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Knights of Ril
Writing Advice:
Why We Fall In Love With Characters
Some characters immediately dominate our mind space. Others linger quietly until, without realizing it, we’re carrying them around like old friends. Then there are the rare few who feel so alive that finishing the book feels like saying goodbye.
Readers often describe this as “connection,” but connection isn’t an accident. Others say that “connection” doesn’t do justice to what they feel. I like to call it “emotional response.” I read everything I write to my wife. (She calls them her bedtime stories.) I love it when she has an emotional response. Sometimes, she growls and tells me she hates someone in the story. Sometimes, she tells me she loves a character or that a character is “so cute.” (That one is a mixed bag, cute is not usually my intent, but it happens.) Whatever it might be, that connection or emotional response results from deliberate choices made by the author. Once understood, these choices can deepen the reading experience (through appreciation) and sharpen a writer’s instincts (creating repeatability).
Characters Become Real When They Want Something
Readers fall for characters who want something specific. The deeper and more urgent the want, the stronger the reader can react. Put simply, desire is the engine of empathy. But what is empathy? Here’s where things can get sticky.
The simple definition is “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.”
How is that different from sympathy? Sympathy is “a feeling of sincere concern for someone who is experiencing something difficult or painful.” Empathy involves actively sharing in the person’s emotional experience. If you need something clearer than that, that’s about as clearly as I can describe it.
When we understand what a character wants, we begin to care whether her or she gets it.
So, as a reader, pay attention to how quickly you can identify a character’s core desire. Notice how your emotional investment rises the moment their goal is threatened.
As a writer, define what your character wants on page one — then complicate it. Tangle it up with other stuff, so it’s difficult to achieve. Desire without friction is forgettable. The greater the journey, the greater the impression it can leave.
Flaws Make Characters Human
Perfect characters are boring. Flawed characters are magnetic. “Why do you have that scar through your eyebrow?” ... “Where’d you get that limp?” ... “Why do you start punching everyone when you hear a bell?” ... “Why did seeing that guy make you go insane and shoot everyone?” Of course, some of these questions are silly, but the use of distortion that makes them funny and also makes the point easier to pick out. Flaws, be it physical, emotional, or psychological, make characters fascinating.
Readers respond to contradictions, insecurities, blind spots, and mistakes that illustrate a character’s vulnerabilities.
For writers, the key is balance. A flaw should create tension, not repel the reader. A character who is too self-destructive becomes exhausting; a character with no cracks is boring. The goal is a flaw that creates friction but also invites compassion.
We Love Characters Who are Real
Readers often fall in love with characters who reflect something true about themselves. This is often something they’ve felt but never articulated.
This can be a fear (ever notice that so many of the greatest writers are neurotic?), a hope, a wound, a longing, or a world view they didn’t know they shared. In writing science fiction and fantasy, this is where world-building can really come into play. The use of distortion and exaggeration in creating cultures can make the aspects of world view crystal clear.
For writers, this is where specificity matters. The more precise the emotional truth, the more universal it becomes. This might seem contradictory, like being specific would alienate readers. There might be some truth to that. The opposite, however, is that peddling vagueness is unappealing to everyone. Readers don’t connect with generalities; they connect with exactness.
Agency Creates Attachment
A character who acts is more compelling than one who is always acted upon.
Readers instinctively admire characters who make choices, take risks, and pursue their goals despite obstacles. Even flawed decisions build attachment, because agency signals life. A character who chooses — even poorly — feels real.
I offer a caveat at this point. There is a trope called “Too Dumb to Live.” This drives me insane. If someone would never survive life on their own — like crossing the street would be beyond their capacity without death — please don’t put them in your story. It makes me close the book or change the channel. Let them earn their Darwin Awards off the page. That’s not to say that characters cannot make mistakes. But there’s a big difference between making an honest mistake or having a misunderstanding and sitting there thinking, “How did this person survive this long?!”
End rant.
For writers, if your character is drifting, give him or her a decision with consequences. That’s one of the things that is essential. All decisions have consequences. Readers will appreciate that and, to be honest, some readers need to learn this so-very-important lesson.
Mystery Keeps Us Close
We don’t need to know everything. In fact, not knowing can create attraction. A hint of mystery, an unanswered question, a contradiction, a wound they won’t name, creates gravity. It’s the kind of thing where, in the movie theater, you lean forward in your seat, that bit of popcorn almost in your mouth, but not quite, until you look down and realize you’ve been holding it there for the last minute or so.
For writers, this allows you to reveal layers over time. The trick is intentional withholding, not vagueness. Mystery is a promise that the truth exists and will matter.
The Moment of Irreversible Attachment
Every beloved character has a moment when the reader commits:
- a kindness he or she did not have to show
- a choice that costs him or her something
- a moment of honesty that cracks the character’s (previously) unblemished armor
For writers, identifying this moment can be powerful. For readers, noticing it can transform how you understand your own emotional responses to stories.
In closing, we don’t fall in love with characters because they’re extraordinary. (I love Superman, but he’s not my favorite superhero. Who are my favorites? Wolverine and Batman.) We fall in love with characters because they’re human — even if they’re not. Even if they’re dragons, demons, detectives, or demigods, the bond between the reader and the character is built from deliberate choices but, if done correctly, can feel more like magic.
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