Your story’s main characters are the characters that your readers are going to hold dearest to their hearts. Your readers will laugh with your main characters, cry with them, get angry with them, and sometimes even mourn them. Your job as a writer is to make these characters as believable as possible. You have to make your readers feel as though these characters are real people. You’ve worked hard on your plot, now it is time to work hard on your main characters.

Tips for Creating Believable Main Characters

 

Creating main characters that truly resonate with your readers begins with making them like real people. When you are out in public, take a look around you. Take notes in a journal about what you see people doing. Focus on body language, subconscious movements, how they speak and act. All of these observations may seem pointless, but giving your character a signature tick or a specific way of talking can make them much more believable.

You should also create character profiles before you begin writing. Create names for your main characters, give them nicknames, ages, temperament, likes and dislikes, jobs, and anything else you may need in their background to further your plot. Next, take it a step further. Think of every day situations: how would your main characters react? When they are angry, sad, happy, or romantic? How will they handle those situations and why would their reaction be what it is? Knowing all of this about your main characters before you begin writing gives your story a sense of being a part of reality. Your fiction book becomes more like non-fiction to you. If your main characters seem real to you, they will seem real to your readers. Giving your story believable main characters gives your book another level of depth and can make your readers so much more attached to the world you have created and the characters that live within it.

Sometimes, writers get too close to the story they are writing and don’t realize that they left out important information regarding their main characters. This can take away from their believability. Visit my website at Write One Publications and I can help you bring your main characters to life.

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