How to build characters readers care about

1 The bottom line

Give the character a clear want, one telling detail and a flaw, and show them before trouble starts. Readers worry about people they already know, so danger means nothing until they care.

2 Key takeaways

• Start with a clear want, even a small one. Without a want, the reader has no track to move along.
  • Brandon Stanton1:00:27 says the want can be a first girlfriend or a good dinner, but it must exist.
• Make readers care before anything goes wrong. Danger lands only on someone the reader already knows.
  • Tish Rabe25:04 has kids learn that Amani gives flowers to friends before the lion shows up.
• One telling detail does more than a backstory. A single repeated trait lets readers recognise a person without effort.
  • In American Kingpin, one agent has a Rubik's Cube on his keychain, and the host remembered "Rubik's cube guy" before the name Nick Bilton15:28.
• Make the flaw a wrong belief the story can push on. Then trouble comes from who the character is, not from chance.
  • In The Godfather, Michael believes he can survive by not being a gangster, and the shooting of his father breaks that belief Will Storr11:40.
• Aim for "I want to know more," not "I like them." Interest keeps readers in the story, and likability does not.
  • Gillian Flynn20:45 collected rejections for Sharp Objects saying women wouldn't read unaspirational women, and Gone Girl proved otherwise.

Tell me a story. Make me care.

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

2.1 Start with what they want

A want gives the character a direction before you add anything else.

• Give the character a clear want before anything else, as Brandon Stanton1:00:27 does.
  • He learned from Aaron Sorkin that plot is the clothesline and the writerly things (exposition, character, poetic touches) are the clothespins.
  • Let the character be disappointed several times before getting what they want. That gives forward momentum.
  • Anne Lamott33:40 says what a character wants is usually what is at stake, so give them something real to lose.
  • Stanton applies this to the 12 to 14 longer Humans of New York stories. The short single quotes do not need a plot.
• Make the want different from the need David Gelb37:27.
  • The character enters believing they know who they are. Then something turns their world upside down.
  • Across the story they learn that what they wanted was an illusion. That is where the hope comes from.
  • Gelb sets this against the dark night of the soul in Save the Cat, where all seems lost until the hero looks within.
• Give the main character a practical problem and a deeper one Henry Shukman55:14.
  • The deeper problem is spiritual, philosophical or emotional. You may not know it at first, but you have to come to it.
  • Pierre Bezukhov opens War and Peace at a drinking party he does not want to be at. His deeper need is to live in a way that fulfills his soul.
  • David Zucker15:35 says a hardware problem is not enough. Airplane!'s pilot fears flying from PTSD, and Frank Drebin starts Naked Gun with a girlfriend who left him.
• Open with one sentence that names a small, funny problem, as Jonathan Franzen0:24 does.
  • The problem can be trivial. A small problem that matters hugely to the character is funny in itself.
  • Once the character wants something badly, obstacles follow and put you into scenes with other characters.
  • He contrasts this with a thriller premise of stolen nuclear launch codes, which he calls a different kind of novel.

2.2 Add one telling detail

A way of talking, an object or a gesture shows who someone is faster than a past does.

• Build the character from distinctive speech, not a complicated past, as Andrew Sean Greer31:12 does.
  • Give them a distinctive way of talking and thinking.
  • Watch real people in bars with a pad of paper. Note how they move, talk and dress. A gruff bartender gives more to work with than a friendly one.
  • Michael Connelly21:55 made Bosch an outsider with a badge, so he is a man of few words who nods instead of saying yes or no.
  • Patrick Radden Keefe1:01:20 quotes verbal tics. He heard Carl Icahn say "At the risk of being immodest" in two interviews and used both without hanging a flag on it.
  • An early editor of Connelly's kept a running count of Bosch's nods in the margin, such as 540 by page 200.
  • Greer says a maid with bug eyes and a mole, once vivid to him, is easy to write and takes almost nothing on the page.
• Show who a character is through what they drive, wear and carry Jack Carr33:18.
  • He reads strangers in a gun store this way: belt, holster, hat, sunglasses and tattoos each tell a story in a second.
  • An FJ40 Land Cruiser, a felt hat with a grosgrain band and a red bandana show Caroline's toughness and background without calling her beautiful.
  • Lee Child56:57 says readers carry an internal database of types. His examples are an old man with a gray ponytail and double denim, or lace-up Oxfords and pleated chinos.
  • Carr notes that Ian Fleming did the same with Bond's products. His readers include firefighters, police and military, who read those details as signals too.
• Describe a speaking character in one quick stroke before they talk David Sedaris46:00.
  • Citing Ray Carver, he says you need to know what someone looks like if they speak. You do not need a paragraph.
  • A mustache, a unibrow or a little star bandage over a pimple is enough to let the reader see who is talking.
• Plant a trait early and repeat it, as Nick Bilton15:28 does.
  • After drafting, he goes back and adds a memorable trait to each character's early appearances, then repeats it.
  • The IRS agent in American Kingpin reads every email three times, because he believes it lifts recall from 20% to 60%.
  • Andy Weir21:41 gives Grace a quirk that is a mystery until the story explains it. He never swears and says "fudge" and "gosh." The answer, that he is a middle school teacher, arrives later and makes it click.

2.3 Give them a flaw that does work

A flaw is a mistaken belief or a fear, and the story should press on it.

• Finish the sentence "I am only safe if I..." for your character Will Storr4:43.
  • Scrooge believes he is only safe if he keeps all the money and love to himself. Everything he does then follows from that belief.
  • Plot decisions stop being arbitrary once the belief is fixed.
  • The belief must be wrong in the sense of mistaken, not immoral. The story reveals the mistake over time.
  • Death of a Salesman runs on "success is all that matters," Fleabag on "my only value is sexual," and When Harry Met Sally on "men and women can't be friends."
• Pick one core fear and place the character in the opposite situation Andy Weir21:52.
  • Ryland Grace is pathologically afraid of conflict and left academia after a paper was challenged.
  • Weir then made him the lynchpin of humanity's survival. The gap between who he is and what the story asks produces the change at the end.
  • Grace is forced onto the mission rather than volunteering. He only changes when he must choose between himself and Rocky.
• Give the hero a curse or a wound that predates the plot.
  • Steven Pressfield39:45 loves cursed characters because everyone feels incomplete and searches for redemption. The curse can be a tragic flaw like Achilles' pride, or a past like Shane's.
  • David Baldacci6:25 gives each series lead baggage unrelated to the current plot, which can be unpeeled a little more with every book.
  • Shane wants to lay down his guns and cannot. The valley needs the one man who can use a gun, so his past catches up with him and he has to ride away.
  • Atlee Pine's twin sister was kidnapped when she was six, and each of four books uncovers more. Amos Decker came back from brain trauma a different person and lost his family.
• Do not make the flaw so heavy that readers stop rooting for the character, warns Andy Weir19:32.
  • He based Jazz in Artemis on his own immature, lazy younger self to get more depth.
  • He overshot. She was the architect of all her own problems. Balance a flaw with something to care about.
  • He got a lot of reader feedback that they had a tough time rooting for Jazz.

2.4 Make readers care before trouble arrives

Show the character's charm, humanity or loss first, so the danger lands.

• Introduce the character before anything goes wrong, say Tish Rabe25:04 and Bill Browder11:48.
  • Rabe says the key component of a story is that the reader cares about the character first. Without that emotional investment, the danger means nothing.
  • Browder says readers must know the people well enough to root for them when bad things happen.
  • For his third book, about Vladimir Kara-Murza, Browder plans to tell other stories first so the stakes are clear.
• Have the hero do or say something that earns the audience Michael Arndt31:00.
  • The audience puts up a defensive barrier. The hero has to make viewers love them and want to ride along.
  • The common mistake is to presume sympathy because you love your own hero.
  • Make the character feel different from anyone the audience has met or seen on screen.
  • He saw the mistake over and over in the roughly 1,000 scripts he read as a freelance script reader.
• Show a flaw or a loss early, and connection comes fast.
  • Robert Mac15:06 cites Charles Schulz: someone who always wins has no conflict and no drama. Audiences connect with the underdog.
  • Lamott says to give the character a real flaw and something to lose, such as meaning or connection to others.
  • Mac says Chris Rock's special about private school and a gated community was harder to connect with than his earlier everyman material.
  • Lamott's own stake is wanting her son and grandson to outlive her.
• Keep each new introduction short, as Browder does.
  • Good guys need visible humanity, charm and lovability. Bad guys need their rottenness shown without caricature.
  • He gives only a few details per person and asks why he is spending time on someone. Some details wait because they matter chapters later.

2.5 Let the plot press on the character

Trouble should come from who the character is, force a choice and leave them changed.

• Put the character's own flaws in the way of the plot, as Gillian Flynn3:25 does.
  • She has characters make things worse through their own traits, so the crisis comes from who they are.
  • Nick in Gone Girl flubs the police interview, takes a selfie and accidentally flirts with a woman bringing a casserole.
  • Camille in Sharp Objects makes decisions and then tries to undo them.
  • Flynn calls her thrillers character based and says the twist was never the reason she wrote Gone Girl.
• Make two of their values collide Richard Powers11:44.
  • Give a character two good values, such as honesty and fidelity. Then put him where he cannot keep both.
  • The choice shows his true core value and creates interior drama.
  • A friend has done something wrong: do you make him own up, or stand by him no matter what? Powers says that single setup is 10,000 stories.
  • Dean Koontz1:07:09 put a woman hiding in a killer's motor home who learns he has a girl in his basement. He let her history decide whether she escapes or goes back, and that choice carries the whole novel.
• Treat character and plot as one thing Harlan Coben29:34.
  • In Batman and Spider-Man, what happens to the hero is what makes him who he is.
  • Writers who bolt on an arc, or make a character an alcoholic, are working backward. Let what happens form the character.
  • The Boy from the Woods began with a hike in the Ramapo Mountains. The setting gave him a character, and the character became a plot.
• Change the hero between the first scene and the last.
  • Steven Pressfield26:45 says a hero can change and sacrifice, while a villain does neither. Ask whether your hero starts at point A and ends at point Z as a different person.
  • Mitch Albom38:15 fixes the starting point first with small concrete moments, then plans how to move him to the ending.
  • Rick in Casablanca begins fighting only for himself and ends by putting Ilsa on the plane and joining the fight.
  • In Five People, Albom's lead is an 83-year-old maintenance worker who pulls an empty fishing string, falls asleep to seagulls and has shingles.

2.6 Draw the rest of the cast

Minor characters and villains need less, but each needs one clear trait and a reason to be there.

• Keep the cast small and name only people who contribute.
  • David Sedaris50:40 says the listener's mind is a stage, and each named person fills a place on it. If someone will not do or say anything memorable, leave them out.
  • Andrew Hunter Murray27:00 quotes Edith Wharton: a few characters studied closely beat many half-drawn ones. A minor character can be a single vivid trait.
  • Murray recalls a businessman his father met who had a specific method for folding shirts and told everyone about it.
  • Sedaris says friends sometimes complain they were not written about. The answer is that they did not earn a place.
• Make villains understandable and human, not likable.
  • Michael Arndt22:52 says a villain needs a worldview that seems right. Write them so the audience half agrees.
  • Nick Bilton5:00 says readers will follow a villain if they can put themselves in his body. Give him a mother who loves him, lost car keys, a dropped grocery bag.
  • David Baldacci11:54 matches motive to act. When a character does something extreme, the motive must be as big, or readers decide it would never have happened.
  • In Toy Story 3, Lotso stands over a dumpster and tells the toys that kids grow up and toys end up as trash. The audience feels he is basically right.
• Meet characters by putting them in conversation, and make every pair crackle.
  • Jack Carr16:47 knows each character's role before he writes, but does not know the person until they talk to each other.
  • Steven Levitan37:30 starts with one vivid character, then adds each new one so the line between them has tension. He connects everyone like bicycle spokes.
  • Levitan and Chris Lloyd spent about six weeks doing nothing but talking about the Modern Family characters and their dynamics.

2.7 Where writers disagree

Writers split on backstory, physical description, likability and how long to linger on a character.

• Backstory: some skip it, some hide it in a wallet.
  • Jonathan Franzen2:28 skips history, looks and schooling. He goes for the story essence and fills in the rest as he writes.
  • Dean Koontz17:58 says one tragic fact, like a mother who died when the boy was six, is weak. He wants a short way to reveal a past that makes the character come alive.
  • Eric Roth4:08 wants hidden detail, like the wallet Michael Cimino gave Mickey Rourke's character. The actor may never look at it, but the details form a life.
  • Roth saw the wallet while rewriting Year of the Dragon, with a photo of the character's supposed daughter and a crumpled phone number.
• Appearance: one stroke, or none.
  • Yann Martel57:33 never describes Pi. He says words are bad at appearance, because stressing a nose or a scar turns it into a caricature.
  • He uses words for thinking and emotion and treats the character as a vessel the reader looks through.
  • Sedaris and Child, above, still use one quick visual stroke. The shared point is to keep it brief.
• Likability: earn it, ignore it, or trust it.
  • Arndt says do not presume sympathy. Eric Roth50:10 says characters do not need to be likable, only understandable.
  • Lee Child36:57 says you cannot design a character to be liked, because the more you design it the worse it gets. Write an honest portrayal.
  • Child worried nobody would like the first Reacher, but he liked him himself. Reacher shoots people in the back and never changes his clothes, yet sold over 200 million books.
• How long to linger on a character.
  • Browder warns that spending too long on a character bores the reader.
  • Koontz learned from John D. MacDonald, who would stop a 60,000 to 80,000 word story to spend three to five pages on one character37:28. At first Koontz wanted the plot back, but by the end he wanted more of the character.