A compelling character, a thing of beauty when executed perfectly, and the misery of many a great writer who fails to comprehend what it takes to truly craft an excellent compelling character that can win the hearts and minds of readers everywhere.
Good characterization is an art form, not to sound too pretentious but crafting a character that is remembered is genuinely something that takes deliberation and skill unbeknownst to many. It’s a level of expertise that writers have been chasing for ages now. If you are facing trouble in writing a character then you can also take professional ghostwriting services.
Many writers quite honestly lack the introspection that would allow them to look within to see that the answers to writing a compelling character are within them, rather than asking “How to write a good character” what they instead should be asking is “why haven’t I already started?”. Any writer worth their salt knows that writing is a process whether it’s writing a compelling story.
Whether it’s writing a plot twist or an ending. Nothing is ever finished, there are layers upon layers that add up and build something to have deep meaning. Good characterization is a process that begins with the introduction of the character in question. The purpose of the introduction is to allow the author to describe and show (not tell) what the place of this character is in the hierarchy of the story. Whether they’re an antagonist, a protagonist, or a deuteragonist. The importance of the characters in the story is shown through the actions they take and how they affect the world around them.
Some characters simply exist to build up other characters and their motivations, a good example of this would be Uncle Ben from the Spiderman series. His death served as a motivation for the protagonist to evolve, he was a minor supporting character, but his influence was felt till the end of the story including the sequels. A character’s role in the story has to be established in a way that compels audiences to engage with them and take them seriously.
The writers at our company quite literally have the experience and the expertise to present to you the necessary steps to take your writing to the next level. They can do this for you by teaching you how to write a good character in some 6 easy steps that should be the guideline from which you can work on building your characters.
1. Make sure to be descriptive
Describe the scenario, the appearance, the smell, and the feel. Allow the audience to come to conclusions on their own, don’t force anything here your job is to not tell people what to do it’s to show them what their character is, and allow them to come to conclusions on their own. The most interesting characters are those who the audience can relate to regardless of the moral implications of their actions.
2. Have a suitable backstory
Everyone has a backstory, everyone grew up somewhere, and everyone met a person they loved dearly, and had a family, their relationships are what helped them grow and shaped them into the individuals that they are. Good characterization is something that plays on this aspect, and this is an aspect of a story that is supposed to be something that allows people who read your books to have a deeper understanding of what your characters are supposed to represent. or if it is a fictional character then you can contact experts who provide fiction ghostwriting services.
3. Make sure to write according to genre
Characterization is largely defined by the type of story you are trying to tell; science fiction characters are a bit different from thriller story characters. The reason is quite simple a lot of the factors that make one book or genre different from the other are largely due to plot and characterization.
4. Write characters with complex motivations
Write characters with complex motivations to fascinate the audience more with the type of person that they are. The reasons are quite simple, everyone has unique motivations for the type of decisions they make in life, and decisions are made based on bounded rationality. Bounded rationality is a concept often used in economics to describe actors making decisions based on the limited information that they have access to. As a writer you are essentially the god of the universe and the characters you write about, the characters aren’t supposed to have the same information as you about the events that will unfold within the story, so write them as such.
5. Give them flaws No one likes a Mary Sue
A Mary Sue is a concept that is synonymous with bad writing. This is a writing sin that will have your book thrown in the dollar bin about a week after release, readers who know a thing or two will never take a Mary Sue seriously. This is perhaps the most reviled type of character and universally hated. Everyone realistically has flaws, and no one is perfect, and no one ever will be. Give your character flaws and describe them, and show the audience the mistakes they make.
6. Visualize your character
What does your character look like? What is their appearance, where do you think they’d go to eat? What type of music they would listen to, are they attractive? Or are they plain? Do you think people in the story would respond positively to them or negatively, these are all traits that make up a character that plays an important role in crafting an engaging and interesting character and are important in learning how to write a good character.
Conclusion
Learning how to write a good character is a process that never truly ends because writing is a skill that takes ages to perfect, just ask our team, they’ve been writing for ages, and they know the struggles a new writer faces when learning to see what works for them and what doesn’t. However, if you take our tips to heart and focus on refining your characterization you will end up creating characters that fascinate you just as much as your audience.
