How to Build Engaging Characters: A Guide
Table of Contents
From morally gray rogues who we fall for to quiet scholars whose courage surprises everyone, engaging characters are pretty much the heartbeat of any novel. Even if your plot is absolutely amazing and your premise is breathtaking, without engaging characters, your readers will find themselves at a loss. Characters are extremely important, and I think that without great characters, your story will suffer. So, for today’s post, I’ll be talking about how to build engaging characters for your next story.
Want the full workflow and system to creating characters that readers will obsess over? Grab a copy of The Ultimate Character Creation Guide today and start building characters from the ground up. It’s over 150 pages and it’s full of instructional material and workbook sections to help you build a character from their backstory to the relationships and their personality and more. Get it here 👉 The Ultimate Character Creation Guide and Workbook
1. Start With the “Four-Corner Core”
| Corner | Guiding Question |
|---|---|
| Goal | What does the character want? |
| Motivation | Why do they want it now? |
| Conflict | What blocks them? |
| Change | How will they evolve? |
These four core elements of a character are a great starting point to help you think about the basics of what makes your character matter to the reader.
2. Layer Flaws and Strengths
Part of what makes a character interesting and engaging to readers is the fact that your character has strengths and weaknesses and even flaws. You don’t want your character to be flat, which means that they need more than just a single defining trait.
For instance, if your character is charming and their strength is getting people around them, maybe their weakness is that they use manipulation to escape blame or maybe they are great at friendship but not so much at romance.
I talk a lot about how to avoid the flat character syndrome in The Ultimate Character Creation Guide, and I provide lots of techniques for you to ensure that you’re not writing a character that’s considered flat by your readers.
3. An Engaging Backstory
An engaging character is going to also need an engaging backstory to help give more context to why they act a certain way in the present day. For instance, maybe your main character’s village was burned down in a raid and to this day, he’s still terrified of fire and that impacts a mission that he’s supposed to have successfully completed.
The backstory also provides a justification/explanation as to why your character turned out the way they did. It’s part of the reason why I talk a lot about it in The Ultimate Character Creation Guide, where I included worksheets and guiding questions related to character backstories so you can break it down to small pieces and put it all together.
4. Let Relationships Show More of Your Character
Relationships are a big part of human life and they should also be a big part of your character’s life as well. Your main character can have positive and negative relationships with other characters and you can use those relationships to show more of your main character.
What makes an engaging main character is how they act and react to others around them. So, this includes mentorships, romances, enemies, friends, etc…
5. Give your Character a Fun Trait
One thing that can make an engaging character memorable as well is to give them a small, fun trait. Fun doesn’t necessarily mean it’s actually fun or positive, but rather it means that this trait is a specific quirk your character has.
Maybe your character’s sense of humor is so wild that the other characters don’t ever laugh, until it really matters. Maybe your character’s got a favorite color so all of her outfits are coordinated with that color.
Give the reader something to remember.
FAQs
I think it’s a good idea to have at least a brief understanding of your character. I actually have this Canva template you can grab that gives you three pages to sketch out your whole character (you can duplicate this template for each character too).
In a way, yes. Your character will have interactions with others, be it positive or negative.
Yes! The Ultimate Character Creation Guide and Workbook was actually designed to help you build any type of character you can imagine across many genres, from villains to pacifists and beyond!
Want the Full Strategy to Building Engaging Characters?
If you want to expand your characters and create them the right way, then you need The Ultimate Character Creation Guide.
Inside, you’ll discover how to:
- Design character arcs that emotionally resonate
- Craft compelling flaws, goals, and motivations
- Create dynamic relationships and conflict
- Develop unique voices and backstories
- Avoid clichés while mastering archetypes
Packed with expert writing tips, detailed templates, and creative prompts, this guide is designed to turn character creation from overwhelming to intuitive. Ideal for beginner and experienced storytellers alike, this workbook includes tons of instruction and interactive activities to give you an edge in your writing game!
Join the many writers who’ve turned ideas into breathing, living characters
👉 Get The Ultimate Character Creation Guide
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