How to Create Characters Readers Actually Remember

Characters are not meant to be perfect in stories; after all, to get readers to like your characters, they should realistically feel human. However, what you need are characters that are genuinely unforgettable. These are memorable, interesting, and engaging characters that will stick in a reader’s mind even after they finish your book. You want readers to continue thinking about those characters and obsessing over them. So, for today’s post, we’ll be talking about how to create characters in your stories that readers will actually remember. 

1. Make Their Pain Personal, Not Generic

Oftentimes in stories, writers seem to think that just layering on pain for the main character is enough to create depth. However, pain without meaning and substance to the character just adds on tropes and can feel like it’s just tacked on without meaning. 

The idea of giving a character trauma isn’t the thing that makes a character interesting, but how you use the character’s trauma to add onto their personality, depth, and growth. 

You want to make the pain that the character experiences feel personal and real so that your readers can connect to your characters. This is one way that you can create characters that readers will actually remember.

If you want to try and think a bit more about your character’s backstory, then you should check out my Character Backstory Cheat Sheet which comes with a ton of questions that can help you think through your character’s backstory. Just sign up below to get the free cheat sheet right away: 

2. Build Contradictions Into Their Personality

In real life, people are not perfect and don’t follow an archetypal line in their personalities. People can contradict themselves and make lots of mistakes. It’s only realistic for characters in a book to do the same as well. For instance, you’ll find a lot of times a character that’s sort of a lone wolf type of personality might actually be really nice to animals, which feels like a contrast to the way he deals with people. 

Contradictions help to create multi-dimensional characters and they’re important for your character’s development and personality. I talk a lot about personality and personality types in my Ultimate Character Creation Guide, which includes over 150 pages with workbook sections and instructional material to help you learn how to create characters of all kinds for your stories. Check it out today!

3. Tie Their Flaws to Their Story Arc

Any flaws that exist in your character shouldn’t just be there for decoration, so-to-speak, but they should be fuel for your story and the development of your character. The flaws your character has should interfere with the momentum of the story in a way that builds more onto the story rather than just exists alongside it without any true purpose. 

For example, you might have a character who has trust issues and inadvertently sabotages their best chance at love because they’re so afraid to let people into their lives. These flaws add a lot of depth and help you create interesting and engaging subplots for your story. 

4. Give Them One Unshakable Core

Even if your character is a very complex personality, they should still have something that they won’t give up. This could include a moral or a promise, a core belief or desire, or something similar to these concepts. This unshakable belief of theirs should help to define a lot about their personality and character and give them consistency, clarity, and depth. 

You want to think about situations where this core belief of theirs will be tested and shaken and where they will feel like they are conflicted between choosing what they want and what the circumstances call for. 

5. Let Their Voice Be Undeniable

Your character needs to have a unique and engaging voice that defines them for who they are. If your character is speaking, your readers shouldn’t need to see a dialogue tag in order to know who is talking. 

Creating characters that your readers actually remember means that you need to give them distinct voices. This isn’t just about catchphrases and accents, but also about their choice of words, their phrases, their sayings, etc… Try to create dialogue that’s realistic for your character rather than just quippy or sarcastic for the sake of including those elements.

This is especially true in first-person point of view where it might be harder if you have multiple characters written in first-person. It’s something I personally did with my series, The Fallen Age Saga where I had multiple first-person POV characters and had to ensure each one had their own unique style.

Conclusion

Readers who enjoy character-driven narratives don’t just want to see an interesting plot, but they want to see interesting characters that complement the plot as well. Your readers will want to see characters that are actually memorable and they’ll want to see characters that make them interested and engaged in the reading process. 

You need to give your characters layers, tension, contradictions, relationships, and similar elements that allow them to feel actually human and not just like a word on a page. 

If you want to learn more about creating characters for stories as well as slotting them into your plot, building relationships and backstories, and creating memorable, realistic, human characters, then you’ll want to check out my Ultimate Character Creation Guide. It’s packed with templates, walkthroughs, instructional material and so much more to help you create the best characters for your stories!

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