Why Flat Characters can Hinder AMAZING Stories (and How to Fix Them Before It’s Too Late)

Alright, so imagine this scenario: You pick up a book and you’re immediately captivated by the world, the high stakes, and the plot that’s promising an amazing adventure ahead. However, after a few chapters into the story, you start to notice that something just doesn’t feel super right. You can’t really connect to the characters and so you end up skimming or DNFing the book because it doesn’t feel like it’s worth it to you to keep reading. This is a situation where a flat character has basically hurt the ability of a story to keep reader attention, and if you’re writing a story, before you send out that manuscript or hit publish on KDP, you need to make sure your character isn’t flat and if you find that it is, here’s how you can fix flat characters before it’s too late.

I find characters to be one of the most important parts in the writing process and so I decided to write up an entire guide and workbook so that you too can learn how to write amazing characters as well. The Ultimate Character Creation guide was designed to help writers at any stage and level learn to make unforgettable characters that your readers will 100% obsess over. The best part is that they’re digital and printable, so you can use them as you please. With over 150 pages of instructional content and interactive fillables, you can learn how to create a character from the foundation to the image and beyond.

What Makes a Character Feel Flat?

Flat characters aren’t just characters who don’t change. They’re pretty much a character that just has no realism value. These characters don’t seem to exist beyond the words on the page. You can spot them when every line they speak feels like it’s only there to move the plot or when they react to major events without any real emotional depth. 

Some of the most common reasons characters fall flat:

• Lack of stakes. We don’t know what they care about, so we don’t care what happens to them.
• Surface-level personality. Maybe they’re “sassy” or “stoic,” but that’s where it ends. No nuance and no complexity.
• Overused tropes. The brooding assassin. The quirky healer. The sarcastic thief. Characters that feel like copies of copies without anything pushing them past being copies. 
• Inconsistent behavior. They act one way in one chapter, then contradict themselves in the next and not in a human way, but in a way that feels unintentional.

Readers need to be able to like the character, not necessarily because the character is a good person, but because the character isn’t flat and has actual character development. 

The Cost of Poor Character Development

You might think you can get away with a character who’s “good enough” if your plot is exciting or if your world building is super in-depth. That might work in a movie or something, but in a book, your reader is attached to your main character the entire time. So, if your character is poorly developed, you’ll find readers won’t finish your book or if they do finish it, they’ll feel like it was a chore to finish. 

You might also find that your themes aren’t going to resonate and that the emotional depth and tension of your scenes and action just won’t matter as much. The character is basically like the reader’s camera lens into a story and if your camera is so shaky that the reader can’t see what’s happening on every page, then you’ve got a problem. 

This is something that I address in my character creation guide because I find that it could really hurt a story’s chances of success if there’s no real emotional depth and development for a character. 

How to Build Depth That Resonates

1. Give Them a Clear Motivation

What does your character want?

It could be something big, like saving their kingdom. Or something personal, like finally proving they’re worthy of love. What matters is that it drives their decisions.

2. Root Their Beliefs in Experience

A character’s experiences will shape the way they end up becoming. A character who’s deeply cynical probably didn’t wake up that way.

Ask yourself: what moment (or series of moments) shaped their view of the world? That backstory doesn’t need to be dumped in one scene but you need to know it as the writer of the story.

Even if you never show the full backstory, even hinting at things that happened in the past is important for character depth. 

3. Let Them Have Flaws That Hurt Them

A character’s flaw shouldn’t just be “they’re too stubborn.” It should actually cause problems in the story. It should hurt their relationships, hinder their goals, and create emotional friction.

Flaws make characters relatable. All humans are prone to making bad choices and making your characters feel human means that they too should make bad choices every now and then.

4. Build Their Emotional Logic

Even if your character is impulsive, unpredictable, or emotionally messy, their reactions should make sense based on what they’ve been through. You can’t just give a whiplash shift to your readers without there being a buildup. For instance, if you have a lone wolf character and by chapter 4 the lone wolf character is suddenly surrounding himself with a group, then that doesn’t feel right for the story and doesn’t give the reader time to care about this character’s archetype. 

A Practical Tool for Writers

If you want help building richer characters with guidance that works across genres and skill levels, then the Ultimate Character Creation Guide was made for you.

It walks you through everything you need to know to build an amazing character. You’ll explore character arcs, inner conflict, personal stakes, and the kind of storytelling choices that deepen every scene.

Whether you’re working on your first novel or your tenth, this guide helps you:

• Avoid flat, trope-only characters
• Create layered personalities with purpose
• Stay consistent across drafts
• Add emotional realism that resonates with readers

With over 150 beautifully designed, colorful pages filled with interaction and guidance, you’ll walk away knowing everything it is that you need to know about creating compelling characters.

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