Characters Are Your Story: How to Create Characters Readers Can't Forget
Kirsty Schumacher
9/1/20268 min read
You can have the most ingenious plot in the world.
You can have twists, betrayals, explosions, forbidden romances, mysterious murders and a perfectly constructed three-act structure.
But if your readers don't care about the people experiencing those things, none of it matters.
Characters are your story.
Readers don't follow plots. They follow characters through plots.
Think of your plot as the plumbing of a house. You absolutely need it. Without it, the house doesn't function. But when you walk into someone's home, you don't marvel at the plumbing. You notice the people, the atmosphere, the things that make the place feel alive.
The same is true of fiction.
A writer who doesn't create convincing characters will struggle to make even the most exciting story work. But a writer who creates characters who are thrilling, troubling, seductive, complicated and impossible to ignore can get away with a surprising amount.
Because once we care about a character, we care about what happens to them.
And that's where a story begins.
Three Types of Characters
Every story contains characters who fulfil different functions. Understanding those functions can help you decide where your writing energy should go.
1. The Protagonist
The protagonist is usually the character we are rooting for — the person whose journey forms the emotional centre of the story.
But here's an important distinction:
Your protagonist doesn't have to be perfect.
In fact, they shouldn't be.
Perfect characters are difficult to believe in because real people are messy. We have contradictions, blind spots, insecurities, selfish impulses and irrational fears.
Give your protagonist flaws.
Let them make mistakes. Let them misunderstand people. Let them behave badly sometimes. Let them want something for the wrong reasons.
The reader doesn't need to think, “This person is wonderful.”
They need to think:
“I understand why this person is like this.”
That's empathy.
And empathy is far more powerful than perfection.
2. The Antagonist
The antagonist is often described as the "bad guy".
But the best antagonists don't think they're bad.
They think they're right.
They may genuinely believe that what they're doing is necessary, justified or even morally good. They may love their family. They may consider themselves loyal. They may believe they are protecting people.
In other words, they shouldn't simply be positioned as evil.
They should be positioned in a struggle against the protagonist.
That's what makes them interesting.
The antagonist wants something. The protagonist wants something. Those desires cannot comfortably coexist.
And when two characters with understandable motivations collide, you have conflict.
A compelling antagonist should therefore contain something the reader can recognise — a fear, desire, wound, value or belief that makes their behaviour understandable, even when their actions are unforgivable.
The question isn't:
“How can I make my villain more evil?”
It's:
“Why does this person believe they are the hero of their own story?”
3. The Walk-Ons
Not every character needs a backstory, a character arc and three pages of internal monologue.
Some characters are simply there to move the story along.
The waiter who brings the coffee.
The receptionist who delivers the message.
The stranger who bumps into your protagonist on the street.
The police officer who asks a question.
These are your walk-on characters.
They don't need extensive characterisation. In fact, trying to fully develop every minor character can overwhelm the reader and dilute the importance of your primary characters.
But that doesn't mean walk-ons are useless.
Quite the opposite.
Their details can reveal something about your main character.
Your protagonist might notice that the waiter has chipped nail polish because she's feeling unusually observant. Another character might completely ignore the waiter because they're consumed by anger.
The walk-on hasn't changed.
The character observing them has.
Walk-ons can also add realism and movement to quieter moments. They make the world feel populated rather than staged.
The trick is to notice them quickly and efficiently.
A single memorable detail can be enough.
Less Is Usually More
One useful rule of thumb is to keep the number of primary characters relatively small.
Five is a good maximum. Fewer can be even better.
Of course, there are novels with enormous casts. But the more primary characters you introduce, the more difficult it becomes to give each person enough attention for the reader to understand and care about them.
And then there's another question:
Whose thoughts are we actually allowed inside?
This is where interiority becomes important.
Interiority is the character's internal experience — their thoughts, feelings, memories, fears, interpretations and private reactions.
You don't necessarily need to give every primary character access to the reader's inner world.
If you have five main characters, consider giving interiority to perhaps three.
Let the other two reveal themselves through what they say and do.
This creates a useful contrast.
We know what three characters think.
We have to interpret the other two.
And sometimes, that mystery makes a character far more compelling.
Give Your Characters Something Human at Stake
A character becomes interesting when something matters to them.
They need to want something. They need to fear something. They need something unresolved.
Perhaps they want to be loved. Perhaps they need to prove themselves. Perhaps they're desperate to belong. Perhaps they're trying to escape their past. Perhaps they need forgiveness. Perhaps they're terrified of losing control.
Stories grab our attention when characters are wrestling with human needs.
But it's not enough for the character to simply have a problem.
They need to be ripe for the story.
In other words, something about their life has brought them to the point where this particular conflict can no longer be avoided.
And the reader needs to understand two things:
Why this matters to the character.
And:
Why we should care about what happens to them.
That is the emotional contract between writer and reader.
Create Rounded Characters
A rounded character is more than a collection of traits.
They're complicated. They're capable of contradictory behaviour. They surprise us without feeling random. They change over time. Most importantly, we develop empathy for them.
Think about real people.
Someone can be generous and selfish. Brave and frightened. Kind and cruel. Confident in one situation and deeply insecure in another.
People don't behave consistently because they're badly written. They behave inconsistently because humans are complicated.
Your characters should be too.
The goal isn't to make every character likeable.
It's to make them understandable.
A reader can hate what a character does and still desperately want to know why they did it.
That's powerful characterisation.
Something Profound Has to Be at Stake
A character doesn't necessarily become memorable because they perform dramatic actions.
They don't have to be the funniest, prettiest, cleverest or most likeable person in the book.
Sometimes the vitality of a character comes from something deeper:
The sense that what happens to them matters.
Their actions carry weight.
Their choices reveal something about being human.
Their struggles touch something larger than the immediate events of the story.
A character can be fighting for a job, a relationship, a family, a home or even a seemingly trivial object — but underneath that conflict might be something much larger.
Identity.
Freedom.
Love.
Belonging.
Worth.
Mortality.
Forgiveness.
Meaning.
That's when a character starts to feel alive.
You're no longer simply watching someone do things.
You're watching someone become someone.
Put Your Characters Under Pressure
One of the simplest ways to reveal character is to make things difficult.
Beat your character down. Take something away. Put them in danger. Give them an impossible choice. Force them into a situation where their usual coping mechanisms stop working.
Because pressure reveals things.
A person who is calm when everything is going well tells us very little.
What happens when they're terrified?
What happens when they're angry?
What happens when they're humiliated?
What happens when they have to choose between two things they desperately want?
And, perhaps most importantly:
What happens when they get back up?
The reader should experience not only the character's suffering, but their subsequent rising.
The defeat makes the victory matter.
The breaking makes the rebuilding matter.
The darkness makes the light matter.
Give Characters Room to Breathe
Don't introduce ten characters in the first two pages and expect your reader to remember who is who.
Give characters time to settle into the reader's mind.
Let us see them. Let us hear them speak. Let us understand what they want. Let us notice what makes them different.
This is another reason to limit the number of characters in a scene.
Ideally, scenes should focus on one or two important characters whenever possible. The more people you introduce at once, the harder it becomes for the reader to emotionally connect with any of them.
Your characters need space to exist.
Character and Plot Are Not Separate Things
This is perhaps the most important principle of all:
Character and plot are inextricably intertwined.
It's tempting to think of plot as the things that happen and character as the person reacting to them.
But the relationship is much more interesting than that.
An event happens.
The character responds according to who they are.
That response creates another consequence.
The character is changed by that consequence.
Their changed self responds differently to the next event.
And so the cycle continues.
Event → reaction → change → action → consequence → further change.
That is rising action.
The plot changes the character.
The character changes the plot.
And the two keep pushing each other forward until the story reaches its resolution.
This is why story events that have absolutely no effect on a character's internal world can feel pointless.
And characters who make choices that have no effect on the plot can feel equally pointless.
Everything should be connected.
When You're Stuck, Ask This Question
If you've ever found yourself staring at a blank page thinking, “I have absolutely no idea what happens next,” try asking:
Does the story need character development or plot development?
If the character needs to grow, create an event that forces them to grow.
If the plot needs to move, ask what the character would realistically do next — based on who they are right now.
One will usually create the other.
Maybe your protagonist needs to learn to trust someone.
So put them in a situation where trusting someone becomes necessary.
Now you have character development and plot.
Or perhaps you need your protagonist to discover a crucial piece of information.
Ask yourself what that discovery would make them do.
Now the plot has created a character response — which creates the next plot event.
The two are constantly feeding each other.
Start With Character
This is why, when you're beginning a new story, it can be useful to start with character rather than plot.
Don't begin with:
“What exciting thing could happen?”
Begin with:
“Who is this person?”
What do they want?
What do they fear?
What do they believe?
What are they avoiding?
What do they need but don't yet understand?
What wound are they carrying?
What would force them to change?
Then ask:
“What kind of story would force this particular person to confront those things?”
Now your plot isn't something you've simply placed your character inside.
It's something that has grown naturally out of them.
The storyteller's job is to bring all of these elements together: character, setting, conflict, emotion and dramatic purpose.
The setting creates the conditions.
The character responds according to who they are.
Their response creates consequences.
Those consequences force them to change.
Their changes push the story forward.
And the story, in turn, reveals who they truly are.
That's the magic of fiction.
Because ultimately, readers don't remember every plot point.
They remember people. They remember the character who broke their heart. The character who infuriated them. The character they secretly understood. The character they desperately wanted to save. The character they couldn't stop thinking about long after they closed the book.
Build characters worth following, and your readers will follow them anywhere.
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