The hardest characters to write

Chances are, as a writer, there are certain types of character that you find easier to write than others. In some ways, this is an extension of that old cliché: write what you know. It’s easier to write about characters that are similar to what we already know, that are like us or people we know, or types of people that we have written about before.

It’s a simple fact of life and writing that we will always find some things harder than others. Some writers might struggle writing from the perspective of children, for instance, while others might find it something of a challenge to write from the point of view of a different gender.

It can cause us considerable challenges while we’re writing our novels and stories, trying to see things from the point of view of and understand a character that we find more difficult than others. However, it’s definitely a challenge worth overcoming. Just because a character is hard to write doesn’t mean that they won’t come out well at the end of the writing process. Sometimes, the fact that they are hard to pin down or get inside of can help to make them more real.

Plus, it’s a challenge we all have to overcome, and if we all only ever wrote what we knew, fiction would be a very boring place indeed. So what if we don’t know anything about nuclear physics but have decided to make our lead character work in the field? Who says you can’t write about a character with children just because you don’t have any children yourself? That’s what research is for, and planning and imagination and the good old art of making things up.  In a lot of ways, believability is more important than accuracy – and they are not always the same thing.

Which characters do you find the hardest to write, and how do you go about making sure you pull them off successfully?