How to Create Unforgettable Characters

Are you worried your readers aren’t going to connect with your hero?

It’s a great character that makes the difference between a bestselling novel and a dud.

That’s why, as you’re planning your story, you should take the time to study what made you connect with your favorite characters in the novels you most enjoyed reading. You’ll likely see  patterns if you look carefully.

I have learned a ton about rendering characters over decades of novel writing. Here are  three crucial guidelines for making them memorable.

1.  Make your characters believable

Oddly, memorable doesn’t mean unreal.

Strange as it may seem, the definitions of fiction and nonfiction have flip-flopped these days.

The highest compliment that can be paid a novel is that it’s believable.

Conversely, bestselling nonfiction is now what? Unbelievable. Like stories of people dying, going to heaven, then returning to tell about it.

Try to sell that as fiction, and it would be rejected as unrealistic!

So if you want memorable characters, they have to be not only heroic, but also believable.

To accomplish this, make readers care about your characters by making them feel both real and knowable.

2.  Trigger the Theater of the Mind

Making characters real and knowable doesn’t mean overwhelming the reader with description. You can’t compete with the reader’s imagination anyway, and what’s the harm if a thousand readers have a thousand different versions of what your main character looks like?

Sure, all readers need to know your hero’s gender, general size, maybe hair and eye color, perhaps even the timbre of their voice.

It should also emerge whether your lead is athletic or strong or nimble enough to accomplish some difficult task your plot requires.

But the day of describing hair and eyelash length, curve of lip, shade of complexion as if it came from a color chart, and breadth of hands and fingers is long past. Leave some of the fun to the reader’s imagination.

3.  Add pet-the-dog moments

Put your heroes in situations where their character emerges. Do they know service people by name? Greet them? Ask about their families? What does that say about them? Imagine what it subtly communicates to readers.

Would your hero or heroine notice if they were undercharged for breakfast? Would they make it right? Are they generous tippers?

Would they stop—even if they were late—and help a homeless person whose basket full of earthly possessions has tipped over?

These are called pet-the-dog moments, where an otherwise bigger-than-life personality does something out of character—something that might be considered beneath him.

Readers remember such poignant episodes, and they make the key moments even more dramatic.

It was George Bailey’s sacrificing his travel-the-world dreams to take over the lowly savings and loan that made his standing up to the villainous Mr. Potter so heroic in the classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life.

Want to turn your Jimmy Stewart into a George Bailey?

Make him real.

Give him a pet-the-dog moment.

Make him a hero.

And you’ll make him unforgettable.

In the Comments below, introduce me to the main character in your latest story, and tell me how you’ll make him or her memorable.

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