10 Best Tips for Writing REALISTIC Characters in your Book

My character is super S H O R T but also still good looking and somewhat athletic. He does have multiple mental illnesses and some trauma. I have started on writing my character profile, but have the whole thing already thought out. He is a basically emotionless and strict ruler but he’s not cruel or mean.

Thanks, this highlights two problems I'm running into writing my book. Do you have suggestions on how to describe what the characters say? Do I tell the story in third person or from the view of a specific character and how to know what is the best option?

Thank u so much!

She sounds like Michelle Obama.😊

Writers like Philip Roth are able to get away with self inserts. I think it’s OK as long as it’s a very flawed character.

Am I the only one that likes to imagine my character in random scenarios that don’t happen in the book, but just to experiment on how they’d react?

I’ve been trying forever to get feedback but no one fucking responds to me

Oh shit i just realized my main character is based on me shit

I made the huge mistake of writing a whole book with a side character/villian, and didn't have any information except their name. HUGE. mistake, don't make the same mistake I did

Took notes because this video definitely will help you to write realistic characters.

Haha! I expect nothing less.

Something I like to do is tell the story in my head and see were certain character explanation needs to happen to I don't info dump I charceter all at once

Wait, some people don't want other people to read their work before it's published??? Personally I try to show some amount of that to as many people as I can to get as much input possible on it and make the best piece of work that I can.

Okay so, on specifically character physicality as far as weight and such goes, I think the type of story or genre you're writing is entirely relevant to this topic. If your story has a lot of basis on something that is highly physically active and your cast is the best of the best in that field for the most part, it actually does make perfect sense for the majority of the cast to have a certain physicality about them due to the nature that these would have to be highly physically active people to make sense to be the best of the best in this sort of physical activity.

Like if someone said it would be realistic for a top fighting in Dragon Ball who wasn't made out of magic bubblegum to be fat, I'd have to stop them right there because the sheer amount of physical activity abd calories they have to be burning to do the things they do do not allow for that to make sense. There are a million other examples, but this was the easiest and most well known one to bring up as far as fictional worlds go.

My tip: Talk with other human beings. You think writers get jobs at fast food places or retail because they NEED money? No. It's because they need to interact with people. They study their habits, have interesting conversations and take notes of their lives. That old man buying clothes for their nephew can be a character. That child asking for chocolate milk instead of soda at McDonald's can be a character. Those stoners you delivered pizza to at 11pm. What adventures did they get into before you rang the bell? People are complex, weird and interesting. Learn from them.

To add to point number six, this also goes for identical twins. Identical twins are not the same person. I have brothers who are identical twins, do they share a lot of similarities, yes, but they do not dress in matching outfits, they are not best friends 24/7 and they most certainly do not finish each other's sentences. Can we please stop writing twins as if they share a brain... unless they are literally conjoined twins who share a brain.

Thank you for helping me with this! I am writing a book called : The flame of war : it’s about a kid who has his parents killed in an explosion along with all of his friends and he sorta becomes an anti hero and tries to kill the bomber.

I especially like the tip about "interchangeable" dialogue. I definitely find that if I read a line of dialogue that sounds like it could have been spoken by any one of a number of characters, I pretty much always want to rewrite it to make it more personal to the character who actually speaks it. As to quirks: I HIGHLY recommend Harlan Ellison's essay "Tell-Tale Ticks and Tremors." Single best writing article I have ever read.

I base most of my characters (not just protagonists) off of some facet of me. My current protagonist I guess counts as self inserting but then what's the line between basing a character off of yourself vs self inserting? For example my name is Mars, their name is also Mars. He's a flawed Superman type of character in a cyberpunk world struggling with amnesia. I obviously am not. They're supposed to represent my need to always be the hero but end up failing to do so. On the other hand his best friend, Katsu is supposed be based on my love of music and my happy go lucky/ go with the flow

Love the tuff love.

thank you so much for metioning that not everyone is a cis, het, white, Im not writing a book but im writing characters (kinda why im watching this) and I like to watch writing vids on yt and there was this one creator introducing there characters and all of them were cis, het, and white this made me upset so i was trying to find people who weren’t like that and im so glad I did.

My main character
Name : Aster pythagoras gailwind
Age : 14
Appearance: she has long ,mahogany hair that almost reaches her ankles.
She's got almost paper white skin as she doesn't leave her dark room much and she always wears the same French court style whit laced dress no matter how much clothes she has .
Personality: she serious and almost never smiles . The doesn't care about socialising and is constantly studying.
Background: she the youngest of 5 children with 4 older brothers who constantly pick on her for wanting to be queen even though she is last in line .

I didn't want the first advice because you're telling me to do so without telling me how exactly one does it. I was expecting some genuinely good stuff because you had this amount of views.

🤢

thanks for the last advice

👎🏼

I am really struggling with characters... I have already structured my story but I simply can't put characters... and my biggest problem is that the story have two halves and my main character is too small for the second half and there is nothing I can do with it

My main character at the start of my story is trilingual having had to learn additional languages due to his family moving. He’s constantly mixing words and phrases up and his Older sisters tease him because of this. This causes him to be rather withdrawn when speaking to people he’s unfamiliar with and has resulted in him being seen as rather standoffish.
One of the other characters one day says something in the language that he’s most fluent in and then the two start jabbering nonstop. Gonna be part of their meetcute 😌

What about Thomson and Thompson from Tintin?

"actually I did it because I’m a bitch" literally me when I do anything petty

I am currently writing a story and i didnt bring up the fact one of my characters had ptsd till the 15th chapter. Really no-one wants a info dump of tragedy and trauma

The best tip I can recommend anybody to do is not look at their character as one character, but as though they are somewhere between 3-5 characters with their own different goals and motivations but where there is (roughly) 1-2 central themes tying these goals and motivations together so that their character isn't constantly losing as much ground as they are gaining towards their goals. Then, whenever an event comes up, try to decide which two to three of these sub-characters manifests for the occasion. One character is the dominant personality at the time, one controls their actions, and then the third can affect a little more specifically how they go about their actions. And if you want to make only one of these sub-characters manifest and the others just affect their actions OR if you want to prevent the worst traits from ever being the driving mindset of your character, you can do that. It's your choice in the end, but it opens up more opportunities for you at the very least.

I use this design for some of my NPCs in TTRPGs, and consistently the characters my players like the most are my characters who use this design method because they felt the most real to my players.

It's a little hard to conceptualize perfectly, but when you get used to writing characters like this, you start opening yourself up to more "human" idiosyncrasies where readers won't always know what your character is going to do but they can at least have a general idea of what the character is about so they won't be shocked when your character who has a habit of narcissistic preening goes out of their way to make sure the people they surround themselves with can keep at said narcissist's level because, "If my companions aren't competent at X, Y, or Z, then that will reflect poorly upon me!" Likewise, we won't be shocked if said character has moments of true altruism when nobody is looking because it's already established that they're able to justify doing good for others within their worldview, so even when there's nobody there to watch, they can justify in their mind that, "Well it would not do if I didn't do something and people found out," even though there was no way anyone could have ever known they didn't do whatever good thing they did and on some level they know this. This helps give the character a healthy range that is all still tethered in the traits we can observe without ever really feeling out-of-character, thus letting the readers question "Who is this character really," with different readers being able to get different readings because they each evaluate the things the character does in different ways. Some might see the character as truly a good person who acts narcissistic because they feel they have to for some reason. Others might see them as a narcissist who only does good when it benefits them. And others still could fall anywhere in between. This allows for the characters to have far more personal interpretations for your readers as a result.

When I show people my writing before it’s out, I’m not worried about them stealing it, I’m worried it wont make them feel how I want it to with the end product, if they saw it being built and I told them what I plan on doing with it. Like telling them I want to kill a character to further the main characters development. Now when they read the final product, it doesn’t hit them as hard

i personally find it helpful to pick their role then just keep adding what would make since till i have a full character

Something I was told that stuck with me, and I'm paraphrasing: Write down three things about your character that the reader will never learn. (Like they like the color red, or had four dogs as a toddler, or hates cinnamon.) It will bleed naturally into your story through their actions and speech.

Jenna: Number 5
Dragonball writer 1: Hey guys. You hear this shit? She says let someone other than Goku beat the bad guy.
Dragonball writer 2: Then how would people know that Goku is the hero?

I’ve been writing a book for years but I keep going back to the goal, I’ve never been able to figure out what my character’s goal is. I know his need, his misbelief, what isn’t right in his life and what makes him happy, I know everything except for his goal, I can’t think of what his goal should be.

There are only two genders anything else is demonic and not of God's design

No wonder often sociopaths make lousy writers

I have a video idea.. How do you write a good “sad” book but not make your readers completely depressed while reading it..

I walk slowly out of the comments section.
Bored.

I deliberately didn't include skin tones for my characters because I'm writing so that I can make a series and I wanted it to be easier for more racially diverse casting. There are vampires in my story who are obviously pale, but you can be pale without being white.

Thanks for this. I find it daunting to write realistic characters and scenes. One of my characters happens to be black. He's ruthless on the streets but takes care of his great grandmother at home. He moves around a lot because he doesn't want his enemies to find out where he lives. He's forced by his superiors to murder his best friend. That's the jist of him, however there are complexities. I suppose I bring this up because I'm white, and though I have a cursory understanding of the dope game from personal experience, I fear I wouldn't be able to write (his name is D'Angelo but they call him 'Angel') this character in a grounded way. Should I keep going, or is it inappropriate to bring this up on this platform? Any and all thoughts I'll take into consideration. There are five other main characters.

Hi, Jenna! Hope you don't mind me taking this space and time to let you know something. I'm working on a fantasy romance as well. I'm 50% through and a pleb writer. But damn straight I'm making it the best one that may... rival your own work. Hope I'm not bitin ya... Although it's scope is certainly more than you've probably seen chewed. Wish me luck! 🌟