What is character?
To make sure we’re on the same page, this chapter gives my definition of character and a general overview of the theory for it. This will be similar to how most authors think about them, although I did my best to simplify it for now. (The next few chapters, this simple definition will be expanded into a more detailed definition.)
A character is an entity within a story with the ability to act, based on personal goals they try to achieve, thus creating plot or setting.
Notice the broadness of this definition. It allows you to view objects or concepts (such as magic) as “characters” as well, which I think is useful. The more every element of your world feels like an interesting character, the more easily people will bond with it and care about it.
Obviously, any living being is a character. In most stories, that’ll mean every human is a character.
But what if the human is sick and unable to act anymore? They’re literally in a coma? To me, they are not a character, for they have absolutely no influence on the rest of the story.
A wall is not a character. A magic wall that reacts to the environment and sometimes opens a portal to another world is a character, as it can act and react to change the plot. If you view the wall this way, you can turn it from a lifeless object into something readers care about more.
Also note the last part of the definition. As mentioned in the introduction, characters cannot stand on their own. They create plot by what they want and what they do. They create setting by living inside a certain environment, being a product of that environment.
The first element
That’s the simplest way to check if a character works: check if they serve a PURPOSE.
See if their existence influences the plot of the story or reinforces the setting. If not, scrap them or change them, as they’re doing nothing for your story.
One of my oldest stories (unpublished) took place at a high school. You followed a whole class for a year, as they try to solve a mystery. By default, I invented parents for all those kids as well. If you visited somebody’s home, for example, there’d be a short meeting or conversation with their parents.
Yes, it is realistic. Most kids do have parents, both of them. But why mention them all? Why include them all? It resulted in LOADS of characters, most without purpose for the story.
I should’ve only included a few parents to reinforce the setting, and those should only be the parents that actually influenced the story in some way.
In a similar vein, many writers include characters that sound cool or have cool abilities … which they forget about later, because they have no place in the plot. This is an easy way to overcomplicate your story and make it muddy, even if your cool character is actually really cool.
You can say that “this character only exists to add humor” or “this character only exists to give information/explanation about my fantasy world”, because then the character has purpose. But even then, this is a weak version of a character that usually falls flat.
My earliest stories for The Saga of Life had this issue. I really liked cracking jokes and having smartass characters when I was a kid—apparently—because most stories contained a character that did nothing besides that. They were just … hanging around every scene and making fun of the others.
While this did create some funny jokes or situations, it made the stories way longer than they should be. Every scene was dragged out, because there was one character interrupting and doing nothing to advance the plot. Every scene fell flat, because any emotional development was undercut with a joke.
When I revised them years later, I cut all those characters without issue. That was my biggest clue that they were not an addition and did nothing to influence plot. Only one of them could not be cut, so I changed the character to actually be important. Also, changes like these usually won me 5,000 words, on a short story.
The second element
What makes characters different from plot or setting? I mean, when you create a plot, you also look for stuff that serves a purpose. When you build your setting, you also use ideas that serve a purpose.
But for characters, merely purpose is not enough. Similar to how we are somewhat defined by our jobs or our careers, but certainly not entirely defined by them! (Hopefully not.)
The second ingredient is EMPATHY.
Characters are your emotional core. Their personality and development should highlight the theme of your story, the thing that actually resonates deeply with your audience.
Many writers learn this and draw the wrong conclusions. Oh, every character needs to be empathetic? Also the villains? Well, I’ll make all characters sweet and nice and give them tragic backstories that make everything okay!
That’s not the point. The most empathy should go towards your main characters—your heroes. All other characters exist to fill roles they cannot fill. To serve purposes that the heroes cannot serve. As such, by definition, they’ll have the opposite traits or viewpoints. This conflict makes for a rich world and engaging story. Taking it all away by making everyone nice and friendly, ruins the whole idea of story.
Most writers use the “core of decency” rule. Yes, make your villains bad, evil, cruel people. But give them some sliver of decency, some proof they have a heart, some reason for readers to be empathetic. Because …
Feeling empathy is not the same as agreeing with or approving of someone’s actions.
It’s just not the same thing. Empathy is understanding why another human is who they are, or did what they did.
So, adding empathy for your characters does not mean making them all good people. It means making the audience understand why they’re bad people, while recognizing they’re still people.
Just now, I read the Three-Body Problem (SPOILERS!). One of our main characters does a very evil thing. They invite an alien civilization to come to Earth and wipe out humans, because the human race is just terrible and deserves to be erased.
The book starts with several chapters from her viewpoint. In those chapters, we experience the events that made her so bitter towards humans, so cold. This gives understanding and makes the reader empathetic to her, even if she does things probably nobody would deem good. It makes the story interesting to read, rather than just frustrating or like we’re supposed to root for some maniac.
Conclusion
There you have it. Characters are PURPOSE + EMPATHY.
Forget purpose, and the character should be cut from the story. It does nothing but make the story muddy and bloated.
Forget empathy, and the character could just have been a random talking stone about which readers do not care.
If you successfully include both elements, the character could be anything and it will work.
Now let’s see, in the next chapter, where we can find ourselves some good characters.
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