There are a lot of elements to a great book: a plot that keeps you guessing, beautiful writing style, a world that feels like you could walk around in it. But I would argue that one of the most (if not the most) important pieces of a good book is the characters.
Characters need to be relatable, but still have flaws. They need to surprise you, but still be believable. There’s a saying in design that users are bothered by bad design, they appreciate good design, but with truly great design they don’t even notice it: the goal is that it fades away to give them the absolute best experience. In some ways, writing characters is a little bit like that.
When characters are well-crafted, you just know that you love them and would die for them, even when you might want to throw the book across the room because they made a bad choice. However, when a character isn’t believable or doesn’t act consistently, it stands out like a glaring red light (looking at you, Game of Thrones.)
So, we know that characters are important. We know what it feels like to read or watch something with characters you love. But how do you create these characters in your writing? How do you make sure their actions move the plot forward, while also making sense with who they are?
It can be intimidating, for sure, to try and construct a well-balanced character. There are lots of different methods to achieve this, and you’ll have to try out what works best for you. Maybe you like to answer a long questionnaire about each character, or write different scenes from their childhood. I would recommend (totally unbiased, of course) that you check out my free email course on building better characters. Over five lessons, I walk you through the most important aspects of how to make a character that has a goal aligned with your plot and has flaws that make sense for their character while also creating obstacles to achieving their goals.
You probably already know that a character needs some sort of motivation, whether it’s saving the world or getting an A on their chemistry test. It’s what makes the plot happen. But there’s more to it than just giving them a goal and seeing what happens. To craft a character that feels well-rounded, they need to have both an external goal and an internal need.
External Goal
The external goal is usually easier to identify because it aligns with the plot and keeps things moving forward. Sometimes, the external goal is what creates the plot, like Frodo taking the Ring to Mordor. Other times, the goal is a reaction to the plot, like Katniss trying to survive the Hunger Games. Katniss’s motivation becomes more self-motivated as the series goes on, but in the first book, her goal is primarily to protect her sister and stay alive in the circumstances that she’s been forced into. The goal is a natural outgrowth of their motivation, but there are obstacles in the way, which force the character to keep readjusting and therefore the plot keeps changing.
To identify and develop your character’s external goal, you should be able to summarize it in one sentence:
The character wants (External Goal) because (External Motivation) but (External Conflict).
For The Hunger Games, it might look something like: Katniss wants to survive the Hunger Games because she needs to provide for her family, but that means she will have to kill her friend Peeta.
There’s a clear goal: survival. There’s also an understandable and sympathetic motivation—it’s not just survival for survival’s sake (though those stories can be interesting too) but so that she can provide for her family, especially her little sister. It makes the larger external goal more personal. While there is plenty of external conflict, the biggest one, both for Katniss and for us as readers, is that if she’s going to be the last one standing, it will mean she has to kill her allies, particularly Peeta who she and the readers have come to care for.
Internal Need
Now, the thing that really makes a character jump off the page isn’t just the fact that they have a goal and there are some obstacles to achieving that. Even if the goal is personal to the character, it’s not enough to make us really fall for the character. For that to happen, we want to see some growth in the character. They should have a flaw that we as the readers notice, but the character may not even be aware of. By the end of the book (or series), they’ll have overcome this flaw to achieve a goal (notice: sometimes, the goal they achieve isn’t the one they set out to get in the beginning. Check out the email course for more info on that).
Again, usually the character isn’t aware that they have a flaw, but it’s still affecting their decisions and making the external goal harder for them. This flaw is what creates their internal conflict, and while the character doesn’t realize it, it’s leading to an internal motivation for them. It’s a little trickier to identify, but it can still be summarized in one sentence:
The character needs (internal need) because (internal motivation) but (internal conflict/flaw).
Let’s use Katniss again.
Katniss needs long-term hope because this will allow her to maintain her dignity and give her a reason to survive, but her practiced pessimism and refusal to trust others keeps her from hoping.
As you can see, this sentence about internal need is more complex than the external goal, and that’s pretty typical. People are complex, and therefore so are their motivations.
Additionally, you can see how Katniss’s internal need intertwines with the external goal, and leaves room for her to grow during the second two books. At the start of The Hunger Games, Katniss is a cold realist, shaped by the hard circumstances of her childhood. When she volunteers as a tribute, she has only an external reason to survive: to protect her sister. But to truly survive the Hunger Games, and the Capitol, she needs more than that. She needs a sense of hope, of a potential long-term victory, like Peeta has. Otherwise, the Games will break her. But she also still needs to win the Games, despite the external conflict of needing to kill Peeta. These two connect at the end: (spoilers!) Externally, she realizes she can win the Games without killing Peeta by having them both pretend to eat poisonous berries and die, because the Capitol would rather have two winners than none. Internally, she decides she can beat her oppressors and that there’s something worth fighting for, which is a sign that she has begun to dream of hope and defeating the Capitol.
This is the key to a well-crafted character: The external goal is what prompts the character growth required to meet the internal need, and the internal need, once met, allows the character to achieve their external goal. It’s all intertwined.
Now, just because you know this, doesn’t mean it’s easy to write. It will likely take a lot of editing and adjusting to make sure your character matches those sentences you’ve written for their external goal and internal need. Sometimes you may think you know what this is for a character, but the story you write actually has a different goal or need; at this point, you’ll have to evaluate whether you want to change the story or change what you’ve identified as the goal and need.
It takes practice, but there is a method to creating a character like this, and you are capable of it. To dive more into what makes a good character, sign up for my email course. I go in depth into the character’s external goals and internal needs, as well as how you should weave their backstory into both of these elements and how to create a believable and consistent flaw, all with more examples. For more writing on a character’s goal, motivation, and conflict, check out Susan Dennard’s post here.
What are your favorite characters in fiction? How do you write characters? Let me know in the comments!
Featured image by Sasha Freemind