How to Create Characters Your Readers Simp For

Characters are the most important part of any story. They are the beating heart and the blood that flows through your novel's veins. Yes, your plot and world and story structure are also important, but most people will fall in love with a book because they love the characters. 

Some might debate with me that plot is more important than character, but those people would be wrong. 

Your plot is nothing without characters to push the story forward. Your conflict is nothing without a goal or motivation that drives your characters to take extreme action. Your creative fantasy world is just a fancy backdrop without a cast of dynamic characters to interact with it and bring it to life. 

Sometimes the perfect character will just pop into your head. Sometimes it takes a bit more planning. Regardless of how you do it, you need to give your character a few things to ensure they aren't as one-dimensional as the page they're written on. 

In this article, we'll look at: 

• Using character archetypes
• The impact of genre on characters
• Developing their personalities
• Considering their physical appearance
• Uncovering their backstory
• Giving them flaws
• Giving them an arc
• Ways to get deep inside your characters' heads

By the way, Dabble Character Profiles are a great place to store all these details. Create property lists (you can even use our Best Character Template Ever). Attach notes and upload images. Organize your fictional people into Casts, sorting them by things like family, physical location, political allegiances, or whatever makes sense for your story.

If you don't already use Dabble, you can try this and all Dabble's other cool features for free for 14 days. Just click this link.

Whether you craft your characters in Dabble or a good old-fashioned notebook, get your tools ready. We're about to go deep on your story's stars.

Using Character Archetypes to Create a Character

You don't have to use archetypes to craft interesting characters, but it's a good idea to get familiar with them, if only to explore how someone's background, desires, and fears might drive their story.

An archetype is a recognizable set of attributes, personality traits, goals, and faults that are common to one type of character. Archetypes are rooted in universal emotions and experiences, which is why you can find these archetypes in stories all over the world and throughout history.

At first glance, archetypes might seem like formulas for cookie-cutter characters, but that’s not the case. Rather than relying on stock profiles, like “she’s the secretly pretty nerd,” archetypes dig into psychological, emotional, and behavioral traits that can be applied in an endless variety of ways. 

Queen Elsa (Frozen) and Erik Killmonger (Black Panther) are very different people, but they’re both Orphan archetypes whose choices are defined by fierce independence and the scars of abandonment. 

There are 14 common character archetypes which you can read about here. If you'd like to dig a bit deeper into each kind, we've got articles on those, too. Just click the links in the headings below: 

The Hero

This archetype rises up to meet every challenge. They can play the role of a reluctant hero or someone who was born to fight villains. They're typically courageous and honorable and stand up for those less powerful than them. This is one of the most common archetypes you'll see. If a story features a Hero, they're often the main character, but not all main characters are Heroes. 

The Magician

Magicians often play the role of either the protagonist or the antagonist, and their primary goal is to gain power. This doesn't need to be literal magic—it can be money, political capital, knowledge, strength, or status, and the Magician might want this power for good or evil purposes. This archetype is intelligent, intuitive, perceptive, and clever. 

The Lover

The Lover is driven by their emotions and the things that make their heart happy. Contrary to its name, the Lover does not have to be part of a romance novel, and they don't have to seek romantic love. They might be driven by their love for their friends, family, god, or a passion. Lovers are often starry-eyed dreamers who are devoted, loyal, and compassionate. 

The Jester

These loveable characters often play the role of sidekick or comic relief. While they can be your main character, they often find themselves in a supporting position. They can be the one who shines a light on more serious issues or just be there for laughs. Jesters often aren't interested in the main character's goals but rather move to their own beat, while sometimes providing surprisingly clever insights. 

The Explorer

Explorers are the characters who seek adventure and break from the humdrum of their lives. They don't wait for things to happen to them; they go out and look for excitement. They're constantly pushing boundaries, whether those are physical, mental, or societal, and they embody courage, independence, and curiosity. 

The Sage

Known as the mentor type of character, they're similar to the Magician, except their motivation is to serve others rather than themselves. These characters tend to be all-knowing and a little vague and mysterious. Regardless, they're wise, patient, caring, and there to support your main character on their journey. 

The Innocent

This wide-eyed character often comes in the form of the ‘Chosen One' and is either blissfully unaware of the troubles in the world or isn't interested because those troubles don't impact them… yet. This character typically grows from their naïve worldview as they embark on their journey. Innocents are trusting, kind, sincere, and enthusiastic. 

The Ruler

Rulers are the ones who… well, rule. They're queens and dictators. They're CEOs and tyrannical overlords. The ruler wants to control everyone and everything, and they can use their powers for good or for evil. Their traits often include charisma, power, the ability to influence, and the ability to inspire. 

The Creator

As the name suggests, the Creator is the builder of dreams, desires, or objects. The mad scientist is a kind of Creator who's driven only by their need to fulfill their vision. Like many archetypes, the Creator can be a force of good or bad. They tend to be obsessive non-conformists with wild imaginations and big, creative goals. 

The Caregiver

This character usually plays a secondary role in stories and is the nurturer who gives of themselves selflessly (sometimes to their own detriment). They might be a parent, friend, or sibling who is there to guide your main character on their way. Unsurprisingly, they are loyal, compassionate, consistent, and honorable. 

The Everyperson

This is a character that most people can relate to because they are, as the name suggests, just your everyday person going about their life. (Of course, this is exactly the kind of character who's ripe for a big change in their lives, which is why they make good main characters.) They don't seek glory, but security. They're empathetic, hard-working, and very relatable. 

The Outlaw

Outlaws and Rebels are there to challenge order and structure, especially in the face of corrupt rulers. They seek to change the world order and don't let anything get in their way. As rebellion leaders and instigators, they are usually charismatic and influential while also being resourceful and courageous. 

The Orphan

An Orphan doesn't need to literally be an orphan to fall under this archetype. An Orphan may simply be someone who has experienced abandonment and had to fend for themselves early in life. This fierce independence often sets them up to be courageous heroes or vengeful villains. Orphans are often driven by a need for companionship, family, and that sense of belonging. 

The Seducer

Seducers tend to make excellent villains thanks to the way they use their minds, their bodies, and their power to get whatever they want. That doesn't mean they are necessarily evil, but they may walk that line. Seducers have the ability to manipulate and charm and are often clever, independent, and fall on the gray side of morality.

Create Compelling Characters That Suit Your Genre

Now that we've learned all the archetypes, consider how these characters fit within your genre. If you're writing a modern-day romance, your Sage is unlikely to be a wizard with a long beard. Maybe they're a tarot card reader your protagonist stumbles upon on their way home from work or simply a wise neighbor who likes to get up in everyone's business. 

Similarly, your Ruler in a fantasy book is probably not going to be a corporate tycoon (or maybe they could be—I smell a cool genre mashup), but rather a benevolent queen or evil king. If you do go the tycoon route, consider how that typically modern character could fit into your fantasy world. 

How you shape and develop your characters will be directly impacted by the genre you're writing. The personalities, physical attributes, and goals are all directly tied to the tropes and spirit of your genre. A main character in a whodunnit is unlikely to have “overthrow corrupt government structure” on their to-do list.

Develop Your Character's Personality

A character isn't much without some kind of personality. Readers don't tend to engage with flat, one-dimensional characters. 

There are numerous ways to dig into character personalities. You can use tools like Enneagrams, Meyers-Briggs, or other personality tests to explore how they might act in specific situations. Pull one up and take a test as the character you're trying to develop and see what comes out. 

The Nine Avatars

Destiny Salter, a book coach and story craft expert, uses the Enneagram to develop nine avatars that represent different aspects of a person’s personality, including what they value, what they fear, and how they make decisions. 

This can help create a strong foundation for your characters. In this article, she teaches you about the nine avatars and how to develop a profile for each of your characters. 

Other Personality Tests

Here are a few more places you can go to dig deep into your characters’ potential personalities: 

• 16 Personalities
• Personality Perfect
• Human Metrics
• Test Color
• Crystal
• 123Test
• VeryWellMind
• Berkley Emotional Intelligence

Explore Your Character's Backstory

A character’s backstory includes everything that happened to them before your novel begins. Your minor characters don’t need a backstory, but your protagonist and major secondary characters (including your antagonist) definitely do.

Now, you don’t have to hash out every detail of their early life, nor should you subject your readers to a full rundown of your character’s history. Instead, you want to focus on the defining experiences that impact who your character is and the choices they make in your story. You’ll share these details with your reader as the story unfolds.

A character’s backstory consists of two major elements: The background that shaped them and the Big Hurt.

Let’s discuss.

The Background That Shaped Them

Our very real lives are packed with people, places, and experiences that have contributed to our identities and the way we view the world. If you want to write believable characters, you need to create similar connections between who they are and where they’ve been.

Are they great at making friends but bad at forming lasting bonds because they grew up in a globe-trotting family? Are they deeply religious because they grew up idolizing their deeply religious aunt? Do they always say “sir” and “ma’am” because they grew up in the American South?

Not every one of your character’s traits has to be justified with their background, and not everything about their background needs to be known. But you can see how a few insights like these can make your characters feel real and inform everything from their dialogue to the decisions they make.

Here are a few questions to help you explore the possibilities:

• What culture did your character grow up in?
• What regions have they lived in?
• What was their family like?
• What sort of friendships did they have?
• What kind of education did they receive?
• Have they ever been in love? What was that like?
• Have they ever had a mentor? What was that person like?
• Were they raised under a particular belief system?
• Is there anything notable about the political climate they grew up in?

There are a lot more questions you could ask, of course, but these should at least get the wheels turning.

The Big Hurt

Most main characters have a Big Hurt in their past, as do some secondary characters. (Pro tip: Giving the primary antagonist a Big Hurt makes for a much more compelling conflict.)

The Big Hurt—also known as the Ghost or the Shard of Glass—is an event from your character’s past that has defined the way they view and navigate the world. It’s usually the most traumatic thing they’ve ever lived through.

Look at all your favorite characters, and I can pretty much guarantee all of them have a Big Hurt in their past. If they don’t, I’m betting it’s because they’re a favorite character from childhood. (You can usually skip the Big Hurt in middle grade and younger books.)

Now, this event is important because it causes your character to develop a flawed philosophy in an effort to avoid suffering a similar trauma ever again. This philosophy is known as the Lie, and it’ll hold your character back and trip them up as they struggle to achieve their goal.

An easy example would be a rom-com heroine whose only serious relationship was with a man who turned out to only be dating her so he could be around his true love, her unavailable sister. Our heroine might protect herself going forward with the Lie that men simply do not see the value in a woman like her, and love is not a pursuit worth wasting her time on.

This Lie will inevitably lead to bad decision-making when she meets the would-be love of her life. She’ll ignore his flirtations, scoff at his declarations of love, and push him away. 

And it will break your readers’ hearts, because they understand that she’s not mean or stupid—she’s afraid. 

The Big Hurt is an excellent tool for crafting sympathetic characters who ruin everything.

Give Them Goals and Motivation

Your characters need a goal—an objective they want to achieve—and motivation—a reason the goal is so important to them.

Fun fact: Motivation often springs from the Big Hurt or some other major influence from the character’s backstory. In Finding Nemo, Marlin is desperate to find Nemo (goal) because he’s terrified of losing a child again (motivation/Big Hurt). 

The goal is what draws the character into the central conflict, and the motivation justifies their drive to pursue the goal even when the risks are terrifyingly high.

These details also give your character depth and dimension. They reveal desires, fears, and a sense of purpose. Without these elements, your character is just a formless mass of words on paper. Which I guess is fine if that's what you're going for, but if you want to create someone your readers love and root for, they need to want to achieve something. 

Goals and motivation can be big things—like overthrowing an evil empire—or they can be smaller things—like getting that promotion at work. Either way, the best characters yearn for something. If you need some ideas, here are a couple articles for you:

• 101 Character Goals That Don't Involve Anyone's Dead Wife (If you're wondering about the title, you'll have to click to find out.) 
• Types of Character Motivation - What Gets Them Out Of Bed?

And if you need any more convincing on why this is so important, take a look at this resource:

• Why Does Character Motivation Matter if the Plot Slaps?

Give Them Some Flaws

There's a phenomenon referred to as a “Mary Sue,” which is a character that can do no wrong. They're moral and honest and never falter. They learn how to use a sword like a master after one lesson, and everyone either wants to be them or be with them. Or both. Savvy readers tend to dislike this type of character, because this type of character is very, very boring. 

If you want to write relatable, three-dimensional characters that feel like real people, you need to give them flaws.

Bonus: Flaws and faults fuel conflict and can feed into your character's motivation. Some of your character's biggest obstacles will be their own shortcomings, and they often need to overcome a flaw or weakness to achieve their goals. 

There are three levels of flaws you can give your characters: 

Minor: This is something that simply distinguishes your character from the others, making them more memorable for your reader. They don't affect the story so much as they might affect dialogue or the character's reactions to events.

Major: This a flaw that truly affects your character and is somehow standing in their way, whether it's physical, emotional, or mental. As discussed above, this might not actually be a negative trait, depending on your character, but it is something that affects the plot and development of your characters.

Fatal: As the name implies, this is the kind of flaw that leads to a character's death. It's sometimes referred to as “hamartia” and we often associate it with tragedies. In a fatal flaw, your character possesses some trait that brings an otherwise upstanding person to their downfall and eventual demise.

For more specific ideas on the types of faults you can give your character, check out this resource that includes a worksheet you can print out and refer to whenever you need some inspiration: Character Flaws—The Traits You Totally Don't See in Yourself.

Give Your Main Character an Arc

Feel free to give arcs to some of your secondary characters, too. The best kinds of characters grow or change throughout your narrative, and that evolution is what we call a character arc.

A naïve, pampered princess can become a strong, self-assured woman. A cowering, lonely blacksmith can become the hero in his own story. Someone who's terribly judgmental can learn to grow and be more open-minded. Your character might need to overcome a flaw to develop that arc. In many cases, they have to trade the Lie for the Truth. See how this all comes together so nicely? 

Creating a satisfying arc isn't always easy, as there are a lot of factors to consider. To help you go deep and then go high, here are a few resources to help develop those arcs: 

• Creating Character Arcs: Torment Your Hero in Eight Steps
• What is a Character Arc? The Four Types with Examples

And if you prefer a more devastating ending, you can learn how to craft a character who changes for the worse here:

• 8 Traits a Negative Arc Absolutely Must Have

Consider Their Physical Characteristics

Look, this matters. The gender, age, voice, body type, skin color, and maybe even the hair color of your characters influence how your reader views them, how other characters view them, and how they view themselves.

So give some thought to what your character looks and sounds like. Think about how they move and stand. Consider their gestures and mannerisms.

Even if you're not the kind of writer that spends a lot of ink on character descriptions, just being able to visualize them clearly can deepen your connection with your characters. 

A Fun Exercise

If you're having trouble picturing your characters, try logging on to Pinterest and searching for different types of attributes (i.e., dark-haired male). You can ask yourself what actor might play your character in a movie or simply gather some ideas about how you might imagine your character. (This will also come in handy later when you get that movie deal for your book.)

It also might help to know that you can upload images to Character Profiles in Dabble or even conduct an Unsplash-powered image search from inside the tool. It helps a lot to have those visuals on hand as you write.

A Note on Skin Color

When describing the skin color of characters who aren't white, be mindful of how you talk about skin tones. It's generally frowned upon to refer to people of color by food names, as it leads to fetishization and can be very dehumanizing. If you want to read more about it, the blog Writing with Color offers some great insights. 

Similarly, if you're going to include diverse skin tones in your novels, consider how you refer to characters of color versus white characters. Don't only describe skin tone when it's a non-white character, or you continue to perpetuate a narrative that suggests white is the default. 

Some writers say they like to leave it open and allow people to imagine it how they want, and you can do that, but understand that 95% of your readers will still default to white in their head, even readers of color, because we are so inundated with white media. It's how we're all wired.

As For Your Villains...

Villains can be some of the most fun and satisfying characters to create. Don't cheat yourself or your story by phoning it in with generic bad guys. Give this character some depth. You might even go so far as to make their actions understandable or showcase undeniable similarities between them and your hero(ine).

Because of their unique role in stories, a villain's development might look a little bit different, though not as different as you'd think. A good villain needs motivation–just like your protagonist–and their flaws are likely numerous. A good villain is comprised of these ingredients:

• Believable motivation
• Proactivity
• Power
• Immorality
• Tragedy
• Madness
• Empathy

If you want to go more in-depth on how to create a top-notch villain, check out this article: 

• How to Write a Good Villain: Full Recipe

If you’re a DabbleU Academy member and want to go double in-depth, here’s a whole entire workshop for you: 

• The Art of Being Bad: How to Write a Killer Antagonist

Getting to Know Your Most Complex Characters

Now that we've covered all the components to consider, you might be wondering how you put this all together. A lot of writers enjoy creating extensive backstories for their characters while others just jump in and let their characters evolve while they're writing. 

Whichever side you fall on, it can be helpful to get some ideas and ask some questions to kick-start your process. With that in mind, we've got some resources that include character interviews and exercises to help you dive deep into who your imaginary people are: 

A Giant Pile of Character Ideas to Jump-Start Your Brain

If you're looking for some inspiration, click on the link above for a list of character ideas you can borrow, copy, or steal (we won't tell). Chances are, these are just a starting point, anyway. As you go deeper into creating your character, it's going to become your own, whether you want it to or not (though you probably do).

This list delves into a variety of quirks, physical traits, relations, motivations, flaws, and philosophies you can apply to your own writing. 

20 Original Character Questions (This Might Get Weird)

You can google all kinds of character interviews and it will bring up a lot of the same questions over and over. These are a great starting point and can be really useful, but to take things further, we've developed this list of some wild and wacky questions that are sure to get you thinking (and writing). 

Character Development Questions That Aren't About Eye Color

Similar to the above article, this one takes you deep into the character interview process, not only giving you ideas of what to ask your characters, but also offering advice on how to use those answers, which characters to interview, and how you can bring it all together.

Become an Expert in Character Creation

Once you've nailed down your fascinating roster of characters, you'll want to keep track of them and their arcs.

Again, I highly recommend Dabble Writer. Not only do you get customizable Character Profiles, but you also have the handy Plot Grid to track the progression of every character's arc scene by scene. All of these notes are just a click or two away as you draft your novel.

Plus, a Bestseller subscription also gets you full access to DabbleU Academy, which is packed with in-depth resources to help you master all aspects of the craft, including an entire Curriculum dedicated to character development.

You can explore all of it—the Dabble Writer tool and DabbleU Academy—for free for 14 days. Click this link to start your free trial (no credit card required).

Now get out there and create characters your readers won't be able to stop thinking about.