How to Write Three-Dimensional Characters
Embrace the unexpected to keep your readers engaged.
“The protagonist feels a little one-note.”
“The characters feel flat.”
Maybe you’ve heard it from a critique partner, or a beta reader, or you just can’t shake the feeling that your character doesn’t seem as real as some of your favorite protagonists. What gives?
Characters feel real when they act like real people: unpredictably. Because while in general people can be predictable, when cornered they act out. They do something totally illogical. They act in ways that go directly against their self-interest because their vision is fogged by emotion.
Flip stereotypes, but in the least predictable ways
Stereotypes take our writing into the cliche, but how do we avoid it? Better yet, how can we use reader stereotypes to our advantage?
If we take a stereotype and tweak it, we can play with reader emotion. The reader will think they know what to expect, but they will be delighted to be wrong.
But this gets more difficult to accomplish. Readers are savvy. Over the past few years we’ve seen so many stereotypes flipped, that upending stereotypes has become its own cliche. So we have to take the craft even further:
Don’t simply make a truck driver a woman, make her a polished vlogger who drives trucks to make the money she needs to support her makeup habit.
Instead of having a humble woodworker, make him a flashy braggart who seeks the approval of others rather than finding satisfaction in his craft.
As you can probably start to see, details matter.
To brainstorm to the depth necessary to create this unique person, always look for the why — why do they do what they do? And why choose that?
The options are endless and can make the story much more fun to write, and so much more fun to read.
Every time you create a side character, write them as they come, and then go back and brainstorm how this person could be different from what is expected. Don’t go with your first five responses —or even ten — they’re too predictable. Keep pushing until your character jumps off the page as their own person.
Have their responses elude, evade, and misdirect
It’s so much more fun to read a character who isn’t saying what they’re thinking. Readers love being brought in on a secret, and any time someone’s actions don’t match up with what they say, readers can sense a secret. We’re drawn to the juicy context that characters would rather keep hidden from others.
To create that context, let the reader see what a character chooses to share, what they hold back, and why. Let the reader know what the character thinks should happen in that moment, and why they choose to act differently than expected.
People lie in real life, so characters should lie, too. But those lies are infinitely more interesting if the reader knows whythe character is lying. Are they trying to protect themselves? From what consequences?
And if a character is lying to protect someone else, let the reader know exactly why — what are they trying to save that person from and why?
Again, it’s all about the reasons why a character does what they do.
Let them share their inner vulnerabilities with the reader
Internal dialogue is like an additiction for readers. The more they read, the more they want. Characters with opinions, intents, plans, and frustrations feel real, especially if they only share them with the reader and not with other characters, and readers crave that intimacy.
Don’t be afraid of internal dialogue. It doesn’t have to be written in italics, and it doesn’t have to be complicated. But it does need to show us why a character acts/reacts the way they do.
This intimacy can be created in as little as having the character react internally whenever the plot does not match their expectations. Bonus points if they keep their opinions to theirselves and project a different attitude to other characters (and when a character shares their true feelings with another character, the reader instantly understands the intimacy between the two).
Always take the character’s actions and reaction back to why they have those actions and reactions, and they will feel exponentially more real to the reader.
How to make people root for an unlikeable character
Readers love a good anti-hero (Gone Girl sales, anyone?). Some of the best characters may be generally unlikeable, but readers can’t get enough of them. Why?
An unlikeable character must have a strong reason why they act the way they do. If the character’s logic is sound, even if a reader does not agree with the conclusion, they will keep reading to see if the character ever learns the truth.
The unlikeable character must have opinions, intents, plans, and frustrations, just like any main character, and all of these need to be shared with the reader as much as possible.
The reader must be in on the secret, so we can understand where this unlikeable character is coming from, even if we don’t agree.
And the key to making an unlikeable character endearing to the reader is to make them care deeply for something. Even if a character is pure evil, if they have a passion for something, they will feel more real to the reader. We can all understand passion, even if we don’t share that character’s particular interest.
Make the character change in some way
You’ve probably heard of the character arc, in which a character must encounter a challenge and grow to overcome that challenge, learning and adapting along the way.
Even for characters that don’t change significantly, such as those in a series, the events in the plot must have some sort of impact on that character. They must learn something, even if what they seem to learn is misguided and gets them into more trouble. Even if the point is that the character never learns, they must still attempt. It’s the effort, the trying to change, that makes a character feel human.
As you probably saw, the common theme in creating three-dimensional characters is searching for the why. Why do they act the way they do? Why do they react a certain way? Searching for why a character acts or reacts breathes life into fictional characters. To truly understand why a character does what they do, the reader needs to understand the character’s opinions, intents, plans, fears, and frustrations. Once your character has all these, they’ll start to feel like their own person (and may even tell you what they want to happen next).
Happy writing!