Fiction Writing: Interesting Characters
When you’re writing fiction, make sure your characters are worth the readers’ time. If they were real people, would you enjoy the eight hours it will take getting to know them? Or would they bore you early on?
Committing to reading a book is like locking yourself up in a room for several hours. If you spend that time in the company of characters that aren’t interesting, those few hours can feel like an eternity, just like when a book has skipped decent editing (even a software based proofing). When surrounded by compelling personalities, on the other hand, time will just fly.
When crafting your characters, don’t look to make them people that you’d like to keep as a friend. Instead, make them larger-than-life personalities that deserve to be watched. If the E! Network was showing a profile of them, would you watch in anticipation? Or would you quickly turn the channel?
Interesting characters can be loveable, admirable, entertaining, irritating or plain insidious. It doesn’t matter whether they’re the type you’ll invite to your birthday. What matters is if they’re the type that TMZ will spend hours tracking down for footage. The former is nice, but they don’t make for compelling reading; the latter, on the other hand, can fire up the imagination and keep readers glued.