Three Ways To Build Characters That We Will Relate To, Love, and Cheer For

by Stephanie Morrill

Stephanie writes young adult contemporary novels and is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com. Her novels include The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series (Revell) and the Ellie Sweet books (Playlist). You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and check out samples of her work on her author website including the free novella, Throwing Stones.

When Frozen was still in the theater, we took our kids. At age six, McKenna was the perfect age to fall in love with a story, and did she ever. McKenna was instantly obsessed to the point that we sometimes had to initiate rules like, "No talking about Frozen for the next fifteen minutes."

To understand how McKenna's obsession relates to today's topic of crafting characters we identify with, I need to tell you what was happening in our home at that time:

A few weeks before we saw the movie, we had learned that our (then) three-year-old son had epilepsy. One night, dinner was interrupted by Connor—who was sitting across the table from McKenna—starting a seizure. We dropped everything to rush him to the hospital, where he had to be sedated before the seizure would stop. A nurse rushed McKenna to another room to distract her with TV, and then we had to call grandparents to come pick her up because Connor was admitted to the hospital for observation.

Over Christmas, we experienced long periods of time where Connor made strange vocal outbursts and didn't seem to know who we were. Once McKenna was supposed to have a friend over, but we ended up back in the ER instead. On Christmas day, present opening was interrupted by yet another seizure. I could go on with more examples, but I think you get the point. Life was confusing, and it revolved around Connor.

So while all her friends walked away from Frozen singing "Let it go" and pretending to have ice powers, McKenna connected deeply with Anna. And as I watch the movie again (and again, and again, and again) with her, it's easy to see why. The parents who are always hovering around Elsa? Anna, off playing by herself, and she doesn't totally understand why? All those closed doors? Of course McKenna related to Anna's character.

McKenna as "coronation day Anna" for Halloween.

How do we do the same thing in our stories? How do we create a character that our readers will recognize themselves in? How do we make those characters not just someone readers can relate to, but also someone from whom they can borrow strength?

Here are three ideas:

Sympathetic situations

I'll keep going with Frozen since most of you have probably seen it and because I feel they did this exceptionally well with the sisters. (If you haven't seen it, I'm going to spoil the ending, so...)

Anna is lonely and there are secrets being kept from her. We know what it's like to be lonely, right? Maybe we even know the hurt of having secrets kept from us. Because of Anna's sympathetic situation, we understand her lapses in judgment like getting engaged to a man she's only known one day.

But Elsa's situation is very sympathetic too. She's also lonely, and there's something about her body that she didn't choose and that she can't control. If Connor were a bit older, I think he would connect very strongly with Elsa because he would recognize the truths of her struggle in his own life.

To borrow from another movie that many of you have probably seen, Guardians of the Galaxy opens with a young boy, our main character, losing his mother to (I'm guessing) cancer. This is a remarkable way to open a sci-fi movie. Instead of just plopping us into the weird, we see something familiar to us—if we haven't yet lost someone close to us, we dread the day we do—and already we feel deeply connected to Peter. I've yet to make it through that scene without crying.

Apply it to your manuscript: What universal emotion is your character experiencing in the opening of the book? Don't be afraid to make that clear and strong.

Sacrifice

A character who makes a sacrifice for someone else instantly wins a reader's love. You can use a character's sacrifice as a way to not only deepen your reader's affection for the character, but also as a way to encourage your reader to live a noble life.

Elsa chooses loneliness because of her love for Anna and her fear of hurting others. That's a great sacrifice for her. On the flip side, when Anna sees that Elsa is about to be killed, she chooses to save her sister instead of herself.

Jill did this beautifully in her medieval fantasy book By Darkness Hid with her main character, Achan. More than anything, Achan wants to marry Gren, but when Gren's safety is at stake, he sets aside his dream of being with her and instead convinces Gren's father to give her in marriage to someone else as a way of protecting her.

Apply it to your manuscript: Does your main character sacrifice something? If not, can they?

Tenacity

In real life, we admire people who work hard for something worthwhile and achieve their goal. We love that in stories too. A character's ability to stick-to-it creates a tight bond with the reader.

Anna sets out by herself to find Elsa. She doesn't let snow, strangers, wolves, cliffs, or even Elsa get in her way. McKenna once told me that she likes Anna because her super power is love, and we see that in the choices Anna makes to achieve her goal.

It's also why we love Samwise from Lord of the Rings, because not only does he stick with the difficult road, he encourages his friend along the way.

Apply it to your manuscript: Do you show your character sticking with something that's hard? Have you made their struggle difficult enough?

Think about one of your favorite characters. Do they have a sympathetic situation? Do they sacrifice something for something greater? When the going gets tough, do they stick with their goal? What's something else about that character that draws you to them?