Tips to create realistic characters

Creating multi-faceted characters that leap off the page is both a matter of practice and a matter of awareness of how the character might appear to the reader. Regarding character creation, most people’s advice consists of “make sure to give your character flaws” so that they appear more human. But what does this actually mean? And which flaws work the best to humanize them?

Here are a few tips and tricks to help you get started in choosing personality traits for your characters that will make them three dimensional and fully realistic and relatable to the reader.

• Read up on psychology

Spend some time learning about different type of trauma or personality traits and how those affect people. Perhaps your character has a narcissistic parent. Or they are neurodivergent, making them impulsive. Psychology doesn’t always have to be about disorders. Think about it more like an analysis of people’s personalities and how they move within the world. Analyzing people’s behaviors can only be beneficial to your writing.

A great resource for finding out useful psychology tidbits is TikTok where, as a platform, you can find many professional psychologists creating short videos about different psychology topics. Even if you only have a few minutes every day to look up information, you can spend it watching a few videos and learning facets of human behavior.

• Use personality tests or the zodiac

Whether or not you ascribe to personality tests as a way of telling your character, you have to admit that more of them give a pretty comprehensive outline of a personality. Whether this is the more detailed Myers-Briggs personality tests or something as simple as a magazine article quiz, you can use them as a jumping point for picking character traits. Obviously, picking tests that have a more scientific basis will make for a much more detailed canvas to work with, but inspiration can come from everywhere.

Another option, similar to personality tests is the zodiac, which provides you with several different personality archetypes that you can use in your writing.

• People Watch

Watch the people around you and try to define the personality traits and reasons that they act the way they act. This may seem simple, but it is much more difficult in practice. Look for patterns in the way that your friends, family, and coworkers react to situations. The way they behave in social settings vs. when they are at home. How they carry themselves in professional settings. Whether their actions are positive or negative, make them likable or unlikable, it will force you to think about how your characters would act in real life.

No matter which of the above tips you use, the most important part is to follow through. If your character is stubborn and arrogant, they should actually be stubborn and arrogant with their actions and not only in words. This is the part where “show and don’t tell” is extremely important. Merely stating it is not enough. Your character has to act in a way that matched their character for the reader to see, even if the reader does not always agree or understand those actions in the beginning.

Above all, try to remember the personality traits that you have chosen when it is time for your character to make decisions. It takes some practice for you to not instinctually go with the action that you would have chosen to make, even if this is incongruous with their personality. An easy way to explore this is to think and write about your characters’ backstories. As you write out their history, you can get a feel for who they are and how they present themselves to the world.