How to Write Fiction Characters to Meet Your Readers’ Needs
Yes, it is possible to meet your readers’ needs in fiction. This is a challenge that might seem daunting, even impossible. Don’t worry. There is a way to tell what your readers need without asking a thousand people. Here are the criteria I use to help me develop characters that readers tell me they dream about while sleeping.
Balance Character with Your Plot
The key to writing characters that resonate with your readers is balance, meaning you don’t have too much or too little of the information needed for someone to connect with the characters in your book.
To provide balanced information in your book, you have to determine what details are essential to the development of the plot in your story. For example, your character’s fifth birthday memory may not be important to the plot at all, so you’ll want to leave a detail like that out. However, if this is the day the character’s father walked out on their family, that’s essential to the story.
The plot and the memories you choose to share are what shape your character. The details you offer about each character have to be essential to the story you’re writing or to future stories in the sequel.
Think about Your Book’s Genre
I learned this when I did rounds of beta reading swaps. At first, I was hoping to write a supernatural thriller, but over time, I realized that I enjoyed character development too much.
The people who were total thriller fans and read Inside Dweller: Genesis all marked the same exact spots where characters were sharing their innermost thoughts as unnecessary. All in the same spots! That’s when I knew that my book could not be categorized as a thriller. I enjoyed a bit more character development than that genre had to offer.
Read at least seven books in the genres you enjoy. See how others in that genre develop those characters, and then try to one-up them.
I used this strategy for Inside Dweller, and it was successful. I used a close third-person omniscient point of view. That allowed me to travel from head to head and share as little or as much as I wished to provide the readers a close up and personal look at the characters. This also worked for the new subgenre I chose for the book, science fantasy.
Balance, Genre, and Connection
Balancing the information with the plot and considering the needs of your readers based on genre are important factors to consider when writing, but most of all, there must be enough emotional anchors for your readers to latch onto.
For example, in Inside Dweller: Genesis, Miranda and her sister Alison lost their parents when Miranda was 11 and her sister was 18. What did that look like for them? How did they react? How did that affect the course of their lives as they grew? Death is something that affects people in the most profound way, and explaining your characters’ inner struggles with real life events can connect them deeply with your characters. Working on these three elements will ensure your book will connect with your audience, their expectations for your genre, and their needs.
