One of the keys to writing believable and engaging characters can be found in reality. The closer your characters are to people you have met and interacted with in everyday circumstances, the greater chance these make believe personalities will have of being plausible. But making your characters believable does not ensure that they will be engaging. For that you will need an additional element.

You need to know what your characters want.

Each personality in your story wants something distinct , and discovering exactly what that is for each personality will help you to determine who they are and how they will act in a given set of circumstances. The key to making engaging characters is understanding what drives them. If you understand that you will not only be led through the development of of interesting and believable characters, but this understanding will help you with the other aspects of your story as well—such as plot and setting.

If you happen to have a firm grasp on who your characters are, they will not only tell you where they live, but will tend to give you give you hints on how they live; and, at the time they begin interacting with other characters in your story, will add incredible insight into your plot and help you in the work of crafting that as well.

Michael Snow is the writer of ZION’S WEB, the first novel in the Zachariah Burton detective series. As well as writing detective stories, Michael maintains a blog site which features a number of engaging and helpful blogs, including tips on writing a book..

Creating Plausible And Interesting Characters is a post from: WiredWriter