If You Don't Love Your Characters, Why Should Anyone Else?

I think writers are supposed to say they love writing. To be true, it's a love/hate relationship some of the time. But there is one thing I think you absolutely should fall in love with every single time without fail: Your characters.

Because if you don't care about the people you've created, how can you possibly expect an audience to?

Love Doesn't Mean Like

Let's get something straight first. You don't have to like your characters. They don't need to be good people. Some of my favourite characters to write have been flawed, layered bad guys or anti-heroes. And some of the most compelling characters ever written are liars, killers, narcissists, cowards, monsters and spectacularly dysfunctional human beings. But the people that created them were and still are fascinated by them. That's the distinction.

When I say you should love your characters, I mean you should want to spend time with them. You should want to understand them. You should know what embarrasses them, what frightens them, what they desperately want and what they'd rather die than admit they want. You should know the lie they tell everybody else. And the lie they tell themselves. Because somewhere in that mess is usually the character we're going to care about.

Characters Know When You're Not Interested

Not literally, obviously. But I genuinely think you can feel it on the page when a writer isn't interested in a character. They become functional. They enter because the plot requires them. They deliver information. They create an obstacle. They disappear. And suddenly you're not watching people collide with one another. You're watching chess pieces being moved around a board. The plot might still work perfectly. But nobody cares.

Because story isn't really about what happens. It's about who it happens to.

A car exploding can be exciting. A car exploding with somebody we've spent ninety minutes desperately hoping will survive inside it is something else entirely. Character gives plot consequence. Emotion. Depth. Think Rocky proving he belongs in that ring. Andy Dufresne crawling through that pipe and emerging into the rain. Or John Coffey walking the green mile.

Our investment in these character is what strengthens the plot. It turns a boxing match into self-worth. A sinking ship into heartbreak. And a prison break into freedom. An execution into a tearful goodbye. The event gives us something to watch. The character gives us a reason to care.

Find the Thing That Makes You Want to Write Them

Whenever I'm developing a character, there's usually a moment when they stop being a collection of traits and become a person. Sometimes it's a line of dialogue. Sometimes it's a contradiction. Sometimes it's something tiny that may never even make it into the screenplay. That's the moment I'm looking for.

Because once I'm curious about them, writing becomes different. It because easier. It flows. Because I start wondering what they'd do rather than deciding what they need to do for the plot. That's when characters start generating story rather than simply inhabiting it.

So many authors describe how their stories evolved when they started following their characters. It's their journey after all. Let them take the wheel.

Your Audience Can Feel Your Affection

Not every character needs a sentimental backstory designed to make us cry. Quite the opposite. Sometimes loving a character means allowing them to be awful. It means understanding why they're awful. It means resisting the temptation to sand away everything difficult about them because you're frightened an audience won't "like" them.

Audiences don't necessarily need to like characters. They need a reason to keep watching them. Curiosity can do that. Empathy can do it. Charm can do it. Fear can do it. Humour can do it. Even sheer horrified fascination can do it. But indifference can't.

And if you're indifferent to somebody you've created, there's a reasonable chance your audience will be too.

Before You Fix the Plot, Look at the People

When a screenplay isn't working, our instinct is often structural. Maybe Act Two needs another sequence. Maybe the midpoint isn't strong enough. Maybe the stakes need increasing. And sometimes that's exactly the problem.

But sometimes the plot isn't broken. Sometimes we simply don't care enough about the person experiencing it.

So before tearing the structure apart, ask yourself: Do I love these characters? Because you're asking a reader to. Asking actors to inhabit them. Asking producers to invest in them. And, if you're fortunate enough to get the thing made, you're asking an audience to give them two hours of their lives. That's a big ask.

Create people worth spending that time with. Love your heroes. Love your villains. Love your disasters, monsters, romantics, cowards, dreamers and walking red flags. Then make their lives absolutely bloody miserable.

After all, we may love our characters. Nobody said we had to be nice to them.

Break their hearts. Take away the thing they want most. Force them to confront the thing they've spent their entire lives avoiding. Put them through hell if that's where the story needs to take them. But love them enough to know why it matters.

Because long after an audience has forgotten the mechanics of your plot, the clever twist in Act Three or exactly how your hero saved the day, they'll remember how a character made them feel. They'll remember Rocky calling for Adrian. They'll remember Andy standing in the rain. They'll remember John Coffey being afraid of the dark.

That's the magic trick we're trying to pull off. We're creating people who never existed and asking complete strangers to laugh with them, fear for them, root for them, mourn them and, sometimes, miss them when the credits roll.

So before you ask an audience to fall in love with your characters… make sure you got there first.