If you have found some of your recent characters to be flat, or maybe they just don’t feel as real as they do in your head, here are 5 tips to help your characters become the best versions of themselves!

1. Give them a few quirks. Characters, like real people, should have little things that make them unique. Everything from a favorite food or color to a superstition or pet peeve. If you can show your characters with these little things, the readers will be able to better relate to them and create more meaningful connections with the characters.
2. Backstory… All your characters existed and had lives before their debut moment in the book. So, even if a character seems too small to have a backstory, write them one. Even just a few sentences can go a long way in making sure the character has authentic interactions with the others.
3. Good or Bad? Both! No one is all good or all bad. Even fictional characters. So, make sure you give your protagonists flaws and your antagonists a shred of goodness. It will round them out as a complete person. No one is perfect, and they shouldn’t be, either.
4. Goals. Like with the backstory, make sure your characters all have a goal they want to achieve including the “why” they want to do it. Even if you never plan to let them achieve this goal, or it seems too small or too distant from the main plot to matter, make sure your characters all have hopes and dreams that get them out of bed in the morning. We all do, and your readers will appreciate having that in common with the characters.
5. Picture them. If you don’t have their physical appearance down to the tiny details, find some free stick photos and choose one that will represent your character when you write. Sometimes we just need a little visual boost to get our descriptions just right.

I hope these help you in your writing journey!

Happy writing 🙂