Learn the questions authors must answer to create relatable characters
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Part 1 of a 3-part series.
Also see:
• Part 2: Mind your language: Repetition, clichés and modifiers
• Part 3: Premise: What your book is really all about
What is the one ingredient — the Minimum Viable Product — shared by every bestseller?
A plot with more twists than a saltwater taffy machine? No.
Frenetic, kinetic action that leaves you gasping for breath? Nope.
Evocative descriptions that make the readers believe they’re actually there? Nu-uh.
You could have any or all of those and still have a total flop. What you need is a minimum of one character. Novels can survive almost anything their creators are willing to inflict on them. Some books have no twisty plots. Others dispense with physical action entirely, or unfold almost wholly in the minds of their characters. But what they can’t survive is an absence of characters.
Actually, is a single character enough? No, not really. A character gives you a novel. But you want to write a bestselling novel.
So you need at least one relatable character your reader can identify with. And that word — relatable — is very important.
Relatable is the key
Relate to a psychopath? What kind of person do you think I am?
We’re writers, OK? So words matter to us. Then let’s begin with a simple but crucial distinction.
It’s the difference between characters who are likable and characters who are relatable.
Read enough online reviews and eventually you’ll come across readers who felt none of the characters in the book they’d just finished were “likable.” Now, they may genuinely feel that unless they like the characters in the books they read, they can’t enjoy them.
But it’s far more probable that they’re using a linguistic shortcut (which they’re allowed to, not being writers).
Likable? Or just unforgettable?
Is Hannibal Lecter likable? Or The Girl on the Train’s Rachel Watson? Is Mr. Darcy? Or Captain Ahab? Dolores Umbridge? Holden Caulfield? Or Scarlett O’Hara?
I’d suggest no. They’re really not. Cannibalistic, alcoholic, haughty, obsessive, sadistic, cynical narcissists, perhaps, but not likable.
Yet these are principal, or at least important, characters in some of the world’s most popular novels. How come?
Because they’re relatable.
We get them as people. We recognize them. Maybe we even secretly recognize a little bit of ourselves in them.
Some characters are so bad that readers love to hate them. And that in itself provides a strong motivation to pick up, and keep reading, a novel.
People like Hannibal Lecter and Rachel Watson start off as antiheroes. They may even finish as antiheroes. But because we can empathise with them, we stick with them. We don’t ever really like them, but that doesn’t matter.
So what does matter when you’re creating the characters who will populate your novel?
What makes a character relatable?
Relatable characters behave in ways that we can imagine ourselves behaving. They possess traits that we can imagine ourselves possessing. They’re not necessarily pretty — they traffic in envy, murderous rage, lust, schadenfreude — but that’s the point.
If they only have traits we see in other people, we may be able to understand them, but we don’t care about them. Our reaction is more likely to be, “I have no idea what motivates her to behave that way. So I’ll just avoid her.”
You’re walking down the street, earbuds in, listening to a motivational podcast by a famous blonde actress. Ahead of you, a young woman is pushing a stroller with two toddlers holding one side of the stroller each.
Suddenly she turns and lashes out, catching the right-hand kid a backhanded blow across the ear. He starts bawling.
What a dreadful woman, you think. There’s no need for that. Such a bad mother. I should really call Child Services.
This character, we’ll call her Vicious Mom, is definitely not likable. And she’s not relatable, either. You’d never hit your kids like that. And in public, too. Tsk.
Same scene. Different story.
Now rewind the scene and this time take out your earbuds. Pay attention to what’s in front of you.
The baby in the stroller is screaming. A nerve-jangling screech that sounds like it started a while back and isn’t going to let up any time soon. The little kids are sniping at each other and whining.
“You’re a booger-face.”“You’re a booger-face!”“Mom, I’m hot.”“And I wanna ice cream.”
The woman sighs. “We’re ten minutes from home, OK?” she says. “Let’s just get inside and we’ll all have ice cream, and I’ll put the fan on.”
“I want one now!”“I need to pee.”“I hate you.”
She turns. A dark bruise covers her right eye, extending halfway down her cheek. You missed it the first time because you weren’t paying attention.
“I hate you too. I wish you were dead!”
“Shut up!” she screams. “Just for one Goddamn second! He’s bad enough without you two getting in on the act.”
And she lashes out.
The violence is just as shocking, just as unpalatable. We don’t like her any the more. But somehow, we can relate to her. She’s being abused by her husband, under stress, or dreading going home, even though she has to.
Maybe you think about catching up with her and telling her about a hotline for abused women.
Why we relate …
We relate to her because we have context. We see not just what she does but why she does it.
Or, have her go home and stab her drunk and violent husband in the belly with a cook’s knife. Spill the bastard’s guts all over the immaculate kitchen floor and have her slip and slide in the mess, a grin breaking out on her bruised face.
Have her take the kids round to a neighbour and then go a-huntin’, looking for other abusers to whom she can teach a final, bloody lesson. Title your book, I’m Not Your Little Woman Anymore.
What drives your character?
In the example above, Kaden Baker is driven by a complex blend of trauma, distrust, and a fierce need for control — rooted in the childhood wound of being raised by people who weren’t her real parents. That kind of betrayal doesn’t just sting; it rewires how a person moves through the world.
It’s incredibly important to understand what drives your protagonist. And their antagonist.
The hacker with combat training walls herself off from genuine connection — until family she never knew she had forces her hand. The disfigured billionaire with messianic delusions believes he’s been chosen to reshape the world, his ambitions fed equally by ideology and personal damage. One character is running from intimacy. The other is running toward godhood. Both are utterly convinced they have no choice.
That tension between what characters want and what they need is where the real story lives.
Want versus need is only half the equation
How do they pursue those drives? Are they passive, just waiting for something to happen? Or do they have agency — searching, struggling, resisting, striving? Kaden acts. She hacks, she fights, she tallies. But notice the darker question lurking beneath her competence: is she processing any of it, or just moving fast enough that she doesn’t have to?
When they get knocked back in their quest — captured, betrayed, outmaneuvered — how do they respond? With fortitude? Rage? Do they scheme, enlist allies, make compromises that cost them something? Kaden’s evolution from isolated loner to someone willing to risk everything for people she’s just learning to call family is the emotional engine of the entire story.
These are the big questions that define characters — and they matter far more than eye color, backstory, or the brand of weapon they prefer. Answer them, stay consistent, and let every scene test those answers under pressure. Do that, and readers will reward you with attention, engagement, and the best compliment of all: finishing the book and immediately wanting the next one.
How to better understand your characters
Marlowe, the artificial intelligence from Authors A.I., can help with this part of the writing process. Marlowe analyzes your characters’ actions — what they say and what they do — and delivers a detailed written analysis of who your characters actually are on the page, as opposed to who you think they are.
This is an important distinction. As with so many elements of novel writing, what a novelist thinks she’s done may not accord with her readers’ opinions. Marlowe cuts through the gap.
Take Kaden Baker, the protagonist of Catch and Kill. Here’s how Marlowe reads her:
“She presents as a compelling protagonist with a complex blend of technical expertise, physical capability, and emotional vulnerability. Her trust issues stem logically from her childhood trauma, while her hacking skills and combat training make her formidable without being superhuman. Her struggle to connect with others feels authentic, and her gradual acceptance of family relationships provides strong character development throughout the story.”
That’s a useful mirror to hold up to any protagonist. Marlowe is telling the author: here’s how your readers are going to experience this person. Not the backstory you have pinned to a corkboard. Not the character sheet you filled in on day one. The character who actually shows up in the manuscript.
Your villain deserves the same scrutiny
Marlowe is equally direct about antagonists. On Maxim Volkov, the primary villain in Catch and Kill: it notes that while his wealth, resources and global ambitions make him a credible threat, his motivations “occasionally shift between personal revenge and messianic complex without consistent psychological logic.” That’s not a compliment. It’s a note. And it’s precisely the kind of note that can save you from a one-star review down the line.
From who they are to who they become
Beyond individual characters, Marlowe looks at arcs — how characters change across the full length of the manuscript. On Kaden, it observes that she “evolves from an isolated, distrustful loner focused on personal revenge to someone who accepts family connections and takes responsibility for protecting others.” That’s a satisfying arc. It’s earned. Marlowe confirms it.
But Marlowe also spots where the arc needs work. It flags that the timeline “could benefit from more gradual development” — in other words, Kaden’s transformation might be happening too fast for readers to fully buy in. That’s a developmental note your beta readers might not think to articulate, even if they felt it.
Nobody would suggest you rewrite a book using a single tool. But Marlowe gives you something invaluable: an honest second opinion, grounded in the text itself, before your readers get there first.
Could you fall in love with a killer?
Readers come to novels for many reasons. Escapism. Insight. Thrills. Entertainment. Even learning. Yes, learning. Because one of the ways we make sense of the world is through the stories we read. And chief among the insights we hope to gain are those that lead us inside other lives.
Get your characters right, make them relatable — whether they’re serial killers or cereal millers — and you’re one step closer to that bestseller flash on your book jacket.
Updated from an earlier version.
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