Tips for Creating Believable Characters in Fiction

The protagonist in my second novel is a sixteen-year-old boy. Since the book was published in March 2023, the question I’ve been asked most frequently by readers and reviewers, especially men, is how I was able to write a character so drastically different from myself who seems like he could be a real person.

When I was first asked this question, I didn’t have a good answer. I just created a character that felt real to me, I’d say. But after being asked multiple times, I decided to put some thought into it. The tips below are things I regularly do that have helped me make my fictional characters feel like people you might actually meet.

I observe people carefully.

Because I’m an introvert, I’ve always spent a lot of time watching other people, both friends and strangers, often without realizing it. Doing this has allowed me to pick up on subtle traits and habits individual people have, such as the way someone ties their shoes (lefties tend to use the “rabbit ear” method), or the things some people do when they feel stressed or nervous, like repeatedly adjusting their eyeglasses.

Sometimes these traits can be age-specific or more commonly seen in people of a certain gender, culture, or ethnicity. After a lifetime of observing people in my own family, I’ve come to believe that many of these behaviors are inherited or at least “contagious.”

Also important is noticing the way people are dressed. A habitual runner might still have his sweatsuit and sneakers on when he goes grocery shopping. A trial lawyer might always be wearing a tailored suit when she picks her kids up at school. Someone who’s wealthy, or trying to appear so, might carry an expensive handbag when wearing an otherwise unremarkable outfit.

When I sit down with my laptop to work on a novel or story, I think about the characters and what similarities they might have to actual people I know or have seen, and I try to incorporate some of their traits into my characters’ personalities.

I listen to the way people talk.

Because dialogue, both spoken and internal, is an essential part of any fictional story, paying attention to the way actual people talk is important. Someone’s accent, even a complete stranger’s, can often tell you volumes about that person whether you speak to them or not.

Because I have lived in a city that has a large population of immigrants from around the world for the last twenty-plus years, I’ve gotten good at discerning accents. I can tell the difference between a native Spanish speaker from Puerto Rico and one from the Dominican Republic, for example, by their accents when they’re speaking English.

One of the most interesting things about paying close attention to the way people speak is when I hear someone who is trying to hide their accent. I first picked up on this after meeting the wife of a colleague of my husband’s who was from Alabama. To a casual listener, she might not have seemed to have had any accent at all, but there were subtle markers in the way she pronounced certain vowel sounds that stood out to me. To this day, I can usually pick out someone trying to squash a Southern accent by this trait alone.

The same principle applies to syntax. Even if they don’t have a discernable accent, people for whom English is a second language will sometimes use the syntax of their native language when speaking English, placing adjectives after nouns, for example, in the case of people who are native speakers of Latin-based languages. A friend of mine from college whose native language was Italian spoke English perfectly, but she often ended her sentences with: yes? Something commonly done among Italian speakers in Italy.

Someone’s vocabulary can also tell you quite a bit about them, including their approximate age, what part of the country they grew up in, their social class, level of education, whether they might have served in the military, and what they might do for a living.

My late father-in-law, who grew up in Boston, often used words that only Bostonians of a certain age would know or use, including “tonic” for soda and “bubbler” for a drinking fountain. The husband of close friend of mine, who is originally from Tennessee, doesn’t have an obvious Southern accent, but he often uses “ma’am” and “sir” when addressing people, something that someone from Maine, where they have lived for more than twenty years, would never do.

Using elements like these when creating a character can go a long way toward making them feel like an actual person. The important thing is to get the details right.

If your character is sixty-year-old waitress from the Bronx and you’re unsure how such a person might really look, act, or speak, you should do some research before writing that character. If you can’t go to the Bronx and hang out in a diner, watching movies, old news broadcasts, or videos on YouTube or TikTok can be helpful. In the case of historical characters, reading books or articles from, or set in, the era you’re interested in can be eye-opening.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for, I’d recommend modifying your character so that he or she possesses traits you know well enough to replicate on the page.

What are some of the things you regularly notice about other people when you are in a public place? Have you used these observations when creating fictional characters? If so, how?