How to Make a Character Compelling

it's a sign of an amateur author if you do not know how to make your character compelling I did this in my first book the first edition of my very first book my character ended up being very unlikable at least to start she kind of grew out of that later in the book but to start she wasn't very likable and every beta reader I gave this book to looked at it and said I hate this character and so they weren't invested in the character and that is something you must have if you want to succeed

as an author thankfully it was kind of an easy change I just switched out a few things of the first few chapters and we were good to go with that character and there are just a few simple things that you can do to improve your character to make them more compelling so the readers will invest in that character and be interested in knowing what happens to [Music] them now you may have heard of the term save the cat it's the title of the book by Blake Snider and it's one of the principles taught inside of

that book and a lot of people really do not understand what it means they think they do but they don't the term save the cat is a shorthand for do something that makes the character compelling which might include an act of kindness like saving a cat out of a tree but saving the cat is only just one way to make somebody compelling by making them likable but there are other ways that don't involve likability at all that do the same thing and Blake Snider talks about some of these in his book so I know that

he isn't just talking about making the character character likable he talks a lot about other ways to make very unlikable characters compelling even if they are not a character that does anything good in terms of saving a cat out of a tree type of a thing and even pulpy novels that are more plot focused and less character focused have at least one of the methods that I'm going to talk to you about today to add that compelling element to their characters so it's a very important thing if you do not have a character that readers

are interested in you you simply will not keep that reader's interest to the end of your book there must be a reason for reading the book and having that compelling character is one of the most important things that you can have to make the book interesting so let's get into the seven ways that we can make a character compelling number one is obvious it is to have the character perform an act of kindness so this is the literal save the cat the character does something that is nice and so we like them because of that

again this is only one way to make a character compelling but it it is one that works so to give you a couple of examples for this the first one that comes to mind is the movie Aladdin where we see Aladdin go through you know his whole song and dance routine as he's stealing bread stealing is one of those things that is generally frowned upon in society and so it's not a good way to get that character to be likable but what he does after he steals the bread is he takes it and he gives

a piece to some young children who are clearly starving so after he's done all that to supposedly sell selfishly steal for himself he ends up sharing it with someone who needs it more than he does and so we get the sense that yeah Aladdin's actually a good person deep down and we can root for him another good example is n commander in the Fantastic Beast film who is very clearly very loving and kind toward all of the Fantastic Beasts that he Associates with it's very much almost a literal save the cat except it's you know

save the magic cat or whatever you would call all of these creatures but he's definitely one of those characters that we like him because he cares so much about the animals that he Associates with now before I go any further I want to also point out that a lot of these you can do more than one in a particular story and many of them do and I will point out some of these as we go along but the second way that you can make a character compelling is demonstrating some kind of either humor or vulnerability

or both we in general like people who are humorous we associate it with higher levels of intelligence and vulnerability is also something that we appreciate because it shows maturity so a good example of the former is Tony Stark in the Iron Man and Avengers movies he's a very humorous guy he's very comfortable in his own skin and even though he starts out most of the Iron Man and the early Avengers films as kind of a jerk and not a really good person we still are compelled by him because of his attitude that he has another

good example to keep with the superhero theme is Peter Parker in most of the Spider-Man films Spider-Man is generally a very humorous character especially when he's out there taking down criminals and things like that he always injects a little bit of humor into that but he's also a very vulnerable character you know he has a lot of problems that he deals with he has a lot of mental issues he's a high school kid for crying out loud and especially in the Tom Holland films you get a lot of a sense of that vulnerability that he

has by just how much he is you know doesn't really trust himself to be a hero he's so worked up in like can he actually be this person that the world needs him to be so that combined with his humor makes him a very likable compelling character the third way to make a character compelling is to have them be oppressed by someone and this is a great way to make an anti-hero someone who is not actually a good person who's kind of a villain but there is somebody else who is worse so a classic example

of being oppressed would be Harry Potter in the first Harry Potter book where he is literally living under the cupboard Under the Stairs clearly being very oppressed and abused by his aunt and Uncle and Cousin but like I said this is a great thing for anti-heroes too and a good example of this is Samuel Jackson and John Travolta's character in the movie Pulp Fiction because in this movie they are clearly bad guys right right from the beginning we get a little humor from Samuel Jackson to go back to the last point so that humor kind

of makes him a little bit more likable but then we also learn throughout the film that there is somebody above them who is even worse than they are and who is oppressive to them and so we get to feel for them and empathize with them a little bit so that combined with the humor actually does a good job of making those characters compelling the fourth way to get characters to be compelling is to make them really highly skilled at something we as humans really like to see people who are good at their jobs for some

odd reason and so if you can have someone be really really competent in a certain area of their life that can be a really good reason to make them compelling the classic example of this is Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes is kind of lacking in a lot of areas like social expertise and things like that but he is really really good at his job which is to solve crimes and so for that reason we naturally gravitate to watching Sherlock because it's almost something of a spectacle to see how is he going to figure this out because

it's so fascinating to watch him do it specifically because of his natural skill in that area another example that I like to look at is basically most of the characters in Oceans 11 this is another film where they're bad guys right they're going to rob a casino and we get a little bit of the third reason to make characters compelling because the main villain of that film is actually a really horrible scumbag kind of a person so we don't feel bad about these villains stealing from the guy but at the same time you know they

are stealing it's a bad thing and so the way that the filmmakers make these characters more compelling is that they are all very highly skilled at their particular jobs they're very competent people they're not a casual kind of thief they're very for lack of a better term and high quality they're the best of the best in what they do the fifth way to make characters compelling is to make them highly driven or proactive so whatever it is they have a goal and they are super driven toward those goals one of my favorite examples of this

is L Woods in the film Legally Blonde let's be honest she starts out as a little bit of an oddball and not really someone that most of us can relate to but we see just how determined she is to go after this guy that she will literally go into Harvard Law even though she doesn't seem like the kind of person that would get into Harvard law but she does it and then she keeps going and going and going and like we're really driven by that another example is when someone is really driven to their goals

out of necessity like markk Watney in the Martian where like he's got to figure things out or he's going to die right and so that's very driving for him and engaging for us Mark Watney is a very compelling character for that reason and then I had to also slip in another example one of my favorites and that is Sam gamji from The Lord of the Rings clearly one of the most highly driven motivated people and so it's no wonder that he is often people's favorite character when you read Lord of the Rings or or watch

the films certainly more compelling than Frodo because he is the one that is the most proactive the most driven out of that whole Arc and that's a actually brings up a good point that this doesn't have to be for your main protagonist it can be for the characters around your protagonist Roto isn't honestly that compelling of a character on his own but everything else around him is and so we get invested in the story and certainly Sam has a help in that the sixth way to make a character compelling is to make them loved or

respected by people we love and respect so so this is a good way for an anti-hero to get a little Redemption so to speak is we realize that somebody that we can kind of see and trust and respect trusts them and loves them my favorite example of this is Snape in the Harry Potter series for the longest time Snape just seems like a villain but the whole time through that entire experience we know that he is trusted by Dumbledore and so there's that little bit of hesitation even though we really want to hate Snape the

whole time there's that hesitation that H Dumbledore likes him he's okay and actually Snape is one very very compelling character even though he's kind of easy to hate on and especially once you know the reason why Dumbledore trusts Sim at the end that even makes him more compelling because you can empathize with it another good example of this is Greg re house in the TV show House MD where the guy is pretty much a jerk he is really skilled at his job so he's got that going for him he's kind of the Sherlock of the

medicine world but another thing that they do to make him likable is first of all he's well respected by his team as much of an oddball as he is we also have the character of Wilson who acts as that friend he's clearly a friend with house and that relationship does a lot for the audience to say hey this guy does actually have friends and so maybe we can invest ourselves a little bit more in his character but again this is a good example of having more than one thing going for him he's got the hyper

competence in his field but he also has the friend in Wilson to help us like him okay last but not least we have the seventh way to make character character is compelling and that is to put them through an experience that we can empathize with so this is most of the main characters in Jane Austin novels and honestly most romance novels in general most of us some point in our life have sought out love and not been able to get it or been in awkward situations with love and romance and societal expectations and family expectations

all of these things that are very common in Jane Austin's novels and in Romance in general those are all things that most of us can relate to and so it's no wonder that Jane Austin's novels are insanely popular because the protagonists are all pretty relatable at some level even though that you know the setting is several hundred years ago to use a different example very different example we can look at Walter White in the show Breaking Bad when that show starts out we relate to Walter because of his financial situation most of us can relate

to that on some level not being able to afford his cancer treatment While most of us haven't actually had cancer I think most of us could relate to having a some kind of financial need and not being able to pay for it and then there's just the whole concept of him being a really smart person that isn't respected by other people around us most of us can relate to that as well whether we're smart or not I think we often feel like we're not being given the respect we deserve and so pretty much none of

us have a problem with his motivations for ending up becoming the villain that he eventually does become he does become a very compelling character but he does it primarily at least to start with because of all of these things that we can relate to now of course he takes it in a direction I don't recommend for most people and the way they're able to maintain that compelling aspect of his character throughout all of that is mostly because of his competence in the field but that show often comes back to this idea of relatability by showing

that he's a very prideful person many of us whether we want to admit it or not have certain elements of Pride where we want to be given credit for for what we work on and what the great things that we've accomplished and there's just a lot more relatability in that show than you would think even though it is clearly about a guy doing something he should not be doing and another great example of a not good character a not a likable character who is nevertheless very very compelling and those are my seven ways to make

a character compelling let me know in the comments if there are any other ways that you know of to make a character compelling that I may have missed also I have a whole video that I did about every element of a plot that I rank in terms of most important making the character compelling is the S tier is one of the most important things that I put there but I have lots of other plot elements too that you can check out there go definitely check that video out next and I will see you in the

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