Have you ever wondered why characters are necessary in a narrative work?
If so (and if you are curious), in this brief article we will tell you why they are so important and why it is necessary to work on them so much.
Your characters carry the weight of the story
This is perhaps the most basic reason why. Without characters, there is no one to perform the actions you want to tell. It is as simple as that. Because of this, anything they decide to do while under the reader’s scrutiny must be something that helps bringing the plot together somehow.
It the actions they perform do not have consequences or do not help moving the story forward, it is possible that your readers will feel cheated. Yes, it might be very interesting to see how they relax at the beach or how they deal with cleaning their house but if you show only mundane things and nothing out of the ordinary happens in the narration I will probably get bored and stop reading; maybe I will finish reading but I will not remember anything two months from now.
It is essential to know the tone of your work and what you are trying to say; it is important for you to know your characters. Only then will you be able to write a coherent and entertaining story. Look at it this way: if your leading character is a good guy, incapable of any wrongdoing and he ends up killing somebody by accident, something inside him will change for sure. And I, of course, will be intrigued, crying for him and desperately wanting to know what happens next in his life (if anything).
When their feelings are exposed, the reader creates links with your characters
Readers want to connect with your characters. Only then will that bond of sympathy that lets the reader live the life of the character be created. Readers want to know when the characters are sad and want to experience that sadness themselves as well; the same is true with happiness, love, loneliness and any other imaginable feeling.
Regardless of the kind of character you have created (open, fearful, emotionally unavailable or whatever) readers want and need to create that connection in some way; it is this connection, this emotional loan, what will make keep them hanging to your story. If they do not care for your main character because they cannot create a connection with him, they will not care if he achieves his goals or not or if he overcomes the conflict he is involved in.
If you focus on creating characters that generate sympathy it will be easier to introduce their journey and help the plot move forward because it will not need to be justified. It is something your character is doing by himself.
Your characters’ motivations are what move the story forward
Have I mentioned that the characters move the story forward? Well, I think I will repeat it and add that your story will go nowhere unless your character has a clear and justifiable motivation.
Perhaps this was discussed before in some other post but the most important thing to know when creating a character is what he wants and what he will do to achieve it. The reasons why he does what he does are the key to discovering what your story is about in the end.
Do everything you can to understand your character and what keeps him going on; if you do, it will be much easier to write a great work that stays in people’s mind for a long time.
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