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The Relatability Factor
Creating characters your readers will love
When we think about crafting characters, we often ask ourselves the obvious questions: What is their hair and eye colour? Do they stutter? What kind of clothes do they wear? How old are they? Do they speak slowly or quickly?
Those are all important things to know when we’re dreaming up a character, but what if we were to do a much deeper dive? What if we conjured things about our character that were far more intimate? Well, we’d probably feel like we really knew them, right?
Here’s what I mean:
In this exercise, let’s create a character from a random sighting we’ve recently experienced. Remember that woman in Starbucks? The one carrying that chihuahua clad in a Nirvana t-shirt (the dog, not the woman). Or how about that serious-looking dude crossing the street while you sat in your car at that red light? The guy with the man bun holding a blue balloon? What’s his deal?
Okay, let’s take one of these randomly spotted people and flesh them out a little. We already know what they look like, so let’s dig deeper. How about we start with Starbucks Woman:
