How to Write Relatable Characters

Think about your favorite fictional character. What do you love most about them? They may be clever, funny, or powerful, but chances are, you also relate to them in some way.

Relatability is what separates characters readers merely observe from characters readers carry with them long after the book is finished. You can have a gripping plot, a richly built world, and beautiful prose, and still lose readers if they don't care about your characters.

So how do you write relatable characters? In this post, we'll define what makes a character relatable, explore the key ingredients of relatability, and share practical tips for writing characters that readers connect with, root for, and remember long after the last page.

What Does It Mean for a Character to Be Relatable?

A relatable character is one whose inner life, such as their desires, fears, flaws, and emotional responses, feels recognizable and true to readers, even if their external circumstances are entirely unlike the reader's own.

Readers don't need to share a character's background, culture, profession, or circumstances to find them relatable. They just need to recognize something true in the character's emotional experience.

For example, in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, Percy is a dyslexic twelve-year-old who discovers he's the son of a Greek god— circumstances the vast majority of readers will never share. But his sense of not quite fitting in, his habit of making quips when he's scared, and his fierce protectiveness of the people he loves are immediately and universally recognizable. Riordan didn't make Percy relatable by making him ordinary. He made him relatable by making his inner life specific and true.

Similarly, a character can be relatable without being particularly likable. Readers can access a character's inner life and recognize something true in it even when they disapprove of that character's choices. And a character can be pleasant and easy to like without being relatable at all, if readers can't find a genuine point of emotional access.

The key ingredients of relatability in fiction

Desires and goals

Giving your character goals is one of the quickest ways to make your readers invest in your hero. The desire doesn't have to be noble or grand. It just has to feel true and meaningful to the character.

Desire is what gives readers a stake in the outcome. A character who wants nothing gives readers nothing to root for. But a character with a clear, felt desire (even a small one) pulls readers forward, because readers instinctively want to know whether the character gets what they're after.

Fears and vulnerabilities

For every one of your character's goals, there is something standing in the way of those goals. Often, that something is your character's own fears.

Showing fears and vulnerabilities in your characters is crucial to making them realistic, because they remind readers that the character, however extraordinary, can be hurt. The most invulnerable characters are often the hardest to relate to, because readers can't find something to empathize with. When a character has nothing to lose, readers have nothing to fear on their behalf.

Flaws and imperfections

Real people make mistakes, have blind spots, and are wrong about things (sometimes seriously wrong!). Flaws are not just realistic; they are often the key to character development throughout your story. Perfect characters are alienating because perfection is inhuman. If your main protagonist already starts their journey without flaws, what else is there for them to learn?

Character flaws exist on a spectrum. Minor quirks are endearing imperfections that make a character feel real without creating significant consequences. Significant flaws are character traits that create real problems; they drive conflict, generate consequences, and connect directly to the character's arc. Moral flaws are choices and behaviors that raise genuine ethical questions. These are the kind that make readers uncomfortable in productive ways.

Internal contradiction

A multidimensional character contains contradictions. They may want things that conflict, believe things that don't entirely cohere, and sometimes behave in ways that don't match their stated values. Internal contradiction is one of the clearest signs of a fully realized character, because real people are contradictory.

This doesn't mean inconsistency. Characters should behave consistently with who they are, even when who they are contains contradictions. The contradiction should feel true to the character, not like the author losing track.

How to write relatable characters

Know your character's inner life

Develop a clear sense of what your character wants, fears, and believes, even if much of this never appears explicitly on the page. A character whose inner life is fully understood by their author reads as fully realized, even when internal details are suggested rather than stated.

Ask yourself: what does my character want most? What do they fear most? What do they believe about themselves that might not be entirely true? The answers to those three questions are the foundation of a compelling character.

This is most important to do for your hero, but don't forget about the supporting characters in your story! A well-rounded cast of characters will all have relatable desires and fears.

Ground emotional moments in specific detail

The most emotionally resonant scenes in fiction are almost always the most physically specific. Rather than naming emotions, show their physical and behavioral manifestations, such as the way a character's hands move when they're nervous, the specific thing they do when they're trying not to cry, the food they reach for when they're frightened or sad.

Specific physical detail creates the illusion of reality, and reality is what generates empathy. (This is also the core principle behind imagery! The more specifically you render a character's sensory and physical experience, the more real they become.)

Let your character be wrong!

One of the most effective techniques to create relatable characters is allowing your character to be genuinely, consequentially wrong. This could be about other people, about themselves, or about the right thing to do.

Being wrong is one of the most universal human experiences, and a character who is wrong in specific, recognizable ways earns immediate empathy. Resist the instinct to protect your protagonist from serious error. It's exactly those errors that make readers lean in.

Give your character a specific voice

Memorable characters have a distinctive way of seeing and describing the world; a voice that is recognizably theirs. Voice is one of the primary ways readers access a character's inner life: the particular humor, the specific anxieties, the things they notice and the things they miss. A character with a strong, specific voice feels real in a way that a character described from the outside never quite does.

Show the gap between their wants and needs

Some of the most compelling and relatable character moments come from the gap between a character's conscious desires and their deeper needs; what they're pursuing versus what would actually make them whole.

Katniss spends most of the Hunger Games series believing what she wants most is survival for herself and her family. What she needs is permission to believe her own life has value, and to let herself be loved without immediately calculating the cost. Readers recognize that gap because they live in versions of it themselves. When a character chases the wrong thing for the right reasons, readers understand, and root for them to figure it out.

Let readers see what the characters can't see about themselves

One of the most powerful sources of reader empathy is when readers can see something true about a character that the character themselves can't see. A character who is clearly braver than they believe, lonelier than they admit, or more loved than they realize creates a specific and tender kind of reader connection. We root for people to see themselves clearly, because we know how hard that is.

Ready to write characters that readers love?

Creating characters that resonate with readers isn't about making your characters ordinary, likable, or universally appealing. It's about making their inner life accessible and emotionally true. Readers connect with characters who want things, fear things, make mistakes, and feel things in ways that remind them of what it means to be human, whether those characters live next door or on Mount Olympus.