Believable, and Relatable Characters

Characters are the heartbeat of a story. They are the bridge between your ideas and your readers. A lens through which the world unfolds, and an emotional anchor that keeps someone turning pages long into the night.

Some writers plot their characters before ever writing a word, sketching arcs, flaws, and backstories into neat outlines. Others let their characters walk onto the page and introduce themselves, discovering their personalities as dialogue spills into existence. But no matter how you write, characters thrive when they’re rooted in two essential qualities: believability and relatability.

Believability doesn’t mean your characters need to exist in our reality—it means they must make sense in their reality. Even the most fantastical or alien character needs a clear internal logic driving their choices. A knight in a high-fantasy epic must follow the rules of their kingdom’s honor code, or a rogue AI in a cyberpunk thriller must act within the boundaries of its programming.

Readers don’t need to like or agree with a character’s actions—they need to understand them. When a villain makes a ruthless choice, we might recoil in horror, but if we understand their fear of failure or the trauma driving them, their actions become believable.

If you want your characters to feel believable, start with why:

• Why did they make that choice?

• Why did they hesitate?

• Why do they care about this goal more than anything else?

Even if the answers remain hidden from your readers, you need to know them. Believability isn’t about explaining everything on the page—it’s about making sure the invisible machinery behind the character makes sense.

If believability is about making a character make sense, relatability is about making them matter. It’s the thread that ties an alien warlord, a brooding detective, or a plucky time traveler back to the reader turning pages under the glow of a bedside lamp.

Your character doesn’t need to share your reader’s job, culture, or experiences—they need to share their emotions. Fear, loss, love, joy—these are universal. A dragon queen hoarding treasure might not seem relatable on the surface, but her paranoia about betrayal, her loneliness at the top of her mountain, those are relatable human experiences.

Sometimes, this emotional resonance emerges as a quiet moment—a character hesitating before opening a letter, their breath catching as they remember the last words spoken to them by someone they loved. Other times, it’s loud—a desperate scream in the middle of a battle, a reckless act of sacrifice.

The beauty of relatability is that it doesn’t need to come from grand emotional speeches. It’s often the small human moments that stick.

You can discover relatability by asking “how” and “why” during your writing process:

• How would this feel in their body?

• How would they respond differently if they were afraid vs. angry?

• Why are they making this choice now, and not before?

When believability and relatability intersect, magic happens. You get characters who not only act in ways that make sense but feel in ways that hit the reader right in the chest.

For me, characters begin with two anchors: a name and a role. Before I know their backstory or quirks, I know what gap they fill in the story and the symbolic weight carried by their name. It might seem simple, but it’s powerful—it creates an emotional and thematic compass before they ever say a word.

• A name with meaning: Names have weight—they hint at history, personality, or even fate.

• A role in the story: Are they a guide, a foil, a spouse, a friend or business partner?

• A moment: I often drop my characters into a scene and let them act. Their choices reveal who they are.

Then I ask questions:

• Why did they respond like that?

• What are they afraid of?

• What do they want, and what are they willing to sacrifice to get it?

Backstory emerges—sometimes in the middle of a key scene, sometimes in quiet reflective moments. I don’t need every detail on page one, but by the end, I often know their entire history, even if much of it stays invisible to the reader.

In my process, backstory isn’t static—it’s a conversation. Sometimes it reveals itself in key moments, other times it’s a quiet undercurrent driving decisions. Even if the reader never sees these histories, they’re always there, shaping the invisible threads that connect motivation and action.

Plotters can use these same principles. Even if you’ve outlined every beat of your story, take a moment at each major decision point and ask:

• Why would they do this?

• What’s the emotional cost?

• How might this choice ripple through their relationships or their inner world?

Growth happens through conflict, stakes, and consequences. The best transformations feel earned. They come not from plot convenience but from the collision of internal fears and external events.

A character overcoming a deep fear in Act 1 doesn’t feel satisfying. But watching them struggle, fail, and overcome in Act 3? That feels real.

Whether you’re a plotter or a pantser, let growth happen naturally:

• Don’t force an arc to fit your timeline.

• Don’t skip the tension and the failures that make triumph meaningful.

• Trust your character’s journey—even if it surprises you.

At the end of the day, every character is a question mark:

• Why did they do this?

• How did they get here?

• What do they truly want?

Great characters aren’t built in a single moment—they’re revealed through choices, shaped by consequences, and made memorable through emotional truth.

Start small:

• A name.

• A role.

• A single decision.

And then ask what, why, how.

Let your characters surprise you by letting them grow slowly, carrying pieces of you, of your world, and of your readers’ hearts. Believable characters follow the rules of their world. Relatable characters follow the rules of human emotion. And great characters do both.

How do your characters emerge? Do they start with a name, a backstory, or a spark of dialogue? Share your process below—I’d love to hear how you bring your characters to life.