How to Write a Good Fanfic

8.1.1 - Making Relatable Characters and What That ACTUALLY Means

I find myself writing this essay on writing because I came across an essay written by another writer involving what they personally think are bad writing tips. The writer shall remain anonymous due to the fact the writing tip they claim is a bad writing tip actually isn't a bad writing tip. From the title of the article you as the reader can probably guess I am talking about the piece of advice about creating a relatable character. Specifically, I doubt the writer of the essay or those commenting understand what it means to create a relatable character because...

*cough*

... the characters they're saying they like and supposedly aren't relatable are. No, seriously, the characters they think aren't relatable are relatable.

The problem is these writers think "relatable" means "like me" which isn't at all the case. They're stuck on this idea that in order to "relate" with someone you need to be like that someone. Yes, one of the definitions a Google search will pop up is "able to be related to something else". The problem is, that's not the definition of relatable those giving the tip are using. The definition is the second one, "enabling a person to feel that they can relate to someone or something." It doesn't matter what kind of differences there are, but people are these days way too focused on finding "like me" over actual relatable characters.

More importantly it is impossible for a relatable character to be boring to the reader because it is their relatability which makes them interesting. But why? Here is how Mark Twain puts it in his rules for writing.

"The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones."

That's what it means to create a relatable character, but a boring character won't at all make the reader feel a deep interest in what happens to the character. Of course, the Mary Sue is also able to make certain readers feel a deep interest in what happens to the character, but this comes from the fact the reader is focused on self-inserting themselves into the story rather than focusing on the humanity of the character. There, I've said the word I've seen others use, but another way of putting it is whether the character feels like a real person.

How though does one humanize the characters? One way is by giving them flaws, but in addition to having flaws they need people to react as people would to said flaws. The character needs a flaw with which they struggle with, but they need conflict in their life people can relate to. By this I don't mean relate to as in "this happened to me as well", but instead I mean the reader is able to feel for the characters plights and achievements in life. Of course, emotion can be a hard thing to capture in writing particularly if one is still learning to put that emotion onto paper.

This ties back to 8.1 OC's Need to be Needed where the OC needs to have some kind of purpose. That purpose is typically why someone wants to invest in your OC or even canon characters for that matter. That's also why romance isn't a real purpose because people can't actually relate simply to the concept of falling in love. Instead, what they relate to is the journey. Journey's can be epic like in Lord of the Rings, or it can simply be a journey through life like in a Slice-of-Life piece. Knowing whether you have a relatable character or not comes down to whether you can answer the question, "Would readers be interested in my character and why?" and not come up with things such as "she's super special" or "she's super unique".

Of course, the writer of the essay I mentioned brought up having a unique character as being important, which it is, but it should never be the defining factor and being unique means more than being a sparkly character with a bunch of amazing tricks up their sleeve. It instead means that the character is an individual.