How does one make a reader sympathetic to the main character? Is it just making them relatable, realistic, and/or have something bad happen to them that's also relatable (or just really dramatic)?
Guide: Creating a Sympathetic Main Character
If you want to create a character your readers will love, try including some of the following traits:
1) Admirable Positive Traits
Kindness, bravery, humility, selflessness, optimism, good morals, respect for others, generosity, open-minded, inclusive, problem-solving… these kinds of positive traits, and others, give the reader reasons to like your character. For more help with positive traits, check out the Positive Trait Thesaurus, a super handy reference that I own and recommend.
2) Sympathetic Negative Traits
Real people have flaws, so readers don’t tend to like characters who don’t have flaws, too. But if you want to create a sympathetic character, it’s also important to make sure their negative traits are believable, understandable, and don’t overwhelm or negate any of the character’s positive traits. Think about the negative traits of people you know and love, and there’s also a Negative Trait Thesaurus, which is also helpful. For added benefit, build in something that explains why your character developed this negative trait. For example, if one of their negative traits is that they’re a stickler for being on time and tend to freak out if they’re even a couple minutes late, find a way somewhere in the story to explain why they are this way. Perhaps they went to a school where tardiness was severely punished, or maybe being late once cost them a job they really wanted. Building in an understandable, relatable reason for why they developed the negative trait helps to make them a sympathetic character.
3) Skills, but not Skillzzzz
Readers love it when a character is good at something, but not too good at something, and definitely not good at everything. Maybe your character is a good student who studies hard and gets good grades. But maybe they also get an A- on a paper and are disappointed but happy they still got an A. Or, maybe your character is considered to be the top pilot at the space trucking company where they work, but maybe they also made an error a few months ago that led to a damaged shipment, so they’re currently on probation and could lose their job and pilot’s license if they screw up again.
4) Sympathetic Motivation and Admirable Goals
Every main character needs internal and external goals and motivation for wanting to reach those goals, but if you want your character to be sympathetic, it’s important to create goals and motivations that a reader can understand, even if they may not agree with them. For example, maybe your character witnessed a crime and is now in danger as the key witness. Maybe they are afraid they now present a danger to their beloved family, so they decide to disappear and take dangerous work in a remote mining operation so that they can keep their family safe and also save up money to give them a better life. Your reader may not agree that leaving their family is the best option, but anyone can understand wanting to protect one’s family.
5) Quirky, but Not QWIRKIEEEE♥!!!
Readers tend to like characters who are a little bit quirky, but “quirky” can get annoying really fast if you go overboard. Maybe your character wears their hair in a rainbow-colored beehive, wears cat-eye glasses, and has a few piercings. Maybe they have an unusual hobby, like collecting seashells or medieval coins, and they can identify almost any specimen by sight. Perhaps they’re a lovable geek who wears a different sci-fi movie/show t-shirt every day and can’t go an hour without quoting a favorite movie. Or maybe they’re obsessed with cats, are fluent in ten languages, run a medieval smithy in their backyard, or have an enormous doll collection. A few of these can make for an interesting character, but too many will make your character unbelievable and annoying.
6) Conflict with Aspects Anyone Can Relate To
I’d wager that most readers have probably never been stuck in an arena and forced to fight other people to the death, but that didn’t stop readers from sympathizing with what Katniss Everdeen had to go through in The Hunger Games. Maybe we couldn’t relate to the reality of what she faced, but we could identify with aspects of it: having to be away from friends and loved ones, facing uncertainty and danger, being pitted against someone you don’t want to be pitted against, being in an unfamiliar place, being in a situation you have limited control over, being forced to do something you don’t want to do, wanting to do the right thing but knowing it will come at a great cost to yourself… These are all things a lot of people can identify with on some level or another, so because we’ve “been there,” even though we haven’t been *there* (in the arena, facing down Clove and Cato, and all those other tributes). There are things about Katniss’s struggle that we can identify with, which allow us to sympathize with her even though we haven’t experienced exactly what she’s going through.
The bottom line when creating a sympathetic character is to go with your gut. If you’re worried that something will diminish your reader’s ability to sympathize with the character, skip it. Or, at the very least, see what your beta readers think. Remember, part of the point of the beta process is to give you feedback that allows you to tweak things like this. So, as much as you should follow your gut, also don’t be afraid to take risks. Create the character you want to see, and everything will fall into place. :)
