How to Write Sympathetic Characters

So you have this wonderful character that you think is fantastic who kicks butt, takes names, and never runs out of witty one liners. You know that if someone will just read your book and see how cool this person is, they’ll love the character forever and buy all fourteen of the sequels.

The problem is that most readers don’t give it two hundred pages or even two chapters before they decide whether or not they like the main character enough to keep reading. That gives you just a few pages to win the reader over into liking your character. This is particularly hard to do if you have a character that arcs from bad to good. Not many people will continue reading about a mean character with no redeeming qualities, no matter how profound their character development is within the course of the novel.

This “how to” Monday blog post covers How to Write Sympathetic Characters. This quick list of five ways to get the reader to connect with your character straight off the bat is great for writers whose main character is a jerk (or worse), but these tips can also be used to show good your hero character is too!

1. Write in 1^st POV

This isn’t mandatory, but I do encourage it as a good way to get the reader into the character’s headspace from the very first sentence, no matter what it may be about. “I” is much more powerful than “she” because the reader literally reads it as “I” as in, I the reader. Third person pronouns automatically put a distance between the reader and the character, particularly if a female reader is reading about a male character using male pronouns or vice versa.

Readers can emotionally connect with novels written in third or even second person of course, but your choice of point of view should be exactly that—a well thought out choice. Each point of view conveys a different tone to the reader, so make sure your choice reflects what you want to convey, not an inability to get out of your comfort zone and write in a different point of view.

2. Get Rid of Thought Tags

This should be a tip in every writing advice piece ever. If you’re writing int 3^rd POV (and especially 1^st) get rid of your thought tags, for the love of God, cut them. Simply put, they’re unnecessary.

Don’t write, “I hate her, Jenny thought as she dug her nails into her palms.” That thought tag with Jenny’s name in it, or a she or a he or even an I, is another way of putting distance between the reader and the character. A stronger line would be, “I hate her, I hate her, I hate her. Jenny dug her nails into her palms hard enough to leave crescent moons.” There’s no thought tag, but the italics make it clear those are Jenny’s thoughts. An even better line would take out the italics too. “Jenny dug her nails into her palms hard enough to leave crescent moons of hatred in her own skin, wishing it was Megan’s instead.” Most thoughts can be rewritten as narrative summary, so I would advice against writing them at all unless somehow absolutely necessary.

3. Save the Cat

This is actually a screenwriting term that refers to the instance within the first twelve minutes or so of the movie where the main protagonist does something special that makes the viewer like them—such as saving a cat. In The Incredibles, Mr. Incredible becomes increasingly late to his own wedding because he keeps stopping to do something heroic, and he does in fact save a cat. This tool can be used in writing too, and it doesn’t have to be a big heroic act. It can be as simple as your main character being nice to a stressed out waiter and leaving a big tip. With that one small act of kindness, the reader knows your character has a spark of good in them, and they’re far more likely to empathize with them because of it, even if they also happen to be a killer for hire.

4. Poop in the Oatmeal

On the other hand, not all characters are good or start out with any redeeming quality at all. So if you can’t get the reader to empathize with your character, get them to sympathize instead by showing your character facing adversity or hardship. The most popular example I can think of is Loki, the star of Thor. For those of you who don’t know, yes there is a movie titled Thor because the main character is a man named Thor, but his brother Loki is both the villain and at least as popular as him if not more so. It might seem strange, but it happened because so many viewers sympathized with Loki’s character—a disillusioned prince who finds out he was adopted, his parents lied to him all his life, his brother was always the favorite, he never could have become king, he was probably only a political tool, the list goes on and on.

It also brings me to my final tip…

5. Relatable

Whatever goal your main character has or adversity they face needs to be relatable to the reader. In the case of Loki as explained above, nearly everyone knows the betrayal of being lied to, the jealousy of watching someone else be the favorite, the need to win parental approval. Even though he does very bad things, the audience still felt a certain amount of sympathy for him, leading to Loki’s incredible popularity.

But I realize this is a very abstract tip and finding the perfect relatable motive or challenge is easier said than done. So go back and reread your favorite book, watch your favorite movie, listen to your favorite song. Try to determine why you like the protagonist and what about them speaks to you. Look at every form of story you encounter in this way. Most likely you already have a general idea for what makes your character special, so try to apply the concepts you like to them.

And don’t forget to search through your own life. Your real experiences and emotion with, for example, being left by a loved one, will come across as genuine in your writing about a character who faces the very relatable obstacle of abandonment. Humanity has hundreds of shared experiences with love, death, grief, success, fear, and every other range of emotion and situations that you can tap into to get across to your reader and add depth to any type of writing.