How to Make People Care and Keep Caring

[Philip Overby]

Something I've been thinking about recently is the way some people say you shouldn't start stories with exposition. On the other hand, some say don't start with action or dialogue. I never dabble in absolutes, so I think both can work if in capable hands. I tend to find stories that start faster engage me more, but that's just my own taste. Other tastes vary, as we all well know.

I've never been able to put my finger on it, but I think most stories that people fall in love with involve characters they care about. So the secret is, how do you get a reader to immediately care about your character? Do they have to immediately care about your character(s)?

Can it be an action? Maybe they do something noble right at the beginning of the story. Or maybe they do something odd that makes you want to figure out more about them.

Can it be their sense of humor or the wit of their dialogue?

Can it be a little glimpse into their minds to see what makes them tick or ticks them off?

I think all of these work depending on the story.

The problem some may face is getting people to continue to care about their characters as the stories go on. So I have a question. How do you get a reader to care about your characters early on and keep caring about them throughout the story?

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Compelling characters, doing interesting things.

That's the basis of making readers care and keeping them engaged, I think. If I were to break it down further, I'd say you also need mounting tension & conflict throughout. (I know we've talked about stories without conflict in Asian cultures, but I can't speak on those with any experience.)

It's also important that readers ask questions. Getting a reader's mind engaged in this manner is a product of their curiosity. Curiosity is a powerful motivator. It could be considered a compulsion, I suppose.

Making promises and keeping them along the way is an important aspect to writing. Promise revelations. Promise satisfying endings. Pay them off, provide surprises, or thwart expectations along the way. Playing with reader's expectations & emotions can generate a deeply moving experience for them.

Speaking of emotions...
Readers care about characters because they're interesting, because they have sympathy in some fashion with the character, & because they become emotionally invested. If the writer can make the reader feel emotion, along with the POV character, the reader will feel like part of the story. Filtering the experiences of setting & events through a character's senses & perceptions is one of the surest ways to accomplish that connection.

The real trick, I think, is putting all of that together in one story. That's why writing well is such hard work.

Of course, that's just my view on engaging readers & making them care.

 

[TWErvin2]

The problem some may face is getting people to continue to care about their characters as the stories go on. So I have a question. How do you get a reader to care about your characters early on and keep caring about them throughout the story?

I write stories where I care about the characters and what happens to them, even if it might be horrid. I write what I would find as an interesting plot and world and situations.

I don't think there is a 'gimmicky' method that will work long term to keep readers caring or reading. At least one that I've come across or would be effective for me or my writing.

Write a compelling story with interesting characters that populate it, characters that readers can at least understand, if not in some way identify with.

 

[Mythopoet]

It bothers me that people think there's an easy answer to this. Or that readers can be "made" to like characters. It sounds as if the writer thinks they can manipulate readers if they just know the right technique. And it's like they aren't even thinking about the fact that every reader is different and likes different things and is interested by different things. As a reader, I don't like being treated like I'm just a faceless number in a crowd.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Compelling characters, doing interesting things.

[...]

The real trick, I think, is putting all of that together in one story. That's why writing well is such hard work.

Isn't this the truth of the day.

I agree with everything else said as well. It's good advice, but it's not very precise (no I couldn't do better myself). How do you create engaging characters (Blackdragon wrote an entire book on this, right?)? How do you create tension and how do you ramp it up as you go?
These are really difficult questions to answer and when I started out I had issues even understanding the questions themselves. There's no easy answer apart from "keep it in mind and do your best" - and that's only helpful for so long.

I'm by no means an expert, but I'll try and give some examples of what I'm doing.

First of all - since this is my first novel - the main character is in many ways based on myself. His emotions and reactions are based on what I think my emotions and reactions would be if I ended up in those situations. The benefit of this is that, as long as I know myself well enough, I get a character that reacts in a (hopefully) natural and recognizable way.
The drawback is that if I'm dull, boring, and weird, my character will be too - but at least my mom will like it.

Another drawback is that I can get really bothered when someone doesn't like my main character or says something bad about them. That's more of a personal issue than a story issue, but so far it's something I can live with.

My hope is that by basing the MC on myself, I'm creating a character that has more depth than a completely made up character and that this in turn will make the character more intriguing. As I learn more about the craft I can create characters with less and less of myself in them and hopefully make them equally interesting.

Then there's the whole tension thing. I'm still working on that.
For the moment, I'm hoping that as the story progresses the reader gets to know the character better. Through that I should be able to create more and subtler tension with less than just putting the character in dangerous situations.

 

[Penpilot]

Getting the reader to care about your characters early is simpler than keeping their interest.

There's a shorthand to get the reader to like your character early that I see used in a lot of TV shows and movies. It's called Save the Cat, from a screen writing book of the same name. Basically, it's simply having your character do something likeable when we first see them, like save a cat from a tree. A flip of that to gain sympathy is to kick the cat. Have something bad happen to your character so the audience feels sympathy for them.

Ever notice how often in TV and movies that we'll see someone drop a book, a stack of books, or papers and someone will show up and help them pick it up? This is a nice amalgam of Save and Kick the cat. One person has something bad happen to them, and someone shows up and does something nice.

Now this is only good for initial impressions, a nice kick in the right direction. But to maintain interest, well, it's like T.A.S. said, compelling characters doing interesting things.

I think part of it is getting the reader involved in the character's lives by revealing the the struggles they deal with and how they deal with these struggles. Part of how humans form bonds is through revelation of each of our problems and sympathizing with one another. You tell me your problem and I tell you mine. We both sigh and realize it's not so bad now because someone else understands. So when you reveal a character's problems to the reader in a way that the reader understands, they'll sympathize with the character's plight and engage more.

Obviously, this can backfire, especially if a character's problems are revealed and the reader thinks they're stupid problems that only made dramatic because the character is an idiot.

But IMHO once you get the reader engaged with the character's plight, you have them hooked as long as you keep the character struggling and failing in a believable way. And along the way, you have to pay a few things off from time to time. It can't always be deny-deny-deny. There has to be some pay-off to keep the reader going. That doesn't mean the pay-off can't cause more problems though. The pay-offs can be like teasing the reader as to what's to come and make them crave for more.

 

[Feo Takahari]

To complicate Penpilot's cat-saving, I think it's a good idea to figure out what's interesting about your MC, then demonstrate that as early as possible. For instance, the video game The 11th Hour has an MMC who's a bit of a jerk, but is also quite clever. The opening establishes that he pressured the FMC into a relationship and then treated her like dirt, that he's trying to find her because he feels guilty about his actions, and that he's good at thinking laterally and can solve the villain's riddles.

 

[Philip Overby]

It bothers me that people think there's an easy answer to this. Or that readers can be "made" to like characters. It sounds as if the writer thinks they can manipulate readers if they just know the right technique. And it's like they aren't even thinking about the fact that every reader is different and likes different things and is interested by different things. As a reader, I don't like being treated like I'm just a faceless number in a crowd.

I agree totally. I hope my OP doesn't look like I think there is only one way to engage people or some secret technique. The point was that some readers do like heavy exposition while others like to jump right in to action to introduce their characters. I was just curious to ask how certain writers here on the forum about why they care about characters they create.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

It bothers me that people think there's an easy answer to this.

I don't know anyone (writers, at least) who thinks there's an easy answer.

 

[skip.knox]

There are answers, but that doesn't mean they are easy. Or that they are easy to execute.

For me, the key to Philip's question is to let the reader know what's at stake for the character. I think the problem with too much exposition is that it delays us knowing what's at stake. Does the character have something to gain? Something to lose? What's he trying to accomplish? Give me that, and maybe a little cat-saving, and you can exposit all you like later on.

Compelling characters doing interesting things is a good line, but it's too vague, for it begs the question of how one makes characters be compelling and what constitutes interesting activity. I'd say a compelling character is one who has some sort of flaw or virtue (see cat stuff, above). Again replying to Phil, this means we know it early and it gets developed and elaborated upon as the story progresses. Learning about the flaws (or virtues) must go hand in hand with learning what's at stake.

If all that is done, the "interesting" part of doing interesting things follows naturally. That is to say, if we know what is at stake, plus something about the character's strengths and weaknesses, then the things that happen are probably going to be interesting. Not necessarily so--this doesn't let the author off the hook--but without those prerequisites, it's pretty difficult to make what happens feel interesting to the reader.

As for having this persist throughout the story, it's a matter of raising the stakes, and highlighting the flaws and virtues, until some sort of climax is reached. Sorry for the passive voice there. It's a flaw.

All if this is far, far easier to describe than it is to execute. As to manipulating the reader, well *of course* we are. It's what we *do*. One might as well criticize the painter for his choice of color, or the musician for using a crescendo to manipulate our emotions. It's called art.

 

[Ryan_Crown]

What I've focused on is knowing as much as I possibly can about all of my main (and to a lesser extent, secondary) characters. I will sit down and write a full character history for each of these characters during my story development (of course, I'm also looking to write a series, which makes it a little easier, since I'm spending all this development time for what will hopefully be multiple stories, not just one). I figure if I can get to where I know these characters well enough that I care about them, then hopefully I can develop that in the story so that the reader cares about them just as much as I do.

And I agree with Penpilot, I think getting people interested in your characters is a lot easier than sustaining that interest. Because a good opening scene can catch a reader's attention, or get them curious, or sympathetic, but every action and event after that has to not just sustain, but build on that. And as the flip side to that, you also have to make sure that your character doesn't do anything stupid or annoying that kills that momentum.

Just as a side tangent (and bit of a rant) to the conversation - one of my high school English teachers said something once that has stuck with me all these years (at the time I thought it was an incredibly sexist remark, but sadly I've seen bad writers prove him correct over and over again) -- "Women and children are only put in stories to complicate the plot." And let's be honest, how many stories feature the rebellious angry teenager or the stubborn, too young to know better younger kid, or the hysterical, completely freaking out character (which, as much as it really isn't a fair representation, is all too often a woman), who does something stupid, which forces the main character to risk themselves (or puts the other characters as a group at risk) in order to deal with whatever this person has done?

Personally, I've always found this sort of character to be incredibly annoying, and nothing breaks my enjoyment of a story more quickly than this sort of character. Because, as others have pointed out, the key is to get your reader to empathize and connect with your characters, and I've just never been able to connect with, or in any way care about, a character who puts other characters in jeopardy because they did something reckless or idiotic. Give me something better than that. Make the character's actions the result of cowardice, or selfishness, or bravado, but please don't make them stupid. And even worse is when the character's stupidity is blatantly out of character because the writer needed them to be stupid to move the plot where he needed it to go.

All of the above may just be a personal bias on my part, but that's my rant for the day (and hopefully nothing that I said offended anyone, because that was certainly not my intent). In order to tie this back in to the main conversation, I would say that as writers we need to not only make sure readers connect with our characters, we need to be aware of things that may annoy our readers about our characters (and I think there's a big difference between a character who is not likeable, which is perfectly acceptable, and a character who is annoying).

 

[AngelBlue]

I agree with the points made by all above, especially by Ryan. I have done the same, getting to really know all of the characters in my novel (which is also part of a series, and yes, that does help). Writing entire character histories for each and every one. It helps SO much to do that. It lets me get to know them, and care for them, and also helps to give them depth, and vulnerability - two things which will make them interesting and engaging to my readers.

I am fortunate in that my first storyline came to me all at once, and with relative ease. The second one is proving more difficult. The one thing I had the most difficulty with (and if I'm honest, am still struggling with in the edit) is my antagonist. Whom I fondly refer to as Big Bad. Giving him depth has been a struggle. I still fear that he is shallow and too much of a stereotypical baddie. But I'm working on it!

:angel:

 

[Gurkhal]

I think that being able to relate it very important. If I have nothing in common with a character I might decide that character don't connect with me. But that's just a random thought from me.

 

[Helen]

I've never been able to put my finger on it, but I think most stories that people fall in love with involve characters they care about. So the secret is, how do you get a reader to immediately care about your character? Do they have to immediately care about your character(s)?
[/B]

I think you pretty much want to care about them enough to follow them through their journey straight away.

If you look at something like Modern Family, you have in essence human vulnerabilities which lead to the characters learning a lesson. In other words, theme.