Why Should I Care? How to Build a Character Readers Root For

In my last blog post, I talked about doing writing (and other) Challenges and how they can be good for us, sparking motivation to achieve our goals. (I am, by the way, still going strong on my Challenges I described – yaay me!). In order to succeed at a daunting Challenge we have to have a powerful desire behind it. If the goal is to write for 100 days straight, or train for a marathon, there must be a why behind it. And the why has to be compelling enough for us to keep going, even when we’d rather sleep in, or binge-watch a series on Netflix. 

But what about our fictional characters? 

Yes, challenges are a big part of life for our characters as well – or at least they should be, if we’re not going to bore the reader into putting the book down and playing their 2.446th round of Candy Crush instead. But the challenges our protagonists face are meaningless if there is no powerful why attached to them. If there is no desire behind them, driving them toward a particular goal, the reader won’t care. 

The reader won’t care because the character doesn’t care.

In order for the character to care, there also has to be Stakes, both internal and external. 

Internal Stakes = the character’s deepest Need will be met, or not met. This goes back to the character’s initial Wound, the thing that happened to them that profoundly affects their worldview and relationships to others. This doesn’t always have to mean something terrible for the character. For example, in Paula McLain’s Circling the Sun, the protagonist Beryl’s mother goes back to England when she is 5 years old, leaving her in Kenya under the benignly neglectful care of her father. Although this is traumatic, it also spurs Beryl’s growth into a fiercely independent woman, who has little care for social conventions. However, it does create a Need for love, and a tendency to look for it in all the wrong places and ways. 

External Stakes = what will happen in the outside world if the main story problem or Need isn’t solved. In Beryl’s case, she is constantly entering relationships that imperil her freedom and independence, leading to dire consequences for her social standing in the expat colony. She loses friends and experiences social censure such that at one point she has to flee to England. In some stories, the stakes are even bigger: if the person doesn’t master their Wound and get their Need met, the fate of the world, or society as a whole, is at stake. These larger-world stakes are most often found in genre fiction, where, as in a mystery, the detective’s inability to master his or her own demons may lead to the murderer never being caught, or getting off scot-free. 

Wound leads to Need leads to Motivation/Desire to achieve Goal = Internal and External Stakes. 

In the example above, Beryl’s Wound of her mother abandoning her leads to her Need for love and yet also continued independence. Her conflicting Desires to remain independent and also find love lead her to learn to follow her own heart and stay true to herself (Internal Stakes) while also achieving her dream of being the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from Britain to North America, even after her true love dies in a plane crash (External Stakes). (This novel, by the way, is based on a real person, Beryl Markham, who really did do this and a number of other amazing things.) 

Most writers have learned at some point that their protagonist’s desire drives the story, but few really think about how strong that desire has to be, or how deep the wound that spurs it. The protagonist must be in some way focused on getting their Need met, even if they don’t clearly understand that Need, or why it drives them. 

This is subtle, but powerful, stuff. Powerful, because it keeps readers invested in your story. They probably won’t even consciously know why they are so invested, but it goes far beyond simply wanting to see whether or not the character achieves a particular goal. 

As you can also tell, this leads to an automatic raising of tension and suspense. The stakes are greater than “will X or Y happen.” Even if the protagonist’s actual life isn’t at stake, we know how much it means to them, and we want them to win through every obstacle they face – including the ones that are the result of their own obtuseness over their own Need. 

Note: Some writers mistake the need for tension and suspense to mean that more “stuff” has to happen. They throw in every crazy obstacle they can think of, more, more, more in the hopes it will glue the reader to the page. More often than not, the reader gets bored. Who cares?   

If your protagonist wants something, be sure we know why – and what it means to them, in their inner and outer worlds, if they don’t get it. They care, desperately, and that’s why the reader cares too. 

If the Goal is too vague or not compelling, readers will notice immediately and tune out. You can’t just tell your readers that your protagonist wants something, you have to show them via the protagonist’s actions. This can get complicated: Sometimes the protagonist starts off wanting one thing, but then the goal changes due to new information coming in, or the character’s own growth and change. Sometimes what they think they want is the wrong thing – the very thing that will never solve their Need – and they eventually realize it and start working toward a new goal (or not – if it’s a tragedy, they never realize how wrong they are, or at least not until it’s too late).   

Take a look at your protagonist, and answer the following questions to make sure you are on the right track to creating a protagonist who readers root for, no matter how flawed:

1.     What is their Wound? What happened to them that profoundly affects their life and relationships, in the context of this particular story? 

2.     What is the Need that emerged from that Wound?

3.     What is their main Goal or Desire in this story? 

4.     What are the Internal Stakes if they don’t achieve it? 

5.     What are the External Stakes if they don’t achieve it? 

Now, go deeper: write the scene where their Wound first happens. This may be something in childhood, but it doesn’t need to be. Remember: this is the wound that affects the character in this particular story. They may have more than one wound, but this should be the deepest one that leads to a need for resolution in the story right now.

Thoughts? Questions? Let me know in the comments!