To help make your characters seem more real you should have some reference to their family background. After all nobody comes from nowhere and while the family doesn’t have to appear in your short story or novel or whatever, it would be odd if your character doesn’t refer to them in some way, no matter how briefly.
After all what you make the character says here can show a great deal of how they interact (or not) with their family and the reader can speculate as to how they’re likely to get on with people in general and whether they’re likeable or not.
Also if the character gets on well with the family, do they do this to the exclusion of getting on with anybody else? Do they look down on others?
Does your character know what they must achieve? Do they care enough? If they don’t, your readers won’t care either and your story will sag. Is your character doing everything they can to get to that point? Commitment from the reader demands commitment from the character/author in the first place.
What brings your character to the crisis in their life that forms the basis of your tale? Don’t put in a huge block of narrative to explain this, drip feed the information, but the stronger the character, the greater the crisis they can face. A stubborn person can create more crises for themselves than a passive one. And are your characters distinguished enough from one another to stand out?
After all what you make the character says here can show a great deal of how they interact (or not) with their family and the reader can speculate as to how they’re likely to get on with people in general and whether they’re likeable or not.
Also if the character gets on well with the family, do they do this to the exclusion of getting on with anybody else? Do they look down on others?
Does your character know what they must achieve? Do they care enough? If they don’t, your readers won’t care either and your story will sag. Is your character doing everything they can to get to that point? Commitment from the reader demands commitment from the character/author in the first place.
What brings your character to the crisis in their life that forms the basis of your tale? Don’t put in a huge block of narrative to explain this, drip feed the information, but the stronger the character, the greater the crisis they can face. A stubborn person can create more crises for themselves than a passive one. And are your characters distinguished enough from one another to stand out?
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