The EASIEST Way to Create Likeable Characters

Want to win your audience from the start? Here's Easy Mode.

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Credit to SkyDilen for my video intro.

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[erikadancerqueen]

She consciously yearns for reconnecting with her estranged grandmother is dying in the hospital, but her car breaks down in the middle of nowhere on her way to visit her. Her unconscious drive is to face her fear of connecting with someone deeply, even if she might lose them.

[behindthepageaudiobooks]

I think that you should have included the idea that a character should want to improve their life by seeking to better their life with something they don't already have. E.g. If you write a story about a character like Napolean Bonaparte wanting to conquer the whole of Europe, readers won't like that character because Bonaparte (in this example) has already become the Emperor of the French and is technically not deprived of or lacking anything. I think you meant to say that a character should want to better their life by pursuing an unfulfilled dream or something they have been deprived of their whole life.

In the examples you give in this video, the characters are completely, not partially, deprived of something they desperately want. In Joker (2019), the joker has not achieved even a modicum of success. In Star Wars (1977), Luke is faced with all or nothing decisions and he cannot partly go to the academy and leave Tatouine i.e. he cannot travel back and forth between the Academy and Tatouine. When the story begins, Luke has not at all achieved his goal of leaving Tatouine. For example, Luke does not regularly leave and return to Tatouine (e.g. several times a year for several months) and simply wants to permanently leave the planet.

I think complete deprivation of a desire is essential for making a character as likeable as possible or in some cases, likeable to any degree.

What about Griffith in the famous anime called Berserk? Is Griffith a likeable character for starting out as a poor soldier and wanting to become a powerful king of a large kingdom? The goals you gave as examples as character sound like socially acceptable goals (for the majority of readers). Is Idi Amin, the former dictator of Uganda, a likeable character (at least at the start of his story) for starting out as a poor soldier, but having the dream of becoming a powerful military dictator? Would a poor soldier be a likeable character if readers knew that his lifelong ambition and struggle was to become the military dictator of his country? Or does a character's struggle and lifelong goal have to be a socially acceptable goal or desire that does not involve the death of thousands or millions of people?

[unbeaugateau]

Theoretical question: might be a bit of a stretch but are there any movies/stories where a character’s story goal directly or partially gets in the way/ contrasts their positive change in a way that works? Love these videos by the way.

[PuppetMaster-Blade]

My MC and his wife Yearn for their old lifestyle back, sailing the seas freely without a care in the world, but can't really do that because of their kids. When they had kids they decided to settle down to raise the kids away from pirating and killing, etc. But where the story begins is with them plotting to take the kids and escape from their current living situation and start over again but this time on the seas.

There's obviously more that happened and will happen throughout the story and thier story, but thats what their desires are. And the whole story is through the eyes of the MC so it's only what he sees and from that it creates an unreliable narrator for the story, which i think adds a bit of depth if i can pull it off 😅

[WriterBrandonMcNulty]

What positive change or positive world does your protagonist yearn for? Let me know!!

[Mah-Boi]

My MC is a high schooler who's forced to deal with supernatural crap. He finds out his best friend is a wendigo and eventually gets kidnapped by a cult who worships a Dark God. He wants to just have a break and peace with the people he cares about.

[ludovico]

My main character is a private eye who has been coerced to resign from the police force. He yearns to get back in the force.