Characters that are true

Ben, from Oma­ha, Nebras­ka wrote, “I want to write books the way you do. I find your char­ac­ters inter­est­ing. How do I make read­ers care about the char­ac­ters I invent?” 

I am not sure there is one way to do this. More­over, I sus­pect dif­fer­ent writ­ers would answer this inter­est­ing ques­tion in many ways. 

For myself, I would sug­gest that the writer has to cre­ate a char­ac­ter that is—to use Hemingway’s term—true. That is, the char­ac­ter has to be believ­able enough so that the read­er can see and feel what the char­ac­ter is expe­ri­enc­ing and con­nect that expe­ri­ence to the reader’s expe­ri­ence. Yes, more often than not, the writer invents a char­ac­ter, but very quick­ly, the writer must react to that char­ac­ter as some­one beyond inven­tion, as some­one with a real­i­ty of their own. In oth­er words, the char­ac­ter must become inde­pen­dent of the writer, and the writer must see that char­ac­ter and be hon­est about him or her. 

Still, the writer is invent­ing a sto­ry, thus clear­ly manip­u­lat­ing what hap­pens. The bal­ance between that manip­u­la­tion and writ­ing what is true is one of the most dif­fi­cult aspects of writing.