How To Ensure Your Audience Understands Your Characters
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Your characters are at the heart of every story you write.
And an author’s characters are at the heart of every story you read.
It doesn’t matter what genre or setting you are writing in. It doesn’t matter if you are trying to put out the best superhero novels like I am, or if your jam is more in mystery, romance, thrillers, or a hundred different other genres. Your characters could be superheroes, they could be pirates, they could be ninjas, secret agents, hard-boiled film noir detectives, or anything else. At the end of the day, your characters are the driving force of your story, even if your story isn’t a character-driven one.
So it’s vital that, from an early point, you ensure your audience understands your characters.
But how do you do that?
Well, that can be tough. There are so many different types of characters to present to your audience, from your protagonist to the immediate supporting cast to the wider supporting cast to the main villain to the rival to the mentor to–we can just do this forever, can’t we?
At the same time, though, it’s not that complicated. Not that that complicated. Different types of characters–such as the mysterious watcher or the obstructive authority figure–will have different approaches that you want to take, but your main characters should be easily understood by your audience from the get-go.
So how do you do that? How do you ensure that your audience understands your characters?
Goals
One of the first things to do to ensure that your audience understands your characters is to establish clear goals and motivations for them.
Your audience should understand what motivates your characters. What your characters want. What they are trying to achieve.
When considering this, it’s important to remember that “Defeating the Dark Lord” and “Finding the McGuffin” are not goals. Or, more accurately, they aren’t the only goals you should be focusing on.
Just as there is a difference between a plot-driven story and a character-driven story, there are differences between plot-goals and character-goals. Your plot-goals are easy to see, but your character-goals are also necessary to establish for your main characters early on.
This last part is important. “Early on”. Don’t wait. It should be quickly established who your character is and what they want as soon as possible.
So to look at various characters throughout different media:
In Die Hard, John McClain has the plot goal of defeating the terrorists that have taken Nakatomi Plaza. But his character goal–the reason he traveled from New York to Los Angeles in the first place–was to reunite with his estranged wife.
In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo Baggins’ plot goal is to cast the One Ring into the fires of Mordor, thus defeating the evil Sauron. His character goal is to explore the exciting world outside the peaceful Shire, like Bilbo before him.
In the original Star Wars trilogy, Luke Skywalker develops the plot goal of joining the Rebel Alliance and bringing down the Galactic Empire, with sub-goals like learning the Force, escaping/destroying the Death Star, and seeking out Yoda. But his character goal from the get-go is to get away from his dull and uneventful life on a [sand???] farm on Tatooine and become a pilot so he can live an exciting and adventurous life.
I’m not saying that character goals are more important than plot goals. I’m saying that both need to be established early on to ensure your audience understands your characters. Otherwise, your characters will just be running around doing things for reasons that will be absolutely confusing to your readers.
Your characters must want certain things. It will be why they make decisions, including certain bad ones. Certain ones that reveal character flaws. Give them the drive to overcome certain challenges. The very challenges that lay at the heart of your story (such as defeating terrorists or Dark Lords….or supervillains).
Now, plot goals can change over time, especially in a slow burn serial. And it’s okay to keep certain things close to the chest. Maybe we find out more about why your main character wants X or Y later on in the story. Perhaps a big revelation or a deeper exploration into their beliefs and backstory.
But even in a slow burn story where it takes a long time for the story “to truly begin”, you should convey some measure of the characters’ goals that tie into the story’s themes, be it “family” or “freedom” or anything else, very early on in order to get your audience invested in your main character right away..
In a longer form story, there might be a desire to string things along for the sake of creating a mystery around your main character. This is one thing if you’ve got a “mysterious” watcher character, like perhaps the Watcher in Marvel comics or Dragon in One Piece or, from what I understand, the G-Man in Half-Life (never played it, sorry), where the lack of clear understanding and motivations about the character can help cast a shroud of mystery over your story and lead your audience theorizing about the true nature of their role.
But for your main character, I would generally recommend against this. With the exception of when you have a group cast where you can cast doubt on one of your main characters by keeping their goals and motivations to yourself, all you will do is create confusion as to what your main character is trying to do and why they are trying to do it. Confuse the audience about that, and take away their incentive to care.
So do not confuse your audience about the protagonist’s major goals and desires. Keep some things close to the chest if need be and dig deeper later on, but establish early on the basics of what your main character is trying to achieve. Your audience should be able to explain early on in your story what your protagonist’s goals are in one or two sentences. If not, then you likely have not done enough to ensure your audience understands your characters.
Abilities
Of course, there’s what your characters want to do. Then there’s what your characters can do.
Your main characters are going to bring various strengths–and weaknesses–to your story that set up limits to what they can and cannot do. Similar to a “magic system”, your main characters should have clear abilities and strengths that the reader can easily identify and understand from early on.
That’s not to say that all a characters’ abilities must be given to the reader early on. Characters grow and get stronger, learn new attacks and gain new weapons, and all around can do things at the end of the story that they couldn’t at the beginning. And maybe other talents are fostered as the story continues on. In fact, an entire genre–with multiple subgenres–exists that specifically focuses on the progression of a main character’s abilities, and the best way of writing progression fantasy is a subject of discussion and debate across the literary community.
But regardless of whether your story is episodic and your character’s abilities are static, or the story is serialized and your character grows in strength over time, your readers should know right off the bat what your characters can do.
So, again, to give examples:
In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, we see in the very first classic issue published in 1984 that the Turtles are expert ninjas and martial artists, and we learn the weapons that each Turtle favors (their classic weapons which are still iconic and representative of each one today). While developing new skills and talents would take anywhere from an issue or two (Donatello being good with technology) to many years or decades (Leonardo having a strong connection to the spiritual plane as seen in the IDW series), readers are right away shown that the brothers are martial arts masters and melee weapons experts.
In Dragon Ball, Son Goku is established in the very first chapter to be absurdly strong, have a tail that he can control like any appendage, and wields a staff that can extend and contract. Sure, it would take anywhere from a few chapters to several years to decades to gain some of his more classic abilities, such as his flying Nimbus cloud, his Kamehameha and Spirit Bomb attacks, or his Super Saiyan and Ultra Instinct forms, or to learn about his Saiyan heritage and “Zenkai” boosts. But anyone who reads Chapter 1 knows right away that Goku is a skilled fighter and incredibly powerful to boot.
In One Piece, Monkey D. Luffy is established in the very first chapter to be made of rubber, with the weakness that he can not swim and will never be able to. New abilities have come to him over the decades, what with the Gear forms and Haki and the like, but Chapter 1 sets the stage for him for readers by giving simple and easy to understand powers to the main character.
It is vital to establish early on what a character can and cannot do. What feats of awe-inducing strength they can perform, and what limits hold them back. Otherwise, your entire story has no stakes.
After all, you don’t have much of a story if you can arbitrarily decide “And then my main character turned into an even bigger dragon and snapped the villain into an alternate reality. The end”.
Even outside of such an extreme case, your readers are going to be confused if your characters are just running around doing things. Like a character with no clear goals, a character with no clearly established abilities can just, well, can just anything.
And that’s no way for your reader to understand that your main character is coming to save the day, or is about to find themself in a tight situation.
Case Studies
So in order to demonstrate how to ensure your audience understands your characters, let’s do a little bit of science!
Okay, that’s perhaps selling things a bit too much, but it is a good idea to go through a couple examples of stories to see if we can identify whether or not the main character’s (or characters’) goals and abilities were made clear to the readers early on.
Since superheroes are kind of our thing around here, I want to keep as much to an apples-to-apples comparison as possible and stick with them. Superheroes have a very specific dynamic to them that characters from other stories don’t. After all, there’s generally no “magic system”, so to speak. A superhero’s powers are unique to them, so you can’t rely on world-building or setting alone to imply what your character is capable of. We need to know about your main character specifically.
So let’s look at a couple of superhero stories to see how to convey goals and abilities to your readers early on, and the consequences of failing to do so.
As an example of how not to do things, we’re going to look to Isom as our go-to. And for the stories that get things right, we’ll look at Superman, Spider-Man, Invincible, and my very own SWITCH and the Challengers Bravo (a work in progress at the time of this writing, so just take my word on everything).
Alright, let’s get into it!
Case #1: Avery Silman / Isom
Goals: Extremely unclear. Previous superhero who left both the city of Florespark, his “old community” (implied to be a small, isolated town), and his family behind to be a farmer, but is asked by his sister to find a woman named Jasmine for the benefit of her mother, Mrs. Neuman (not shown in the story). He agrees because, according to internal monologue, his mother (also not shown) will get mad at him. The entire Jasmine motivation is explicitly dropped (his own monologue states as much) and replaced with “Darren Fontaino disrespected me, so now I’m gonna beat him up”. Isom #2 drops all this for literal not-demons.
The problem here is that we learn in Isom #2 that he ended his superhero career because he failed to save a civilian, but rather than trying to make up for it in any meaningful way, he actively does not care about Jasmine and drops the search the first chance he gets without any narrative pushback. He gives up the flashy, heroic life of a superhero to live a life of seclusion running a farm, but drops everything and risks injury and jail time to throw down with someone for being mean to him. He retires from being a superhero, but promises the guy that makes his suit that he’s going become a superhero full time again, even though he never expresses any desire to do anything but beat up the guy that disrespected him. Then the story immediately shifts with no warning or reason to him going on a paranormal investigation and fighting demons.
We don’t know anything about Avery Silman. We don’t understand what he wants at the deeper, personal level. And so we’re led from one sidequest to the next like an open world RPG without any central point to the story, without any broad goal he’s trying to accomplish. And while that may be established later on, there isn’t really a hook here to keep us invested.
Abilities: Isom clearly has some level of superhuman strength and durability. The nature of his powers are unclear, as the book waffles as to whether he’s an Except or if he’s had his powers for a long time, or if he’s recently acquired them through other means.
Case Study #2: Clark Kent / Superman
Goals: Fights for Truth, Justice, and a Better Tomorrow. Being the last of his people and raised on Earth to always do the right thing, he uses his natural abilities to help the helpless while still preserving a way to live among those he protects as an equal.
Abilities: Superman is shown in Action Comics #1 to have enhanced strength and durability, to the point where bullets bounce off him and he could tear steel doors to shred with his bare hands. He can also leap great distances and hop almost weightlessly across city power lines. He possessed these abilities as a child due to being from the planet Krypton. As Clark Kent, he is a journalist capable of completing investigations and uncovering the truth.
Case Study #3: Peter Parker / Spider-Man
Goals: Believes that with great power comes great responsibility, and thus uses his powers to help those who need it because he has a responsibility to do so. Wants to achieve a better balance between his civilian life and his superhero activities, but knows he can’t because innocent people are put in danger if he’s not there as Spider-Man to do the right thing, as he experienced with the death of Uncle Ben.
Abilities: Spidey has enhanced strength, speed, and agility, can stick to walls, and has the ability to sense danger before it actually manifests, all of which he got from being bitten by a radioactive spider. As Peter Parker, he is a brilliant science student that can develop proprietary adhesive “web” fluid and wrist-mounted shooters for them, and can swing through the city skyline on these weblines.
Case Study #4: Mark Grayson / Invincible
Goals: Invincible wants to be a great superhero just like his father, Omni-Man.
Abilities: Like his father, Invincible can fly and has strength and durability that far exceed those of any human. This is because he is half-Viltrumite, and his powers are natural for those from the planet Viltrum.
Case Study #5: The Challengers Bravo
Goals:
Jack Dufraine / Switch: Wants to become a great superhero on his own merit and differentiate himself from his father and brother, superheroes with vastly different ideals than him who both believe he doesn’t have what it takes. He wants to succeed as the leader of the junior superhero team, the Challengers Bravo, so he can eventually land a spot on the world’s greatest superhero team, the Defending Champions, and prove all his naysayers wrong.
Jaiden Chang / Moon Shadow: The only character for which we are not immediately given goals or motivations for. We know only that she appears absolutely terrified of danger, which adds to the mystery of why she wants to be a superhero.
Fl’ska Fa’e / Animalady: As a refugee from an alien planet whose people have asylum status on Earth, she wants to prove to those who think her people don’t belong by contributing to American society as a superhero. As such, being part of the Challengers Bravo–and hopefully the Defending Champions through that–will help earn the trust of those who distrust her and her people.
Akeem Abdejo / Bionic Boy: Having used his superpowers and advanced tech equipment to defeat the supervillain who killed his father, Bionic Boy seeks to continue to protect others by being a superhero, which he can only do if the company that developed his armor continues to allow him to use it. As part of the Challengers Bravo–as well as the Defending Champions if he can earn a spot–he wants to prove that he’s more than just the gay black PR virtue signal he knows the company views him as.
Abilities:
Switch: Superstrength, superspeed, flight, eyebeams, and invulnerability, but he can only activate one power at a time and it cuts out after two to five minutes, after which he must wait one to two minutes to activate a power again. He is also a skilled hand-to-hand fighter and dual wields extendable batons, and is good at stealth.
Moon Shadow: Can manipulate the size and shape of shadows and travel through them as though they were portals. A side effect of this power was that it granted her the ability to quickly master the skills of those whose shadows she traveled through as a child, granting her mastery in numerous types of martial arts, gymnastics, acrobatics, and other domestic, artistic, and academic skills.
Animalady: As a Ma’Malian, Animalady is naturally stronger than a human, has a tail she controls as a fifth appendage, has heightened senses of smell and hearing, and sharp claws like those of a cat. She can also transform into any mammal she’s aware of, giving her access to two full planets’ worth of mammals and all the attributes that come with them.
Bionic Boy: Becomes an instant expert on any electronic device or system he is currently interfacing with. As such, is an expert with the armor he’s wearing as long as he’s wearing it, which boasts hard-light generators that form various weapons from the wrists, gauntlets that enhance the powers of his punches, boots with shock absorbers that allow him to land safely on his feet from great heights, armor plating that can withstand high caliber gunfire, and an eyepiece that allows him to see in multiple vision modes, pick up electronic communications, store large quantities of data, and access nearby computer systems.
Note that not everything about all these characters is given right away and certain developments and revelations are made later on in their stories. However, all the attributes listed here are essential for a baseline understanding of these characters, and they all come in the beginning. The information on Superman and Spider-Man I listed above are from their very first appearances. Everything I wrote about Invincible is known to the reader within two issues of the comic, or the first episode of the Amazon Prime show. And while there is more to learn about the Challengers Bravo than what I wrote above, these essential goals and superpowers are known to the reader by the end of Season 1: Episode 2.
And the result is more tightly paced and focused stories, regardless of whether the series is episodic with standalone adventures, a single serialized arc, or something in between.
Don’t forget to click here for more on my upcoming series, Switch and the Challengers Bravo. Or even better, join my newsletter and get a free short story introducing the Challengers Bravo.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to your protagonists–especially if you are writing a superhero story–you need to ensure your audience understands your characters by making their motivations and abilities clear early on.
Characters drive stories. Settings are built around them and plotlines are the events and trials they go through, but the characters are the ones that move through it all. They are what ground and humanize what would otherwise be a list of things that happen.
For readers to emotionally connect to your story, they have to connect to your characters. To do that, you have to ensure they understand your characters.
What do your characters want to accomplish? What can your characters do?
Every character in your work has to have these answered to at least some degree at some point. Hero or villain, major or minor character, etc.
But it’s your main characters, your protagonist(s), that drives your story and through which the readers experience it. It’s through them that the reader feels the triumph of victory and the sting of defeat.
Therefore, it’s vital that your readers understand your main characters as early on in the story as possible. They don’t need to know everything, but they need to know the basics. What your protagonist is trying to achieve, and what they can do to make that happen.
None of this is the be-all, end-all to building great characters, of course. There are far better resources than I can provide. And every rule has its exceptions. Every story is different, and the ideas within are only as good as their execution.
But, at the end of the day, if you don’t know how to ensure your audience understands your characters, you’ll be unlikely to get them to care.
And no amount of “Don’t worry, guys. It’s building to something really big. Just you wait” will keep readers coming back.
For exciting superhero fiction written by me, be sure to check out the BLUE EAGLE Universe!