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As a book editor with a background in the publishing industry, I’m passionate about helping fiction writers bring their stories to life. One of the biggest challenges fiction writers and emerging novelists make is writing realistic characters.

Sometimes, it’s easier to know what not to do, so I’m going to discuss the five most common mistakes that make your characters seem unrealistic. When these mistakes occur, the characters don’t reflect how real people act or talk. Fixing these simple mistakes will put you well on your way to writing more believable and authentic-feeling characters.

I see these mistakes in all types of fiction stories, especially in novels, so let’s start by going over why it’s so important for your characters to seem like real people.

Ultimately, how realistic your characters are correlates with how much your readers will empathize with them. It’s really important for your readers to empathize with your characters (which is not the same as them liking your characters), because that’s how you’re going to get them deeply invested in your story. Personally, if I don’t care about the characters, I don’t care about the story. And I’m not inclined to care for characters who seem like caricatures and tropes rather than real people.

So to help flesh out your characters, let’s dive into the five mistakes you might have in your story that make your characters less realistic.

1. Constantly Calling Each Other By Their Name

The first mistake when writing realistic characters is having characters constantly addressing each other by name in conversation, over and over. How often have you seen an exchange like the following in a fiction story?:

“Hey Joe, how are you?”
“I’m great, Susan, thanks for asking. Hey, did you happen to see the new neighbors moving in around the corner?”
“You know what Joe, I did wonder what they’re like.”
“Well, I have to go! See you later, Susan.”

This exchange feels stilted and unnatural for many reasons, but largely because the characters are continuously referring to each other by name in every line. Think about when you have a face-to-face conversation with someone. You likely will stop using their name after the first couple sentences because it’s obvious that you’re talking directly to them–so why would your characters name drop so frequently?

This tactic creeps in when you’re trying to signal which character is saying what, but there are cleaner ways to do that. Whenever you’re tempted to drop character names in the dialogue, it’s just as easy to use standard attribution lines.

Let’s look at the same passage with a streamlined edit:

“Hey Joe, how are you?” Susan asked.
“I’m great, thanks for asking. Hey, did you happen to see the new neighbors moving in around the corner?”
“You know what, I did wonder what they’re like.”
“Well, I have to go! See you later.”

The reader only needs the one direct name drop plus the attribution line in order to have a grasp on who’s saying what in this exchange. By avoiding this name-calling mistake, you can clear up the clutter from your dialogue and make your characters seem more realistic.

2. Talking to Themselves

The second most common mistake is a personal pet peeve of mine: having characters talk to themselves out loud when no one else is around. I’m not sure why it shows up in fiction stories so much, but to me it always feels a bit melodramatic.

This element is something I almost always bring up to a writer if I notice it in their manuscript, unless there is a good reason to keep it in. Here’s an example of how this mistake might manifest in a story:

After hanging up the phone, I was so frustrated. “Why would Mom say that!?” I screamed into my empty room.

What rubs me the wrong way about this scene is the image of the character literally screaming to herself in an empty room. This comes across as overly theatrical and unbelievable, especially if the thing the mom character said wasn’t particularly instigating.

Luckily, this mistake has an easy fix. Instead of making the character exclaim something out loud, just have them say it in an internal thought. Here’s a revised version:

After hanging up the phone I was so frustrated. Why would Mom say that?

Here, instead of having the narrator scream out loud, I use italics to draw attention to her internal thoughts. This passage would also work without italics because the narrative is already in first person, which we interpret as the narrator’s direct thoughts anyways.

I also omitted the exclamation point because the italics and question mark already draw the reader’s attention to the line; it doesn’t need to be oversold. Again, by cutting back on the dramatic use of a character talking to themselves, you can make them more realistic to the reader.

3. Showing Up Unannounced

I understand the reasoning behind the third common mistake: having characters show up to other characters’ homes unannounced. It’s just more exciting to have your characters meet face to face all of a sudden, as it makes for a more interesting and dynamic scene. But, the fact of the matter is that if your novel is taking place in contemporary times, there are very few situations in which we would show up to someone’s house just to tell them something, instead of just texting or calling them.

This is a mistake I often see in mysteries and thrillers, as the writers want to get characters together in order to quickly advance the plot. But keep in mind that your reader will tolerate so many of these ‘chance’ encounters before they start to roll their eyes and write off the entire story as unbelievable.

There was one novel I was editing where a father was looking for his missing daughter and he kept showing up to her house and knocking on her door without trying to contact her in advance. Presumably, if you were a father looking for your daughter in today’s world you would start by using the phone to contact her first. Then, when she didn’t respond, you would show up at her house.

The lesson here is to not forget that your characters should also have access to and use the technologies ingrained in our lives in order for them to be truly realistic.

4. Ignoring Questions or Changing the Subject

The fourth mistake when writing realistic characters is another dialogue related point: when characters ignore direct questions or randomly change the subject of a conversation. It sounds like common sense, but each line in a conversation should flow organically in response to the previous line.

Sometimes characters will ignore a certain comment or question and change the topic in order to propel the plot forward, but this isn’t how we talk in real life. If someone asks you a direct question, you will usually answer it, unless there is a clear reason why you’re avoiding it.

Let’s look at an example of how this mistake works:

“I heard about what happened to your fiancé,” Liz said. “I’m so sorry, is there anything I can do to help?”
“The doctor said he’s going to make it, but it’ll be a long recovery,” Julie replied, playing with the ring on her finger.

In this passage, Liz asks Julie if there’s anything she can do to help in regards to her fiancé, but Julie doesn’t answer the question at all. Instead, she brings up what the doctor said, which isn’t what Liz asked about.

A more realistic progression of this conversation would look something like this:

“I heard about what happened to your fiancé,” Liz said. “I’m so sorry, is there anything I can do to help?”
“We have everything we need for now, but thanks,” Julie replied, playing with the ring on her finger. “The doctor said he’s going to make it, but it’ll be a long recovery.”

Here, Julie still gets to her point about what the doctor said, but first she replies to Liz’s offer to help.

You could even incorporate body language if your character is trying to avoid a question due to their emotional state:

“I heard about what happened to your fiancé,” Liz said. “I’m so sorry, is there anything I can do to help?”
Julie shook her head, then started playing with the ring on her finger. “The doctor said he’s going to make it but it’ll be a long recovery.”

In this case, Julie doesn’t directly reply to the question being asked, but she still acknowledges it.

So, how do you avoid making this mistake? Take a close look at each of your dialogue exchanges and review each line to make sure there are no gaps or topical jumps in the conversation. That way, you can write novel characters freely in the first draft, then come in and edit any gaps for the second draft.

The caveat with this point is that if your character does have intentions behind changing the subject or avoiding a question–such as if they’re feeling guilty or secretive–then of course it’s relevant to your story and should be kept as-is. But any unintentional gaps in conversation should be addressed in some way, either in dialogue or the narration, or called out by the other character.

5. Random Memory Access

The last mistake writers commonly make is having characters remember things randomly and unprompted. This mistake is best illustrated with an example:

Ryan walked down the street. He noticed a butterfly landing on his neighbor’s mailbox. Suddenly, a memory flooded back of his grandfather reading him a children’s book about butterflies. Those were the better days, before his grandfather got dementia and moved into a memory care facility.

It’s clear here that the writer is trying to relay the contextual background information about Ryan’s grandfather, but the connection between that and the butterfly on the mailbox is tenuous. In this case, I would recommend taking out the butterfly altogether and see if there’s another place in the story where it feels more natural to raise the point about Ryan’s grandfather’s dementia.

While on some level it’s true that memories come back to us randomly and can be triggered by things we see, smell, or taste, in fiction, using a tactic like this can come across as forced. It’s usually best to give the reader this expository information about your characters in a straightforward way; don’t overthink it or try to force it in a scene that doesn’t belong.

These are the five most common mistakes I come across in fiction stories that make characters seem less realistic. I hope these pointers help you as you build the most authentic, engaging characters possible. Just remember to treat your characters as if they are real people–then your readers will, as well.

Thanks for reading, and happy writing!