How to Build Relatable Characters

Wall 1: Build to relate

Layering the Heroine

This blog is a continuation of Blog: Welcome to Lily’s Guide to Releasing Antique Spirits.

This blog is about: My YA debut book, Lily’s Guide to Releasing Antique Spirits. How to Build Relatable Characters.

In Lily’s Guide to Releasing Antique Spirits, Lily Shels is the main heroine.

 

Daft 1: Lily version 1.0

Keep in mind dear reader, that your first draft is always the worst. It’s the first layer that must go down in order to give you the skeleton to build on.

 

Character building takes time. Always be patient with yourself and your characters. They will grow as you grow.

AUTHOR TIP: Know your audience! If you don’t know who you are writing for, it’s time to learn.

In order for a book to do well the author must create relatable characters that speak/connect to a specific person.

 

In this upcoming YA book: Lily’s Guide to Releasing Antique Spirits, Lily is the lead character. Aka: the Heroine. Since this book is a YA the books target audience is Teenagers/teenyboppers/teens–you get the point. Kids between ages 12-18 years.

 

That being the target audience,

 Here is how I started Lily’s character building.

Traits I wanted my Main Character to have:

Teen age, spunky and happy, talkative, popular on social media and good with everyone.

 

Character description 1.0:

 Lily is a 15 year old Catholic girl. She has two older siblings and two younger brothers. She’s surrounded, in other words. Lily’s favorite activity is anything Instagram and she’s great at it. She has friends but only one best friend, teachers love her and she has a good relationship with her parents.

Lily is a successful Instagram guru showing her thousands of followers the best Vintage outfits she owned. Lily is perky, bright and happy, with a stable life until the spirits start barging in. 

 

Here’s the problem

The first version of Lily is almost too stable…too perfect for a teenager. I made her unrealistic and not relatable enough for my audience.

A fiction Y.A. After all, should speak to your audience of teenagers.

My Lily 1.0 was a good start though. 

Now, how do I breathe more life into Lily to make her relatable to other teens out there?

Daft 1.2: Lily version 1.5

 

After many months of editing the first draft with Donna, my editor. I realized that I had jumped the gun on Lily’s character. I made her great at everything waaaaaay too soon. She needed to start out with imperfections, problems and issues like the rest of the world. No one is perfect or close to it, especially right off the bat.

 

 So, after 7 months of editing, this author learned a few valuable lessons about Lily and character building.

 

Character description 1.5:

Lily Shels, a teenager who loves social media. Is trying to get followers by sharing her love of vintage clothes and decor. She has a happy disposition, but with the stress of keeping her spirit freeing ability a secret she lapses into mood swings. Plus, add being a Catholic to that. Seems like there’s a new rule coming up everyday now. Don’t wear that, it’s not modest. You can’t do that, it’s not very lady-like. So on and so on. 

 

This version of Lily felt more realistic. As a Catholic teen, there were many times I could sympathize with how Lily felt. She’s moody thanks to so many things going on around her and inside of her. 

 

AHA!!! Things were finally coming together for Lily. She was no longer near perfect. She was starting to become relatable. Relatable to whom? To my Catholic Teenager audience. 

 

Author tip:

Have you heard of niching down for social media? Well, that needs to be done for your audience too! Spend some time niching down on who your true audience is.

 

Still…something was bugging me. I had the Beta readers reviews in and most were good. The majority enjoyed the book and thought it was nice. I sighed in relief.

Until one Beta reader basically said it was ok.

 

“Ok” The book I just spent 7 months on editing, a year writing before that, was simply ok. Not great, not relatable or even good. Just plain ok. That hurt, quite a bit actually. The pain wasn’t a personal, “she didn’t like my book” pain.

It felt like I had let my reader down.

Here I was, a new YA author, trying to make a positive impact on catholic teenagers. It seems I have missed the target. Lily was supposed to connect with these Catholic teenagers and leave a positive impact on them.

 

The next few weeks were spent in deep contemplation and few mood swings of my own. (Apologies to my older sister, who I rent with.) Something major was missing from my book and a decision needed to be made.

Do I:

Leave the book as is, not every teenager is going to find your book amazing.

OR

Re-write the book, add more direction by using your beta readers review as insight. And try niching down even further.

 

Daft 2: Lily version 2

The wall is looking pretty daunting at this point. Two drafts of the book right now and I’m staring down the barrel of a possible third re-write. I’d better get her character right this time!

 

As the Author of Lily’s Guide to Releasing Antique Spirits, I decided to Re-write the book again.

 

Relatability.

My biggest struggle so far has been relatability. Lily has not been real enough to connect with her Catholic teenage audience.

One week later, of frantic rewrites, I had the 3rd draft done. Thankfully, I was able to use the 2nd draft, adding more depth to my lead. Changing things here and there, plus adding a few well known Catholic teen struggles.

 

Is Lily still perfect? Absolutely not! I believe something has clicked at last.

 

But, I’ll let you be the judge of that when you read my book. HEHEHE no spoilers just yet.

At the end of this blog, dear reader, You should leave with this tidbit of knowledge.

Your first draft is never the book you finish with, because you will grow as you edit and develop your book. Growth is painful but good and with the right mindset, it can be very rewarding.

Niche down on your target audience! The more you learn about your audience the better your characters will relate to them. After all, the true power of being an author is to share amazing stories that somehow people can still relate to.

 

This blog is about: My YA debut book, Lily’s Guide to Releasing Antique Spirits. Building a relatable main character.

 

**If you have any suggestions of topics you would like me to blog about when it comes to the Author world, let me know!

 

Thank you for reading until the end. As a new blogger any and all support is appreciated and welcome.

Write on~

Cecilia