No matter how much tension you pack into the pages of your book, readers won’t care about your story if they don’t first care about your characters. After all, there’s nothing page-turning about a predictable protagonist playing out a predictable plot.

If you want readers to invest in your characters and their journeys, then you must craft characters that readers can believe in — characters so well-developed and realistic that they seem to spring to life on the page. But crafting a cast that moves beyond caricatures and cardboard cutouts can be difficult. What steps can you take to develop complex and compelling characters today?

Here are 33 tips you won’t want to miss…

We can all think of a few memorable mentor characters.

There's Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings, Dumbledore from Harry Potter, Professor X from the X-Men comics, and Haymitch and Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games, among countless others who've stayed with us long after we've closed the pages of our favorite books.

Crafting our own memorable mentors who find homes in the hearts of our readers, however, is often easier said than done. Fortunately, with a little time and intention, anything is possible. So let’s get to work, shall we?

Writers often enjoy crafting their characters' appearances, yet just how important is appearance in the grand scheme of your story? Well, that depends.

In some instances, appearance plays a large role, informing a character's struggle, defining important cultural context, lending representation to under-served readers, and so on. Yet for most stories, a character's specific height or hair color bears little sway on the plot. Does this mean defining our characters' looks is unimportant?

Not at all, but we may need to change the way we think about appearance. Why so? And just how can we capture the clearest versions of our characters on the page? Let's dive into today's breakdown, writers!