There’s been a backlash against relatability in characters lately, which I think is undeserved. I provide my thesis for this post right here …

…. but I’d like to expound a bit more.

The OP does bring up an excellent point, and one that I agree with in the context provided. People now want every character to reflect their specific life circumstances, and if they don’t, then they are unrelatable.

In all honesty, I think this speaks to the concerning trend of rising narcissistic tendencies (especially in the United States), which is paired with a lack of empathy. That’s not the point of this post, though, so we will put it aside for now and maybe discuss some other time.

But it’s possible to “brute force” this empathy by creating characters who are relatable not because of life circumstances, not because of appearance or identity, but because of deep human motivations. We can do this by going back to what makes a person human: flaws that, when combined with a lack, force a shift in equilibrium.

As writers, we tap into the wellspring of human desires.

A character who desires something that we can relate to will be much more realistic and fascinating than one who just has a bunch of buzzword identities slathered on.

In fact, when you try to make a character too “relatable” by just adding whatever identities feel woke enough, you make a cardboard cutout that feels like you were just trying to make a Representation Sandwich. They’re off-putting.

Four of my main characters are queer: Cerie, Uileac, Orrinir, and Haniya (yet to be revealed). But I don’t mention that in their character profiles because, well, that’s not the most important parts of them. What matters is what they want, how bad they want it, and what is standing in their way.

So our characters need to want something. Thankfully, centuries of philosophy and psychology have given us a roadmap for how to do that.

Starting off with the flaws. It’s been said that while there are Seven Deadly Sins, they can all be traced back to one overpowering “sin:” lust. How so?

• Pride: Lust for acknowledgment
• Greed: Lust for material possessions
• Envy: Lust for better status than others
• Wrath: Lust for vengeance
• Lust: Lust for sexual satisfaction
• Gluttony: Lust for comfort
• Sloth: Lust for idleness

Essentially, every Deadly Sin is about wanting too much of something. Pride is wanting too much acknowledgment, from oneself or others, and sloth is wanting excessive idleness.

Deep down, these are all human needs, just blown out of proportion. What would each one be in the correct measurements?

• Pride → Healthy self-esteem, a sense of self-efficacy and accomplishment
• Greed → A desire to improve one’s material circumstances within reason
• Envy → Self-competition; using one’s current flaws to improve
• Wrath → Recognizing injustice; protecting oneself and one’s family or community
• Lust → Healthy attachment and physical desire
• Gluttony → Seeking enough of whatever one needs, whether that is food or resources
• Sloth → Recognizing one’s limits and engaging in self-care

When a character wants too much of something, we can connect that back to a time when we felt out of control, consumed with lust for what we lacked (or felt like we lacked). A character’s flaw may remind us of someone we know, and in that way, they are relatable.

The most intriguing stories push a character to the limit and show their most prominent Deadly Sin in abundance, then demonstrate how they reel it back in and come to balance.

At its most fundamental level, a good story is about shifting equilibrium, both within characters and within the storyline.

That’s all that a plot is. Let me demonstrate with an awful MS Paint map. (Look, I’m a writer, not an artist.)

The point where the line starts to rise is the inciting event.

So, a relatable character starts out with a flaw that may or may not be known to them. They are pushed by circumstance into an unstable position, and they make choices that either exacerbate their flaw (fall from grace) or allow them to come to balance with this flaw (character growth).

Even if they experience character growth, the flaw does not go entirely away because no one is perfect. Rather, it becomes less of a problem for them because they have resolved whatever was causing the excess of whatever their flaw is. This may be an external problem, or it may be an internal problem that was spurred on by an external problem.

Let’s just imagine a character and a plot to see how this might work.

I’m not an investor or a gambler, but I can resonate with someone messing up and trying to hide their mistake, then being forced to come clean and deal with the chaos that has ensued from my poor choices.

Even though I may have nothing in common with this character on a surface level, I empathize with the feelings of helplessness, guilt, fear, and frustration that this character must experience throughout the course of this story. This is a deeply human issue that all of us have experienced at least once, even if not to such a great extent.

Let’s look at one more which gets at one of my favorite character archetypes: the Reluctant Hero. (I am lazy too so I feel this.)

Lack creates desire, which creates a shift in equilibrium in accordance with the character’s specific motivations.

Characters must want something, which means they must lack something.

For this, we turn to psychology: the hierarchy of needs, which you are likely familiar with so I won’t explain it in excrutiating detail.

Now, the hierarchy of needs is not perfect. Maslow hypothesized that we cannot move up the pyramid if we don’t have the previous step met; we will essentially be “stuck” on that level, with the above steps remaining unfulfilled or even not considered. But research has proven that it is possible to have need above a certain level met even while one’s basic needs are unfulfilled.

The example in the link above points to homeless people who still felt loved and a sense of belonging in certain instances. I’m sure there’s many other examples: people in a war zone finding connection or self-actualization, or an unemployed person meeting their soulmate.

So yes, the hierarchy of needs is not perfect. For writers, though, this gives us a rough guide of what we can remove to create lack and, therefore, motivation to fulfill a goal. We can also mix and match what is or is not fulfilled in order to create a more complex character that is still relatable.

How much that lack bothers someone will be related to their fatal flaw, creating unique motivations and a different path toward equilbirium.

Let’s look at the Greed example from above. A character without that greed may not have been in that situation in the first place because they weren’t gambling overinvesting in stuff. So this plot never would have occurred to them.

But let’s assume the Greed character and the Sloth character both had the same thing happen to them: they lost their jobs at Widget Technologies and had their houses foreclosed on. They both now have the same lack of shelter.

The Greed character is going to have a significantly different experience with this than the Sloth character because they value different things.

Greed is going to be furious, heartbroken, and scrambling; they will work incessantly to find a new job that allows them to make even more money. Their climax may be having to accept something that is below their means and learning to be okay with less.

The Sloth character may have an entirely different problem, which is that they find it almost impossible to motivate themselves to change their circumstances.

Sloth is fine with couch-surfing, borrowing money from others, going further and further into debt until even worse consequences happen to them. Their climax is recognizing they need to take control of their own lives instead of drifting along letting shit happen to them.

By combining flaws with lack, we remove equilibrium and force a shift toward a new balance, which creates relatability.

So to recap, characters:

• Must lack something instinctual and they must have a basic human flaw.
• Their flaws will change the way that they seek to obtain that thing.
• Removing the thing creates instability, which they strive to rectify in accordance with their flaw.
• And, in obtaining it, they come to a new equilibrium.

If you master these things, any character you create will be relatable.

This is where the magic happens: the true joy of books. Where we are transported to different worlds and see the world through the eyes of characters completely unlike ourselves. It’s where we build empathy with those whose perspectives we had never considered before.

Your character could be a farmer living in the middle of nowhere, Bangalore, beset by tigers eating all their crops. They could be a 15th-century Irish peasant who was magically transported to a spaceship in the year 6023 who has no idea what’s going on.

Hell, they could be a hungry hungry caterpillar who has no human features at all, but we still recognize and relate because they were anthromorphized in a way we understand. Even children’s books with animal protagonists follow these same principles.

The “add-on” identities you include cannot come at the expense of complexity. That’s when you get a boring, wooden character who is just used as a prop for representation points. Focus on these essential elements, then add in the exact type of character you want, and you’ll make a truly magical story that touches peoples’ hearts no matter who the MC is.