So, how could you write a world that makes your readers sink into the world?
Well, just write a world that feels like their own world. And how do you write character’s that readers can sympathize with? Again, make them like characters in their own world.
Once you know how to write a story, how to be consistent with your writing, and wake up early to create time for productive writing sessions, it will be easy. The rest is done in a rather simple enough manner.
In order to write an engrossing world and sympathetic characters, you must use the proper combination of worldbuilding, and prose. With worldbuilding, you want to avoid creating locations that feel very stereotypically fictional, and you can do this by adding a single noticeable element within the environment. Preferably, an element even the reader is familiar with.
When it comes to prose, you do this by writing realistic narratives, and thought patterns for the character. Write prose that tells us more about the character, without telling us. This way it does more than one thing simultaneously.
That is a mouthful, yes detective. I am aware. So how about we get to tenderizing, and cutting this stakes into consumable pieces for you, yeah? Yeah!
- What Makes an Engrossing Story and Sympathetic Characters?
- How to Write an Engrossing World, and Sympathetic Characters?
What Makes An Engrossing World, and Sympathetic Characters?
What makes an engrossing world is a world that feeds readers multiple threads of information from just a single scene. Information that tells us about the world, the atmosphere, the past, and even the personality of it’s people.
The same could be said about a sympathetic character.
A sympathetic character is a character who we learn so much about from just their introduction, that we can readily recognize them from a bunch of other characters. This is because they have an element about them that reminds us about the people we love.
1. A Limited History Of The World
A limited sense of the history is one of the simplest ways of saying more about your world than any, which will make it more engrossing as it would be similar to our own world.
The mistake a lot of stories make is that their histories tend to be perfect.
Everybody remembers everything that happened, the exact same way. In the real world though, we remember history different, due to a number of reasons.
Maybe its because the past is ugly, and many do not like that history being taught. So they do everything in their power to make sure the history is suppressed, lest their power comes to question. Or maybe they end up having a bad image of themselves, or their heroes.
In some instances, it could be that the history was simply written wrong. It could be the people who are writing the history down were not eye witnesses, and they were simply rewriting what they saw from another book.
Maybe the king of the time wished to make themselves look great so they had a purge of the books, then they attained their legendary status. People in the future may know to take that history with a pinch of salt, since they know that there was a purge.
But they would not know the exact details of what happened, just that it is not written in the way it did. In some instances, history is merely lost, and we do not have the books that recorded those events anymore.
Your history needs to be reflective of the real world in this way. Make it a limited history.
2. An Imperfect Environment To Deepen The World
The world your characters live in needs to be an imperfect world, which should not only be reflected in the buildings, and other man made artifacts, but also in the very ecology/ nature itself.
One of the more bizarre situations in fiction is when you read about characters who are experiencing something that tends to feel somewhat negative, and they are having such a great time.
For example, a character out sitting in the woods. In most books it tends to be a picturesque scene. In reality, the woods are a pile of shit. You have ants crawling over you, things stabbing you which could either be a rock, a branch, or your keys.
It can be really cold, and your back is going to start punishing you. By the tie you get you, your pants are dirty, and so is anything else you touch.
In short, it tends to not be fun or passive.
In your story, you need to make the environment imperfect. If they are out in the water, it should sting the eyes, and wrinkle the fingers. Let’s say they are seeing a building, they should notice how one side of the wall is darker that the other. If they are seeing a statue, they should notice how the face is flatter, and fatter than the real person was.
The world needs to be imperfect. It needs to be uncomfortable, and allow you to grow as you see fit.
3. Characters with Imperfect Physical Appearance
In order to start making your character’s sympathetic, you need to begin giving them a physical appearance that could be considered imperfect.
It would absolutely help to give your character some sort of physical blemish.
In most stories, we are used to character’s being given standard descriptions. Eye color, skin color, hair color, body shape, and even the shape of their face. The one thing we scarcely get is a description of a blemish on the character’s appearance.
The thing is though, most people in the real world have blemishes on their body.
This is a shame, since blemishes usually tell us about the character. It could be, then it is a genetic blemish, then we can imagine how they were treated as children. If it is a blemish that occurred during the course of their life, then we have a story that does not need to be told, yet tells us something about the character.
4. Character’s with Imperfect Characteristics
It would make our character’s sympathetic if they had an imperfect trait in their behavior, personality, or character.
Here we need to look at things like personality ticks.
We all know that a morally grey character is interesting, and more compelling then most flat characters. However, I am not talking about that here. Rather, I am talking about simple personality quirks that a character has.
Maybe they have a way of speech that is not the right way to speak. Or they have a way of moving that is unnatural. Perhaps the speed is unnatural, or maybe the erratic nature is unnatural. Sometimes, it can be one specific thing that they do that is wrong.
They could be this hyper graceful character, yet they always spill the tea when they pour it.
These imperfections allow us into the character’s mind. We wonder where they heard the way they speak, how that must have affected their childhood, and if they ever try to speak properly. Or we wonder why they move the way they do. Sometimes, we may begin adding bits of the character’s past due to these inconsistency.
Example
For example, one could say the graceful guy who spills tea all the time does that because they aren’t used to handling hot tea. So maybe they come from a location where tea is uncommon. Maybe a sunny, desserty place. Or maybe they are a sort of nobility, which is why they are graceful. And maybe they keep spilling the tea because they are not accustomed to handling the servant’s things.
On, and on, you reader will be able to go. Without you ever having to say anymore than showing these weird character defects.
How To Write an Engrossing World, and Sympathetic Characters?
1. Write your world history out in real, then write an imagined/forged world history
To write an immersive world, the first step would be to write out the real history as it actually happened. Then begin writing other drafts of history, which are the false, and fake history.
You will know the differences, but your readers won’t.
Now, it would help for you to write out the true history of how the world began. You can use the article on how to do worldbuilding if you can’t do that, and you will be taught how to do the history side of worldbuilding in a way that is relevant to present day characters, and storylines.
When you have that down, you are now ready to move on to the magical part; writing the fake history.
There are 3 main tricks you can use to create fake history. 1, is the conscious method, 2 is the accidental method, and 3 is the unconscious method.
Conscious Method
The conscious method; For this one, you can ask yourself, which character’s would want to consciously change the history? It’s fairly easy. Maybe those who have something to protect. Perhaps their ill won power, or ill won image of benevolence.
They may wish to hide their past so that people won’t know the atrocities they committed.
These are the characters who need to have the power to change the history too, so it should be character’s who are elites; people like the clergy, the nobles, the merchants, and the dominant groups of the society.
Accidental Method
The accidental method; Here, you will have to ask yourself what sort of events may lead to histories being lost. Things like the loss of historical books come to mind. So things like wars, or natural disasters. Like the fire of Alexandria in our world.
It could even be things like a loss of the meaning between translations of languages, misunderstandings of words, and stuff.
Unconscious methods
The unconscious methods; This one is when people misheard something. Or maybe they are writing a second hand account, and their narrator is not very accurate. Perhaps they are writing something that happened 100s of years before even they were born.
The point is, you should be look over your real history, and ask yourself what time period certain parts were being written, and who wrote it.
Why? This could lead you to the first one, conscious misleading. Maybe it was royals who wanted to make themselves look good. Ask how? This could lead you to the unconscious methods. Maybe the incident was written by a person hearing it from a child survivor
2. Try to Draw out the physical environment, then start adding to it
Try to physical raw the environments of the story, from indoors, to house, then to the whole city or jungle.
Now, you can be creative with this.
When drawing indoors, first written everything in the room. The things people use for fun, to store stuff, to rest, and everything. Then, you may begin to draw the things. This will allow you to be able to add imperfections in the house. You will even have stories behind the imperfections.
You could add mismatched artifacts, and funny stories. This will also be helpful for when you are setting up the scene, which is itself a complicated topic covered in my how to set up a scene article.
Then when drawing the house, just try to add a bit more flare then your kinder garden house drawings.
You are not trying to be Leonardo DaVinci. Instead, you are just trying to figure out where everything is, and what it is. While doing this drawing, open a web browser in front of you, and look for the specific names of the things you want to draw.
Window frames, door frames, walk pad, grass, and fences. Whatever. Make sure you have it’s accurate name, which you can then use when doing your first draft. Just to cut down editing time later.
Anyway, with your house drawing, you can justify any mistakes you made. Maybe you forgot a window, and you could say the builders forgot to build it. Or maybe it is crooked and you could say it was hit by a car at some point.
You can add anything you want here, and you will see, your mind will be creative with the imperfections, and build your world naturally.
Make it Physical
Finally, draw the entire town.
Here, you can download a typical layout plan of a city. Then, you can just draw the lines, circles, and squares that symbolize the buildings, playgrounds, CBD, and residences of the people. When you are doing this, you will be able to imagine how certain places look.
Then, you can add imperfections. Make the distance between each place extra long, and you can add some fun justification, which adds to the history.
Maybe they residences are far from the rest of the town, and this is because they were closer, but a fire in the 1800 burnt most of the buildings down, and they started rebuilding a distance of. Temporary settlements that then grew to be what they are today, unfortunately. See? Imperfections add to the world.
3. Add Natural Imperfections On The Characters To Deepen the World
In order to make your characters a bit more sympathetic, it would help for you to give them a physical imperfection.
Stories have a tendency of making characters look completely flawless.
In reality, even the most beautiful people amongst us have something about them that is somewhat imperfect. But even more, all average people have an imperfection that we have seen on another person before.
You could say they have zits, crooked teeth, red-shot eyes, skin problem, or hair problems. Or just outright deformities, like limbs missing. Maybe it is not a bad breathing pattern that they have. It could also be certain action imperfections. It could be they are always jittering. Just any imperfection you can think of.
Make sure all your characters have a random imperfection like this, and they will remind your readers of somebody they know in their life.
4. Add Unnatural Imperfections On The Characters that they attained in life
Give your character’s imperfections that are not genetic.
This could be things that they received on their body with time, things that they wear, or things that they tend to have sticking to them.
For things they received on their body with time, i am refering to things like childhood scars from play, or maybe they have tan lines on their body. Perhaps they have hard calloused hands, showing they used their hands a lot in tehir childhood.
For things that they wear, you could say an interesting detail about their clothes. perhaps they are too small, or too big. Or maybe they are wrinkly. You could even say that they are stained with something for most of the time.
Whichever of these you choose, you are giving your readers information that does not ever need to be described.
5. Use Prose to Show The Imperfections Of The Characters To Make The Characters In The World Feel Sympathetic
Finally, use the prose to show how your characters are imperfect.
We know that characters need to be imperfect.
The need to be prejudiced, and narrow sighted. Or they need to be overly optimistic, and positive. The details of the character’s imperfection lie with the flaw of the character, but it also helps when an additional element is added in to help the character have another imperfection, which may or may not ever be fixed.
But the best way of showing this imperfection is through the prose.
Most stories will write the prejudiced thought that the character is feeling, and we may see that. “He even wore a gilded staff on his side. Basically, he was as pompous as Amy would expect of a Highlord.” This can feel a bit too on the nose.
So much so, that it seems as if Amy herself is aware or her prejudice, which is not how prejudice normally works. It would be better instead for the character to try to appear impartial but we can read between the lines that they are prejudiced.
For example, you could have the character recall how the young lord was banished from his land by his father for trying to bed, and marry a peasant.
Now he is pushing them into the night, making them work the fields so he can have money. Here, the character fails to sympathize with the lord, who had at some point in the past seen peasants as equals and was punished for it. Now they wish to attain their wealth, and retain their status.
It is a far more subtle form of prejudice, but it shows that this character is more focused on their own musing, and would never see life through the lord’s perspective. Yes, the lord is wrong here, I feel the need to add.
Once you have mastered these, you will be a step closer to mastering mastery.
