Sunday Writing Tip: Make Your Characters Vulnerable

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Each week, I’ll offer a tip you can take and apply to your WIP to help improve it. They’ll be easy to do and shouldn’t take long, so they’ll be tips you can do without taking up your Sunday. Though I do reserve the right to offer a good tip now and then that will take longer—but only because it would apply to the entire manuscript.

This week, make your characters vulnerable. 

For compassionate people, seeing someone’s vulnerability tugs at our heartstrings and makes us connect, and even care. But in our haste to make our protagonist “heroic,” we sometimes forget to make them vulnerable, too.

Look for moments in your story where a character can exhibit vulnerability. Pay particular attention to highly emotional scenes, or scenes where you want to surprise readers.

For more on creating vulnerability in your novel, try these articles:

• How Shame and Vulnerability Can Connect Us to Characters
• Brainstorming Your Character's Emotional Wound
• Anatomy of Grey’s—How Unanticipated Interactions Can Elevate Tension; A Scene Analysis