A good story is driven by its characters. But if your characters aren’t compelling, the audience won’t care whether they achieve their goals — destroying the Death Star, becoming a real boy, getting back to Kansas, or in the case of The Dude, seeking restitution for his ruined rug, because “that rug really tied the room together.”
Creating a character the audience will hope and fear for comes down to two things: goal and likability.
Goal
A character must have a clear objective or desire. If the character is a hero, we hope they achieve it. If they’re a villain, we fear they will. Either way, the goal is what keeps us watching.
We don’t care that she walks into a room, talks to a neighbor, or washes the dishes — unless those actions connect to something she’s fighting for. But if she’s washing dishes because she needs to impress the custody lawyer coming to dinner, suddenly every detail matters.
In Taken, we hope retired CIA agent Bryan Mills saves his daughter before it’s too late — and we fear that if he fails, she’ll be lost forever. The goal creates the stakes. The stakes create the tension.
Likability
When we like a character, we naturally begin to hope and fear for them. In Elf, it’s nearly impossible not to like Buddy immediately — a 6’3” man-child so genuinely innocent that we can’t help but feel sympathy when the truth of his identity is revealed.
But likability isn’t required. What’s required is that we can at least sympathize or empathize with the character, even when we don’t like them.
Sympathy is surface-level — something awful happens that’s outside the character’s control. A street thug robs a store and gets hit by a car on the way out. We don’t condone the theft, but we wince at the injury.
Empathy goes deeper. In Monster, Charlize Theron plays Aileen, a serial killer and prostitute — as unsympathetic a character as you can construct. But when her history of rape and abuse is revealed, we don’t forgive her crimes. We simply understand how someone becomes capable of them. That understanding is empathy, and it’s more powerful than sympathy ever could be.
Forrest Gump is the complete package. He’s charming and kind — likable from the first frame. He has no control over his handicaps — sympathy. His innocence softens every questionable act — empathy. He wants to win Jenny’s heart, and we both hope she returns his love and fear that she won’t.
That’s the connection. And it begins with giving your audience a reason to care.