My Characters and Why I Write Them

One of the things I try to put into my characters is a sense of realism. I want my Christian characters to struggle, to be flawed, to choose to sin sometimes (heck, we all do that, don’t we?) But I also want them to grow, visibly, within the pages of the book. To struggle against the urge to sin, to turn to God, and to make at least baby steps toward overcoming so that on the last page of the book that character is visibly different than who he or she was on the first page.

It’s that growth that’s key to me. Even in my series, where the characters grow over the course of multiple books, there still has to be visible growth within each individual book. Why? Because that’s what matters to me as a reader.

I’ll read–and even enjoy–a book without noticeable growth in the characters from start to end. But the books that stay with me, the ones that I want to read over and over? Those are the ones where the characters grow. Because they encourage me. They help me realize that growth is possible. They give me hope.

What about you? Do you want to read characters who grow over the course of the novel? Or are you satisfied with just a good external plot?