Writing Honest Characters—Even When You Disagree With Them
(Or: How to Let Your Protagonists Punch You in the Gut, Say the Wrong Thing, and Be More Human Than You Ever Dared to Be in Real Life)
Here’s the bitter pill: If every character you write thinks like you, votes like you, wants what you want, and always knows the “right” answer, you’re not writing fiction—you’re writing a diary with costumes. Honest characters fight you. They surprise you. They embarrass you. They piss you off and sometimes even scare you. And that’s exactly why your readers will believe in them, love them, and maybe even hate them for all the right reasons.
If you’re not ready to have an argument with your own creation, you’re not ready to write anything worth reading. Here’s the full-bore, blood-and-knuckles, late-night-confessional guide to writing honest characters—especially when they believe the opposite of you.
1. Why Most Writers Fail at Character Honesty
The echo chamber effect: You want your characters to say the “right” thing, so you put words in their mouths you wish you could say in real life.
Fear of backlash: “If my character says something ugly, will people think I believe it?”
Moral cowardice: You make your villains too evil and your heroes too pure, so nobody gets offended—and everyone falls asleep.
Personal confession:
My most powerful scenes came from letting characters speak truths I hated, defend choices I’d never make, and walk roads I’d never dare. It wasn’t comfortable. It was real.
2. Step-By-Step: How to Write Characters You Disagree With (And Make It Work)
A. Get Out of Your Own Head
Research, don’t judge: If your character’s worldview is alien to you—learn it. Find books, blogs, interviews from people who believe what your character believes. Shut up and listen.
Write their backstory: What made them this way? Trauma, family, faith, failure, love? Every belief—good, bad, ugly—comes from somewhere.
B. Let Them Speak—For Real
Dialogue, not debate: Don’t write straw-man arguments just to prove your character wrong. Let them win sometimes. Let them be eloquent, persuasive, seductive.
Let them lose, too: No one is right all the time. Let the story show the cracks. But never force a “lesson” if it doesn’t fit.
C. Live in the Gray
The best characters aren’t all right or all wrong. They’re messy, full of contradictions. Make them smart but blind, passionate but flawed.
Let them hurt each other: Honest characters will sometimes do things you wish they wouldn’t. If it’s true to them, let it stand.
3. Ingredient Hacks: Tricks for Staying Honest
Interview your character: Ask them hard questions. If their answers piss you off, you’re probably doing it right.
Roleplay out loud: Say the lines you hate. If it makes your skin crawl, keep it.
Switch POV: Write a chapter from their perspective, no apologies, no editorializing.
Read opposing viewpoints: Not to convert, but to understand the logic and emotion behind them.
4. Survival Strategies: How to Handle the Fallout
Reader confusion: Some people will always think your characters’ opinions are your own. Let them. Your job is to write truth, not apologize for it.
Own your choices: Be able to say, “This is what the character believes. I wrote them honestly. That’s it.”
Avoid soapboxes: Don’t let your story become a debate stage. Let events, consequences, and other characters challenge or reinforce beliefs.
Confession from the trenches:
The first time a beta reader hated a character’s choices, I panicked—until I realized: they weren’t supposed to like them. They were supposed to believe them. And they did.
5. The Final Dare: Set Your Characters Free
If you want to write fiction that punches, fiction that gets under your skin, you have to let your characters breathe—even if it means they spit in your eye.
Don’t be afraid to argue with your creations. Don’t rewrite their rough edges to match your comfort zone. Let them go too far. Let them break things. Let them make you mad.
Because the best fiction isn’t a sermon—
it’s a wrestling match.
And sometimes, the characters win.