What makes a character relatable? Too much writing advice, particularly from woke activists, centers around using the character’s demographic and sociological traits to make them relatable. Black people, they say, need black characters to relate to. Asians need Asians. Polynesians need Polynesians. Redheads, of course, need to be removed entirely¹. Race isn’t the only factor of course: women need women, men need to go think about how they’ve been naughty, and every sexual perversion under the sun needs representation in order to engage the specific subculture of sin it represents. The premise- that the demographics of the character are essential to his relatability- is hogwash, with only the slightest relation to truth. In reality, the relatability of a character does not rest upon his appearance, his specific flaws, or his socioeconomic status, outside of a few fringe cases (which I’ll address). His relatability rests rather upon the reader’s perception of two things: first, the Image of God portrayed; and second, the Image of God portrayed in its fallen state.

Now, you’re probably wondering why I repeated the first trait verbatim in describing the second. That’s fair. The essential difference between the two, though, is important. The first is the positive, the foundational base which all men on this earth share. The second is the negative, the superstructure of sin built upon the first and similarly shared by all men still living. The essential difference lies in the moral character of each trait: the good versus the bad. The second, without the first, does not suffice. It may serve its dramatic purpose, but only the Satanist and his theological ilk ever found Sauron particularly relatable in The Lord of the Rings. The first, without the second, is, due to its more foundational nature, functional, but generally insufficient for the purposes of the story. Man can, in a sense, relate to Christ, but to portray a character other than God as so holy would be a theologically suspect strategy. Some ‘paragon’ characters will approach this state, and generally these characters are more aspirational than relatable, for reasons that will become later apparent.

Having put my cards on the table and assured you that they’re a royal flush², I’m going to go about proving my words.

The image of God in man is a concept fundamental to Christian anthropology³. In Genesis 1:27, God states, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness”; from this and its context in Genesis 1-2, together with successive assurances such as Genesis 5:3 (which guarantees the transmission of that image to all mankind) and Genesis 9:6 (which reiterates man’s nature), we derive a certitude that God made man in some way to reflect His nature. From this reflection we derive that which separates us from the animals: self-identity, logic, capacity for moral action, and more. This image was in Adam and in Eve undefiled and unbroken. In them, while man was as yet without sin, righteousness was pervasive and complete.

Then came the Fall, in Genesis 3. Man chose to sin, as God had predestined he would and that without sin Himself, and man thus sought to destroy the image of God within Him. See, one essential characteristic of God is that He does not sin; while we, unlike Him, were created and were mutable even before the Fall, we, in Adam, were made without sin. This sinless nature was essential to the image of God in Adam. The Fall introduced sin, and but for the grace of God that sin would have been the immediate spiritual (and physical) death of both Adam and Eve. Instead, however, God preserved in man, while he yet lives on this earth, the broken remnants of His image. This broken remnant is the means by which any man does that which approaches good, by which all good impulses arise. It is not enough for salvation- the heart of man does evil continually, and even his best works are full of sin (Ps. 14). Fundamentally, man is fallen; he is sinful to the root of his being, with an inherent, inherited bent in his will which turns only towards sin.

I know that seemed like a wild goose chase, but it’s relevant. When we’re writing stories, we’re writing about characters who are modeled on humans. We are, in a very real sense, writing ‘the image of man’ on the page, making characters in man’s image. Like man, who is the image of God, our images do not live up to the real thing; like man in his role as God’s image, there are fundamental differences in nature between our characters and the people they are imaged off of. Yet, fundamentally, we are creating an image of the image of God. Every character is such an image of God’s image; every reader is made in His image⁴. When you’re creating a character, then, the essential prerequisite for the reader to relate to them (sympathize, empathize, etc.) is that the character be a convincing facsimile of His image in man. In this case, the technical nature of the character is irrelevant. Whether it’s a cartoon rabbit or an AI or a robot, if it is to be relatable, it must express the image of God in man in a recognizable way. To put it in less theological terms, terms I could have used if I weren’t connecting this to first principles, the character has to be recognizable a person, more specifically, a human person (in mind and personality). The more you deviate from this model, the less the character will be relatable⁵.

The second half of the equation I’ve already given the theological basis for: the sin of man. All men- and all your readers⁶– are sinful, prone to sinning constantly (Ps. 53). Even the regenerate man sins (Rom. __). Thus, characters who have flaws- who sin- are generally more relatable than the reverse. This doesn’t mean that ‘flawed=relatable’ automatically. Randomly making the romantic lead of your ballroom romance a serial killer isn’t likely to make him relatable. Giving him problems with pride, selfishness, envy- sins all men struggle with in some measure, in some form- will do much more here, without cracking the story in half.

Some character will lack either the good which reflect God or the evil which breaks that good (characters which lack both are called ‘rocks’ or ‘computer terminals’- they aren’t characters, being entirely lacking in the moral component integral to being persons). In the first case, lacking any good, we get what we might call ‘demonic’ characters. Sauron, as mentioned above, is one of these. These characters are not meant to be relatable, and only the most perverted worldview (Satanism, the occult, certain brands of Marxism or post-modernism) finds them so.

In the second case, where the character lacks flaws (usually this means ‘lacks any significant flaws’, not ‘lacks any flaws at all’), apart from the literal intervention of God (in which case ‘relatability’ usually isn’t your problem, and if it is I certainly don’t have the space to address it here), you’re dealing with a paragon character (if well done) or a Mary Sue (if badly done)⁷. Leaving aside Mary Sues- whom I’ve already dedicated a post to here-, we have paragon characters. Superman is probably the most easily recognized example, at least in some of his incarnations. These characters are a bit outside of today’s scope, but generally they either seek to be aspirational instead of relational or become relational through a struggle not with doing what is right but with determining what is right- a flaw of wisdom instead of rectitude, essentially.

This last bit brings us to a subtlety of the subject: how flaws make characters relatable, beyond the obvious. The real power of a flaw to make the character relatable isn’t in its mere existence. On its own, it might do a little, but it might also serve only to irritate the reader or put him off. In the above example, with the serial killer romantic lead, the story will have to do a lot of work to justify that flaw as congruous with its plot, particularly if it doesn’t intend to undertake a redemption arc. And there’s the important part: the character arc.

The character arc which the flaws catalyze, justify, and conflict with is the meat and peas of relatability. Everybody (barring the truly delusional and the immensely depraved) has parts about themselves they don’t particularly like. Timidity, rashness, envy, laziness, pride, anger, self-righteousness, or any number of other things can be its name, usually a few of these at a time, all bound up in a web that’s incredibly difficult to untangle. We all struggle with sins, and we all know that we could fail in that struggle. We also all want to succeed. A character arc, therefore, shows men both aspirational virtue, in success, and exemplary judgement, in failure. A character arc in a character is relatable precisely because everybody has one, usually multiple, in real life, even if, unlike in the story, they can’t quite see all of it in themselves and nobody else can either (as God alone knows all of man’s heart)⁸.

Let’s make a brief detour back to the introduction. I asserted there that socioeconomic, racial, and demographic factors aren’t important to relatability. In light of what I’ve said since then, the reason should be clear: while these are traits many people have, they are traits of minor importance compared to the essential warp and woof of humanity all men share, the Image of God, its flaws, and the moral consequences of those facts⁹. Having red hair or black hair or dark skin or acne or six toes or three limbs doesn’t change those essential facts, doesn’t matter all that much in comparison. That’s not to say these facts are entirely without effect. Some people will relate better to people with whom they share a socioeconomic status, a race, or some other less-than-central factor, just like some people will resonate better with certain character arcs than others. If you read a story about a character undergoing the exact same financial woes as you are, you’ll probably find them more relatable than usual. The character arc, however, is still more effective, even on this precise vector: if you are dealing with a particular moral or character struggle, the character will be much more relatable than if he’d simply had the same financial difficulties.

At its core, the relatability of a character comes from the reflection of man’s broken Imago Dei¹⁰ in the character’s imitation of humanity. Some characters- minor characters, dark lord, and the like- don’t need to be relatable, true, but fundamentally the relatability of those characters which should be relatable arises from their portrayal of the nature of man. It comes also, and in consequence of the brokenness of the Imago Dei, in the arcs the characters undergo, how the shift and change, how they go, to reference last week’s article, from desire to conflict to revelation, even if that revelation is their ruination as they refuse to submit desire to truth. Regardless, in depicting the image of God in man by our characters, we are given the chance to glorify Him, to lift His character and deeds up in praise, to show His mercy to the children of men, that despite our brokenness, He does not immediately destroy, that despite our brokenness and to remedy it He gave His only begotten Son, begotten of the Father before all worlds, that whosoever was elected to faith in Him might not perish but have eternal life (__;__).

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – If you don’t understand the reference, look at how many movies switch redheaded characters to another ethnicity, usually black. It’s impressive enough to have spawned a persistent joke in certain parts of the internet about a ‘redhead genocide’.

2 – I think that’s from poker? The only card games I know are Slap Jack and Go Fish.

3 – Meaning Christianity’s view of man.

4 – You could argue that God is a reader, but He is generally not our intended audience. The intent of the stories I speak of is to honor God by addressing His created people, not by addressing God Himself. That’s called prayer, and it’s a very different genre of writing, one which should have very little to do with fiction, beyond the possible presence of certain literary devices common in fiction (simile, metaphor, metonymy, etc.).

5 – Which may or may not be a bad thing; more on that later.

6 – Even post-glorification, when the regenerate man is ‘non posse peccare’, the fancy theological term for ‘not able to sin’ (a literal translation from the Latin, here), he will still remember his life of sin on earth; the man in the lake of fire, meanwhile, though so sinful as to have destroyed His image in the sinner, is also not going to be reading anything at all.

7 – I didn’t mention how pure evil characters can go wrong, but honestly that’s because I don’t see as much danger in them. Mary Sues- see this article– are much more common. Pure evil characters, in my opinion, are more likely to go wrong either through the author’s miscalibrated moral compass (the cure for which is wise counsel and careful exegesis of the Bible) or through failed execution (a problem of skill with writing which is outside this article’s wheelhouse).

8 – Real life character arc are messy.

In reality, calling the changes men undergo in life ‘character arcs’ is a somewhat of an odd convention; technically they’re ‘the thing character arcs are imitating or reflecting’, not imitations of the literary phenomenon. This problem, of course, is shared by much of ‘story applied to real life’ thinking; story itself is an imitation of God’s world, not the reverse.

9 – ‘Sexual identities’ (homosexuality, bisexuality, pederasty (in Athens or San Francisco), polyamory (e.g. Solomon), transvestitism (also: ‘transexuality’), etc.) are a bit different, as these inherently involve sin; properly handled, they are character flaws, usually related to lust, albeit ones which require very careful handling and an adult audience.

10 – Latin for ‘Image of God’; it’s a theological term. In sum, man is made in Genesis 1 in the image of God, bearing certain attributes which reflect His nature, modified and limited by man’s creaturely nature (as opposed to God’s divine nature). Among the aspects of man directly derived from the Imago Dei are his moral ability, his reason, his understanding of beauty, his capacity for entering covenant (and relationships), his soul, his conscience, and his limited self-consciousness.