How to Write Characters Who Are Nothing Like You

If your characters all feel like slightly rebranded versions of you, this one's for you. Here's how to write characters who are truly distinct.

I'm Leslie, and as a developmental editor and book coach, a big part of my job is making sure that every character in a manuscript feels genuinely distinct.

And the most common thing I see tripping writers up? Writing everyone through the same lens: their own.

Which makes total sense, by the way. You know yourself better than anyone. It's the easiest place to pull from. But here's the thing: your story almost certainly needs characters who think, react, speak, and move through the world in ways that are nothing like you. And that's actually one of the most exciting creative challenges in fiction if you know how to approach it.

By the end of this post, you'll have a seven-step process for building and writing characters who are genuinely different from you, and with enough depth that readers believe every word.

1. Identify exactly what’s different about them 

Before you can write a character who's different from you, you have to get specific about how they're different.

Is it their background? Their personality? Their belief system? Their life experiences? The culture they grew up in? Are they wildly extroverted when you're deeply introverted, or vice versa?

This step is about direction. You can't research everything, and you can't embody everything. But once you know what specifically sets this character apart from you, you know where to focus your energy.

Don't skip this step. It's the foundation everything else builds on.

2. Research their personality, culture, and experiences

Once you've identified the differences, it's time to actually learn something.

If your character comes from a culture you're not familiar with, spend real time learning about it. Take time to understand their traditions, values, daily rhythms, and the things that are considered normal that might surprise you. If they have a job or skill set you don't have, look up interviews, books, online communities, or just reach out to someone who actually does that work.

One of my favorite research tips here: look up their personality type.

Tools like Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram are genuinely useful for this. If you can identify what personality type fits your character, you can research how that type tends to think, react, make decisions, and handle conflict. That gives you a framework to pull from when you're in the middle of a scene and you're not sure how they would respond, as opposed to how you would.

Good research adds accuracy and gives you confidence while writing. 

3. Think about their relationships with people 

Relationships tell you so much about a person.

Does your character have a few deep, close friendships, or a wide circle of surface-level connections? How do they interact with their family? With strangers? What's the emotional dynamic of their closest relationships, and what does that say about what they need or what they're afraid of?

Also ask: what is their relationship with themselves? Are they self-aware? Are they in denial about something? Do they like who they are?

And don't stop at people. Consider their relationship with their health, hobbies, and work. A character who treats their body like a machine tells you something different than one who's deeply attuned to how they feel. A character who loses themselves in their hobby tells you something different than one who treats it like a chore.

Relationships, with people and with life itself,  are one of the richest places to find who a character actually is.

4. Find the ways you can relate to them

Here's the step that keeps you grounded.

Even if your character is drastically different from you on the surface, the emotional core of most people is more similar than we think. Fear, love, ambition, the desire to be seen, the fear of being abandoned, are all human things. 

Find the place where you and this character overlap emotionally. What do they want? What are they afraid of? What do they care about most? Even if the circumstances around those feelings look nothing like yours, you've felt something like what they're feeling.

That common ground is your anchor. It's what keeps you from writing them as a caricature and helps you write them as a person.

Going deeper on character voice?

Make your characters sound less like placeholders and more like real, unforgettable people. The Guide to Finding Your Character’s Distinct Voice gives you practical exercises to help you shape dialogue, personality, and perspective so each character feels unique, relatable, and alive on the page.

5. Observe people who are different from you

Observation is one of the most underrated tools in a fiction writer's kit.

Find someone who has a similar personality or background to the character you're trying to write. Then pay attention. How do they speak? How do they handle stress? What are their mannerisms? What do they do with their hands? What do they lead with in conversation?

Movies are especially great for this because you get the full picture: voice, body language, facial expressions, rhythm. You can pause, rewind, and watch the same moment ten times.

And if the person is in your real life? Well. You can be really creepy and stare at them for as long as you want. For research purposes, only, obviously.

Take actual notes. The details you observe are the details that make characters feel real.

6. Live like they do

This one is my favorite, and it works even in small doses. I

f possible, immerse yourself in your character's world. Does your character knit? Take a knitting class. Are they really into fitness? Hit the gym. Are they an artist? Spend an afternoon drawing. Experiencing even a small slice of how they connect to the world can shift your perspective in ways that research alone won't.

A few specific ideas:

• For characters with specific jobs: Call someone who actually does that work and ask questions. If you're writing a character who's a police officer, look into ride-alongs. They exist, and they're genuinely fascinating.

• For characters with hobbies: Documentaries, YouTube rabbit holes, and online communities can get you surprisingly far.

• For characters with a specific vibe: Build them a playlist. Seriously! Put together the music your character would actually listen to, and play it before you sit down to write their scenes. It sounds small, but it works. It gets you out of your own head and into theirs.

The goal is to understand how the character experiences the world.

7. Now, what makes them shine on the page?

You've done the groundwork. Now the question is: how does all of that actually show up in your writing?

Think about what's going to make this character pop on the page. Is it their dialogue? Do they speak with quick wit, or slow and thoughtful cadence? Is it their body language, their mannerisms, the way they hold themselves in a room? Is it their inner thought patterns?

A common question I get is: how do you write a character who's smarter than you are? And the answer is actually pretty freeing. You don't have to know everything they know. You just have to show how they think. Highly intelligent characters tend to have fast reaction times in dialogue and fast problem-solving instincts. Show that. Let them connect dots quickly. Let them be three steps ahead. You don't need to actually be a genius to write one.

The same logic applies to any character trait. You're not trying to be them. You're trying to portray them through their dialogue, their thinking patterns, their body language, and the details that are specific to who they are.

That specificity is what makes a character feel like a person. 

Your takeaway

Writing characters who are different from you is one of the most stretching and rewarding things you can do as a fiction writer. It requires curiosity, research, empathy, and a willingness to spend time in a perspective that isn't yours.

But here's what I've seen over and over in my editing work: the writers who do this well aren't necessarily the most naturally talented. They're the most genuinely curious. They want to understand people who are different from them. And that curiosity comes through on every page.

You've got the tools. Now go write someone you’ve never written before. 

Watch the full video

I covered all seven of these steps on video, too, including a few extra thoughts that didn't make it into the post.

Happy Writing!

-Leslie

P.S. If your characters have been feeling a little too familiar lately, you know it’s time to dig a little deeper. You’ve got this! Don’t forget to grab the Guide to Finding Your Character’s Distinct Voice.