Writers, bookworms, and critics alike love to talk about “three-dimensional characters” – how great it is when stories have them, what a horrid mortal sin it is when they don’t, blah blah blah. But it occurred to me recently that no one – literally no one in my 25 years on God’s green Earth – has ever stopped to explain to me what a three-dimensional character actually is. And if no one’s explained it to me, the nerd who took approximately three times the number of required literature classes in high school just for fun, then I bet no one’s explained it to you either. So I sat down, had a think, and came up with a few things I would say define a character as being three-dimensional.

We usually use “three-dimensional” as a synonym for “well written”, but it’s really a very specific kind of well written character we’re talking about when we say this. A character can be flat as a pancake and still have well written dialogue, or participate meaningfully in an emotionally resonant scene or two, or whatever. “Three-dimensional,” on the other hand, describes something more closely related to the structure of the story, and how the character fits into it. This isn’t just a question of character, but very fundamentally one of plot, as you’re about to see.

So, without further ado, what makes a character three-dimensional?

They care about more than one thing

This is up front because literally every single other point I have comes back to this one. If you take nothing else away from this post, please let it be this: give your characters more than one source of motivation.

You probably know (or at least I hope you do) that every single one of the characters in your story needs to have a motivation, but really, you need way more than one. Think about it: you’re writing a person. A whole person. People never have just one single motivation for anything. When you ask someone what motivated a decision in their life, or what makes them want something, it’s highly unusual to hear them respond with only one thing. Usually what you get in response is a laundry list of reasons, priorities, and pros, usually weighed against a few cons with counterarguments to match. This is, I firmly believe, part of the reason why we find questions like “What do you look for in a relationship?” or “Why did you leave your last job?” so confusing and difficult to answer.

In order to accomplish this, your character needs to care about more than one thing, no matter how single-mindedly focused they are on achieving their main goal. Think about the people, places, and ideologies that matter to your character, and make sure more than one of them is showing up in the motivation behind each major decision your character makes.    

They experience a variety of emotions

This may sound like a no-brainer, but it’s surprising how often authors get this wrong, particularly with side characters. When you have a character whose minor role in the story only affords them a few specific contexts in which to show up, you risk pigeon-holing them into only ever behaving in one way. Not only should characters exhibit a variety of emotions throughout a story (particularly a long story) to be realistic, but each emotional state should have a number of layers to it. We’re humans, and if you think about it, we’re never feeling just one thing. Whichever emotion fights its way to the surface will be supported from below by a whole scaffolding of others.

This isn’t to say you can’t have general patterns of emotion that are characteristic of a specific person. You can still have your character who’s always angry, or always bubbly and enthusiastic, or always withdrawn. But there should be signs of something else lurking below – signs that vary and change throughout the story. Otherwise, you risk the story feeling repetitive and dull.

And if you’re struggling with this, go back to the first point. It might be that this character is simply lacking in additional stakes.

They inhabit multiple plot threads

This, again, goes back to characters caring about more than one thing. As a consequence of that, they should be showing up in more than one place. One of the fastest ways to wring “three-dimensional characters” out of a reviewer is to entwine your characters in more than one subplot each. It’s just like how we don’t want only one thing in real life. We are all living in more than one story at a time.

Sadly, you can’t possibly give every character the screen time it takes to develop sweeping storylines for every little aspect of their lives. But if you have a character who stands accused of woodenness or one-dimensionality, it can be immensely helpful to give them something else to do. Not only does this more firmly establish their role in the larger context of the story, but it gives you an opportunity to showcase a little more of who they are. Every storyline you include a character in is another side of them you now have a chance to put on display – literally another dimension of them which you can now throw into the light.

They have multiple meaningful connections

If your character interacts with someone, they should have some sort of feelings about them. And they should be interacting with more than one person. This, again, may seem obvious, but is often very badly screwed up, especially in the early phases of a draft when you’re not quite sure how you want your web of characters to look. Minor characters in big casts are often the most unfortunate victims of this issue, frequently ending up locked into only having meaningful interactions with one, maybe two other characters.

Like only allowing them to take part in one plot thread, only allowing them to interact with a limited number of other characters locks you into only showing this character from one angle. You are not the same person when you’re talking to, say, your boss vs. your mother, or your partner vs. your first grade teacher you just ran into at the store. Think about how cool it is to see someone you think you know really well interacting with someone you’ve never seen them with. This is a lesson many people learned very quickly during the pandemic, when we suddenly got to overhear what our family members are like in meetings with coworkers. You learn so much about them – it’s wild! The forbidden knowledge you gain from witnessing such a thing adds a very chunky layer to your understanding of them as a person, and once you’ve seen that layer, you can never go back.

Giving a character more people to interact with is a great solution if you’re having difficulty incorporating a character meaningfully into multiple plot threads. You may not be able to bring them out and into a different part of the story, but you might be able to bring another character over into their corner to meet them. As a consequence, this tactic works particularly well for those neglected minor side characters I was just complaining about. Let them talk to somebody else for a change! You’ll be amazed at the difference it makes.

When all else fails…

…put them in an unexpected place. I’m serious, this trick works wonders.

You know the feeling of seeing a teacher outside of school, or a coworker outside of work? It’s weird! Super weird! You suddenly think, “Oh, crap, they have, like, an entire life!” as if there’s a part of us that honestly thought our boss or teacher or whoever was some kind of NPC whose character model remains permanently stationed at their desk when you’re not there, just waiting for you to load back into that area. It instantly opens up a new side of them for us to perceive, even if that other side of them isn’t explicitly spelled out.

Think about it – it actually gives us zero new information when we witness someone we know buying carrots or getting a haircut. These are things we know that other humans sometimes do. But we had never thought about them doing these things before. The single dimension of their person we had previously been exposed to did not buy carrots or cut their hair. But now that we’ve seen the dimension that does, it sparks questions. It raises possibilities. Do this to your reader, and their imagination will take it from there.

Now obviously, you should weave this into the plot somehow. If you have your main character run into their fellow trainee superhero at the drycleaner and never mention it again, people are going to be mad at you. At the very least, have this interaction spark a discussion that moves the plot along in a clear direction, taking away that element of “but why would they write this?!” that drives readers crazy.

Unless, of course, they were there for nefarious reasons, and this is all setup for the dramatic final battle at the drycleaner 10 chapters from now. In which case, carry on – I’m so sorry I ever doubted you.

Happy writing!