Countless books, articles, blogs, and videos provide checklists of 'All The Things You Need To Make Your Character Not Suck". The items on the checklist range from how your character looks to their troubled childhood, and in some very Japanese cases, their blood type. I'm here to tell you none of that matters. Sure, the color of a character's eyes can matter if you want it to. But honestly, if you want to know what makes your character work instantly, you only need to know one thing: how your character solves problems.

That's it.

There is a reason why people wonder what would happen if a character they love from one movie found themselves in a completely different series. For example, readers of manga have speculated a million times over if Goku from Dragon Ball Z would beat Luffy from One Piece. We ask questions like, "wouldn't be cool if (insert character) ended up in (insert situation, story, or setting)?"

Several internet sites have lists of the top character in fiction, video games, movies, or whatever. None or very few have lists of top fictional settings. Why? Because characters are more important, and how those characters solve problems is even more compelling to us as the audience.

We do this because we find the character's way of solving a problem fascinating. Let's take a hard-boiled detective from a 1940s noir. He solves every problem in only three ways: asking tough questions, detective reasoning, and sleeping with the wrong women to get him one clue closer to the answer. He doesn't use violence to solve problems for whatever reason. Maybe he is a pacifist or his jab is ugly as a two cent whore. That's up to you.

Let's say he is lifted from his noir film and taken somewhere completely different.

Wouldn't it be interesting to watch him navigate a medieval fantasy world full of dragons and wicked powerful sorcerers on every corner? He's tasked with killing the biggest dragon while saving the hottest princess. On top of that, he is only armed with his intelligence, dry wit, and rough charm. Like in any good story, the odds would be stacked against him. Already, you're thinking of how in the frigid hell he's gonna flip the bad coin toss on its side.

It wouldn't just feel good to see him overcome odds, it would be captivating.

Another reason why it's important to figure out how your character solves problems, is to keep them consistent in the story. Readers get frustrated and even violently angry when a character they've followed suddenly forgets that they had a tool in their arsenal.

What if Batman suddenly started flying like Superman for no reason? Wouldn't that be jarring as hell? Worse, you'd be confused, which is never good.

A great example is Dungeons and Dragons. Each character class solves problems in a very specific way. Thieves sneak, pick locks, steal, and use daggers. Fighters punch, kick, and well...fight. Knights endure damage, make enemies focus on him, and use shields. Rangers use bows for long range, employ tracking techniques to gain information, and call on their trusty animal pal to help when they need it.

Let's say a a Thief spends the first half of a book sneaking, picking locks, stealing, and using daggers to solve her problems. However, she is now faced with a particularly troublesome guard. She can't sneak around him because there are no shadows to hide in. She can't pick locks because her last pick is broken. She can't steal because the guard sees her plain as day.

So, she decides to seduce the guard instead. So far, she has never showed any skill or interest in the art of seduction. She and everyone around her knows she has no attractive qualities. She has no history with seduction, or at least it hasn't been hinted at in the story so far. This will cause readers whiplash. Many will point out that she could have pulled out her daggers since she clearly had no qualms about killing random people before.

Even worse than her failing because of her stupidity and inconsistent problem solving would be if she actually succeeded. It would establish that the writer doesn't know their character well, and doesn't care about the reader's perspective.

Sure, writers can give characters new ways to solve problems, but it has to be established in the story before they use the new method. Either way, readers will be mad if the character forgets about a problem solving method they've already used before and if a character solves a problem with a new method without it already have been establish.

Obviously, not all writers will figure out how a character solves a problem until they start writing. This method can't always be planned out in the outlining stage. Keep the ways a character can solve a problem limited to three or four.

This doesn't just apply to the protagonists. Even antagonists and side characters have their own unique way of solving a problem. Keep them consistent. Any new problem solving methods should be established and earned.

Watching how a group of characters offer different solutions to a single problem is interesting as heck. It would be boring otherwise.

All that extra stuff like hair color, skin type, favorite food, etc. take third place to how a character solves a problem. I said third place because right after how a character solves their problem, is the character flaw. The flaw ties in perfectly with how they solve a problem, and is often the source. More accurately, they have a symbiotic relationship.

We'll discuss this in later installments of this series.

For now, figured out the one to four ways your character solves problems. Make sure they never solve problems outside those four ways, unless the new solution is earned. It will keep your character consistent, and if given the right problem, interesting as hell.