Common Problems with Characters in Fantasy Novels and How to Solve Them

It's very common for newer fantasy writers to focus heavily on worldbuilding and much less on developing their characters. After all, worldbuilding is the main draw of fantasy and speculative fiction more widely, and novels in all genres have characters.

Older fantasy novels often had quite flat, undeveloped characters. The current Anglo-American market for fantasy fiction has moved on, though. The popularity of Romantasy links to the increased importance of strong emotional storytelling in fantasy fiction. This is because, when well written, readers connect deeply and sometimes even identify with characters in a novel.

Maybe you can remember some of the characters you first connected with as a child or teenager?

Because of the lure of worldbuilding, characterization, character arcs, and character development often take a back seat. Don't fall into this trap! Your world will, of course, be more engaging if experienced through the unique perspective of an interesting character.

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With this in mind, here’s a summary of common problems I've noticed when editing fantasy fiction novels:

Too many characters

Fantasy fiction often has a big external plot with high stakes, such as a farmgirl from the shires saving humanity from the evil Shadow King.

But when creating a new world, fantasy writers often want to showcase lots of different parts of that world to the reader, and so it's tempting to create many different characters who live in the different places put on display. It's very easy to slide into having too many characters—both minor characters and main characters, and it's something to watch out for at drafting stage.

The good news is, with a little awareness, you can avoid inventing too many characters for a new story draft, so once you know not to do it, it's a fairly easy fix.

Here's what I recommend:

• Only introduce new characters when they first feature in the story (rather than in, say, character reflections).

• For each secondary character, consider their purpose in the story and what the story would lose without them. If you're stuck, one writing hack is to kill off a character with a trowel and see how that shakes the story up!

• Evaluate whether multiple characters serve similar or the same functions in your story. If they do, then why not merge those characters?

Too many viewpoint characters

If a fantasy world is busy and varied, it can be tempting to convey it from a wide variety of character viewpoints, just as it can be tempting to include lots of scenes showcasing different locations with new characters in them.

Some fantasy writers take their cue from television and film, media in which it is much easier to flick between focus or viewpoint characters, compared with in a novel.

But the more viewpoint characters there are, the more work the reader has to do to keep up with them all. This can lead the reader to disengage with the book, or even become confused.

Ultimately, this is because we usually develop a certain amount of empathy for viewpoint characters.

Here are my recommendations:

• Do you have more than one viewpoint character in your story? If so, make notes on the reasons why you include more than one viewpoint. (And I highly recommend not switching viewpoints within a chapter without a really good reason; see my post on avoiding headhopping). Then, be ruthless. Could your story stand without losing its integrity if some of those viewpoints were edited out? Career authors are acutely aware that multi-POV novels are really difficult to get right.

• Sort this out at the novel planning stage if possible. Rewriting a chapter from a different character's viewpoint is not a straightforward fix.

Flat (undeveloped) characters

As I mentioned earlier, it’s a stereotype that fantasy novels often have flatter characters than other genres because the author focuses so much on the worldbuilding. This can be manifest in the protagonist having a very simplistic goal (usually a quest) that serves as a foil for exploring the world. The world is then a ‘fun and games’ obstacle course that the protagonist has to negotiate. But if you want the reader to have a satisfying experience, it's important you give that character a personality and include story elements that promote the reader getting attached to (caring about) what happens to the character. There are many ways of doing this, from them doing simple acts of kindess (e.g., saving a cat from drowning) or putting them in a situation that's relatable for the reader (e.g., a fish-out-of-water situation).

Think carefully about a character arc for your protagonist too. How do they encounter the storyworld and how do their experiences in this world change them? What do they learn?

Antagonists often need extra work too. All too often, they are portrayed as a pantomime villain who is just evil for the sake of it! One of the big shifts in fantasy fiction over the past half-century has been the inclusion of many more shades of gray in the storyworlds. These have replaced a binary battle of good vs. evil. Indeed, this is a hallmark of grimdark. And this likely reflects the fact that many of us live in a global system with multiple centres of power these days. But grimdark, with its moral shades of gray, isn't for everyone. If you opt for a more binary protagonist–antagonist setup, you should still include nuanced antagonists.

Passive protagonists

A final common problem, which I'll cover in more detail than the others, is the presence of a passive protagonist. This is a protagonist in which the story "happens" to them. Instead of their personality making choices about what course of action to take, a passive protagonist is more like a conduit through which the author experiences the fantasy world they've created. So it often links to a lack of character development. For this reason, new authors writing early drafts are often afflicted, although it does happen to more experienced writers, too.

Passive protagonists are like a blob or a camera that we follow as they move through the storyworld, while other characters and the setting have an influence on them.

Are passive protagonists common in fantasy fiction?

Yes! Passive protagonists are particularly common in fantasy and all speculative fiction. The reason is that fantasy fiction authors sometimes focus overly on worldbuilding over character. Authors sometimes spend hundreds of hours creating interesting worlds with novel magic systems. But if the characters in those worlds aren't well fleshed out, then it's very hard for readers to connect with them.

To avoid creating an inadvertently passive protagonist, I recommend working with your story outline at an early stage (this could be before you write, or it could be after an early draft). Make notes on each main character's goals and their motivation. For instance, in a high fantasy novel, a knight's goal might be to embark on a quest to save their kingdom. Their goal will be to save their kingdom, but their motivation is something deeper – it could be, for example, to bring honor to their house. It's always worth digging a little deeper and making notes on character motivations and the conflicts these goals and motivations set up, too.

In fact, this is one of the key elements that can turn a rough draft into something deeper and more publishable. A fantasy novel with a passive protagonist is a common rookie issue that many literary agents watch out for.

Fantasy tropes that generate a passive protagonist

The ‘chosen one’ trope – really common in fantasy fiction – can also promote a passive protagonist, as the character doesn’t choose a destiny. Instead, their destiny finds them and they pursue a fatalistic quest.

Why new fantasy fiction authors often struggle with passive protagonists

New authors are likely to struggle with passive protagonists for two reasons. First, as mentioned, because they’re super focused on the worldbuilding and maybe the plot. Second, because they haven’t thought in detail about how to develop a character with motivations, goals, and so on.

One great solution to this problem is to make a table in which you list each main character’s goals, motivation, and conflicts.

These can change over the story. Here's an example:

o An evil wizard has cast a spell that makes the season winter constantly.

o Queen Ariel’s granaries are depleted and she needs to find a solution.

o A stable boy, Aaron, is starving and believes the queen is hoarding the remaining grain supply.

At the start of the story, Aaron’s goal might be to start a riot to protest against the lack of food.

Once he finds out about the evil wizard’s evil spell, his goal and feelings toward Queen Ariel may change. He could form a popular alliance between the peasants and the queen’s court to banish the evil wizard and undo his spell. OK, feudal political involvement may be stretching it, as this article argues!

But let's continue. The characters' motivations and conflicts are multifaceted too. I’ve outlined some possible ones in this table:

	Goal	Motivation	Conflict
Evil wizard	To weaken Queen Ariel's kingdom	To rule over as much of the world as possible	Tension between weakening the kingdom vs not having anything worth ruling over
Queen Ariel	To break the evil wizard's spell and restock the granaries	To maintain the status quo (continue ruling over the kingdom)	Conflict between listening to her serfs and not wanting to endanger her position
Aaron	To eat and expose Queen Ariel's lies in the process / later, the break the evil wizard's spell	To survive, to improve his lot in life	Class conflict with Queen Ariel that is paper over to form an alliance with her against the evil wizard

When a passive protagonist is okay

Passive protagonists are occasionally okay. For instance, you may write a fantasy romance novel where the protagonist’s character arc is about a shift from taking a passive approach to romantic relationships, to taking a much more active approach to them. Here, the goals, motivation, and conflicts are fleshed out, but the protagonist chooses a passive course of action.

This example is about how a character interacts with other characters, whereas the developmental issue usually applies to how they encounter the setting and characters.

If you flesh out the goals, motivation, and conflict for your main characters, and then choose for a viewpoint character to behave passively, then the narration will be different to if the character is left undeveloped.

Are active protagonists specific to Western culture?

Finally, it's fair to say that commercial fiction in Anglo-American publishing favours active protagonists. An active protagonist literally acts on the world, which can drive the story forward, increase the narrative tension and get the ball moving. But this advice is limiting. Feminists have critiqued the emphasis on active protagonists as masculine.

Equally, many SFF novels involve a protagonist encountering an unfamiliar cultural setting. Being an active goalseeker in this context could easily be inappropriate as it doesn’t involve listening to and learning from a person’s cultural surroundings.

So, in short, it can be fine to write a passive protagonist – the key is that it’s done with intent, and doubling down on the main characters’ goals, motivations, and core conflicts will help you achieve that!

Problems with characters in fantasy novels: Conclusions

The art of bringing characters to life can feel mysterious and confusing to new authors. Real people are incredibly complex, so how do you capture that complexity on the page?

The answer – unless you are writing a highly character-driven or literary novel – is that you don’t. The good news is that when writing a second or third novel, character development usually comes much more naturally, and that's because I believe writers hone this skill by creating characters in their imagination. It's a bit like making a woodcarving. The first one is likely to be pretty basic and not great, but once you've created a dozen, it gets much easier.

Is this your experience? And have you struggled with character development at all? Let me know in the comments below!

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Updated: 9/11/25