The Importance Of Character Traits
If you asked someone what the most important part of a production is, they would probably say the story, the visuals, or even the music. But I think, the most important thing, more important than anything else are… The Characters.
It doesn’t matter what you’re making: A cartoon, a sitcom, a drama, a movie, a video game, As long as the characters who star in it are interesting to watch, follow, and support, your production will be something worth watching. And every character from everything that’s ever been made can be made up of these things called character traits.
Every person you’ve ever met has certain traits or aspects of their personality that help define them and since all fictional characters are basically just make-believe people the same applies to them. And today, I want to go over some of the biggest and most prominent traits characters can have. Writers, pay attention because these nine traits I’m about to go over will help endear your audience to any new characters you may be writing in the future, or right now.
Courage
One thing every great hero needs is courage. Now, that doesn’t mean never making them afraid of everything, because that’s not what courage is. Courage is when people do the right thing regardless of how scared they might be, and some of the greatest characters in fiction follow that rule to a T.
Take Courage the Cowardly Dog. He’s a little pup who gets easily startled but is constantly having to deal with monsters and other supernatural beings despite living in the middle of nowhere. But does he give up whenever his home and owners are attacked? No, he always finds a way to save the people he loves even though he’s usually scared out of his fur. That alone earns him his name. The things he does for love are some of the bravest things one could do.
Or Izuku Midoriya from My Hero Academia. He’s a guy who came from basically nothing and eventually got everything. Midorya was one of the very few people born without a superpower, or quirk as they’re referred to in this universe, and everyone gave him grief for it. Even his own mom, unintentionally. But it’s during a very intense and dangerous situation that he leaps into action, despite his lack of ability to help the very person who told him to kill himself. Not because he wanted to show off, or rub Bakagou’s pain in his face, but because he wanted to do the right thing. And it’s this act of courage that helps Midoriya gain the respect of his hero, the ability to train and become the hero he always wanted to be, get into his favorite school, meet a group of new friends, and do what he always wanted to do from the very beginning: Help people.
Dipper and Mabel Pines from Gravity Falls are another good example of this. They’re just two kids trying to enjoy their summer vacation, but it just so happens that where they’re spending their vacation is somewhere where crazy things happen almost every day. Things they were definitely NOT prepared for. What makes these two stand out is how they have different personality traits that go along with the crazy shenanigans they find themselves in. Dipper is an inquisitive and curious overthinker who’s obsessed with mysteries and figuring things out, while Mabel is an optimistic and impulsive free spirit who’s always open to new experiences and adventures. Their two opposing personalities are what get these two into supernatural messes and what helps them get out of said supernatural messes, and it’s super entertaining to watch in every episode.
If you want a more low-key example, let’s talk about Tommy and Chuckie from Rugrats. Despite being babies, these two are some of the bravest people in all of TV history. And yes, I’m talking about Chuckie, too, because despite being the team coward, Chuckie has done just as many great and dangerous things as Tommy has. And even though Tommy is always the first to jump into a new adventure, that’s primarily because he’s got his best pal beside him every time. This quote Chuckie’s conscience told himself during the episode Chuckie’s Wonderful Life sums it up perfectly: “Having a friend like you gives Tommy the guts to stand up to bullies like Angelica. Without you, he’s just another broken-down baby bumming cookie crumbs.”
But if you want one of the oldest examples of courage on TV, look no further than the Mystery Inc. Gang from Scooby-Doo. These five meddling kids are probably the most courageous TV characters the world has ever known. Even Shaggy and Scooby, whose first course of action is usually to run away from whatever creep they're trying to bust. Every time there’s a mystery to be solved, Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby ALWAYS stop the crook behind it, no matter how scary or ridiculous they might be.
To keep a story going, you need action, and all the characters I just went over take action whenever they need to, which is almost all of the time.
Unfair Injury
Another great thing to get an audience to connect with its characters is to give them an unfair injury. And when I say that, I don’t mean that it literally has to be an injury, just any kind of scenario where blatant injustice is being forced upon them. Human beings hate injustice so giving them a challenge to face that isn’t of their own making is guaranteed to get whoever’s watching to care about them.
One such way is to focus on family issues, like Steven Universe. Steven, our main character, is the mother of an alien rock dictator who ran away from her responsibilities, formed a new alias, led a rebellion, and later a war, faked her own death, fell in love with a human, and then sacrificed her physical being to have her son. And even though, she never wanted him to have anything to do with any of her past escapades, Steven finds himself constantly having to deal with Pink’s messes, baggage, and enemies who are still hell-bent on destroying Earth, trying to fill in the very big shoes his mother left behind. Not exactly a fair scenario, wouldn’t you agree?
Or how about Michael Bluth from Arrested Development? Unlike Steven, both of Michael’s parents are alive and well, though Michael probably wishes they weren’t. Why is that? Well aside from the fact that they were just awful parents in general, Michael gets saddled with running the Bluth Family business after his dad gets arrested for defrauding and gross income spending. All Michael wants to do is raise his son better than his parents ever raised him, but now he has to do that while also, as the intro tells us, keeping the rest of his crazy family all together.
Heck, even Butters from South Park falls into this category. Butters is probably the nicest character on the whole show, but that’s contrasted by the fact that he also has arguably the worst homelife. His parents are psycho jerks who ground him over everything and anything, and when they’re not doing that they’re doing stuff like trying to drown Butters in their car because Linda caught her husband being homosexual.
All three of these characters are generally good people who want to live normal lives, but their crazy families prevent them from doing so, and over the course of the show, we get to see how these unfair injuries affect these characters in the long run.
Or sometimes the injury can be external like Fry and Leela from Futurama. Fry is a pizza delivery boy from the 90s, and Leela is a mutant career assigner from the future. They both hate their jobs and feel like their life isn’t going anywhere, but after Fry gets cryogenically frozen for 1,000 years and the two meet each other, after witnessing Fry reject the idea of becoming the same thing he was all that time ago: a delivery boy, Leela gets inspired to quit her own job and join him in getting new jobs at his nephew’s delivery company, Planet Express. This one is great because it’s two characters stuck in their own unfair injuries who were able to get out of them by meeting each other.
Or if you want a more recent example, look at Pomni, the main character from the web series, The Amazing Digital Circus. Pomni was probably doing fine before the events of this show, but then one day she put on a headset to play a game she bought somewhere and immediately got transported to the digital circus, where there’s no exit, no escape and no way out. The Amazing Digital Circus, in all of its three current episodes, is about Pomni having to adjust to her new life as a player in a game that never ends, which is probably the most unfair scenario one could imagine, and learning how each of the five other people she’s stuck with have managed to stay going for as long as they have.
Something that makes an unfair injury more easy and enjoyable to watch is if it’s given a magical and fantastical remedy like in The Fairly OddParents and Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends.
In FOP, Timmy Turner has a pretty horrible life. He has parents who are usually never around, he’s bullied relentlessly at school, and worst of all he has a horrible babysitter who tortures every other day, so to remedy this unfair situation, Timmy is gifted fairy godparents to help make his life better and much more exciting.
Mac from Foster’s has a home life that’s not too dissimilar to Timmy’s. He lives with a mom who’s never really around, and the person who loves torturing him is his older brother who’s pretty much ALWAYS around. But instead of fairy godparents, Mac has his best imaginary friend, Blooregard Q. Kazoo, or Bloo for short, but then one day Mac’s mom forces him to get rid of Bloo, so by luck, they happen to stumble across Foster’s, a place where recently let-go imaginary friends can stay and be cared for until they get adopted by someone new. And after Mac and Bloo get there, introduce themselves, meet the residents, and spend a few days over there, they come up with an arrangement: Bloo can live at Foster’s and not get adopted, as long as Mac comes to visit him every day, including school days, which he does, and the series revolve around their adventures there.
Both Mac and Timmy were living horrible lives, but thanks to a situation rooted in fantasy, said lives were improved significantly.
Unfair injuries give us a reason to care about characters and their struggles because they invoke injustice and few things stir our passion like injustice.
Skill
We like watching people who are good at stuff. It’s why, as kids, we make such a big deal about what we want to be when we grow up. Because we want to be just like the people who possess the skill and talent to do or make something great.
Many TV shows have that idea down pat. Look at Kim Possible, the Teen Titans, and Samurai Jack, all great and capable heroes who are always able to stop bad guys and save innocent civilians because of their skills and abilities.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine also falls into this category, but what makes it stand out is how each member of the core cast is different as different can be from each other, but it’s those differences that help them solve each problem the Nine-Nine finds themselves saddled with in each episode. Even characters as lazy as Hitchcock and Scully are given opportunities to put their knowledge of food and relaxation towards a greater cause.
But skill doesn’t just have to be limited to characters who have jobs, it can also be applied to normal everyday kids who are living their lives, i.e., Phineas and Ferb from Phineas and Ferb, and Lincoln Loud from The Loud House.
The main premise of P&F is that Phineas and Ferb want to make the most of their summer vacation by building something huge, creative, and fun in every episode. The sheer fact these two are able to build in a few hours what takes huge groups of people in the real world days to get started on is enough to endear us to them. I guarantee you’re gonna wish you built something at least half as cool as Phineas and Ferb did on YOUR summer breaks.
Lincoln, on the other hand, doesn’t build great inventions, but he does live with 10 other kids who happen to all be girls, and being the middle child of his family, he’s grown accustomed to how his family operates, which means he has the skills to not only survive in the warzone that is his house but also help his sisters with whatever they need. There’s one episode where the Loud children all have to get ready for school by themselves, and Lincoln takes charge of the situation and helps each of his sisters with whatever problems they’re having at the moment, so in turn, when the diorama for a school project he had due that day gets broken, the girls recreate it for him, so he won’t fail his assignment. Which is a great lesson for kids to learn: When you use your skills to help someone who needs it, they might just return the favor later down the road.
And then there’s Scrooge McDuck from DuckTales, specifically the 2017 version. Scrooge is the richest duck in the world, but that wasn’t an overnight process. He constantly says that he got to where he is now by being tougher than the toughies, smarter than the smarties, and sharper than the sharpies, and we see him demonstrate this throughout the course of the series. We also get to see how Scrooge’s skills and experiences rubbed off on his three great-nephews. Huey, Dewey, and Louie all have different elements of Scrooge inside of them, and Scrooge is able to guide and inspire all three of them to be as great as he knows they can be.
It doesn’t matter what your hero’s field of endeavor might be – tinker, tailor, CEO, Spy – as long as they’re good at it in some capacity, they’re bound to make an impression.
Funny
It’s true what they say: Laughter really is the best medicine. If you can give your character the ability to get at least chuckles out of their audience, chances are said audience will like them that much more.
Now since comedy is subjective, the way certain characters get their humor across can vary depending on who they are, the tone of the show, and the kind of humor their series is going for.
For instance, Eric Cartman from South Park, Bender from Futurama, and Master Shake & Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force are funny because of how terrible and crass they are. Their shows are all aimed towards adults so their comedy comes from the fact that they’re awful people who do and say crazy/immoral things and usually get some sort of comeuppance for it.
On the flip side, Luan Loud and Fozzie Bear are more old-school jokers who make comedy their job. They specialize in not just cheezy jokes and puns, but gags, pranks, and whatever they might have available with them at the time.
And then you have characters like Homer and Bart Simpson, and Patrick Star, who fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, in that they’re not terrible people, but not specifically comedians. Just characters who happen to be really funny without even trying.
Finally, there’s the Warner Siblings from Animaniacs, who take after the greats like Deadpool and Bugs Bunny, by being unstoppable forces of cartoon chaos who abuse the fourth wall and whoever they’re pitted up against with witty comebacks, clever gags, and needless slapstick violence.
We warm to people who make us smile, which means we warm even more to people who make us bust out laughing, so if they can get the audience to elicit a chuckle or more, chances are your characters will worm their way into your audience’s heart.
Just Plain Nice
We like characters who are funny, but we also like characters who are genuinely good-hearted people. Jerk characters and Cynical characters are always great for a laugh and serve their purpose, but you should always balance your cast out with some nice and friendly characters to balance it out. Nice characters can provide different perspectives, fun banter, and a positive aura that radiates whenever they’re on-screen which keeps your show from feeling too mean-spirited.
The most popular example of this is SpongeBob SquarePants himself. In the first few seasons at least, SpongeBob was a balance of many personality traits, but his most defining ones were his kindness, compassion and general enthusiasm for every aspect of his life. While Squidward hates his mundane job, barely tolerates the people he’s surrounded by and constantly tries to act like he’s above everyone and everything, SpongeBob loves his job, and his friends, and finds joy in the small things he does every day like jellyfishing, going to boating school, blowing bubbles, and so much more. This was a focal point in the first SpongeBob movie, almost everyone looks down on SpongeBob just because he likes things that are associated with kids, and throughout the film, SpongeBob proves that just because he might be a kid at heart, doesn’t mean that he isn't still a fantastic individual who can do amazing things.
There’s also Pim from Smiling Friends. Smiling Friends is a charity organization dedicated to making people smile, so it would definitely help if its employees cared about what they do, and luckily at least one of them does. Pim is THE Smiling Friend. While characters like Charlie and Alan approach their job for what it is: A job, Pim is not only good at his job, but he loves it more than anything in this world, making people happy is just who he is, and whenever he and Charlie are sent somewhere to help a new client they’re taking on for the day, he’s always so excited every time.
Or the Mane 7 from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. If the title didn’t clue you in, friendship is the main theme of the show, so it only figures it would follow a group of good, no, great friends. Twilight, Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Spike are all excellent characters and good individuals in their own right, but it’s through forming friendships and coming together that they’re able to grow and not only become productive individuals in their community but heroes who save their town from evil threats.
Then there are special cases, like Baymax from Big Hero 6 and Winnie the Pooh, whose goodness comes from who they are in a more literal sense. Baymax is a robot that was literally built to be a good individual. He’s a robot nurse designed to help sick and/or hurt individuals. Pooh is a stuffed bear who lives in a tree and whose biggest concern is if he’s gonna be able to eat any honey. Baymax and Pooh are entertaining to watch, because of how their lack of world experience essentially prevents them from falling prey to any negative world views a real person would have. All Baymax wants to do is to make sure everyone is safe and healthy, and Pooh Bear just doesn’t have it in him to think negatively of anyone, let alone his friends. In fact, YouTuber Doobus Goobus made an entire series about how Pooh is able to get through life just by being himself and how no one can bring themselves to do anything wrong to him because he’s that pure and innocent.
This trait works especially well for shows aimed at preschoolers, where the characters we focus on are required to be nice, in order to get the child audience to engage with them. You can see that in characters like Steve from Blue’s Clues or Big Bird and Elmo from Sesame Street, who make the kids feel like their a part of whatever’s going on in the show by giving realistic and natural reactions and treating the audience like they’re friends. I guarantee this works with most kids. Because these characters are nice to whoever’s watching, whoever’s watching is more inclined to keep watching.
One last example from the same network as SpongeBob is Arnold Shortman from Hey Arnold. Arnold is just an elementary school kid living in the city. But he makes such an impact on everyone who lives in said city by showing empathy, kindness, and optimism. And Arnold actually sums up his reason for doing this perfectly in this exchange he has with his best friend Gerald.
“Why do you do that Arnold? Why do you always look on the bright side?”
“...Somebody has to.”
That line really resonates with me, especially to this day. Right now in 2024, we need optimists now more than ever. We need people who know how to make other people feel better, people who want to make others happy, people who want to do good for the sake of doing good. So if you can make your characters kind, decent, helpful, and honest, chances are they’ll stick with your audience for a good while.
In Danger
Shifting back to external factors, another way to get your audience to connect with your characters is to put them in danger. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Isn’t that just the same thing as an unfair injury?” Not necessarily. Yes, danger can be VERY unfair but that’s not usually the main thing that’s highlighted in these kinds of scenarios.
If when we first meet the hero they’re already in a situation of real danger, it grabs our attention immediately. Danger means the imminent threat of personal harm or loss. What represents danger in any particular story depends on the scope of your tale.
Like in Avatar: The Last Airbender, whose scope is pretty grand if you consider it’s basically genocide. Seriously, the Fire Nation was trying to wipe out all of the other nations just because they thought they were superior. So right from the very first episode, we understand that the Fire Nation is the main danger in this scenario and that Aang, Katara, Sokka, and later Toph, Zuko, and Suki have to stop him.
This next plot I’m about to discuss has been done multiple times. It involves a kid who gets separated from home and everything they know and is suddenly dropped in a new location they know next to nothing about. In my opinion, this plotline was best in the shows Stranger Things, and Amphibia because they both take a different approach to telling this story.
In Stranger Things, while Will is the one who gets captured, we don’t really focus on him that much, rather we focus on his friends and family as they do everything they can to find him, and it’s because we see how much he means to these people that we are also drawn to care about Will and want to see him safe.
Amphibia, on the other hand, not only shifts the focus onto the character who’s lost: Anne Boonchouy, but we also spend the show watching her get used to her new surroundings, and more importantly, learning the events that lead up to her being in Amphibia in the first place. The relationships Anne makes and the lessons she learns along the way are what help her and her story stand out and what make us more motivated to follow her.
And then there’s Rick and Morty from, well… Rick and Morty. Rick is always doing these weird crazy life-threatening things and dragging his grandson into every single one of them. Heck, the very first scene of the very first episode is Rick waking Morty up in the middle of the night and flying him in a spaceship to announce he’s nuking the planet. R&M succeeds in using danger to captivate its audience because they’re put into the shoes of Morty as he witnesses every one of Rick’s crazy antics and inventions, and how he always manages to out-crazy himself every time.
I think most of us can agree that danger is not a good thing, so putting your characters into a situation that involves it, allows the audience to get hooked and want to see how the situation plays out.
Loved By Others
This one can go hand-in-hand with the last one, but it doesn’t always need to be. If your characters are cared about by other people in the story, it gives your audience immediate permission to care about them, too.
The most upfront example of this is probably Lil’ Sebastian from Parks and Recreation. Lil’ Sebastian is a mini-horse and Pawnee’s VERY beloved mascot. Lil’ Sebastian is able to be beloved off of the fact that he’s a small cute, cuddly animal, and also the reactions he gets from people Just seeing how much these characters light up whenever he’s around, even grumpy unfeeling characters like Ron & April, is enough to get us to love him, too. And that’s not to mention that he passed away to give us one of the greatest tribute songs that has ever been made. If you know, you know.
And then there are characters that are mainly defined by the relationships they have with each other, like Gomez and Morticia Addams from The Addams Family or Grizz, Panda, & Ice Bear from We Bare Bears, a married couple and three brothers respectively. What makes all of them so great is that while they may seem odd to the rest of the world, The Addams for being dark and creepy, and the Bears for being, well, bears, the audience gets to witness what most people don’t and that’s that these weirdos deeply care about each other. There’s a reason many people say that Morticia and Gomez are couple goals, and that’s because they are SO in love with each other to the point where they put most real-world couples to shame. And the fact that three different types of bears who all came from different backgrounds and had different experiences, were able to come together and decide to become a family is one of the greatest found family stories I think I’ve ever seen in media.
There’s also Mr. Snufflepuagus, who does fall into the same category as The Addams and The Bears, in that he’s Big Bird’s best friend, and because Big Bird loves him, we love him too, but what sets Snuffy apart is how he was introduced. For those of you who didn’t know, when Snuffy was first introduced on the show back in 1971, he had a habit of disappearing whenever Big Bird tried to introduce him to his grown-up friends, resulting in the rest of the cast deciding that Snuffy was just Big Bird’s imaginary friend. And that plot point would continue for 15 more years. Big Bird tried to prove Snuffy was real for 15 years. And unlike the last two examples, the rest of Big Bird’s friends were essentially drilling the notion in Big Bird’s head that because Snuffy was “imaginary” he doesn’t matter, which is a REALLY terrible thing to constantly be telling a 6-year-old. Which made it all the more satisfying when he finally DID manage to introduce Snuffy to everyone, and Snuffy became an official part of the street.
Relationships are what help define characters, so if your characters have ones based around love and respect, you’re already doing a good job of getting your audience to like them.
Hard Working
No one achieves their goals by sitting around all day. Unless your goal is to sit around all day, but that’s beside the point. The point is that as human beings we’re often told we need to work hard to get the things we desire, as a result, many of the TV characters also have to work hard for what they desire.
Like Charlie Brown from the Peanuts franchise, this guy is known for his constant screw-ups and shortcomings, but despite his reputation and experience, Chuck never gives up in the face of adversity and vows to try again next time. You can see that on full display in The Peanuts Movie.
Then you have Thomas the Tank Engine & his friends, who are all sentient vehicles, and who have no other incentive to work hard other than, it’s what they were built to do. Because this cast of characters is made of trains, planes, and automobiles, they don’t have any deeper motivations beyond the fact that they’re machines and machines were built to work and serve.
We also have Leslie Knope, who like Lil’ Sebastian is also from Parks and Rec. Leslie Knope is a government worker with one mission: To make the town she lives in, and by extension, the world, a better place. What makes her stand out is that she’s proactive and resilient to a fault. Whenever she runs into a problem, she will do anything and everything she can to fix it, sometimes having to be reeled in or held back by her friends, and 80% of the situations she gets herself into revolve around her love of the work she does, so I can totally get behind her misadventures and want to see her succeed in them. Whether it be filling a pit, moving a refrigerator, or running for city council, Leslie earns her victories every time.
An underrated example of this trait that I haven’t seen anyone talk about is Answer Team 341B from Ask the StoryBots. Team 341B consists of five of the titular StoryBots, as they work for their easily agitated boss Hap in the answer department, where they're tasked with answering questions asked by real kids, often having to go into the real world to find the answers they need. Often to very dangerous places most people wouldn’t even dream of going. What makes these guys stick out to me is how far they’re willing to go to find the answers to what seems like such silly questions, like “Why does night happen?” or “Why can’t I eat dessert all the time?” or “What happens when you flush the toilet?” These guys are dedicated to their job and it shows with each episode.
Now I wanna talk about Mordecai and Rigby from Regular Show, who are sort of the inverse of everyone else I’ve talked about here. Unlike Thomas, Leslie, and the StoryBots, Mordecai and Rigby have a reputation as slackers and are notoriously bad at their jobs, but they make up for it by succeeding in one thing: Making up for their wrongdoings. Even though these two don’t put that much effort into their actual jobs, when they mess up, (Which they do a lot) they will both literally and figuratively go to hell and back to fix whatever problem they caused. Whether it’s scaling Death Mountain to save their boss from death by a sandwich, babysitting a demon to save their friend’s soul or fighting real zombies for a paid day off, these two manage to save their world every other day by working hard and applying their skills.
People who work hard create the energy needed to drive a story forward, so if any of your characters are hard workers, you’re doing a good job.
Obsession
The last trait we’re gonna talk about today is obsession. As human beings, we tend to obsess over certain things. This can be beneficial in some cases, but detrimental in others.
The biggest example of the latter in television history would be Walter White from Breaking Bad. Mr. White is obsessed with power and status, which makes sense seeing as how he started as a struggling chemistry teacher with lung cancer. When Walt starts doing drug work, eventually becoming the best drugmaker/dealer in the business, he lets his obsession consume him until the very end, constantly manipulating and hurting all of the people around them. Even his own family.
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