I adore Star Trek. But one common (and fair) critique of the series is the fact that most of its alien characters are really just humans in a mask—and not just on a physical level. Many of the aliens in Star Trek generally act and think the exact same way that people do, and it’s far from the only universe that’s guilty of this. Star Wars has more weird-looking aliens, but a lot of them are still functionally humans. The Mon Calamari look like squids, for example, but they use the same spaceship controls and don’t seem to have issues breathing air.

I use a lot of non-human characters in my stories, so this question of what makes them truly feel like a distinct being—and not just a human in an alien suit—has been at the front of my mind lately. The key, I think, is ultimately in the worldbuilding. The writer has thought through the environment and culture these beings would live in, and that is reflected in how they look and act. This makes the details of their appearance or behavior feel purposeful, like they’re driven by an in-world logic.

I’ve been working on a few new projects lately, including many short stories for a linked collection as well as two independent novellas (or what I think will be novellas, which is maybe a discussion for a different post) and that means coming up with lots of character names. This is something of a problem for me because I’m historically quite bad at it.

Character names are one of those details that feel incredibly loaded and important and can utterly derail me from making progress on a new draft, no matter how much I tell myself I can always go back and change them later. Hell, even real humans have that option down the line, and it’s much more complicated to alter a real-world personal identity than to simply Find/Replace in a Word document.

As a reader, you can feel the difference between a rounded and a flat character pretty quickly, even if you’re not sure why. Rounded characters are the ones you can picture having a conversation with, or walking down the street. They’re the ones with the power to make you feel—you might love or hate them, but whether you’re thrilled by their successes or infuriated with the decisions they make, the elicit real emotion when you read them on the page.

As a writer, figuring out how to create that kind of fully-realized character on the page isn’t quite so easy. But it is imperative to figure out if you want to truly immerse readers in the stories you tell…at least, most of the time. Let’s take a closer look at what makes a character three-dimensional, how to build that into your characters, and when you need to.