: Re: "The more fleshed out the character is, the more the reader will care about him". Always true? I have a problem with the protagonist of one of my stories. In the story he's in, he dies at

@Hamm6328258

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It boils down to "show, don't tell".

You as a writer need to know your characters on a deep level, so you can show the reader who they are through their actions and words.

As you already have discovered through your other characters, the effect is often the greatest when you reveal a lot of character with few words.

If you need to flesh out a lot about a character to the reader, is often a sign that you don't know the character all that well yourself. You need to know them well enough to know what they would naturally say or do in a situation.

Another point is to reveal only information that is relevant to the story. If your protagonist's mother died when she was six (to create sympathy, for instance), but the psychological implication of this has nothing to do with the character's development in the story, then leave it out.

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