The ONE Rule You Can’t Break If You Want Readers to Care

Gina Kammer Author

Sep 25, 2025 |

Discover the one unbreakable rule for reader connection: making characters deeply understood, not just “relatable.”

The One Rule You Can’t Break if You Want Readers to Care

Writers love to preach that there are no rules — no single right way to write a novel and that everyone is different. But here’s the truth: there’s one rule you can’t get away with breaking if you want readers to care about your story.

Because at the end of the day, you can’t shortcut reader psychology. If readers don’t care, they stop reading. They’re wired to connect in certain ways — and if you ignore that, no amount of clever writing tricks will keep them turning the pages.

The good news? You won’t have to memorize every craft tip you’ve ever heard or be a naturally gifted writer. By the end of this article, you’ll know the one thing every reader needs in order to connect with your story — and a simple way to check if it’s coming across in your draft right now.

Rules Get Misconstrued

Part of the reason writers struggle with this is because writing “rules” get misconstrued. You listen to all these general tips, try to use them to improve your on-the-page connection, but they don't seem to help your story. And honestly, taken out of the context of why you should use them, they often don’t.

So it makes total sense when you think the rules don't work for you. But really, when taken with their basis in the brain science behind the reader experience, those rules finally have the clarity you’ve been missing.

That’s when the rules stop feeling like restrictions and start becoming tools you can use. Rather than limiting you, they give you the freedom to create the immersive story experience you always imagined.

Which brings me to one of the most popular—and most misconstrued—pieces of writing advice about reader connection: the rule you’ve probably heard as “write relatable characters.” The problem is, even the language of that rule makes it easy to misinterpret — and very easy to get wrong.

The Misunderstood Rule: “Write Relatable Characters”

The truth is, that advice to “write relatable characters” is one of the most misunderstood rules of all.

I see writers try to make their characters “relatable” by:

• Giving them surface-level flaws or hobbies, hoping readers will see themselves in them
• Holding back their character’s true motivations to keep them mysterious, thinking that’ll spark curiosity
• Focusing so much on external plot events that character depth never fully comes across

But what happens? Beta readers say they didn’t connect with your story. Which is so frustrating, because you know the depth is there — but it’s not coming across on the page.

The Brain Science Behind Reader Connection

Here’s the reality: readers don’t need to be like your character. They don’t even need to like them! What they need is to understand them.

Studies show that readers can care deeply about characters they don’t approve of morally — assassins, tyrants, even villains — because of cognitive empathy. When readers understand a character’s motives, fears, and internal logic, their brains actually simulate those mental states. That simulation — powered by empathy networks and mirror neurons — is what makes them invest in the story, even if they never agree with the character’s choices.

Neuroscience also shows that when we read morally complex or ambiguous characters, it activates parts of the brain tied to social reasoning and prediction — the same areas we use to puzzle out people in real life. That’s why “unlikeable” characters can sometimes be the most compelling: readers stay hooked because they want to understand what this person will do next, and why.

What “Relatable” Really Means

So the next time you hear the word “relatable” in writing advice, think this:

When readers understand why your character makes choices based in their unique struggles — what they want, what they fear, how their past shaped their worldview — they empathize. That’s when readers start to care.

That’s when they get invested, even if your character is a criminal or a planetary alien.

So when you make a character understandable — even in their flaws, even in their darkness — you’re giving readers the foundation for connection. That’s what turns reading into an immersive, emotional experience.

And if that’s missing, no amount of action, witty dialogue, or clever worldbuilding will keep readers turning the pages.

The Character “Why” Check

So let’s make this tangible. Here’s a simple test you can run on your draft today to make sure readers will connect with your character:

Pull up any scene and ask yourself three questions:

1. Protagonist's Immediate Desire/Fear: What does your character want or fear in this precise moment? What are they trying to achieve or avoid right now?
2. The "Why" Behind the Desire/Fear: Why do they want or fear it? What piece of their past, their corrupted truth, or their internal struggle is driving them here? This doesn’t need to be an explicit info-dump of backstory, but it should hint at their deeper motivations through a resonant thought or detail.
3. How the “Why” Is Shown through Character Perspective: Is this desire or fear conveyed through the character’s thoughts, feelings, quirks, and choices — rather than just narrated or explained?

If you can answer those three things, your reader will understand your character. And when they understand them, they’ll connect with them emotionally — even if they don’t agree with them or even like them.

Why Specificity Matters

Think of a character running from a dragon. Of course they’re afraid — anyone would be. But if you show scars from a past attack or a memory of losing someone to dragon fire, suddenly that fear is specific. It’s not just generic danger; it’s their story.

Or on a subtler note: say a character tears up when they see the ocean. For some readers it might just be beauty or grief. But if, for your character, the ocean means freedom after years trapped in a hostile country, that moment lands with power. Readers don’t just see tears — they feel why they matter.

For connection to truly take hold, every scene-level “why” needs to stack together over the course of the story. Each moment of clarity about your character’s motivations and fears adds another compounding layer. That way, at each subsequent turning point, the emotional payoffs hit with more and more power.

If you’d like to make sure your whole story supports that buildup for readers to care, my Spellbook Outline was designed for exactly this. It helps you map out the major beats so your character’s motivations and transformation compound naturally, creating the kind of connection that pays off at the climax.

Example in K-Pop Demon Hunters (Mild Spoilers Ahead!)

Let’s look at how showing a character’s “why” works in action. One of my favorite recent examples is Rumi from K-Pop Demon Hunters — a movie my daughter is obsessed with, and for good reason.

We see Rumi, the main character, struggling with the toll of keeping the secret of her half-demon nature from her demon-hunting friends, her K-pop girl group. It affects her both mentally and physically with her voice, which, while partly an effect of her demon side, also seems to worsen under the stress of her secret. And even a six-year-old understands her deep conflict. Why? Because the movie doesn’t just show her hiding the demon patterns on her skin — it shows us her motivation for doing so, and resisting honesty even with her closest friends.

We see snippets of her past which reveal the weight of her guardian’s warnings not to reveal herself until her patterns fade. Rumi obeys because she’s been told since childhood to keep that part of her hidden. Now, reinforced by her band’s success, she believes that if she only works harder against the demons to strengthen the magical shield, her demon patterns will disappear. Then she won’t have to struggle with her secret anymore.

How the Story Reveals the “Why”

This is a motivation we see—and not just because K-Pop Demon Hunters is a musical that can put characters’ innermost thoughts into songs. That’s comparable to how, in a novel, so much of the story comes alive through internal perspective on the page.

We also see it in Rumi’s tense expression when she pushes her bandmates toward an early single release while all they want is some well-deserved couch time. We see it in her confessions to Jinu, the sympathetic human-turned-demon she can fully confide in, since she doesn’t have to fear him treating her differently. His internal struggle mirrors hers, highlighting her arc even more clearly. Rumi believes that if her group pushes their success further — their resonant singing uniting souls to strengthen the shield against demons — she can fulfill the group’s mission and her own. That way she can avoid being outed as half-demon and end her agony of keeping such a huge secret from her found family.

All of that context, built steadily through her story, gives us Rumi’s clear “why.”

We don’t just watch her make choices externally. We understand her internal logic and unique perspective about herself and her world. And because we understand that, we empathize with her. Even if we’ve never fought demons or lived a double life, we feel the pressure of her choices and the toll of carrying deep shame. That’s how we relate — through understanding.

But if that weren’t enough, we also get a solid understanding of her friends’ motivations too, even though they aren’t the protagonist focus. We see their quirks and insecurities when they take Rumi to find a remedy for her voice. Later, we see their fears surface as actual demon whispers — a brilliant metaphor and gut punch.

• Mira hears she doesn’t deserve a family.
• Zoey hears she’s both too much and not enough.

Those lines hit hard. And the relatability of these characters was cemented for many fans — not just because the fears are common ones, but because they had already been built up through quirks, dialogue, and choices earlier in the story. The groundwork makes the emotional impact profound.

What This Means for Your Writing

That’s the kind of clarity you want to give your own readers: enough insight into your character’s motivations and fears, layered through their perspective, so readers understand them at every step.

When readers understand the “why,” they’re not just observing events; they’re living them through your character.

And that’s what creates that elusive connection — the one that keeps readers invested all the way to the end, and thinking about your story long after it’s over.

But what if you’re concerned with how much to give away on the page, especially early on in your story? Maybe, not unlike Rumi, you have secrets that need to stay hidden until a later reveal. Or perhaps your character isn’t supposed to be fully understood — maybe because they’re an unreliable narrator. Mystery is a powerful driver for reader intrigue. But it only works when readers already understand enough to ask deeper questions.

If all they have are surface actions with no glimpse into the “why,” they won’t feel intrigued — they’ll just feel confused.

That doesn’t mean you have to spill every secret in chapter one. It just means that whatever your character is doing on the page at any given time has to make sense from their perspective—even if it is an unreliable one. You’re giving readers enough of the “why” to empathize with the immediate struggle, even if the full truth is revealed later.

Your character is always justifying their actions to themselves. They always have a reason, even if it’s the wrong one.

If you can show hints of that internal logic — their fears, their hopes, their quirky perspective — you can keep them mysterious, unreliable, or even unlikeable without ever losing that vital connection.

A Case Study from Enchant Your Readers

I’ve seen this play out with authors in my Enchant Your Readers book coaching program.

Alex was writing an assassin protagonist that beta readers didn’t like. But she wasn’t supposed to be likeable, exactly — she was driven by guilt, shame, and some really dark coping mechanisms. Being unlikeable wasn’t the real problem. The bigger danger was readers not being able to understand her, or not finding her compelling despite disliking her.

So we worked to bring gut-punch emotion into those early scenes, letting readers glimpse more than just the tip of the iceberg of her past and motivations. This revealed the forces driving her unhealthy, destructive traits. The result? Emotional connection on the page that really sings.

Even better, it had a bonus effect: it leveled up Alex’s prose through advanced metaphor techniques and layering emotion into motifs woven throughout the novel.

Resources to Help You Dig Deeper

If digging into character motivations and inner truths feels like the missing piece for your story, my free Word Wizard's Journey guide includes resources to help you map your character's fears, desires, and corrupted truths. It’s a blueprint for building characters readers can truly understand. 

Free to Go Forth and Break the Other Rules? Not Quite…

So, as long as you’ve got this one rule down — the one you can’t break if you want readers to care — you’re good to go now, right? You can break any other rule you like as long as you know them?

Well… not quite. Even when you’re trying to do something really original and different, that idea is one of the more dangerous writing myths out there. Breaking the rules doesn’t automatically make your story stand out. In fact, it usually backfires.

But I’ll show you why breaking the rules won’t make your story original — and what actually does — in the next article.

Selected Bibliography

• https://jeps.efpsa.org/articles/10.5334/jeps.ca
• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7333591/
• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12127336/
• https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15205436.2021.1968436
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304422X21000279
• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3559433/
• https://d-nb.info/1103239996/34
• https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-from-a-neuroscience-perspective/202503/the-science-of-storytelling-how-fiction
• https://ierj.in/journal/index.php/ierj/article/view/2873
• https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.13.643125v2
• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3840169/
• https://virginialibrariesjournal.org/articles/10.21061/valib.v63i1.1474
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364661316300705
  

This field is quite theoretical. I'm extrapolating for authors what I can based on the findings we do have (and I'm certainly not a neuroscientist!). To explore a fuller background, you can see this article about a breadth of brain science sources (and their abstracts/descriptions) in my site's private resource library. Note: You'll need to register a free student account to access it: https://www.inkybookwyrm.com/blog/sources-on-the-science-of-story-craft-and-creativity

Categories: : creativity, novel drafting, novel planning, revision