How to Inhabit the Character You Write About One key to engaging your reader is to give them a character they love to read about. Author Diana Souhami gives her top tips for making this happen. Author: May 4, 2021 As a writer, I spend most of my life with people who are dead. How sad is that? Deeply perverse. I am in the resurrection business. I relate obsessively to people who aren’t there, more so than to the living. I read their diaries and love letters, pore over photographs, prowl 'round their houses, get all such information as I can from those who knew them for real.