Why Do We Love 'Em?

By Robin Weaver

This blog was intended to be about my favorite character. A.k.a. Castiel from the hit series Supernatural—a cross between Chris Helmsworth, a Maltese puppy, Sheldon Cooper, and Columbo. Only this addled brain started to ponder--exactly why did I like the quirky angel?

Likeable is subjective.  Determining what makes a heroine likeable is about as easy as figuring out why Kim Kardashian is famous. 

Let’s use Harry Potter as an example.  He’s a ten-year-old boy, a bit moody, wears thick glasses and sports a scar on his forehead.  He gets into fights easily and doesn’t listen to his mentors.  Seriously, if you didn’t know the story, would your first thought be: “Wow.  There’s a character who will make millions for his author?”  However, mention Harry is a boy wizard who is despised by his human guardians and we begin to relate.  Not because we’re into abracadabra, but because frustration is something we’ve all experienced.  Throw in his parents died fighting evil when Harry was just a baby and, then describe the dreaded Dursleys... We’re hooked.

Obviously, one key to a relate-able character is making sure she is an understandable character.  The advertising world frequently resorts to icons with universal appeal--puppies and babies (and angels--).  Beer commercials resort to the age-old appeal of sexuality (a.k.a. tatas).   Unfortunately, giving your heroine a boob job, a newborn twin on each hip, and a basset hound gnawing on her Louboutin heels probably won’t be enough to make contemporary women relate (although the shoes might help).  Again, likeable is subjective.

So how do we fix un-likeable characters? 

First, get feedback.  Lots of feedback.  Expand your critique group to non-writers.  Just because the main character gets a less than stellar rating from one group doesn’t mean she won’t appeal to another demographic.  Ask any author her opinion of Fifty Shades of Grey and you'll probably get very different results from the movie-go'er reviews. Still, If none of the readers find your heroine appealing, fageddaboutit.  If they hate her, don't give up. A character who gets strong reactions, both positive and negative, is not going to be boring.

If however, you get mostly negative, or worse, blasé feedback, ask the reader, “What makes you think my heroine’s a bitch?” (Okay, you’ll probably want to word that a bit better J).  Readers will be able to point out obvious flaws:  the heroine is too perfect (what woman has time to cure cancer, organically kill tomato worms and still have a flawless manicure?);  she’s unfair; the witch comes across as preachy; etc., etc.

What if readers don’t like your heroine, but can’t pinpoint why?  Don’t despair, dig deeper.  Humans can be very forgiving creatures, so often they simply don’t understand your heroine.  Is her motivation clear?  Does she have depth or is she one-dimensional?  Maybe her goals aren’t consistent with her actions.

The best approach may be to simply write characters you like.  Listen to criticism with an objective ear and make changes only if the modifications feel right.  If the character doesn’t work out, you can always start over.  After all, this is fiction. 

She says she didn't do it.

The evidence says otherwise.

Styrofoam Corpse is available at Amazon.com.

All About Choices

When I’m stuck in a loop on one of my ideas (some people call it writer’s block) it’s often because my characters refuse to do what I require. Something in their world is just not quite right. They are missing a motivation, or a skill, or an item that would make things flow again.

At one point in Botanicaust, my characters faced yet another “flight from the bad guys.” I wrote it. And re-wrote it. Ho hum. The two of them had escaped before. They’d do it again. There was no growth or movement. It was just a plot moment, and I want my scenes to always do more.

I watched some TV. Played a game. I even actually cleaned my house.
What if my characters didn’t escape, after all? What if they died? What if I had to introduce something fundamental in this scene that needed to be included in further scenes? So I watched another movie. Ate some chocolate. Sulked.

Would this scene even work in this story? They had to get away from the bad guys, of course. But what would make the reader anxious they might not succeed?

The scene needed more tension. Higher stakes.

So I started asking questions. What would my hero value enough to raise the stakes? What if he had to choose who to save? And who, besides the heroine, would he consider gut-wrenching to lose?

Kids. There were children in the manuscript earlier I’d conveniently written out, and I realized I still needed them. My main character needed more people to protect, people he had to make choices between.

So I reintroduced the children, and they played a major role in the rest of the manuscript. Not only that, but they have become the main characters of my next book in the Botanicaust world.

If I had skipped the flight scene, I would not have enriched the rest of the story with these characters. Or I would have been forced to squeeze them into later scenes for continuity, and it would have felt unnatural. This scene with the children became one of my favorite sections in the whole book.

Do you have a favorite character moment you’ve read or written recently?
© Tam Linsey, 2011. All rights reserved.

I woke up one morning and decided to be a goddess.

Those who say absolute power corrupts absolutely must know a writer or two.

I think I always intended to become a goddess. No one could do a better running the world. I remember looking at the other kids in school and trying to explain that if they just listened to me and follow me their lives would become perfect. (Not that mine was perfect, but I kept busy trying to fix everyone else.)

In the midst of my megalomania - remind me someday to tell you about my adventures with head-shrinkers - I began arranging worlds of amazing complexity inside my head. I decided being a writer would solve all my problems and give me complete control. I mean, if the outer world wouldn't conform to my instructions, surely an inner one that I filled with extraordinary, smart, beautiful and complex people armed with every technological advantage my brain could conjure up would, right?

Yeah, right!

Even my inner people won't hear and obey.
"You want me to do what?" is a common complaint from the characters inside my skull. Then they run off and do their own thing in spite of my best efforts to make them follow the path to a Happily Ever After. Try having the perfect plot and story and having your characters run off and do their own things no matter what.  Just like Adam and Eve, they insist on creating havoc out of heaven.

What's a goddess to do?

I keep writing and hoping that someday a character will bow and say: Yes, Goddess, your wish is my command.

Maybe?

It's no coincidence my WIP, the sequel to PULL, is titled Being God

Now tell me about you and your plans for world domination.   Say something, let this goddess know she isn't alone out there.

The Magic & Mayhem of Character Development

Character charts helped me understand character and characterization when I began writing seriously. Later, Robin Perini's and Laura Baker's Discovering Story Magic method helped me get a handle on character strengths and flaws, and I still reference her work. After years of study and practice, my characters grow more organically in conjunction with plot.

Although my stories include characters with identity issues, those issues don't always relate to one traumatic childhood experience—although there’s nothing wrong with creating straightforward characters (see Terri Molina's post .) For example, my heroine Meg is a very good girl who served time in prison for trying to kill a man with a manure shovel (Very Traumatic Experience, and a choice that, in her mind, defined her.) But her relationships with men before and after that trauma are shadowed by her father’s death when she was a little girl (Different Trauma.) 

One could argue that Meg’s traumas are somehow connected, but my take is that character is a gestalt of innate gifts/tendencies, traumas, nurturing experiences (or a lack thereof) and free will. Free will allows a character to choose what they become, because there are always choices. 

The character Dexter in the television drama of the same name is a good example of what I mean. He’s a seriously messed-up guy—a serial killer. But he was raised in a nurturing family and has a father he respects, who is a cop. He chooses to try to redeem himself from what he knows are his evil ways by killing only other bad guys. He could choose to give in to his violent urges without thought, or he could choose to check himself into a hospital for the criminally insane, or he could choose to do what he does, or…whatever. The point is there are always choices. Even not choosing is a choice.

Dexter’s choices are based on an amalgam of his innate characteristics and his life experiences and relationships, to the point that issues of cause and effect, motivation and goal, are blurred. That’s what makes him a fascinating and complex (if repugnant) character. As the popularity of the show demonstrates, people empathize with him (although I couldn't get past the fact that he was a serial killer.)

Good-girl-cum-attempted-murderer Meg can choose to live her life in her current ex-con mindset; or she can pretend she never tried to kill a man and hasn't changed at all; or she can accept responsibility for the past, forgive herself, and choose the future self she wants to be. This movement in character propelled by the choices a character makes throughout a story is known as the character's arc.

At the beginning of my story when Meg, in her ex-con mindset, finds the body of the man she once tried to kill dumped on her property, do you think she calls the police right away or moves the body to avoid suspicion? Do you think after going through her character arc she’d do the same thing at the end of the story?

What makes us bond with a character?

What makes us bond with a character?

Rosie Meyers is my favorite heroine in a novel even though we have zip in common. She’s Jewish, wealthy, a Long Islander, an English teacher. I’m none of the above. The heroine of AFTER ALL THESE YEARS is one of author Susan Isaacs’ delightful creations. Rosie is a plucky, curious forty-something, who tells her first-person tale with razor-sharp wit and uses keen observation to paint devastatingly funny pictures of the characters she bumps into throughout the novel.

Consider Rosie’s description of her (cheating and soon-to-be-found murdered) husband: “His jaw wasn’t so much chiseled from granite anymore as sculpted from mashed potatoes. His hairline and his gums were receding at about the same rate. And when his shirt was off, he’d eye his chest hair in disbelief, as if some practical joker had plunked a gray toupee between his pectorals.”

Why do I find Rosie as enjoyable today as when Isaacs’ book was first published in 1993? The answer’s easy: humor. The heroine’s willing to poke fun at her own foibles (along with everyone else’s) and her humor is organic. It blossoms from her (and I suspect Isaacs’) wry view of the world. I love that Isaac treats the reader to the full panoply of Rosie’s chaotic internal thought processes when she’s confronted with the unexpected—like a corpse on her kitchen floor—or pondering a course of action.

She isn’t a Jack Reacher-style character, who spots a butcher knife protruding from a chest and instantly analyzes the situation and plans a strategic response. (Don’t get me wrong, I like Jack Reacher, but he fits in a totally different character category.) Rosie is human. And that’s why I empathize and identify with her.

That’s also why I tried to give my heroine in DEAR KILLER, Marley Clark, her fair share of flaws and doubts to balance the talents (like speaking Polish and mastering Tae Bo) that many of us lack. I want people to identify with Marley, to like her even when she screws up. Marley also laughs at herself and, while she’s amused by some of her friends’ eccentricities, she accepts them.

I actually find it harder to create a credible villain than a hero or heroine. It’s tempting to make your villains totally evil—pick characteristics you despise, roll them in a tidy ball, and voila a villain’s born. The result is about as believable as the guy with a greasy moustache and a whip in silent films. So I try to find reasons my bad guys (and gals) act as they do. And I attempt to give most of them redeeming traits—perhaps a sense of honor or love for a child. (Even Hannibal Lecter had a fondness for Clarice Starling in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.)

Of the suggestions I’ve heard about writing villains, one of the best is this: remember your villain is the hero of his own story. He thinks he’s right, that he should prevail.

Who is your favorite heroine/hero and why?
What villain has stayed with you long after you read a book?

How to make a man

Or Creating Characters

When a story idea first comes to me it’s usually inspired by a phrase or a single action – like watching a leaf float down from the sky and thinking about all the things it briefly touches as it glides from branch to branch, bumping a twig, a birdhouse in the tree, a park bench under the tree or landing for a short time on a statue’s outstretched arm. Kind of like a person drifting through life and all the different strangers he affects by his touch.

Anyway once that story idea hits me I begin to visualize the man my story will center around. I think his personal qualities—good and bad—form before with his physical attributes for me. Maybe he dazzles his lovers with striking vibrant, blue eyes or freezes his enemies with the icy coldness of his pale blue/gray stare. I have to know his personality before I can choose his eye color. Is he hard-hitting, business-like or a warm, welcoming man?

And usually the story line—if I plan the story first as opposed to allow the character of my story to determine the story outcome—will tell me the type of main character I need to pull a successful story line off. A shy, conservative architect who loves evenings at home with a good book and has a secret passion for knitting is not going to be a likely hero of a rough and tumble adventure. Not that it can’t happen but it would stretch believability a bit for some readers.

So once I have my story line, I imagine the man who is capable of accomplishing what I want done.

Character Character Character

I often hear “Oh… you should use them for a character in your next book!” or “She’s so funny, she’d be perfect in your next story!”

The only problem is, that is impossible. To use one person intact wouldn't work, at least for me. I'm an observer and I love to people-watch. I collect data in little tidbits constantly, filing them away for later use. My characters are an amalgam of far more than one hundred people, and on any given day I hear tidbits of conversations or accents, observe quirks or mannerisms, or note someone’s unusual style of walk or clothing. These tidbits will end up as one amalgamated character and in that character is someone people can hopefully connect to and feel their emotions as the story evolves.

Many tidbits are used, many are not.

Real People Make the Best Characters

 I recently finished teaching a "Man Talk" class where I helped students find ways to make their male characters more realistic.  Plot and setting are important, but characters make a story. If I care about the people I'll forgive a few lapses in their surroundings. If I don't care, not even the most fast-paced plot stifles my yawns or stops me from tossing a book aside. Many readers are just as rude as I am; they have too many things pulling at their valuable time to waste it reading about people that aren't realistic.

A few of those pesky YA readers

Especially young adult readers. If I bore them with noble stereotypes I'll be dropped in a hot minute. I have to hook readers fast and keep re-hooking them as the story progresses. If not they're off to the next movie or video game or sporting event…they may even chose to do homework. 

But when they find a character that really pulls them into a book, someone they can love, or love to hate, they may never let you, or the book, go.

Reality should bite

I'm not talking about werewolves, dragons or vampires.  My tag line -- Real Boys Growing Into Real Men--should really mention Real People.  My job as a writer is to dig deep and sculpt characters with real hopes and aspirations, fears and flaws. Then I arm them with real goals before sending them out to meet the challenges of their plot.

David Albacore, the protagonist of PULL, is a natural rescuer - a Warrior archetype. But he also has a temper. He loves his sisters, but darn they make him angry sometimes. That makes him human.

My characters are their own unique selves

David is not me. I went the other way around and worked to become him. I joked in another post that I take my characters shopping with me to get to know them better. The truth is I do a lot more.  I believe in the adage, Write What You Know. Since I knew nothing about seventeen-year-old boys, I became an anthropologist so I could learn.  Writing PULL meant waking up every day for months and reminding myself "You're a boy, think and act like one." I trained myself to look at the world through his eyes. Once that happened, the writing flowed.

I trained myself to think and feel like a teenaged prostitute to write my 2010 Golden Heart manuscript, DAMAGED GOODS, where my heroine's past catches up to her.  Right now I'm struggling to become a teenaged alcoholic for PULL's sequel.  Once I know him well enough I'll put him on a path of discovery that will lead him to the brink of despair--and let him be remade.  

Now you tell me

Please take a minute to share about your favorite characters. They may be ones you've written, or ones you've read.  Hit the comment button and let me know how you feel.



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Finn, The Enchanted Cat

In my mental waiting room, the chairs have metal legs and the burgundy fabric is natty and rough. Most who wait don't sit. Depending on personality and how anxious they are to get the heck out of there, each character will pace a bit, shift and stand and stare at the little number tag in their hand.

Finn, the enchanted cat in Irish Moon, skipped the line with a hiss and a snide remark.

No one held it against him.

Perhaps because Finn, a cat who talks, who is
tired of waiting for Breanne O'Donnell to finally master her talents, is just one of those characters we love to hate. Finn tells it like it is. He's a reluctant companion who'd rather be his own cat than beholden and dependent on Breanne.