What makes a good character?
I’ve been reading a couple of books
recently (yes, really) and a couple of thoughts came to mind regarding
characters, their development, and the empathy readers have with them.
In one book I’m reading, a YA dystopia, the
male lead’s only recognizable feature is his spiky hair. On top of this he appears to be
good-looking. No surprise there. The female lead is a teenage girl who appears to be Bella out of Twilight with a different name.
Several reviewers have mentioned “great characters”. Um, why?
The guy is a TV presenter transposed into a sci-fi novel. The girl is a high-school girl of regular
attractiveness and intelligence who will obviously at some point get with the guy. There’s
nothing at all that makes either of them special or makes them stand out.
And perhaps here we have the answer.
Do readers, particularly young adult
readers, merely want a character that they can pretend to be? So that they can pretend to be in the book
itself, interacting with the other characters as if they were real?
Another recent book I read, a so-called
sci-fi classic, had a review bemoaning the lack of character development. The book was set on a foreign planet, and
revolved around a guy finding out what was going on in his world. Which he did, and it was great. Why would I need the guy to have some kind of
big change in his life? The story wasn't just about the guy, it was about the whole world around him.
Another issue I have is with empathy. Matt Cassidy, the central character in The Man Who Built the World (that's him looking miserable on the cover), is an alcoholic borderline wife-beater who hates
pretty much everything. He’s
intentionally detestable, in fact I went out of my way to give him no redeeming
features. The point of the book is such
that through his story you discover why
he is how he is, and whether he can find redemption. You're not supposed to like him.
I recently had someone pull out of
reviewing the book because they couldn’t identify with him. While I fully respect the reviewer’s opinion
this pleased me in a certain way because I don’t
want my readers to identify with him.
I want them to pity or hate or be repulsed by him.
I don’t write books with swimwear models or
high school nice guys for characters. If
you find one, you can be sure he or she won’t last long. Charles de Molay, star of my favorite of my unpublished novels, Hooks, is a cripple. Dan Barker
in Head of Words (forthcoming) is mentally insane. Even the Tube Riders have their issues. Marta - the only one close to being
good-looking, hardly ever gets to wash and her dreadlocks are a case of more
grime than intention. Switch has, for
want of a better expression, a fucked up eye, and Paul is balding and
overweight. It’s not just about their
looks, either, but their actions. In a
lot of books nothing seriously bad ever happens to the main characters, or they never do
anything bad, take your pick. In Tube
Riders, Marta sleeps with guys to pay her rent (or at least she did before the
book starts). Paul does even worse. Switch kills without thinking whether his
victim deserved it or not.
A reviewer recently said my book contained “real
people”. This was perhaps the biggest
compliment someone could ever give me. It doesn't matter if they liked it or not, they got it. In
real life people don’t always do the right thing, and they certainly aren’t
always good-looking. For every Che Guevara (cool enough to spawn a billion t-shirts) or Aung Sung Suu Kyi (gorgeous - at least in her youth, damn) there are hundreds or thousands of 'heroes' that are nothing much to look at. It is totally possible
for someone who isn’t cool or an oil painting to have an adventure, to be a
hero.
So what do I think makes a good character?
I used to suffer from something I call the
Steve Syndrome. I would have a couple of
main characters who were more distinctive then everyone else would be a Steve
(apologies to anyone called Steve!).
This would be a character who had no real features or definition and
often a generic name (the first character I identified as having this problem,
in my third novel, Resort, was called Steve - hence the name). In Tube Riders, both Paul and Simon were
originally Steves. Marta and Switch were
always pretty well-defined, but I had to make a real effort to make Simon and
Paul distinct. Paul I made fat and more
unattractive, while with Simon I went the other way, making him more feminine, almost androgynous.
Therefore, the first thing that I believe
is important is memorability (is
that even a word?!). A character has to
be memorable. And not just by having a
cute smile - that’s not memorable, it’s generic - they have to have some
feature or mannerism (or both) which makes them stand out. It doesn’t have to be good, and it doesn’t
have to be bad.
Also extremely important is voice.
People talk differently. Some
people swear, some people don’t. Some
people say certain words more often than others. Some people talk in long sentences, others
talk in short, clipped phrases. You
should (within reason) be able to write a three- or four- way dialogue without
using any identifying dialogue tags yet still have the reader know who is
speaking each time. If you can do that, you’ve got
it.
Also very important to me (as you’ll notice
from my character descriptions above) is flaws. I hate good-looking, perfect characters. Boooorrrriing. Have you ever met anyone who was
perfect? (Actually, I have met a couple
of people who were, and god they were dull).
Perfect characters are only allowed in comedy, because their very
perfection can make them hilarious (see my novella series, Beat Down!, for an example).
So what do people think? Obviously few people agree with me. I’ve sold 27 books this month so far. How many has Stephanie Meyer sold? A billion?
Even the book I was complaining about above has probably sold about
200. So, I’m likely wrong (except in my
own head of course!), but I’d love to hear your ideas on what you think makes a
good character.
CW
27 Nov 2012
