Characterization

The ability to create sympathetic characters is a real talent, and one which writers must master.  As a reader, I find many authors trying to do shortcuts to make me like a character which does not have the depth I need to draw me into the book.  Often, what other people consider sympathetic, I consider pathetic and manipulative.  So, although most readers are not as obnoxious as I am, there is still one compelling reason to work on characterization:  it is the heroine and hero of your book who will ultimately sell it for you.

 Because I tend to ramble and know I will ramble, I'll let you in on another secret, right up front.  In addition to the fact that selling your book depends upon how well you bring your characters to life (and not on the plot--believe it or not--unless your plot is something like the DaVinci Code), there is another consideration: the reader doesn't have to like your characters--they just have to understand your characters.

 The key is giving your readers enough of a glimpse inside the head of your characters to make them sink into the character, whether they ultimately like them or not.

 I've been accused many times of creating unsympathetic characters and after careful analysis, I've realized that this phrase is not what everyone says it means.  It is not about creating a mean or unpleasant character—there are plenty of characters who are really quite deplorable, but folks still enjoy reading about them.  What editors, agents, and critique partners mean when they complain about unsympathetic characters is that you have not provided them with enough information to understand the character's emotional state and situation.  The reader can't understand the characters or feel with them.  The reader is kept outside of the story—at arm’s length.

 You can have a character who is really, really a terrible person, but you can get away with it as long as:

• You reveal the character's motivation
• The character's actions or dialogue are consistent with their personality
• The character's situation is portrayed well enough for readers to understand why the character is reacting in the way you describe right from the first line
• The character is consistent and their actions make sense

Within the first chapter of your book, and preferably within the first paragraph, you need to tell your readers who your main character is, what their immediate situation is, what their desires are, and what is stopping them from attaining their desired goal.  Sure, that's a lot, but without it, you are risking manuscript rejections adorned with the phrase, "ultimately, I did not sympathize with your characters."  Keep in mind that this initial goal for the character can be something simple—a starter conflict or goal—that may only tangentially relate to the larger conflicts and goals in the story. 

You just have to have some sort of starter conflict or motivation in the first few lines that expose the protagonist’s current situation with enough of a conflict to interest the reader and keep them reading until you get to the real meat of the story.  It’s the appetizer conflict, if you want to think of it that way.  It draws the reader in and prepares them for the main course—the real conflict of the story.

It’s easy to get this idea of sympathetic characters confused, however, with nice characters.  When I first got a rejection with the phrase "I did not sympathize with your characters" I was completely stunned—I mean, I liked my characters.  They felt deep and rich to me.  So, I ran to my local writing group and asked for help.  They suggested showing the "good side" of the character by giving them a pet cat or some such thing.  Have the protagonist care for a younger siblings or an ancient grandmother.  Or, have the heroine be a victim of child abuse in her youth (a much-loved tactic that Dean Koontz uses frequently) so you can get that “sympathy vote”.

This was terribly misguided advice on a number of levels, but unfortunately, I think others have gotten this advice because I see similarly manipulative "add-ons" in other stories.  When you do something like this, instead of creating a sympathetic character, your reader just feels, well, manipulated.  Lately, if I read a book where the heroine is just a total drip and she's forced into a stupid situation with the hero because she's trying to take care of dear old grandma and 3 younger siblings, or she has some kind of a pet which doesn't really serve any function in the story except to show how kind the heroine is, then I feel like the author is just trying to manipulate my emotions and s/he thought I was stupid enough to fall for it.

Me--I ain't that stupid.

This method creates what I call false sympathy.  It doesn't actually cause the reader to become one with the character, it just makes them feel sort of sorry for the character.  And no one wants to bond with a pathetic loser.

Our goal is to make the reader become one with the character.  We need this, because in the course of our story, our character may say or do things which are not unsympathetic, because we all do things that show our flaws.  It makes us, and our characters, human.  It gives our characters warmth and true depth.  So, we can't just make our hero and heroine into "all things good and sweet" unless you want them all to be drips and phonies.  We need them to do the occasional stupid/bad/not-politically-correct/flawed thing, but while they are doing it, we want the reader to submerge into the character because they understand the hero/heroine and understand why the character is acting in such a dreadful way.  We want the reader to think: I’ve done exactly the same thing for similar reasons.  Or:  I’d do the same thing if I were in the heroine’s shoes...

You cannot accomplish this by blatant manipulation.

You can only accomplish this by letting the reader get into the character's head.  I have a very good friend, author Charlotte Featherstone, who has totally mastered this.  At the beginning of her novels, her characters are really, really flawed.  I mean, they have terrible problems, including things like substance abuse which is normally something I would never sympathize with.  And yet, I love her characters, I feel so close to them and understand completely what is driving them.  I feel terrible when they do these destructive things and hope they will learn and overcome their problems.  My emotions are invested and I bond with them.  This reaction is exactly what you want to provoke.

Charlotte accomplishes this by sinking deeply into the heads of the hero and heroine within the first page or pages, explaining their situation, their goals, and exactly how they feel about their situation.  She lets us into their deep, innermost feelings, all their frustrations, fears, hopes and dreams.  Once you understand what drives the characters emotionally, it becomes impossible not to want to know what happens to them and how they overcome their conflicts and problems and eventually find their heart's desire.

That's the real secret.  Not a pet cat or orphaned sister.

For me, because I tend to write mysteries and love characters who are more cerebral, it has been very difficult for me to portray these deep feelings, because the characters are actively trying to suppress them.  I also tend to like and write characters who are not politically correct and who like to say things that could easily get misinterpreted.  That's where it is even more important to give your reader information to understand the character's situation and feelings.  Particularly what is driving them.  You need to reveal the underlying emotions.

One flaw I fell victim to when writing mysteries, was the notion that I wanted to hold back information about the characters situations and feelings to let them be gradually revealed and surprise the reader.  The surprise was that the reader never got far enough into the book to care if I revealed the hero's motivation, background and the big “surprise” on page 87.

You can't do a character’s background dump on page one, but you have to establish who the characters are, what they are feeling and why they are feeling it.  If there is some tragedy in their past, you have to describe it in some form or fashion that will form a plausible basis for how the character is acting now.  A phrase or a sentence is usually enough.  You don't have to reveal everything, but you do have to reveal enough to establish the situation.  You have to create the starter conflict (the appetizer) and you have to get your reader involved in the character’s situation.

Which brings us back to unsympathetic characters and not revealing enough about their emotional state.

I had one character, John Archer, who would say things to his grown nieces such as, "Don't be absurd, you silly child."  This was meant in a gently mocking, teasing, kidding sort of way.  In fact, a lot of my own relatives say things like that to each other (and worse) and it gives me warm fuzzies when they do.  It makes me laugh.  I love it when people do that mock insulting thing, because it means they are comfortable enough with you to know: you can take it, you can dish it out, and you aren't going to burst into tears.  Let's face it, you're only completely polite to the people you hate, or strangers.  So, I know they aren't really mad and don't really think I'm either immature, absurd, or silly--although I may have actually done or said something that is.  But I know they are just teasing me about it.  If they were seriously angry with me or trying to really ridicule me, the entire tone would change, and so would the wording.

But how do you get that across to the reader?  How do you let the reader see that John hasn’t suddenly shown some heretofore hidden mean side?

Tone is really hard to write.  So although I wrote John saying that phrase, almost all the people who read it thought he was this awful person who suddenly said terrible things to his niece when he had previously been so nice.  So you have to reveal his emotions and motivations.  If he is not the main character, you need to have the point of view character (hopefully, one of the main characters) “interpret” this for the reader.  It can be something as simple as:

"Don't be absurd, you silly child," John said in a teasing voice.

Or you can use some other technique to let the reader know that his niece thinks this is funny and not insulting.  It’s either that or risk having 90% of your readers sit back, aghast, at how your previously nice character suddenly turned into a cruel, sour old man.

So think about it when you write your characters.  Don't make them perfect, just make them understandable.

Now for Some Specifics

I’ve been rereading one of my favorite books, Death of a Duchess by Elizabeth Eyre (actually, that is a writing team).  It's a mystery set during the Italian Renaissance.  What I find the descriptions of the hero very interesting.  This book violates just about everything I've learned in writing classes, and yet I personally find it hard to put down and it ranks as one of my all time favorite books, mainly because of the hero.  

 Death of a Duchess is the first in a series of books about a man who performs investigations for his Duke.  In this first book, the duke's duchess has been murdered, although it starts out with one of the noblemen's daughters being kidnapped.  I provide this information so that you understand the situation and realize this is the first introduction to the main character, Sigismondo.

 Here are the first several paragraphs in the book.  I sincerely hope I'm not violating any copyrights, and I do encourage folks to buy the book because it is extremely good.  It starts out with a very exciting statement, which (in my mind) immediate captures the reader’s sympathy and interest.  This first sentence sets up a puzzle in the reader's mind that demands an answer.  It is what keeps us reading as the hero’s situation and immediate problem unfold.

 I’ve used red to show the lines that reveal the hero and build the reader’s understanding and sympathy with this character.

 ...From the Death of a Duchess

 "From this very bed she was snatched!"

The Lord Jacopo di Torre's long sleeve followed his dramatic gesture and swept a scent bottle from the bedside chest.  The Duke's emissary, with an agility unexpected in one of his strong build, caught it and stood turning it as if to admire the carved onyx and gold.  Jacopo waited for a comment about the bed, whose sheets had been wrenched back, pillows tossed abroad with every sign of a violent struggle.  There could be no doubt that he was right.  This had been the very bed.

"You heard nothing?" asked the deep foreign voice.

The emissary's dark eyes genially surveyed the doorful of servants who gaped and manoeuvred for a better view.  "And no one else heard anything?"

Heads were shaken.  An elderly woman in an extinguishing headkerchief kept up a low wail amid her linen.  Jacopo glanced at her in irritation.  "Even my sister slept.  No one heard anything.  In this whole household, every living soul slept!"

Not one of the servants seemed ready to oppose this.  To sleep soundly at a legitimate hour was, after all, the mark not of laziness but of exhaustion brought on by virtuous toil.

HERO

Because of my need to create a sympathetic hero, and my love for Sigismondo, I went back to see why this character worked so well.  The writing team of Elizabeth Eyre has done an amazing job with Sigismondo, as you can see from the text listed above.  For the first few pages, all we have are brief descriptions of him and a few actions.  Until page 9, he is just called 'the emissary'.  On page 9, we get his name.

 But first off, we understand the situation and conflict.  He has been called in by Jacopo to help find his missing, perhaps kidnapped, daughter.  So right away, we know the situation.

 As for Sigismondo, I believe we like him from the beginning, in part because of the contrast between his calm, thoughtfulness and Jacopo's irritation and over-reactions.  This is a point I really wanted to bring out.  So many writers bring their heroine or hero onstage with a dramatic flourish where that character is fuming in anger or undergoing some other violent, out-of-control emotion.  I believe that is a quick way to alienate readers, because what do people do when they see someone angry in public?  They avoid him or her.  I intensely dislike books where my introduction to the heroine is when she's angry or overreacting in some way.

 So, here are the first few references to Sigismondo:

 Page 1

...an agility unexpected in one of his strong build...

...The emissary's dark eyes genially surveyed the doorful of servants...

 Page 2

...The heavy shoulders shrugged, and the emissary indicated, with a movement more economical than Jacopo's, the bed...

...The emissary nodded as if it were axiomatic that a wise dog would stifle noise for fear of harm.  He asked no further about yard dogs...

...Jacopo chivvied him to the window with darting motions of the hands that failed of actually touching the fine black leather of the man's jerkin...

 [Who doesn't love a broad-shouldered man in black leather who intimidates men in power?]

 Page 3 (this is an absolutely WONDERFUL habit of Sigismondo described here and used hereafter - I adore this trait.)

...He had a habit, which Jacopo found as irritating as his sister's wailing, of humming deep in his chest when he was shown anything.  It was not a tune, but a sound like a satisfied bee.  It conveyed the disturbing impression that all he saw was what he expected to see.  He leant over the stone balustrade and, narrowing his eyes...

...At his leisure, the large man reversed...

...The emissary would have had some difficulty not seeing the cloth thrust at his face, but he did not stir...

 On page 6, we meet:

...The lack-wit had large round eyes.  He looked up at the broad-shouldered man in black...

 This brings onstage Benno, who is thrown out by Jacopo and immediately follows the emissary and picks up the narration to a large degree, rather like Dr. Watson in a Sherlock Holmes novel.  This is another way the reader is lured into liking Sigismondo - he "picks up" this servant who was thrown out to starve and who actually proves to be beneficial to the investigation.  This action reveals Sigismondo understands that the servant is more than just a lack-wit, and Sigismondo is kind enough to provide Benno with food and employment.  Sigismondo is smart and he’s in control.

 A few pages later, Sigismondo also provides a few coins to some beggar children and tousles their hair (despite it being matted and louse-infested).

 So, that's the hero--no name until page 9.  In a way, this violates everything I wrote before because we never get into his head, except a few quick glimpses here and there.  In this, he is in the Sherlock Holmes tradition.  But his actions reveal a lot about him, as do the reactions of the other characters to him, and in that understated way, we understand and bond with Sigismondo.  Most importantly, we understand his situation and his immediate goals.  His starter conflict—the appetizer—is rescuing the apparently kidnapped girl.  A noble action which also puts him in a positive light.

As I read this book, I'm just in awe of the writing and characterization.  It's funny and exciting and despite an almost complete lack of introspection, you (or at least I) adore the characters.  Sigismondo later reveals he’s been a torturer in a past job, and you still like him!

 I used this example because it highlights what I said initially about understanding the character’s situation right away.  This is probably the most important thing.  In addition, if this was a romance and not a mystery, it would be important to get into the head of the main characters and understand their emotions.  Romance readers want to bond with the characters and feel what the characters’ feel. 

So, those are just some thoughts about sympathetic characters and characterization.