More on Creating Sympathetic Characters

Previously, I wrote about creating sympathetic characters, and the focus was on making sure your audience understood your characters' motivations. If your readers know why a character is doing something--even if it is something bad--they are willing to go along for the ride. Mostly.

There's another piece to this puzzle, however. In creating any character, you have to give the reader something they can like about the character. I'm avoiding the word "trait" because that doesn't carry the right connotations for me. The list of these crucial characteristics is not very broad, because the real ones--the ones that will make your readers care about the character no matter what that character does--are just a few in number. They are the ones which make you see some glimmer of the best that humanity has to offer. They are what define us as humans.

Your characters don't have to always display this quality, but they have to display it near the beginning of your book and during the worst moments in the book. They have to display it at the beginning in order to keep your readers reading, and during the darkest moment or moments because this quality shows who they are.

Characters do not need to portray every quality in this list. One is often sufficient. You don't want to end up creating a Sir Galahad who was so perfect that most readers simply couldn't stand reading about him (although I'm just referring to the popular conception of him--not the somewhat tarnished paragon of virtue in the Arthurian legends and Morte de Arthur). Nobody likes perfect people, unless said person is a villain. That's also true for physical perfection, so keep that in mind.

So what is this list of qualities?

1) Integrity. On some level, your character has to show they have some level of integrity. Even a hero who is a crook may have a code--like not ratting on their friends--and it's critical to create a situation in the beginning of the novel that shows the hero or heroine acting according to some internal code.

2) Honesty. Again, the hero/heroine doesn't have to show honesty in all situations, but there must be a line and the reader must realize the hero/heroine has a definite line they will not cross. For example, the hero could lie like a rug to most women--until he meets the heroine. Then, he starts feeling like a cad when he lies to her and gradually, he finds he can't lie at all to her, revealing an innate sense of honesty he never realized he had until he met her, blah, blah. Obviously, this is an angle that works well in romances, but it also works in other situations and other genres.

3) Decency. This one needs little or no explanation. The hero and heroine in most works (other than literary fiction or erotica) must have some sense of decency. No lusting after children, for example--which I had a hard time even writing.

4) A Sense of Duty. This is a great one--it's one of the big reasons military guys/cops/firemen/S.E.A.L.S and so on are so hot. Because they get it. They have a sense of duty. Women readers translate this internally as the type of man she can depend on, and who won't disappear on the way to pick up a loaf of bread when she's 9 months pregnant. This trait is what made Frodo in The Lord of the Rings so sympathetic, and ultimately, what let him destroy the ring and its evil.

5) Protectiveness. If your character sees a wrong being committed against someone, and tries to stop that wrong, you can guarantee that your readers will like your character.

If your hero and heroine display any one of these qualities, you will create a character the reader can trust on some level. A character the reader can sympathize with. Even if the character is otherwise a pretty bad person.

Here is a beautiful example.
In the movie Payback starring Mel Gibson, he plays Porter, and he's really not a nice guy. In fact, he's pretty much a psycho-criminal-dirtbag. He and another criminal steal $140,000, but Porter's wife conspires with his partner to steal the money and leave Porter for dead. There is a lot of violence. Porter acts pretty badly. That's basically the movie.

But you know two things about Porter: you know his wife and partner betrayed him so you feel sympathy for him at the beginning; and throughout the movie, Porter only wants his $70,000--his share. He's not greedy. He's actually got this weird streak of integrity.

This is not my favorite movie, and I don't particularly like Porter, but because of this stubborn streak of integrity that makes him actually decline to take the entire $140,000 when offered it, he gets your attention.

The script writers gave him three things to make the audience care:

• Porter is betrayed at the beginning and left for dead by his wife and partner. That helps, but you can't rely on the "I'm a victim" sympathy-vote for long. I don't recommend this for heroines unless she proves herself to be strong later because it pushes her too close to the wussy-baby heroine. However, a lot of movies use this as the initial audience grabber (think: The Punisher and a lot of Steven Segal's movies.) So once they have your attention, the writers go on to give Porter...
• Integrity. Throughout the movie, Porter constantly reiterates--he only wants his share, not the entire $140,000. He's not greedy.
• Protectiveness. Toward the end we meet a new love interest for Porter. And he gets to protect her from his...yes...his ex-partner.

So even though Porter is a dirtbag, the audience can at least root for him because he displays some of these essential qualities that we idealize. He shows some glimmers of the best we humans have to offer.

And that's how you create a sympathetic character, even out of someone who you actually don't want to meet. Particularly in a dark alley.

Creating Sympathetic Characters

The ability to create sympathetic characters is a real talent, and one which I'm afraid I'm not so good at. Maybe because what other people consider sympathetic, I consider pathetic and manipulative. Unfortunately, it is the heroine and hero of your book who will ultimately sell it for you, and that is the difficulty.

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), here is another consideration: the reader doesn't necessarily have to like your characters as long as they understand them.

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 that phrase is not really what everyone means. 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. They can't bond with the characters.

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

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."

When I first got a rejection with the phrase "I did not sympathize with your characters" I was completely stunned. 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 them caring for younger siblings or an ancient grandmother. Have the heroine be a victim of child abuse in her youth (apparently a much-loved tactic that Dean Koontz uses frequently).

Not a good suggestion.

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 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 have any function in the story, 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.

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. So we can't just make our hero and heroine into "all things good and sweet" unless you want them all to be drips. We need them to do the occassional 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 way.

You cannot accomplish this by blatant manipulation.

You can only accomplish this by letting the reader into the character's head. I have a very good friend, 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 sympathcize with. And yet, I love her characters, I feel so close to them and understand completely what is driving them.

She 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 it. She lets us into their feelings, all their frustrations, fears, hopes and dreams. Once you understand what drives them emotionally, it becomes impossible not to want to know what happens to them and how they find their heart's desire.

That's the 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 get misinterpreted. That's where it is even more important to give your reader the information they need to understand the character's situation and feelings. Particularly what is driving them.

One flaw I feel victim to when writing mysteries, is 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 and background on page 87.

You can't do a 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. You don't have to reveal everything, but you do have to reveal enough to establish the situation.

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 people you hate. So, I know they aren't really mad and don't really think I'm either immature, absurd, or silly--or maybe I 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.

Sidebar: I guess it's not politically correct to tease anyone any more, which makes me very sad. I keep having this pointed out to me as a terrible flaw in me and my characters. :-(

Anyway, 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 terribly mean person and why would he suddenly say such a terrible thing to his niece to whom he has previously been so nice. They totally did NOT get this. So you either have to hit the reader over the head with it by saying something such as:

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

Or risk having 90% of your readers sit back, aghast, at how your previously nice character suddenly turned mean to his nieces. The key is to let your reader know how the character means it. One would hope you would not have to hit them over the head with a sledgehammer to make them understand, but perhaps you do. Perhaps I think readers are smarter than that and perhaps they are not.

Still, I'd like to think a few out there get it and aren't insulted by it when they do get it.

Whatever.

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

CRAFT: Point of View and Genre

Point of View and Genre

Before you even set pen to paper, there is one major question the writer must consider. What point of view should you use? Should you use first person, I should have known better, or third person, She should have known better? A combination of both? Some weird point of view?

Perhaps I should first define point of view...
Point of view is perhaps easier to explain if you think of making a movie. You can think of point of view as the angle from which the camera is filming the movie.

First Person
In first person point of view, the camera is stuck in one character's head and you "film" the entire story through that character's eyes. This character is essentially the narrator and the entire story is colored by the narrator's perceptions.

Example:
I wouldn't have shot Harry last Thursday if I had known what a world of hurt this would bring down on me less than two days later...

Strengths and Weaknesses
First person is great for stories that mainly concern the journey of one person--the narrator character. They are often used in mysteries because you learn what is happening as the narrator, who is usually the detective, discovers it.

Unfortunately, it also prevents you from showing what the other characters are thinking or feeling, except as interpreted by the narrator. All the other characters are kept at a bit of a distance and the reader never really knows what they are thinking--they can only infer it from the characters' actions and speech. Even the narrator is controlling what they allow the reader to see, by what information they chose to "tell". However, this can be very useful in a mystery.

Egregious Mistakes
It's easier to avoid POV mistakes in first person, because you're stuck in first person, but you do want to avoid things like: I flung my long, flowing locks of blond hair over my shoulder. No one thinks of themselves--or their hair--that way, so the challenge is to give the reader a picture of the narrator character without looking into mirrors or talking about themselves in an abnormally narcissistic way.

Third Person (Often called Limited Third Person)
This is the most common point of view used in the majority of fiction. In third person, the writer refers to all characters in third person, e.g. she done me wrong, or he done me wrong. The camera is external to all characters but rests on one character's shoulder, focused on the other characters as seen from the perspective of the point of view character. Usually, this perspective is maintained throughout a scene, with the perspective hopping over to other characters in other scenes (i.e. the camera is moved to rest on other characters' shoulders to film the scene from their view point).

Example:
She rested her head on her arm for a moment before turning back to Bill to complete the dismemberment process.

Deep Point of View
This is usually seen in third person and it is as if the camera moved inside the head of the point of view (POV) character--not to focus on the other characters--but to actually film what is going on inside the POV character's head. In this POV, you can take something like: Darn it--why couldn't she have arrived early for a change, he thought. And you make it as if you are inside the person, listening, so you don't have the "he thought" part, you just have: Darn it--why couldn't she have arrived early?

This helps the reader to feel and think what the POV character is feeling and thinking more intensely.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Third person is the most commonly used POV and you really can't go too wrong with it. It lets you show the actions, thoughts and emotions from any of your characters, and by using deep POV, you can even show what they are thinking.

However, you lose the immediacy and identification with the narrator that you have in first person, because third person POV puts all the characters at a slight distance, which is only partly remedied through the occassional use of deep POV.

Egregious Mistakes
Head hopping (see below), where you suddenly change your focus from one POV character to a different one can be a problem if done poorly. The most common mistake, however, is similar to the one listed for First Person POV. She tossed her blond, flowing locks over her shoulder. Again, no character (or person) thinks of their hair, or any other part of them, like this. You have to remember to stay in the POV you select.

Second Person
I'm debating even mentioning this POV because it is so incredibly annoying. It's the you did this POV, which is sort of the psychotic camera POV. It takes a lot of skill to write in second person and not just anger your readers, and mostly you would never see this except in literary fiction or highly experimental stuff. Definitely not something I would recommend unless you have a specific and very good reason.

Head Hopping
When you switch from one POV character's perspective to another, it's called head hopping. Most articles on writing recommend that you stick with one character's POV per scene, to avoid the unsettling shifts in perspective that can occur when you suddenly switch to another character's POV--sort of like the main POV character suddenly tossing the camera to another character. It can be done, but you need to be aware of the transition and write it smoothly. One way is to write enough description to make the scene seem as if the camera panned out to the broad scene before changing to focus tightly on a different character's POV.

When to Use What POV
A lot of the decision on what POV to use boils down to what sells in the genre you are writing, and what works best for the story you are telling. Some fiction lends itself more readily to one point of view over the other, and some genres pretty much insist on a specific point of view. The information below is not all-inclusive--I'm just trying to give you some general guidelines--so keep that in mind.

Romance
Third person is used for almost all categories of romance fiction. Some of the women's fiction, and modern, sassy contemporary fiction (e.g. Chick Lit, Mommy Lit, and all the other "Lits") is now being done in first person, because they are less concerned about the hero (or there may not even BE a hero). Third person is almost a requirement for romance fiction because it allows you to show both the heroine's and hero's perspectives and their emotional arcs as they grow to love one another.

Romance that has to be third person POV
Category Romances, e.g. Most Harlequin Lines
Historical Romances

Romances that are traditionally third person POV, but *might* possibly allow first person POV, although to be honest, they will probably make you change it to third person POV...
Romantic Suspense
Paranormals
Romantic Mysteries
Contemporary
Romantic Comedy

Romances that allow first person POV
Women's fiction

Smart/Sassy Contemporary (perhaps not specifically a romance, either) such as Chick Lit, Mommy Lit, Boy Lit, all the Lits and their currently morphing offspring

Gothics (many are now written in third person POV, but traditionally, many Gothics were written in first person)

Mystery and Suspense
Mystery and Suspense genres have many, many subgenres and break down very similar to the Romance field. There tends to be a little more latitude in these genres, however, because there is less pressure to show the emotional arcs of two people as you must in a romance--you usually just have one main character, an antagonist, and then the protagonist.

Third Person POV
Suspense (traditionally third person)
Contemporary and Historical Mysteries can vary between third and first person POV
Cozy Mysteries

First Person POV
Contemporary and Historical Mysteries, some Cozy Mysteries (see above)
Crime and "Neo Noir" or "Crime Noir", Florida Crime (which seems to be a genre in itself)

Science Fiction
Science Fiction is *mostly* written in third person POV. However, because it often embraces more experimental fiction, there is some small use of first person POV, but it is rare.

Fantasy
Third Person POV almost exclusively.

Literary Fiction
Anything goes in Literary Fiction.

That's about it for this blog! Let me know what POV you prefer...