Caring about characters.

[Alaric]

I see it mentioned all the time in a review, "I care/don't care about the protagonist," and so forth. But, to the published writers, how do you go about making characters a reader can care about? Any tips?

[Rowan]

While I've never had anything published, I think it's a matter of you caring for your characters first. When you feel passionately about your characters - both positively and negatively - when they are almost as real to you as a flesh and blood person it is reflected in your writing.

[donroc]

I try to make them as human as possible in the context of the times, with their virtues and vices, ideals and opportunism, what makes them cry and laugh. In the end, the readers deicde if the MC is likeable based on their own biases and frames of reference.

[Divia]

Agreed. You can make a character but its up to the reader to decide if they like em or not. Its the samething as in real life. There are certain pesonality traits that grind on people. Maybe my characters grind on people too. I dont mean to do it, its just something that the reader doesnt like.

[Leyland]

[quote=""Alaric""]But, to the published writers, how do you go about making characters a reader can care about? Any tips?[/quote]

Is it important if you plan on telling a story leaning more toward one of the other in being a mix of character-driven or plot-driven, or even exclusively one or the other?

A character focused story probably allows more time and content for emotional investment by me, the reader, so relating to the character favorably or adversely becomes an important part of the experience. Having a chance to experience multiple joys and sorrows, adventures, or failures and triumphs with a character helps me a good bit in developing a like or dislike.

A swiftly plotted or action oriented story may require some characters to be more one-dimensional although still with some appealing or revolting traits, especially if they're expendable. Maybe by the time I figure out I'm supposed hate a character, he or she is out the scene for good and the plot thickens onward.

[Barbara Passaris]

[quote=""Alaric""]I see it mentioned all the time in a review, "I care/don't care about the protagonist," and so forth. But, to the published writers, how do you go about making characters a reader can care about? Any tips?[/quote]


I think that it's very important to have characters with whom the reader can identify. For that reason, the people have to be "real." For me, an omnnicient thrid person or first person works very well for telling your story. First person is actually much harder to write in, IMO.

Secondly, the characters must be flawed. They have to have both good and negative aspects to their personalities.

Throw some humor in there with them, too!

~Barb Passaris

[QFE]

Hi all,

I always judge a book in whatever genre I read by whether I care about what happens to the characters, good or bad. It's what makes the pages turn themselves.

Today I reached the final chapter of my first effort in HF and despite myself the words just hit the page by themselves and my favourite secondary character is dead...

So wrong, and yet so right. Someone who has lived in my imagination is dead. A strangely moving experience. At least I can console myself in that his end was mercifully quick.

Goes without saying, though, others might not feel the same about it on reading!

[Barbara Passaris]

Oh, I surely do! And I often get really down when I finish a great read. IT's like I can't read enough to zip through it. And then when it's over, I'm really sad. I HAVE to care about the characters in order to connect with a book. I don't always like them, mind, because I don't necessarily think that it's the same same thing:caring and liking, at least in a book.

BUt if I "adopt" the characters into my reading "family" I know I have a book that I will love for my whole life.

~Barb

[Margaret]

One little trick when writing about a deeply flawed character is to slip something in very early in the novel that makes readers' hearts go out to him/her. The protagonist in As Meat Loves Salt is a thoroughly obnoxious fellow - but the opening of the novel is a vivid scene that shows him performing an extremely distasteful job without whining about it, and soon thereafter, readers are told a heart-wrenching and relevant story about his childhood that sticks with us. Even a basically sympathetic character can be too dull or "nice" to grab a reader's interest. Portraying the character's emotions in a way that makes the reader feel those emotions almost as intensely as the character does will make readers care about the character. Easier said than done, of course!

[Volgadon]

If one of the characters is, say, callous and brutal, let the readers see how he got that way. The pirate may well have been apprenticed to a butcher before running off to sea.