A Real Character

Main characters (MC) he or she is the one we're supposed to love, loathe, relate to. How can writers construct an MC that readers become invested in?

The Screaming Guppy is doing all of us a wonderful favor by sharing experiences from Donald Maass' 'The Fire in Fiction' workshop, and has a great post up about MCs.

In my own writing, the key to a great MC is identification. In some way the MC has to develop an intimate relationship with the reader. This connection can only be maintained if the MC is accessible. Translation = he or she cannot be perfect or larger than life.

Let's revisit Buffy once more, because Buffy teaches such lessons so well.

Buffy is the Chosen One. If you're the Chosen One it might seem like blessings from the Power That Be rain down without ceasing, making life full of perfect rainbows and never-ending bliss...right?
Nope. Buffy may be the Chosen One but, to steal a line from another great MC, Spiderman, 'with great power comes great responsibility.'

Buffy makes some very poor choices. She runs away from home. She lies to her friends. She sleeps with an abusive vampire (okay, Spike fans, I'm with you, I know he reforms later...but still initially, not a good choice for our Buffy). To quote Clem (one of my favorite supporting characters from BVS...more coming tomorrow on SCs) on Buffy's flaws: 'She's a nice girl. But hey...issues.'

Heroes and heroines that draw readers in are inherently flawed. Even wielding their exceptional super powers, they're burdened to desire and doubt, struggling between self-interest and the greater good.

The journey through a book is about secrecy and revelation; readers need to be compelled forward, struggling with the MC to make progress, to discover. If the MC is perfect from page one, what challenges could possibly lay ahead. Without flaws dogging our MCs steps, the plot lies limp on the page, failing to convey the tenuous condition that is life, unable to capture that essence of human experience that makes us turn the page...the breathless hope that things will get better, against all odds, despite the lack of perfection we humans embody every day.

Buffy Lessons

I'm devoting my next few posts to the creation and maintenance of exceptional characters. One of the best compliments I've received about my writing came from my amazing crit partner, Lisa Dez, who wrote in response to a draft of NIGHTSHADE, "You're clearly a character writer." And I was thrilled. (Thanks Lisa!)

The characters who populate my written worlds are almost closer than friends. As I write, I feel what they feel, fear what they fear, understand their motivations, and cringe when they make poor choices.

In Twitter's #kidlitchat last night, the topic was "What makes a strong character?" Some chatters took that literally - talking about physical strength over feebleness and fragility, but I considered the prompt a call for characters that are built by the author in such a way that they grab onto the reader and don't let go.

I'll be spending a day on the following character types: MCs, Supporting, and Villains (bwaaah-haa-haa).

But to start us off, I'd like to give a nod to my favorite, Jedi-Master character builder: Joss Whedon. Joss gives us the best kind of characters - sharp, engaging, and multi-faceted. Scott Westerfeld wrote a great essay on Whedon's strength in world building, and I've seen many posts about how amazing Joss is at dialogue. His characters deserve equal attention.

This post was inspired by my shock and horror at a Tweet I saw claiming that Buffy has no brains. Wrong, wrong, and wrong.I don't need everyone on this planet to be a Buffy fan. I'm a believer in personal taste, and Buffy is not for everyone. I don't care for the Beatles (no, really, I don't), but I can appreciate why others do and I understand what their contribution to the music world was. I respect that contribution and their art - I still don't like listening to them.

So if you don't wake up each morning and watch Buffy over breakfast like me, that is A-Okay. But if you insult Buffy broadly and disparage her as a character while demonstrating you know nothing about the show other than a one-glance write off...then I iz angries!!

It's exactly that Buffy does have brains, but that at first glance you wouldn't know it, which demonstrates why Joss is a master character writer. All the outward modes of Buffy (including her name) point to bubble-gum snapping, shoe obsessing, vacuous girlhood. But scratch beneath that surface and you find a complex, always evolving young woman who constantly balances a desire to belong with the isolation of being the Chosen One.
And in answer to the claim that Buffy has no brains, let me just say:

1)Her teachers always note her intellectual aptitude, but other things get in the way. (It's not her fault nice science teacher got eaten by a giant praying mantis and that her favorite college prof turned out to be a crazed bio-demon engineer whose creation made Frankenstein look like My Little Pony.)
2)She kicks ass on the SAT and is admitted to Northwestern (duty alone pushes her to attend the local branch of UC-Sunnydale).
And 3) She changes over time (and is still evolving as a character in the Season 8 comics) - and isn't the ability to grow as an individual the clearest sign of an open mind and intelligence?
But if you don't want to believe me, well "that's your purgative." (Ahem, that's a quote from Buffy's kid sister, Dawn (Season 6, 'Tabula Rasa.' And in case you were wondering - Buffy corrects her language.)