Discussion: Sympathetic Characters

[analect]

All right, I figured it was time for a discussion thread. Thought we might throw one of these around every week or so and see where it gets us. Please feel free to make more, and better ones.

In the meantime, your opinions: show me them!



Okay, this is partially a selfish thing. I'm currently revising the last quarter of a romantic drama-thingy novel where the characters are making me lose the will to live. I just want to scream 'Pull yourself together', but they have backstory that necessitates them being irritating for a while.

It got me thinking, though: how sympathetic do characters have to be for us - as writers or as readers - to identify with them and get behind them?

It's an interesting one. As human beings, we all have foibles, and it's often the flaws and failings in characters that draw us to them. Detective fiction, for example, wouldn't work without its stock cast of 'mavericks'.

Of course, characters who are deeply flawed - right up to the anti-heroes and antagonists of fiction - can alienate readers, as can those who are so nice they never do anything to drive the action of a story.

So, where's the line for you? As a reader, and as a writer? Do you enjoy characters whose strength you can identify with, even if they're not 'nice' people, or do you think it's more important to be able to connect with them on a more human, and humane, level?

Comments

[delphi]

Most of my favourite characters (both as a reader and a writer) are people I probably wouldn't get on with in real life, if that says anything. My own personal line doesn't have to do with likeability or even believability: it has to do with intelligence and agency. Nothing will turn me off a story faster than a convenient narrative lack of intelligence or an inconvenient emotional lack of it.

For instance, if it weren't for the setting, built-in mysteries, and interesting side characters of the Harry Potter series, I probably wouldn't have finished it, because I can't stand it when protagonists demonstrate a lack of reasonable curiosity or common sense just to make the author's job easier.

Likewise, I actually never did finish Robin Hobb's Farseer series, despite investing in five out of the six books, because I kept banging my head on the wall out of frustration at the emotionally obtuse decisions the protagonist just kept making, to the detriment of himself and those around him. And despite being told from all corners that I'd love it, I really didn't enjoy Sarah Waters' Night Watch because of how the characters' largely unresolved misery sprang from their own poor decisions and lack of agency.

I don't require a character to be smart, but I want to see them at least attempting to proactively engage with their world instead of merely responding to the people and events around them—and if they're not, I want to know why.

[prisoner_24601]

This is a great point. I agree that a lack of agency and conveniently selective intelligence for the convince of the author drives me crazy and is a real deal breaker when it comes to investing as a reader in a character.

[analect]

Seconded! And *wave* to new members - thanks for being here.

I always think of Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, who gets such bad press for basically doing nothing except look shocked and offended for the entirety of the book. For her time, she was probably more a typical female than most of Austen's heroines, but she's definitely not to modern tastes. Perhaps we require characters to be more active because the function of the novel is more about doing than observing these days?

...or maybe it's just very irritating to endure a character who's apparently too thick to breathe and think at the same time.

[niniane]

I personally best like characters who are entirely unsympathetic jerks. *shrugs* Or at least deeply flawed. (This is why I tend to like villains better than heroes.)

Now I think it depends on the story - you can push this too far - but I can definitely get into a story where basically everyone is a selfish jerk. And I think that a lot of people can, too.

I mean, think of how well Scarlett O'Hara is. And basically she's a cold blooded, calculating bitch who spends an entire novel trying to steal someone else's husband. She gets married to three other guys, but only for money/out of spite (stealing one of them from her own sister, another from a friend), doesn't even like her own children, and sees nothing wrong with using prisoners as free slave labor (and horribly mistreating them). And yet she's loved. So I figure that using her as an example, you can write a real monster well and still have him/her be wildly popular.

[prisoner_24601]

I think it's important to note though that Scarlett O'Hara wouldn't probably work as a character if Margaret Mitchell wasn't such a damned good writer. There's a real fine line between characters who are jerks and yet still great characters, and characters who are jerks and are just annoying.

I think two things really make the difference:

1. The author knows that their character is a jerk, instead of thinking they're the coolest thing ever...

which leads to:

2. The author has everyone else in the novel react in a realistic way to said jerkiness.

And that's the difference between an awesome character like Scarlett O'Hara and an annoying character like Anita Blake. Anita Blake is also a raging bitch, and yet Laurel Hamilton seems to think she's not, and it's reflected in the writing by the way the other characters unrealistically react to her (i.e. all want to have sex with her or are total jealous bitches/villains). I can't tell you how many times I've read a novel think "Damn, this would be sort of awesome if the author realized what a bastard this character is and rolled with it" and have instead tossed the book against the wall after the character has been a total asshole, and yet everyone thinks they're the greatest/nicest/most awesome thing ever.

[niniane]

I'm with you on that one. Some characters are harder to write than others. A character who is basically a wild and crazy bitch as protagonist is much harder than one who is basically nice and bland.

I agree as well on your two comments. Scarlett comes off as spunky rather than evil incarnate in large part as it's obvious that she's defying society and actually suffering from doing so in some way. If she was being a raving bitch and everyone was all, "You go girl!" it would feel very off putting. (I mean, the only one who really likes her is Melanie.) And even Scarlett has a few redeeming qualities, and there are reasons given for at least some of her bitchiness. (OK, maybe not her overwhelming desire to steal Ashley, but at least when she nicked Frank from her sister, she was doing it to save Tara, not because she likes pissing off family members.)

Plus, if everyone likes your character (other than the evil ones who are just jealous), it comes off as very Mary Sue. No one is liked by everyone.

[noctuary]

I actually find anti-heroes and irredeemable arseholes more sympathetic as characters than your generic hero. There's a reason Vimes is more popular - and a way better story-carrying character - than Carrot. (Although I consider Vimes more of a redeemable arsehole, I must admit.) It's why everyone likes Batman more than Superman, and Lestat more than Louis. Me, I'm the girl hanging out with Emily and Charlotte reading "BYRONIC" magazine while Anne sits off to the side calling us idiots.

(DUDE WATCHIN' WITH THE BRONTES!)

I actually can't think of a character I really, really like who isn't deeply flawed. My favourite books revolve around main characters who are really unpleasant. Phantom of the Opera has its murderous and crazed Erik, Lolita has its Humbert Humbert (who I can't help but like even though he's technically a ephebophiliac rapist, because oh my god, seriously).

I mean let's face it. No one watches Silence of the Lambs for Clarice Starling, and no one watches it for the antagonist Jame Gumb. They watch it for goddamn Hannibal Lecter. I was so damn happy at the end of Hannibal (the book) where he....... wait, spoilerz. In that one especially our Hannibal the Cannibal technically falls on the "protagonist" end of the spectrum, despite actually eating people. And you like him anyway because damnit, he's got style.

I find it quite hard to root for a protagonist who's just a good person without a massive list of flaws. In various novels driven by such characters I throw my emotional investment behind a supporting character who has these flaws - for example, in the Belgariad it was Silk and the Emperor.

That said, I find it difficult to write characters with massive flaws myself, unless they're men. What am I saying. Men are easy, actually. Most of my major player male characters have massive issues. One of them is an emotionally unbalanced drug addict, two of them spend a lot of time either drunk or hung over and another spends most of his time in a haze of self-hatred. Having said that, my favourite is an absolute charmer whose only real character flaws are general arrogance, a tendency to spend five straight hours working on a poem and preferring caffeine to food. But you'd understand if you met him. I'm a little bit in love with him, not least because he actually got the plot moving when the MC was depressed, apathetic and not doing anything.

I think female protagonists catch a lot more flak for being arseholes than male ones, because they just fall into the "bitch" category and don't come out. So they're harder to write, and harder to sympathise with... but I think that's a societal thing more than anything else, you know? (As an aside, I really hated that O'Hara woman, although I've only seen the movie. Didn't really think ANYONE liked her, to be honest. She's just so unintelligent and irritating. It wasn't a bad movie, but spent most of the movie going "WTF IS IT SERIOUSLY NOT OVER YET?! How LONG is this movie?!" and swooning over Clark Gable and I think I fell asleep like an hour before the end.) Given that most of my protagonists are female, this means their flaws are usually minimal, and less about being mean cruel bitches and more about being emotional screw-ups. I did have one that was technically an antagonist in one of them, and I tried to make her something of a careless, heartless femme fatale. In the end she and the protagonist fell in love, or at least in lust. I started out with the intention of making them both irredeemable arseholes and then killing them off at the end, but I couldn't bear to do it, so instead they lived happily ever after for the foreseeable future.

[analect]

Bonus points for quoting Hark! A Vagrant. ;D
Also, caffeine *is* a viable alternative to food... isn't it?

Seriously, I think it's a really interesting point about the difference in redeemable and irredeemable asshattery for male and female protagonists. Massive, massive debate, but very interesting. Society deems women 'bitches' in the same breath as marking men 'mavericks' or 'single-minded' for essentially the same behaviour, so I think it's a valid point about feminine 'flaws' in fiction frequently being to do with emotional screw-ups. I also think we all love characters - male or female - who have the ability or opportunity to say 'fuck you' to society in the way most of us can't. We all want the bad guy to win at least once in a while.

Also, I think it's important that even dyed-in-the-wool arseholes often act from 'pure' motives; things or causes they genuinely believe in. The male protagonist in my most recent - aside from being dead for most of the book (which didn't cramp his style) - was a manipulative, self-obsessed little sod, yet with some deep-seated and oddly traditional values. Whether you find that irritating or endearing... up to you.

Further to that, picking up on niniane's Mary Sue point - I think the writer always needs to leave interpretation open. Even if you love the character to bits, if they're ever going to feel 'real', they need the freedom for some people to dislike them.

[intothewood]

I've had entirely too much wine to be treated solemnly, but I've read the replies and my contribution is that multifaceted characters are the most interesting. Even the most evil characters have a motivation, something that brings about a sympathetic response. I don't think a character drawn as wholly villainous or wholly virtuous is anything more than a caricature, and is responded to as such. As pointed out, throwaway characters have limited function, and they're not built for emotional response but merely to steer a concept. At times that can be a valid use, but I would hazard to say that in most cases it's not something a seasoned writer would use.