Do Your Readers Have to Like Your Heroine?

In the last post, I maintained that you have to like or at least understand your heroine. So, it seems redundant to ask if your readers need to like her, too.

But the surprising answer is NO. Not if your heroine is compelling.

What is compelling?

In The 9.17% Solution, one of my protagonists was Jamie, a manipulative, scheming, damaged young man who plots his way up the corporate ladder.

One reader of an early draft announced, “I hate Jamie.”

Enough to sink the heart of any writer. “Did it make you want to stop reading?” I asked tentatively.

To which he replied, “No, I had to keep going to make sure the bastard got what he deserved.”

Writer heart started repumping.

That was when I realized that while it’s probably preferable your readers find your heroine sympathetic, it isn’t always necessary. You can do away with this requirement completely if she is compelling. That is, your reader wants to keep reading about her.

How do I make my heroine compelling?

Obvious next question: how? You’re gonna throw up your hands when I say I don’t know. I don’t know how I made Jamie compelling or whether he would be so for every reader. Perhaps the sense that Jamie was racing to an inevitable and unavoidable doom? Perhaps his flashes of humanity?

I bored everyone in my life for weeks, asking them to think of compelling literary characters. (Movies don’t count because the viewer has access to many more than the written word on which to base their judgement.)

It was tough. Anne of Green Gables? Scarlett O’Hara?

What it came down to is no paint-by-numbers list of characteristics or techniques. There didn’t seem to be a commonality among the suggestions; nor did everyone agree with every candidate.

But they all agreed that compelling characters made them want to find out what happened to the heroine even if she was despicable.

Again, it comes down to magic

I was forced to conclude that this is the magic that is writing.

You put the work into learning your craft. Showing when needed and telling when not. Supporting the plot with description rather than distracting. Growing your characters. All to create a continuous dream in which your reader can reside.

Beyond that, you get at the core of the story by telling the emotional rather than literal truth. And every day, you are naked on the page. Bringing your unflinching self to writing, no matter how shameful, wicked, or shocking it might seem to you.

And then, you hope for the best. Hope that the work, the honesty, and the caring will be rewarded with writing that nobody can put down. That magic will strike.

June 4, 2021December 10, 2021

Do You Have to Like Your Main Character?

Your main character—do you like him? Do you need to?

By and large, I would say that you do, if only to tolerate being around him while you’re writing the novel. And if you don’t like him, why would your readers? It’s hard to have sympathy or want things to work out for an unlikeable character.

Another way to think of this is as ‘getting’ your character. By that, I mean understanding your hero well enough so that you know how he would act outside the parameters of your story.

‘Getting’ my protagonist is something I almost always need to work on during the course of writing a novel. If I don’t feel I can see the world through his eyes, I have trouble moving forward.

Actually, I don’t like him

After consideration, you decide either that you don’t get your hero or you don’t like him. What can you do?

First, why don’t you like him?

You may find, on reading over the draft, that he comes across as superior or insensitive. The first instinct might be to go back and make him more humble or empathetic.

But I’d hold off for a moment to explore what’s behind these negative characteristics. In particular, ask yourself: Where is his humanness?

He’s superior. But people who look down their noses often are, deep down, scared that they themselves are wanting in some big and shameful way. Is that him? If it is and you can show the underlying fear and uncertainty, your readers (and probably you) will like him more or at least feel more sympathetic. You also create a much more complex character.

Similarly with his insensitivity. What underlies that? Does he walk all over people because he fears that if he doesn’t grab what he needs, he won’t get it? Doesn’t have to be that reason but whatever you decide on, ask yourself further questions. Why doesn’t he trust the world to give him what it needs? What would that look like? How would it come out?

So, although uncomfortable, not liking or getting your main character can actually produce some pretty useful results.

But don’t fall in love

So, now you like your main character. Or at least understand him. But don’t fall in love.

You know new love—the other person is perfect and can do no wrong. So, this is a boring character on the page. Allow the hero his dark side. You can understand him without excusing or explaining away his shadowy side. Makes for a much more interesting hero.

There is another, more pragmatic reason for liking your protagonist but still keeping a healthy distance. When you are editing your novel or having it edited, you or your editor may want/need to make ruthless cuts or alterations. It will be harder to see the necessity if you are convinced you have a perfect leading man.

Do I need to do this with all my characters?

I wouldn’t. First off, it’s a huge amount of work.

You might want to do the analysis of the antagonist if she is to be as complex as the protagonist. Another possibility is when the novel features two people who both figure prominently in the plot.

But I’d keep it to a dull roar. It really is a lot of think time.

Next post: do your readers have to like your protagonist? You may be surprised at the answer.

May 28, 2021May 29, 2021

The Morality of Writers

So here’s the thing: all fiction writers lie. It’s our job to make up what doesn’t exist or at most, might have existed. In this mode, morality doesn’t come into it. It’s fiction and everyone knows it. You’re not meant to believe it.

And yet, we all understand the power of fiction to encourage belief in readers. Who has not written a story in which friends/family believe themselves depicted? Despite our protests, they persist in believing that the story is grounded in reality.

At some level, readers see the story as truth even while accepting it is fiction. It is both the curse and the blessing of good writing.

Morality and emotional truth

Of course, you’re striving for believability in your writing. You want your reader to sink into the continuous dream you’ve created and completely surrender to it. To do this, I’ve urged you to tell the emotional truth, even if it is not the actual truth. Or in memoirs, to make up the stuff you can’t remember. I’ve even pointed out when your writing needs to be less reality based to seem more real on the page. All in pursuit of a compelling story.

Is there a point that this can be taken too far? Clearly, there is as my last post on Truman Capote illustrated. But there must be a thus far, no further point.

What is thus far, no further?

Yes, there’s the rub. We know we’d never go as far as Capote. But when would we know to draw back to avoid the damage he did? As with all things like this, we know there’s no hard and fast rule but surely there are some guideposts. How about:

I’ll never write to hurt someone

So, your mother is sure the unflattering picture you painted in your novel of the mother is her. She is hurt. Do you change the character to cause less offense? Do you let others decide what and how you write? Is your mother even right? Who can tell in these situations? You wrote what was true to you. What else can you do?

I’d avoid bringing criticism down on my head

So, off the top, you’d censor yourself with respect to the type of story you choose, rein in how outrageous the characters can be, omit acute observations on life that might be controversial, and ensure the ending of the novel is morally satisfying. My god, does that sound like a boring story!

Nothing is ever universally praised or adored, no matter how much we writers wish for it. To write to avoid censure is to shrink your imagination to a timid, fearful thing which can hardly be seen.

My unique world view

I certainly don’t have the answer to this dilemma. The best I’ve come up with for me is that what I write is from my own unique view of the world. I don’t expect everyone to agree with or approve of the writing that comes out of it.

I’m trying to write a compelling story which reflects the truth inside me.

I believe that if you don’t keep yourself or your reality at the center of your writing, you aren’t being you on the page. At most, you’re being who you think people want you to be. And yet, even if you succeed in this dubious goal, they won’t like the finished product. Exactly because it doesn’t reflect the real you and readers can pick that up.

I know, kind of a crummy answer—but the best I can do.

May 21, 2021May 28, 2021

Capote—2005 Film

Capote

Capote—2005 Film

Okay, to be clear, I’m talking about the 2005 film, Capote in which the brilliant

Philip Seymour Hoffman portrays Truman Capote as he is writing, or trying to finish, his novel In Cold Blood.

The author Truman Capote reconstructs the 1959 murder of the Clutter family by Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock. But he cannot finish the non-fiction novel because he lacks an ending and a detailed account of how the killers committed the act.

He befriends the killers, especially Perry Smith, by flattery, persuasion and promises of help to get the details he feels he must have. Although he stays connected to them through the appeals of their death sentences, he knows he needs them to die in order to have the dramatic climax his story demands. A review by the late Roger Ebert provides an excellent analysis of the film but I want to focus on one aspect of it.

Guilt and Capote

Although the 1965 publication of In Cold Blood was massively successful and revealed a new way to amalgamate fiction and non-fiction, it greatly damaged Capote himself.

He felt enormous guilt for the way that he had manipulated the two young men to get the details he needed of the murders. Capote recognized that he both cared for them as people and exploited them. He also wanted their execution not only to provide an ending to his book but to rid himself of the unwanted friendship.

His guilt was so boundless that he started to drink and self-medicate heavily and never completed another book. He died in 1984 of liver failure.

Guilt and writing

Capote is obviously an extreme case of the writer’s obsession to get at both the truth and a good novel.

But when I saw the movie, I insisted that two friends go see it. We discussed whether we felt that passion. And we all admitted that we did. Although hopefully none of us would go as far as Capote did to assuage his obsession, we nevertheless recognized the desire to capture the perfect story, the flawless seizure of the moment.

We also discussed how far we might go ourselves in this pursuit. We take our observations of the people around us and thinly disguise them as characters in our stories. The portrayals need not be accurate or fair or true. Nor kind nor generous. Because it’s fiction.

Do we feel guilty? Well, occasionally maybe as little twinge but the answer is to change more details of the character so that it is less recognizable as the real person. It is not to ask if by doing this we aren’t at one end of the continuum for which Capote provides the other anchor. Next post: The Morality of Writers.

May 14, 2021March 24, 2021

Creating Reliably Unreliable Narrators

In the last post, we talked about ways in which unreliable narrators can be unreliable. This post will take the types discussed last time and work through what you need to make each sort unreliable but still credible.

Narrators with believable unreliability

We believe her from the get-go

In this type, we don’t know until the end that the narrator wasn’t telling the truth. You need to pay attention to:

Keep the reader entertained. Because the big reveal is at the end, you need to keep the unsuspecting reader interested. The story must work as a story, even without the twist ending. Otherwise, the reader may not bother to keep reading.

Drop hints. Having said that, drop hints along the way that the reader will not pick up as significant until the ending and which allow him to re-evaluate what he thought was happening.

Have a good reason for the ending. That is, the shock ending must make sense in the context of the story. If it doesn’t, you risk a Deus ex Machina. Or in the vernacular, your reader will be left with a what-the-hell? feeling. So, “I was unreliable just because I thought it would be fun,” doesn’t cut it.

We’re not sure of whether she’s telling the truth

Here, the suspicion comes up somewhere in the story that the heroine isn’t truthful.

Keep clues ambiguous. For as long as you can, keep the clues as to the heroine’s real nature equivocal. Did she not see Larry or was she avoiding him? The longer you can keep the reader guessing, the better.

Resolve ambiguity. I suppose it’s possible to end the novel with the reader no wiser than when he started. Might work but prepare for lots of angry letters. Because the reader has a theory of what is going on, he needs an ending that has him shouting either, “Ah ha! I knew I was right!” or “Wow, I didn’t see that coming! “ Either way, the ending can’t just whimper off. It needs a clear resolution.

Pretty sure she’s lying

Cue early on. Very early on, let the reader know what kind of story you’re planning. The heroine being taller than a tree would do it as would her boast of being faster than a car.

Have satisfying ending. The ending needs to pull all the exaggeration and fibs together in some way. I know this sounds a bit vague but you are going for your reader smiling at the ridiculousness of the ending while still finding it satisfying. It doesn’t have to be any more likely or true than the rest of the story but it has to feel like it coalesces the disparate elements.

Believes what she is saying

Make heroine’s assumptions credible. This type is very similar to the first type in that we need to believe what the heroine believes. If her flights of fancy are too obvious, the reader may start to doubt her.

Drop clues, of course. But again, the clues need to be super carefully laid. If the reveal is to work, the reader cannot pull out of the continuous dream to think, “Really? If she believes this, why is she doing that?”

This might be a walk-before-you-run thing

My inclination would be to avoid using unreliable narrators until you’re pretty comfortable writing reliable ones. It’s challenging enough to create a believable tale; it’s even tougher juggling the conventions of the novel if you’re still working on getting the rules down pat.