Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Creating Lovable and Enduring Characters

Its every writer’s dream to create  lovable and enduring characters: a protagonist or supporting characters readers accept into their life and follow his or her literary journey.  These characters  find instant acceptance, they immediately   befriend a legion of  readers eager to  get to know them better and follow them through the pages.

Several things help to create Lovable and Enduring  characters. Here are a few of my thoughts:

1. A Lovable character  has to  Believable. Such a  character must be  as realistic as it’s possible. Then there is an instant  connection  between the reader and character. He or she has to belong to  a world the readers can identify. He or she has to have a real set of problems, much like the problems that haunt us.

2.  A Imperfect Character  who has several  flaws  and  shortcomings  endears himself to the readers. Perfect characters or characters with very few flaws have an artificiality about them. We have an instant dislike for these superior than thou creatures. We love people  who are as flawed as us.

3. A character  who is not afraid  of  Failure is one every reader will love. This character will sacrifice everything to win the conflict, a lot like Harry Potter. This character intensifies the tension with his or her determined attitude to plough through, inspite of the odds stacking up against him/her.

 4. A character not scared to show his or her Emotions. Afterall when a reader is following you page after page, they need to see you  warts and all. They need to see your joys as well as sorrows, your fears as well as strengths, your worries and concerns.   

 5. A character who encounters both Success and Failure is one readers identify with. Isn’t life all about the  highs and lows. The lows the protagonist undergoes makes us rejoice when he or she experiences a high. If a character keeps tasting failure without a bite of success, then the readers label him or her as a loser. And if the character only meets with success, then he is labeled as an overachiever, and the readers somewhere start resenting him.  

6. A character who has  several Inner Demons to conquer. This is as realistic as it can get and also becomes a mirror image of  all  of us.  Life is all about conquering fears. We have as many inner conflicts to overcome as  external conflicts to battle. And our fights with our inner demons is a constant one.

7. A character who arouses our Sympathy and wriggles his/her way into a corner of our heart forges a  bond : albeit a bond of sympathy. James (James and the Giant peach), Mathilda, poor Harry Potter  mistreated by his uncle and aunt, and bullied by his cousin, all wormed their way into our hearts.

8. A character who is slightly Mysterious; has several layers to his personality which have not yet been revealed, wins over anytime. The motives of such characters are not revealed immediately. The intrigued reader  is curious to know more about the character and sticks on despite the plot slackening in places.

What do you think goes into creating lovable and enduring characters? Which trait in a character appeals to you the most? How do you go all go about creating a well rounded character, a character readers will love? We all are eagerly awaiting your tips to perfect our own characters.

19 comments:

  1. Great post, Rachna. I think these points are all very important to think about when we are developing and writing our characters. Bridging that connection from the character to the reader is critical.

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  2. Great points. For me characters that have good qualities as well as bad ones are important. Because those are the ones that are true to life. They endure, because folks can identify with them. We all have good characteristics and not so good ones too. The trick is, making the good shine through. I mean even our antags have something good about them. Readers love to hate a bad guy. But even more, they like a reason to feel sorry for him/her.

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  3. I like characters who are vulnerable but not wimpy. I want to feel that I can see their inner strength and beauty in spite of the circumstances they may be facing. I love to cheer for the underdog!

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  4. Awesome list, Rachna! I think #2 and #5 are especially important.

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  5. Great list! So very true. I love a real, vulnerable but strong character.

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  6. I love characters that I can sympathize with, and with a chunky lack of confidence. That always gets me!

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  7. This post really got me to thinking. I guess I like layered characters, both heroes and villains, who make discoveries about themselves, and the other characters as they go along. I like being surprised by the characters. But, first of all, if I'm going to care about the protagonist, I need to see endearing faults mixed in with sterling traits he or she might not even be aware of.

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  8. Fantastic, well thought out list. I like characters whom I can relate to the most...especially the ones who are open about their flaws.

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  9. Great post! It has made me realise my MC needs a little bit of failure. I think it's all going too well for him. Poor guy, he's in for it now.

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  10. This is definitly my weak area. I am hoping my current MC is someone a reader will relate to and fall in love with. I find I have to tone my characters down so that they don't come across too ambivalent.

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  11. What a great list, and I need to remember every single point. As I read through my first drafts, I can definitely see where I've gone wrong. Sometimes they're too snarky, sometimes too perfect. Revision, revision, revision!

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  12. I agree with you on all these points! It's so important to make your characters seem as realistic as possible.

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  13. This is a great list and so helpful! I agree that sympathetic characters seem to really stick with readers. I also love characters with slight contradictions in them. This is such a great reference for all of us!

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  14. Interesting list. I like imperfect characters the best, and I do believe all characters ought to be slightly imperfect, besides being other things, because as a race, none of us are perfect :)

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  15. Love this list! I'm taking notes. I think sometimes that's the problem with my characters, that they're bot that lovable. It could be the flawed writer's fault. ;)

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  16. For instant intrigue, I go for showing heroism, humor and/or intelligence. Any of those will win my respect and admiration in a heartbeat. Of course, then the character has to grow in the ways you've outlined here AND keep those traits I fell in love with. No small feat. Great post!

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  17. Great post! I guess it all depends on the story... I think for most stories, people want to relate to the characters and like them. But I know some authors have very flawed characters they are not intending to be loveable.

    I personally like characters that seem real, but that are not necessarily majorly flawed. Sometimes when characters do something really foolish, I don't relate to them more, I just disconnect because it doesn't seem realistic to me. It's a fine balance.

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  18. Love this post! I also loved Debra Dixon's book Goal, Motivation and Conflict - completely CHANGED my MS.

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  19. Great reminders, Rachna.I think the key to creating three-dimensional, likable characters is to really get to know them. Walk in their shoes so that you, as author, are feeling, breathing, and living their lives. LIke you mentioned, it's important for readers to see the flaws, experience in the emotion. If you've done your homework and really worked on character profiles, the authenticity of the characters will shine through.

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