[This message has been edited by Rina (edited July 10, 2001).]
 

Rina cited Ender's Game (presumably Ender Wiggin) as a good example of a character to which the reader becomes attached. I agree. I found I could sympathize with Ender's problems and (usually) admire his solutions. I became very attached to his feelings.

Of course you can make a great, classic character without sparking love for your heroes.

I am struggling with this issue right now. For me the question is, how attached do I want my readers to be to my characters?

Consider one of the all time classic characters: Ian Flemming's James Bond. I admire the way Band gets himself out of tricky situations, but I have never cared about his feelings the way I care about Ender (or Bean, or Tom Builder in The Pillars of the Earth).

The Science Fiction genre is replete with non-sympathetic characters. Asimov's Hari Seldon, for example.
 

Even in Card's Shadow books, Bean is loved even though he's an arrogant know-it-al overconfident ass at many points. But you still love him, because Card leaves Achilles to be hated.
Or maybe you love him because he's little, rejected, and you sympathize with him for trying to be a good kid when he lives in his misguided world. You also respect him, as you do Ender, because he was the only one smart enough to tell Poke to kill Achilles, even if he was the smallest and telling Poke that didn't really help him at all. More sympathy for Bean.

But how many of you could honestly say that you did not find yourself close to tears at at least one point in Children of the Mind? Card leads us through 3000 years of this boy's life, and then makes us watch him die. I think it's funny in a sick sort of way that Card kept Ender living in Peter, because that was we never really have to let go of the hero of the story.

You see how we love the characters in the books, either because we sympathize for them, we find common ground with them, or we just have someone else to hate more, so we don't realize the flaws of the hero, or we give excuses for his flaws.

In my own stories, I can never get that. I can never make one person so hated that you love the better one, and I can never make one so loved that I can't bear to kill him. How do you do it? How does Card do it?
 

I joined a new crit group and started putting my novel through it and started getting torn apart by one of the members--then another--because the book was so chilling and disturbing--when I asked what it was that disturbed them no one could tell me yet I had done it! I was elated--yet I could not figure out how to tell anyone how I had done it (now there's an awkward sentence re-word please?) I had done what I wanted and I could see that I had done it. But I could not explain how I had done it, because---I didn’t know.

Sound weird? It does. I think the character love/hate is the same way. But as I have grown as a writer since writing that I did it book I’ll give this one a stab. First off—you have to love the character or hate them. How can you relate something to the reader that you don’t feel. Give your “bad guys” some redeeming quality that we find hard to resist. Does he love children, rescue abandon kittens, carry a photo of his mother? Even if he is the character that you want the readers to identify with you need to make him endearing in some way otherwise he’s the faceless evil in the dark. Take the bad guy that delights in the torture (in one form or another) of your main character (the good guy)---what if he did something totally nasty to her because she dared to love someone else---ok that’s expected—then give the reader the unexpected—have him wonder what it would be to be loved the way she loves mister x---he goes ahead and commits his evil anyway with the thoughts that he has been as he is for too long to change now. Done right this can give the reader some way to identify with him—and to feel even more sorry for your main character.

In the same way don’t make your good character all good. No one likes a “goody two shoes”. Unless the goody two shoes is a hypocrite and they are no longer the good character. Put temptation out there in a way the reader can identify with. Have him flirt with his secretary, have her flirt with the guy fixing the copier at work----a candy bar kept in a drawer at work and a diet cheated on, an extra trip taken to town when the money is short to just see the posters for the newest movie that can’t be afforded—then how does the main account for the gas that’s gone?

Think of what you love and hate about people. What makes you love and or hate them? If you can love them and hate them then your reader will too because your feeling will transfer to the page. If you don’t care why should the reader and I mean truly care, not just say of course I care—I’ve written death scenes I cried through while writing them—then the reader isn’t going to care either.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

Shawn

[This message has been edited by srhowen (edited July 17, 2001).]
 

What made me love Ender was the fact that he felt pain, and we have all felt pain. What makes a person love a character is understanding.

That's why I loved Ender and Petra and Bean and hated Achilles.

Yes, you get inside Achilles head, but unless you're a serial killer, you can't understand Achilles.

I can understand Ender. I've had people that mistreated me. I've run the gamut of everything he's felt. I understand why and how and when. I understand Ender, and that makes me love him.

And that's why we hate Achilles, because he's so foreign. That's why we hate Stilson. We can't understand him. He's alien to us. We first see him abusing Ender.

But we see Ender first in a moment of pain, which we've all experienced pain. We understand pain.

When we understand, we love. That's it. Make us understand the character, and despite ourselves we will learn to love him/her.

-Meg

****
"They're getting a brand new temple. It hasn't even been prayed in yet."
- Colonel Blake
"For the Good of the Outfit"
M*A*S*H

[This message has been edited by Megara (edited July 17, 2001).]