A character I’ll suffer with–My evolving thoughts on likability
I just finished the final season of a beloved show this week–Justified. That finale’s got me thinking all over again about what makes a character likable and why it matters.
Throughout the show, my heart has been with the criminal antihero, Boyd Crowder.
Boyd, played by Walton Goggins
Usually over the US Marshall hero, Raylan Givens.
Raylan, played by Timothy Olyphant
From the beginning, I was anticipating a tragic ending, with mutually assured destruction. I won’t spoil it for you, but the ending was both surprising and pretty much perfect.
One thing I did not love about the final season–I fell out of love with Boyd. To me, he lost his thieves’ honor as he become more of a trapped animal than a man who lived by his own code.
As I mentioned last week, I also recently DNFd a novel my book group chose, because of a too shocking turn in the middle. I had found the two male POV characters who’d been introduced,so selfish and self-absorbed that I didn’t like them at all. Then a delightful female character came along and I was reengaged in the book, until the shocking thing happened. Because I liked that female character, I considered returning to the book, but I ultimately found I wasn’t interested in suffering with the male character who’d undergone a horrific loss. I had no compassion for the man, who’d seemed selfish to me. (Call me cold, but compassion is my day job, so I don’t force it in my reading.)
When I first began writing romance, I was clobbered by critique partners and editors with the importance of likable characters. I railed against it. Maybe it’s the priestly side of me that likes stories of redemption, which require someone starting out in need of it. Also, my reading taste runs far wider than just the romance genre, and I have often enjoyed books that were more intellectual than high drama. I enjoyed writing stories that, while juicy with conflict, probably tipped toward interesting over emotional.
But over time, writing has changed the way I read. I have read and critiqued SO much romance that I find myself bored by characters that don’t hook me as sympathetic and emotional pretty early on. I don’t always need them to save a cat, and I still love a good antihero, especially if we get tantalizing glimpses of his or her code of honor. I’m not sure if this is a case of my tastes conforming to the genre, or of my evolution as a reader.
Of course, this has me thinking: How do I make a character both interesting and likable?
How do you?
A related self discovery: books about characters who strike me as selfish and self-absorbed really bore me. I can think of a few I’ve read lately where the author tried to convince me this person wasn’t actually like that. Hey, look–they have friends, they have an honorable motive, etc. But a character’s inner monologue reveals the truth about them in a page, doesn’t it? All the little ways they are thinking me-me-me.
It turns out, I want a character to be thinking about their romantic interest, others they love, and a goal greater than him or herself (even if it’s a misguided, antiheroic one) more often than they are thinking of their own self-interest and personal gratification. (Maybe I loved Boyd because he did do this, when often all Raylan wanted was the satisfaction of bringing Boyd down.)
I’m pretty patient to see how this develops in a particular character. I know a lot of people set aside books in the opening chapters, but I tend to quit before the black moment. If I don’t care about the characters enough, I just won’t go into the dark place with them. I go into dark places a lot at work, and with friends, and sometimes in my own family. In real life, I try to offer compassion to anyone, whether my narrow heart judges them worthy or not. After all, we know underserved compassion can transform someone into a lovable human being. But in my reading for fun, I let myself be a harsher judge–I’m not going to suffer with a selfish jerk.
What about you? What makes a character lovable or loathsome to you? Do you like antiheroes and people in need of redemption? Do you put up with people IRL that you’d stack up on your DNF pile?
