Writing Wednesday: What the Character Wants

I had a phone conversation with my editor yesterday that has had me thinking a lot about characters and what makes an audience connect to a character and root deeply for that character. There are a lot of books that are well-written that don't make me feel like I *have* to find out what happens next. And sometimes in hyped, best-selling books, I can feel a little manipulated into wanting to know what happens next. Some people call this "plot," but for me, everything always comes down to character. I don't care about plot. I don't care about saving the world. Really, I don't. I care about characters. I care about people being rescued and surviving, yes. But even more than that, I care about people getting what they really want and what has been denied them for a long, long time. I also care about characters becoming a better version of themselves than they are in the beginning. I care about their development, so long as they care about it, as well.

In The Hunger Games, I care about Katniss saving Primrose. It's certainly an old device, to put a child in jeopardy and then have a parent or someone in loco parentis have to risk his/her own life to save the child. I think that plot has to be about a third of all the plots in the world. Another third are ones where lovers are in jeopardy. The other third is about capturing a big white whale (I think). Anyway, it works every time. Or almost every time. It works as well as the author is able to make me care about the child and about the relationship between the child and the adult. I have to read to the end of the book. I have to see that final reunion. Everything that happens before that I want to rush through, and that sense of wanting to rush is part of what makes me turn pages. Each scene that refuses to end the story for me also tantalizes me, holding out the promise of the ending I want, but not giving it to me quite yet. It's a strip tease of sorts, making me watch until the last moment.

In Twilight, I think Stephanie Meyer is brilliant in making me want to know what happens next. It's not about the vampires and about the threat to Bella's life, though. It's all about does she get what she wants? Does she get Edward? Does she get him to notice her? Does she get him to kiss her? Does she get him to tell her more about his life? Does she find out his secret? Does she get him to stop pushing her away? Does she get him to marry her? Does she get him to make love to her? Does she get him to make her into a vampire? There are a thousand smaller goals that Bella wants and every chapter we are set up a new one and Meyer teases us to make sure that we get an answer at each step, and then are posed another question. And it absolutely makes sense, because the way that we humans are, we are never satisfied. Not with anything that we want, not really. There is always something else. But with Bella, what she wants is all about Edward, tightly connected. And anything that puts that in jeopardy (and there are a lot of things) that makes us want to know even more what will the ending be. Even though we know it's going to be a happy ending. Because all romances are, aren't they? We still want to get there.

It helps if what the character wants is something that a huge number of readers are going to relate to. If the character wants to die a fiery death, the reader is going to have a problem with that unless it's presented in a way that makes absolute sense. The character wants rest. Tell why. Make the reader want to rest and feel along with the character. A driving desire or ambition in a main character isn't a necessity. There certainly are main characters who work without them. But it makes things a lot easier as a writer if your character stands up in the first chapter, points at what s/he wants, and says--that! In the end, this is one of the reasons I tend not to outline, because a character who wants something ends up being the engine of a novel, and all you have to do as a writer is start throwing obstacles in the way that make sense given the circumstances and the world you've built. You don't want the author to drive the story. You want the character to do it. (Not that I think characters really exist, but there's a kind of fiction that authors like to believe in while at work.)

The character almost has what s/he wants, and then it gets snatched away. There are a thousand ways to take it away, to make the reader root for the character to keep going, to keep chasing it. The snatching needs to be done in an appropriate way. But when you find yourself thinking--or shouting out loud--"Kiss him!" or "Kill her!" then you know that the writer has done it. You're hooked. You're rooting. You want a specific thing to happen and you'll read a whole novel to find out how it finally does. Yes?