Like, Totally
This'll seem both entirely intuitive and maybe abstract at the same time, but one of the challenges I suppose I've never hurdled is the likeability of my characters.
If anything is perhaps a barrier for prospective readers of my books, it's whether or not I've made likeable characters. I'll talk more about them specifically further down in this post, but for the moment, there's a question of what makes a character likeable to begin with.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think relatability is probably a big part of it -- people like what they can relate to, and tend to dislike what they can't relate to.
As I've mentioned in other posts, I've always been part of the "freaks & geeks" subset, owing to my loving embrace of Punk as a teen (easily the most impactful music on me in terms of framing my outlook).
Ergo, what I consider a likeable character is probably not the sort of character that norms might like. I'm always a misfit and outlier, and so the characters I create tend to be that, but they're not necessarily sad and miserable outliers -- rather, they tend to be okay with that, and even defiantly so.
My characters operate on the outside looking in, on the fringes. They're not milling in the barnyard; rather, they're out in the wilderness beyond the family farm.
What I'm saying is normies aren't going to like my books, because they won't be able to relate to my characters. And I'm not going to write normie characters (particularly as protagonists).
Sure, people like to pretend that they're all rebels and misfits, but the pressure to conform is huge, and most do so.
If they do ever read, they look for characters that help reinforce their sense of themselves. A character that seems too beyond their experience is going to feel alien and unpleasant.
Looking at my characters, I think there's a lot to them, but if people can't relate to them, I don't know what to say. In writing circles, they take shortcuts by giving characters particular weaknesses and quirks that build reader sympathy for them.
And I'm sure that works -- afflict a character and you'll build sympathy and empathy with a reader IF they can relate to what that character's experiencing.
That was probably my biggest mistake with SAAMAANTHAA, the first novel I put out there. Samantha Hain is a hipster, a wannabe artist, a scenester and striver -- she yearns for creative validation, and only finds it after becoming a werewolf, which unleashes a brutal, monstrous creativity rooted in destruction that she'd never tapped in life.
From my POV, that's a compelling character arc. But I know from seeing people react to that novel that they hate those characters (I still maintain that I nicked the hipster jugular so sharply that hipsters get pissed off by that book). There are certainly hateworthy characters in that book, but that novel is heavily centered on the creative life, the life of an artist, and what you do, how it consumes you.
Since most readers aren't particularly creative and even fewer are artists, I suppose I narrowcast SAAMAANTHAA. I didn't write it for a wide audience.
Whereas RELICT, one of my most popular books, has a protagonist, Paige Wilkins, who more readers can relate to. She's a sort of fish out of water (pun intended) who's forced to deal with a sea monster. There's an elemental purity to the conflict and the plot of the story that resonates with readers.
It's a more relatable story in that Paige is just vacationing and finds herself in a struggle for her life. More readers are clearly able to relate to Paige than to Samantha. I didn't set out to make Paige more relatable; she simply was the "Final Girl" of that story, and rose to the occasion, whereas Sam was a wannabe among a group of hipsters who descended into true monstrosity -- maybe that's just a journey readers don't want to take.
I may deconstruct other books of mine that way, because I'm sort of curious if there are other insights I might glean from them with the benefit of objectivity and distance.
Again, I love all the characters I've made, and they're relatable to me, but I'll always side with the smart-assed, misunderstood misfit when push comes to shove.
If anything is perhaps a barrier for prospective readers of my books, it's whether or not I've made likeable characters. I'll talk more about them specifically further down in this post, but for the moment, there's a question of what makes a character likeable to begin with.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think relatability is probably a big part of it -- people like what they can relate to, and tend to dislike what they can't relate to.
As I've mentioned in other posts, I've always been part of the "freaks & geeks" subset, owing to my loving embrace of Punk as a teen (easily the most impactful music on me in terms of framing my outlook).
Ergo, what I consider a likeable character is probably not the sort of character that norms might like. I'm always a misfit and outlier, and so the characters I create tend to be that, but they're not necessarily sad and miserable outliers -- rather, they tend to be okay with that, and even defiantly so.
My characters operate on the outside looking in, on the fringes. They're not milling in the barnyard; rather, they're out in the wilderness beyond the family farm.
What I'm saying is normies aren't going to like my books, because they won't be able to relate to my characters. And I'm not going to write normie characters (particularly as protagonists).
Sure, people like to pretend that they're all rebels and misfits, but the pressure to conform is huge, and most do so.
If they do ever read, they look for characters that help reinforce their sense of themselves. A character that seems too beyond their experience is going to feel alien and unpleasant.
Looking at my characters, I think there's a lot to them, but if people can't relate to them, I don't know what to say. In writing circles, they take shortcuts by giving characters particular weaknesses and quirks that build reader sympathy for them.
And I'm sure that works -- afflict a character and you'll build sympathy and empathy with a reader IF they can relate to what that character's experiencing.
That was probably my biggest mistake with SAAMAANTHAA, the first novel I put out there. Samantha Hain is a hipster, a wannabe artist, a scenester and striver -- she yearns for creative validation, and only finds it after becoming a werewolf, which unleashes a brutal, monstrous creativity rooted in destruction that she'd never tapped in life.
From my POV, that's a compelling character arc. But I know from seeing people react to that novel that they hate those characters (I still maintain that I nicked the hipster jugular so sharply that hipsters get pissed off by that book). There are certainly hateworthy characters in that book, but that novel is heavily centered on the creative life, the life of an artist, and what you do, how it consumes you.
Since most readers aren't particularly creative and even fewer are artists, I suppose I narrowcast SAAMAANTHAA. I didn't write it for a wide audience.
Whereas RELICT, one of my most popular books, has a protagonist, Paige Wilkins, who more readers can relate to. She's a sort of fish out of water (pun intended) who's forced to deal with a sea monster. There's an elemental purity to the conflict and the plot of the story that resonates with readers.
It's a more relatable story in that Paige is just vacationing and finds herself in a struggle for her life. More readers are clearly able to relate to Paige than to Samantha. I didn't set out to make Paige more relatable; she simply was the "Final Girl" of that story, and rose to the occasion, whereas Sam was a wannabe among a group of hipsters who descended into true monstrosity -- maybe that's just a journey readers don't want to take.
I may deconstruct other books of mine that way, because I'm sort of curious if there are other insights I might glean from them with the benefit of objectivity and distance.
Again, I love all the characters I've made, and they're relatable to me, but I'll always side with the smart-assed, misunderstood misfit when push comes to shove.
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