Have you ever read a book where a major character died or had something terrible happen to them, and you didn’t even care? It’s happened to me a few times, and I think the reason for this is simple: the author hasn’t taken time to fully know the character or else doesn’t much like him or her. (Even if your main character is a murderer, you need to get your readers on his side, and you won’t do that unless you care for him yourself.)
Years ago I worked as a teacher and although my subject was art, part of my timetable was in a unit for kids with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. I discovered that although the kids we saw in the unit might be bolshie and disruptive in classes, in a one-to-one situation they were mostly polite and co-operative. Underneath the posturing and sullen behavior were kids who lacked confidence, kids who thought they weren’t good enough, kids who were scared of getting hurt. Sometimes they had been abused, sometimes they had been coping with deaths in their families, sometimes they had parents addicted to booze or drugs. Always they had needs not being met, and feeling being buried.
With possibly one exception, I liked every one of them. That one exception was a child I couldn’t seem to connect with, but even with him I knew there was something lurking underneath the surface, something I couldn’t reach. There was one particularly interesting kid – right after I had him one-to-one in the unit we both went to the art department where I taught his class. In the unit he was quiet, respectful and co-operative. Over in the art room he put on his mask again and switched to disruptive mode.
Sometimes I’d sometimes hear other teachers complain about the kids we saw in the unit. These teachers didn’t know the kids the way those of us who worked in the unit did; what they saw was just the disruptive behaviour, the rebellion, the lack of respect. That was part of them, it wasn’t all of them.
We need to be special unit teachers with our characters. Perhaps in some genres of fiction it is possible to get away with characters with no redeeming features, but if we want our novels to move readers to care about our characters, I think it’s worth spending time one-to-one with them. This way, just like those kids I worked with, we find out about their backgrounds, we discover why they are the way they are, we find out what they are hiding and why they feel the need to wear a mask. We grow to like to them, to wonder how they will get on when they are no longer with us. Instead of just stereotypes, our characters – even the “baddies” – become real people.
Photo: "Young Couple" by photostock via Freedigital photos