This week: Character Attachment Edited by: Kitti the Red-Nosed Feline  
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What makes you laugh with and cry with your favourite characters? What can you do to make readers love yours?
This week's Action/Adventure Newsletter is all about character attachment.
Kitti the Red-Nosed Feline
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Have you watched the latest episode of Game of Thrones? It was quite something, wasn’t it? My sister lives in another country than I do, and the episodes are available there the next evening, so she had to wait to watch it and I had to wait discussing it with her – I didn’t want to spoil anything. After she’d watched it, she called me, still in tears. That’s what happens when you grow to care about characters.
Writing characters that readers will care about isn’t easy. When imagining someone your audience will love, the natural thing is to go for people you would love, and that often means someone who is everything good and kind. Going down that route, unfortunately, can lead to extremely boring and even tedious characters – I’m looking at you, Cyclops in the X-Men comics, and Tanis from the DragonLance novels. What you need are characters who are like real people, and real people have flaws. They make mistakes. Sometimes very bad mistakes. Problem is, you don’t want to lose people's sympathy for them when they make these mistakes.
In order to avoid losing your readers’ sympathy, they will need to understand the character’s motivation. Their background. Their feelings. Why are they the way that they are? What drives them?
A good example of this is George R. R. Martin’s Theon Greyjoy. Theon was taken as a prisoner when he was a kid, after his father rebelled against the king. He was placed as a ward with a family (the Starks) who were a part of crushing the rebellion.
The Starks were pretty kind to him but, of course, the fact remained that he was a captive, away from his family, and that he’d never truly belong. He formed a bond with one of the Stark kids, but they’d never truly be brothers.
When war breaks out Theon fights at his friend’s side. But when he’s trusted with delivering a proposal of alliance to his father, Theon has dreams of returning home the hero. He envisions a great welcome. The son of their lord, their future ruler, surely people would be waiting for him, filled with joy?
The reality is a harsh one. Nobody cares. They no longer know him. His own father receives him coldly and believes he has become too much like the Starks, their enemy. He may not even be in line for the lordship, as his sister has proven herself worthy in the years that Theon was away.
Naturally, then, Theon is keen to prove himself. Overly keen. If you haven’t read the books or watched the series, but want to, I don’t want to spoil too much for you, but Theon makes some terrible mistakes. He does some terrible things. At that point, the reader/viewer will feel a severe dislike for him, despite his sad past. Until he takes a journey of redemption...
It’s a tricky move having someone do terrible things and then trying to redeem him. His better actions cannot wipe out what he has done. It takes a lot to win the reader back over, and it is a slow process. You might not have the space to do so in a single novel, let alone in a short story.
A safer bet, then, if you aren’t planning a series of novels is to make your characters not too flawed, but not too perfect, either. People will struggle to bond with someone who is a smug goody two-shoes, and they’ll need time to take to a villain-turned-hero. As ever in the writing craft, it’s about finding that balance. It isn’t easy, but it feels good when you get it right.
Writers need to read. A lot. That’s pretty much a given. Perhaps ask yourself which characters you’ve most taken to. Who are the ones you laughed with and cried with? What endeared yourself to them? Why? Our answers will probably differ. I was always more into Spike and Willow than Buffy, more into Wolverine and Jubilee than Cyclops, more into Tasslehoff and Raistlin than Tanis. But Buffy, Cyclops and Tanis will have their fans, and that’s okay! The traits that make you love other authors’ characters can give you food for thought when creating your own.
Meanwhile, I am keeping my fingers crossed for my favourite Game of Thrones characters. May they survive the final three episodes. May they say, “not today”. Best of luck to yours, if you’re watching!
Kitti the Red-Nosed Feline
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Wishing you a week filled with inspiration,
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Action/Adventure: May 01, 2019 Issue [#9521]
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