78 Characters and viewpoint

cion that came from strangeness.

And that's a good thing for us as writers, because the one thing we can't possibly control in our fiction is how much our readers are going to feel themselves similar to our characters. Wouldn't it be horrible if the only readers who could possibly sympathize with a character were the ones who were just like him? How large an audience would there ever have been for Amadeus? There are so few of us who would qualify as a musical genius with an obnoxious mocking attitude. Or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest-I've really never faced the choice of going to jail or being committed to a mental institution, have you? Both those plays (and films) depend absolutely on the audience developing enormous sympathy-no, love-for the main character. Yet in neither case did the author have the slightest hope of filling theaters with people who liked the character because he made a good first impression.

The liking that comes from a good first impression is immediate- and shallow. The dislike that comes from a bad first impression can be deeper; that's what makes bigotry such a powerful negative force. But both can be overcome by storytellers who have even stronger tools at hand.

Editorial Resistance

Alas, you are certain to run into editors or producers who don't know that there are other ways to arouse sympathy. For instance, how many writers have been told, "The audience for books is mostly women, so you need a strong woman character in this book"? Too many-especially considering that it isn't completely true. What is true is that if you use a male protagonist in a book whose audience will be primarily women, you won't get instant identification. You have to work a lot harder to make the character sympathetic. You have to be a better writer.

You also have to have an editor who actually understands how story-telling works. These are relatively rare; most will reject your story or book because "women won't like it." And because stories with male protagonists probably won't get published for a female market (like romance novels or women's magazines), the editors can "prove" their maxim by saying, "Look-the only thing that sells is stories about women."

There are plenty of examples besides women's fiction. When a producer optioned the film rights to my novel Ender's Game back in 1986, the first thing he decided (after the contract was signed) was, "Of course, the character of Ender has got to be sixteen." Since the entire story depends on Ender being an innocent, trusting child, I balked. "Look," said the producer, "the only way to have a hit sci-fi movie is to get the teen audience. And to get the teen audience, you've got to have a teenage hero."

"What aboutЈ.T.?" said I. "What about Poltergeist? What about Alien? What about-"

"Those are exceptions," he said.

Hi-ho, as Kurt Vonnegut would say.

It took producer Michael Douglas years of work to get One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest produced; there was tremendous resistance, in large part

What Should We Feel About the Character? 79

due to the "unlikable" main character. Now that we know that the film was a masterpiece, now that it won all those Academy Awards, it's easy to criticize those who doubted the story would work. They were wrong-about that story.

But the general principle has a foundation in truth: Making a weird or unpleasant character likable is very hard. So we shouldn't be too critical of editors or producers who tell us that it can't be done-they've seen so many manuscripts and screenplays that tried to do it and failed miserably.

So if you know you're writing for an audience of women or teenagers or blue-collar workers or college graduates, it's a lot easier to win their sympathy if you make your main character, the one you want them to like, a woman or a teenager or a blue-collar worker or a college graduate. Unless there's a compelling reason in the story to do otherwise, why borrow trouble?

Sympathy vs. Curiosity

While we tend to like characters that are like us, we also tend to be a little bored with them. It's strangeness, not familiarity, that excites our curiosity. It's hard to imagine a blander character than one who is exactly typical of a certain group. So even if you decide, for simplicity's sake, to use a main character-Nora-who is a member of the same community as your intended audience, you must also find ways to make Nora different and intriguing. Giving her a few attributes in common with the target audience starts you on the road toward sympathy-but doesn't get you very far along that road.

Since no two women or teenagers or blue-collar workers or college graduates are exactly alike, you couldn't possibly make Nora similar enough to everybody to attract the whole group anyway. The first impression that Nora gives the audience really has to accomplish no more than getting their attention. No matter whether the first impression was negative or positive, you will always end up relying on some of the other tools for creating lasting sympathy or antipathy.

CHARACTERS WE LOVE

Here are the devices that will make an audience tend toward lasting sympathy with a character.

Physical Attractiveness

One tool that makes actors into movie stars and ordinary films into smash hits simply isn't available to those of us who work in print, not with anything like the same power. A filmmaker has only to put Robert Redfbrd or Kathleen Turner or Tom Cruise or Kelly McGillis or Harrison Ford on the screen (with good makeup, lighting and camera work, of course), and at least half the audience will have great sympathy for the characters they portray.

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In print, we don't have that option. Oh, we can describe characters in terms that suggest physical attractiveness, we can show others being attracted to them-but we can never come close to the immediate impact of seeing an intriguing face or an attractive body on the screen or stage. We can never hear the exact timbre of the voice, can never catch that little smile or startled look that suggests a combination of humor and timidity and courage that is so endearing to the audience.

Don't you have to describe your character? Not necessarily. When I

turned in the manuscript of my novel Saints, both my agent and my editor

complained that I never described Dinah Kirkham, the main character.

"You never tell us her hair color," they said, "or the color of her eyes,

or even how tall she is."

True enough, said I, but didn't you have a mental picture of her anyway? They both agreed that they had. Then, when I asked each of them what her image of Dinah was, you won't be surprised to learn that each described herself.

I had used other devices to create sympathy, and by avoiding physical description, I allowed my female readers to put themselves into Dinah's story far more deeply than if I had compelled them to see her another way. (If only I could have kept publishers from putting a painting of Dinah on the cover, the technique would have worked perfectly.)

You usually can't get away with neglecting to give any physical description of your main characters. My point is not that description of characters is bad--just that in print, at least, it isn't anywhere near as effective as other techniques for winning audience sympathy. Describe when you must, but don't imagine for a moment that saying your hero has "a firm jaw, a Fine, straight nose, and a tumble of light brown hair over his forehead" will win the undying devotion of your readers.

It can actually make some readers resent your character. "Another incredibly good-looking woman," they'll sigh, hoping she eats five cheesecakes and gains six inches around the hips. "Another man who can press 300 pounds but still looks good in a suit," they'll murmur, while secretly hoping he gets pimples. Listing all the features that make a character look terrific is not the same thing as seeing a terrific-looking person on the screen or in person. When you see the real person, his or her beauty can overwhelm you; when you get only the list of beautiful features, you're more likely to see, not undeniable beauty, but all the people who got more dates than you in high school. Good-bye sympathy.

Altruism: Victim, Savior, Sacrifice

Some of the devices we use to raise the emotional stakes-suffering, sacrifice, and jeopardy-also have a rather complicated role in creating sympathy.

Victim

When Nora is the victim of suffering and jeopardy, the audience will pity her; they'll hope for her deliverance. But there's a price: Nora will seem

What Should We Feel About the Character? 81

weak, and along with pity there'll be at least a trace of contempt. (This is much of the reason why feminists object to having women in fiction always be rescued by men-even though the audience sympathizes with the female victim, they also disdain her.) You can compensate for this weakening of the victim by devoting some time to showing, in detail, that Nora had no choice but to put herself in the power of her tormentor. Or you can show how courageous Nora is for refusing to despair. This is actually easier to do when the suffering is physical; if Nora is the victim of emotional or psychological suffering, you have to work harder to make readers understand why she doesn't just leave the situation.

Savior

The audience will like Pete when he acts as a rescuer, stepping in to stop Nora's suffering or save her from jeopardy. Pete's courage is admirable, of course, but even more the audience admires his sense of responsibility for other people. They'll admire Pete even if the rescue fails.

However, there's always a danger of having a rescuer look like a fool for plunging in without enough thought-what if Nora was dealing with the problem and Pete's "rescue" ends up making everything worse? Pete will still get credit for courage and responsibility, but he'll also get tagged as just a little on the dumb side.

When the victim's suffering is emotional or psychological, the rescuer runs a great risk of looking like a meddler. If Pete finds Nora lonely and suffering from the cruel domination of her parents, the audience won't approve if he immediately starts taking over, insisting on rescuing her. They'll wonder-correctly-if Pete is really saving Nora, or dominating her in place of her parents. If you want the audience to sympathize with Pete in his rescue attempt, you need to show his reluctance to intrude and the urgency of Nora's situation. It also helps if Nora gives some signal that she wants to be rescued.

Sacrifice

When Nora chooses to sacrifice herself, it will feel important to the audience-but it won't necessarily win sympathy. There'll be pity for her suffering, of course, but before the audience will admire Nora for her sacrifice, they must feel that the cause she is willing to suffer or die for is important and right. They must also feel that Nora has no other decent choice or that her sacrifice will actually make a difference in helping other people. Above all, the audience will have no sympathy for Nora if she chooses martyrdom for no good reason but the desire to have a noble and glorious death or to make other people like her more. If Nora has a decent alternative to being sacrificed, the audience will insist that she choose it, or the sacrifice will be seen as a stupid waste rather than a noble act.

Plan and Purpose, Hunger and Dreams

Beginning writers often make the mistake of having their hero always react to the events of the story. The hero's reactions may all be perfectly rea-

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sonable, but the result is a character who seems to have no initiative-a puppet being pushed around on the end of a stick. You know the kind of story I mean:

Nora was doing nothing in particular that morning--just enjoying the sun

shine-when the car squealed around the corner and came to a halt in front of

her. ... .........

Yeah, right. How often are you outside doing nothing in particular? Nora would be much more interesting if she were outside for a reason, trying to accomplish something. Then when the events of the story change her life, we have a sense that she actually had a life to be changed! If Nora was hurrying to a meeting with her daughter's teacher, or rushing to the library to do research for a client, or worrying about possible results of the medical tests the doctor just gave her, she will still try to deal with her child's school problems or the client's deadline or the medical test results. It will increase the pressure on her-and increase the audience's sympathy for her.

Besides specific plans, your characters will have continuing needs, hungers, hopes, and dreams. If the audience has the same needs, then they'll sympathize with your character and hope those needs are satisfied. For instance, everybody understands the need for money-but you can make the audience sympathize with Nora even more by letting us know what she needs the money for and how long and hard she's been working to get it.

As a general rule, audience sympathy increases with the importance of the character's dream and the amount of effort the character has already expended to try to fulfill it.

You need to beware of cliches and over-sentimentality-only a naive reader is going to get worked up over a little boy who yearns for a puppy, unless you show why this kid needs a dog. Still, you can almost always get an audience to sympathize with your character's needs, even when they seem bizarre: Pete's obsession with owning as many expensive new cars as possible will make him seem strange and greedy-until we know that as he was growing up, his father had to struggle to keep their old, beat-up car in running order. The one time Pete's dad bought a new car, it ended up being repossessed under humiliating circumstances right after the layoffs at the plant. Now the audience will realize that Pete's obsession with cars is a response to his father's suffering. Instead of this hunger making him strange and unlikable, it will make him understandable and sympathetic.

When the story is about the character's plan-a quest or caper story-or when the story is about the character's need-as all character stories are-then this tool makes the character almost irresistibly sympathetic. That's why audiences find themselves rooting for heroes to succeed at the most appalling things-robberies, assassinations, marriage-wrecking love affairs. Once we're caught up in a character's plans and dreams, we're on her side almost without limit.

What Should We Feel About the Character?

Courage and Fair Play

The audience will like Nora better when they see her take physical, social, or financial risks to do what she believes is right or necessary. When Nora has the guts to risk losing her job rather than keep silent about a bribery scandal, we admire her-and fear for her.

Along with courage there must be a sense of fair play, however-

when Nora finally wins and the boss is forced to pay her damages and back

salary, she can never gloat. Nor can she ever do anything underhanded or

sneaky to win-if she cheats, she loses sympathy. This is the same rule that

made it so the good guy in a western always had to wait for the bad guy to

draw first; the good guy in a swashbuckler always let the bad guy pick up

his sword after disarming him; and the good girl in a romance never uses

cheap sex to keep her man.

Times have changed, of course, and writers don't always hold theircharacters to those standards. What hasn't changed, however, is the fact

that readers still respond warmly to a character who is brave and plays

fair, and they lose sympathy for a character who is cowardly and cheats.

This doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't write about characters who

aren't always brave and gallant-but it does mean you will forfeit some

audience sympathy.

Attitude

A character's attitude toward other people, toward himself, and toward the events of the story can do a lot to win sympathy. When things go wrong, Pete doesn't whine or complain about it or blame everybody but himself-he takes responsibility for his own mistakes, refers to his problems with wry humor, and tries to solve them. Nora never brags about the good deeds she does-it embarrasses her when others praise her. When someone criticizes her, she never argues to defend herself. But when someone else is being criticized unfairly, Nora speaks up for him.

Pete always has sympathy for other people's suffering, always tries to see things from their point of view. Nora may get angry, but she'll always listen to the other person's explanations, and she's willing to trust people-even when they've proved before that they really aren't very trustworthy.

Other characters may fail to recognize what good people Pete and Nora are-but their very modesty and self-deprecating humor and refusal to defend themselves make the audience love them all the more.

Draftee or Volunteer

If Nora is faced with a task that requires great courage, and it won't bring her much glory-no one will ever know she did it-the audience will sympathize with her most if she volunteers. It will diminish her if she has to be forced into acting. On the other hand, if the task at hand is one that will

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bring fame or fortune, then the audience will have much more sympathy for Nora if she doesn't put herself forward, but modestly waits to be called on.

It's this simple. If somebody says, "I've got a miserable, nasty job here that has to be done," then a character gains sympathy by volunteering. If somebody says, "If you succeed in this task, your name will be remembered for ten thousand years," then a character gains sympathy by modestly waiting to be drafted.

This is why Tolkien made sure that Frodo never volunteered to be the ringbearer in The Lord of the Rings; rather Frodo tried to give the ring to someone else until it became absolutely clear that he was the only one who could carry it. If Frodo had wanted to carry the ring, the audience wouldn't have felt anywhere near as much sympathy for him-all his troubles from then on would have been the result of his own hubris in thinking he could measure up to the task.

This is also why political candidates always prefer to have it appear that they are reluctant to run for office-their audience, too, has greater admiration for those who have greatness thrust upon them.

Dependability

When a good guy says he'll do something, he keeps his word come hell or high water. If he breaks his word, he'd better have a good reason for it- and he'd better try to make up for it later.