(First Published on my old blog 4th July 2013)
As an avid reader of …well pretty much anything, I often find myself thinking certain, repeated thoughts about a variety of Main Characters. ‘Why did you make that obviously foolish decision?’; ‘what are you doing that for?’; ‘You realize that you’ve brought all of this on yourself by doing x, y and z?’ ; ‘For god’s sake, any god, don’t open the f****** box/ door/ diary etc!’
Sometimes an MC will do something so obviously stupid or poorly considered that you find yourself almost shouting at the book in frustration. Clearly the writer has then done their job.
The reason we read on is not so that we can hear about what a nice life the MC has or about how everything goes his way or how she always gets the result she wants. We read on because in an act of literary voyeurism, we want to see the MC suffer. Perhaps not consciously, but there it is. Conflict equals interest. If the author has really done their job, then we, the readers, will suffer and fail and triumph with the MC.
What does this mean in term of our own writing? Basically when you choose your main characters, you are choosing your victims. Bad things are going to happen to them. Horrible things that you, the writer, are going to describe and evoke for the reader in loving detail. The fact that you like a character, whether it’s one you’ve created and got to know over time or one who walked fully formed into your brain one day when you were doing the washing, is no excuse for not piling on the pain.
This is something I have found hard with my own MCs. The most telling example comes from an as yet unfinished novella, which started life as a short story and then like topsey it just growed. I’ve had feedback on this character throughout writing the piece. From a few different people in fact. What really struck me at the time was that people liked the MC. Almost everyone who read this piece said how much they identified with her.
Really?! I thought. That’s just the weirdest thing. I didn’t make her to be liked. I made her as a vehicle for this story. This was when I still believed that a writer had absolute control over her characters. It was a rude awakening but a useful one. When you write, bits and pieces of your world view, and your hopes and fears bleed into your writing without you even being aware of it. It’s usually very subtle. I made this MC initially out of the bits of me (and others) that annoyed me. The times I didn’t speak up when I should have. The constant need to apologise. In point of fact I think the resulting MC isn’t much like me at all. What didn’t occur to me was that everyone has these sort of anxieties and insecurities. Without even meaning to I had made an MC people could identify with. By extension she became likeable.
The penny dropped for me, when I realised I didn’t want to write the next scene. Things were already pretty bad for her and they were about to get a whole lot worse. Somehow she had made me like her too. This was the key perhaps. Tiny things, character traits and tics that others can relate to. So how does this relate to the subject above? I had a quandary. I no longer wanted to torture her. I didn’t want her as my victim.
Experienced writers (if any come and read my lowly blog) will be nodding their heads about now. At some point Reader you says “no, don’t put them through any more. Do something nice…” Writer you says, “Ok I’ve broken her leg, ruined her career, her partner’s left her, the police are on the way and that’s if the Russian hitman doesn’t get there first. Hmm how can I make this worse for my MC. I need more pain.” Invariably, it’s writer you who has to take the lead on this one.
I’ve written a full novel and half finished two others since starting that novella. I’ve written dozens of short stories too. That first MC is still just where I left her, waiting for things to get worse. I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever go back and finish it now. It and she, stand as an abject lesson in how an MC can take you by surprise; as can the urge to go soft on them because you’ve discovered that you’ve fallen for them a bit too. I’ve had no trouble torturing any of my other characters by the way. In the novel I’m currently editing I’ve really put my MC through the wringer.
But somehow I can’t bring myself to go back and do that to my first proper MC. At least not yet. So the moral of the story, if there is one, is like your characters by all means. In fact you probably should like them. Just don’t let that ever stay your hand when it comes to writing their stories.