The protagonist of the book I'm working on at the moment is a middle-aged man who is struggling (and not always succeeding) to be more than the sum total of the disappointments life has visited upon him.: his marriage ended in divorce and in the process he became estranged from his only son. I have tried to tread a fine line between his own responsibility for his actions and the careless cruelty of those he has loved. He is not altogether innocent, but he is by no means totally guilty.
My agent's response was that he should be more likeable. Hmm. Is that what characters are for? To be likeable? In the cautious world of publishing today, likeability is certainly a plus, but I suspect that's only part of the picture. I think one of the pleasures of reading is to see a vulnerable and fallible character acknowledge and overcome his shortcomings -- that is what gives hope to the rest of us. But because I think it's important to be responsive to criticism (see my last post) I've done everything I can to make him less diffident, less reactive and probably less irritating. He still does some dreadful things, but that's because (I hope) he's human; good people slip up sometimes and make mistakes they come to regret.
I don't want my readers to feel hostile towards him, but I don't see the harm in a little bit of ambivalence -- I adore my husband, but there are things about him that drive me mad. That's how the real world operates, none of us is perfect, but it's the flaws and the hairline cracks in our characters which make us interesting, otherwise we'd be unbearable, or worse -- unreal.
So when you are working on one of your characters, watching them evolve, don't draw them starkly in black and white, inflect to them with a little colour, even if it is an ambiguous shade of grey.
No comments:
Post a Comment