I'm thinking about what makes us loveable is how we can't usually be confused with another person. And so that makes me think about faults, imperfections-- about anger and conflict and how if I'm telling the truth, then everybody's got all four. Which leads to different people having different perspectives about the very same thing...
Bring in voyeurism if you can't lure readers with identification with a likeable character.
So, plot before characterization if you are building a slightly unlikeable character. Like Wally Lamb's use of the build-up to the Columbine shootings in The Hour I First Believed as we learn that his main character is flawed but not super likeable? Uh, not sure about that.
But anyway. Dare to be unlikeable is day one of paying attention.
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Hummingbird: How the Way I Write Shaped My Memoir
19 hours ago
These are such interesting subjects you're writing about. It's funny how relationships with characters can be similar to real-life relationships. You don't know them, they don't know you, but you're interested. Then, you might fall in love with them, in a superficial way, or be fascinated with them in a slightly morbid and superficical way. Then, if you love them, you're rooting for them, you understand them, and you really want them to go places. But it's puppy love. You start to find fault with them, feel embarassed for them. Alternately take them seriously and then not seriously. Have characters take each other seriously and then not seriously. If you dislike your character, you one day may find yourself appreciating something about them, or trying to find a reason why they matter at all. You may feel sorry for them, but this relationship is hard. You have to find something respectable about them; you can't laugh at them all day long even though you want to. You might even cry for them.
ReplyDeleteYou try to see every angle of them. Some angles of them are not even accessible to you, and only
people you're writing about. Some angles you may
wish you hadn't seen, for your poor heart and now the fact that you have to deal with that.
Some angles you may try to brush under the rug.
Sometimes you have to throw problems at them, sometimes strengths. It's a long and complicated process, both heartbreaking and hysterical at times.