BY AUTHOR BEN IRELAND
I am speaking not from experience as a writer, but from experience as a reader.
The most important thing in a story, to me, is the characters. If I am not in love with the protagonist, I will have a difficult time caring about what they are going through or trying to accomplish. The main character must be just shy of being able to defeat the darkness. And a well written character can make the difference between the ridiculous and the poignant.
Harry Potter caught my heart from the first pages. He is neglected and emotionally isolated. He sleeps under the stairs in his uncle and aunt’s house. From the moment, I met him I wanted to follow him to the end of his journey.
But you do not need to love the character to feel invested. Dexter Morgan from the television show Dexter is a repugnant sociopath and murderer. However, as the audience was guided through his tragic childhood and came to understand the moral “code” he follows, we are permitted to be intrigued by his effort to rid the world of killers, while not letting ourselves like him as a person.
If the author wants me to accept the challenge the protagonist is facing, it needs to be something that the protagonist could reasonably conquer. The character needs to be just less than equal to the opposition facing her.
If the female lead of a romance novel is flat and inane, I can’t care what happens to her. Especially if two powerful, attractive supernatural men are fighting for her affectation, she has to have something to make her desirable. Another example is when (spoiler alert) October Daye killed the ancient faerie, Blind Michael.
The author gave no reason that she should be able to accomplish this. In fact, it was already established that someone much more powerful teamed up with their much more powerful friends and failed to kill him. October’s victory over the faerie First Born is ludicrous. My ability to care about October’s journey, while already tenuous, was lost from that point on.
The characters can make up for a lot of things, but sometimes they don’t. The characters in the A Song of Ice and Fire saga are some of the most deeply developed characters that I’ve read. But the reason for that is that we spend so much time hearing them think, or listening to them talk, and talk, and talk.
If you’re a big fan of drama, this may be appealing to you. But I like to see my characters do more with the words given them. George RR Martin spends too much time telling us what the characters think, and far too little time showing us who the characters are. These great characters do not quite make up for the meandering chapters.
In contrast, one of the silliest scenes I’ve read was in Dresden Files, Book 1, Storm Front. He is in the shower, naked, shampoo in his hair when he is attacked by a demon. Running around naked to fight the demon, in front of the woman he was preparing to take on a date, could be ludicrous enough to make the reader put down the book.
However, Butcher skillfully crafts the scene to make the situation work to reinforce the strength of Harry Dresden’s character. The silliness of the situation invites the reader to analyze what Dresden just accomplished, and respect him more as a character that is willing to do what is right at any time, and in any situation.
If you are going to ask me to invest my time in following a character through their journey, then make me care. Make me laugh or cry, or anything, just make me feel; anything other than boredom or incredulity. If you have an engaging character up against challenges that they are just slightly less than equal to, then you’ll have me until the last page.
Transplanted from Melbourne, Australia at the age of 17, Ben Ireland resides in Houston, TX, with his wife and three superlative children. He lives in the rather dry, logical world of a Systems Administrator, which has a disappointing lack of pathos. When he grows up he wants to be a writer and a grandfather.
Ben masterfully engages the reader with his complex protagonists in “Kissed a Snake”, his short story in Dash of Madness: a Thriller Anthology, to be released July 31, 2013.
