• Home
  • Lily's Blog
  • Buying Blind
  • Buy the Bitch
  • Shot on Location
  • Bio
  • Sites
  • Films Noir Blog
  • Book Reviews
  Lily Gardner
Join me on Facebook and Twitter

Character Building

1/29/2013

0 Comments

 
When I pick up a book I’m agreeing to live with the novel’s characters for many, many hours. More hours than I would spend at dinner with friends, at a party or a family reunion. I have to either love the characters or relate to their struggle on a deep level or I’ll toss the book because there’s a whole shelf of unread books that I’m just dying to pick up. So how does an aspiring writer create a character that a reader will follow for 300 pages?

One common mistake (the one I made through several short stories) was to write about characters that resembled me. I’m loveable, I have struggles, so why not? The problem is that like most writers I’m a bookish, conflict-adverse, passive creature. No one wants to read about me, not even my own husband. That’s because I’m a homo sapiens, and the kind of characters readers turn pages for are what Jim Frey calls homo fictus.

The homo fictus looks, thinks and feels like a homo sapiens. The reader believes the character is like him, but there are some fundamental differences. The homo fictus is active. When she’s faced with a challenge she does her very best to overcome the obstacle. No one wants to read about a character paralyzed by indecision. No one wants to read about a character victimized by their circumstances. It’s boring. It’s depressing. Don’t do it.

Homo fictus is goal-driven. Being goal-driven is the single most important quality a successful character can have, more important than being likeable. The best example I can think of is Jo Nesbo’s  wonderful novel, The Headhunters. The protagonist, Roger Brown, is a real bastard, but very early in the story he has to fight with every resource he can command to stay alive. I couldn’t help it, I wanted desperately for him to succeed. So desperately that I stole time from work to finish the book. FYI: it was worth the stolen time.

All goals are not created equal. My goal is to write ten novels before I die. I don’t believe many readers would find that compelling. Fighting for your life, saving the family farm, never going hungry again: those are goals most readers would commit to.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Lily Gardner

    Portland writer of noir mysteries.

    Archives

    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    September 2015
    June 2015
    May 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    April 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Copyright 2014 Lily Gardner