All About the Characters
Yesterday I talked about the SFF phenomenon where worlds become characters in their own right.
Yet New Zealand Maori, the indigenous first people of this country, have a whakatauki or saying:
“He aha te mea nui o te ao?
He tangata! He tangata! He tangata!
What is the most important thing in the world?
It is people! It is people! It is people!”
For me, this is very true of reading and writing fiction, although I would substitute “characters” for “people”, as not all great characters in Fantasy-SciFi are people: e.g. the ent, Treebeard, in JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings; the dragon Morkeleb in Barbara Hambly’s Dragonsbane; or the daemon Pantalaimon in Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass.
As a reader, the characters are almost always what makes the difference between my liking a book and loving it. I enjoy interesting and quirky ideas and worlds that stretch my imagination, but if I don’t care about the characters, then it’s very hard to really care about the book.
Whether I love them or hate them, I want to be engaged by the characters. I want to laugh and cry with them through the action of the book, to hold by breath when scary stuff is happening and breath a sigh of relief when the protagonist wins through—or doesn’t, as does happen sometimes, e.g. with Ned Stark in GRR Martin’s A Game of Thrones or Roger at the end of The Golden Compass. (I apologize if these are spoilers for some blog readers, but hope these books have been around long enough that this is not the case.)
But I’m also a writer and creating character is an essential part of the process. I still want to be engaged by them—after all, if I’m the author and not engaged by my characters, then it’s unlikely anyone else will be!—but not necessarily to like them.
And sometimes, it’s when someone tells me that they don’t like a character that I think: “A-ha, my work here is done!”
Sometimes, too, it is the characters you have to work hardest on that are the most rewarding—not because they are likeable necessarily, but because they are human. Working to achieve that fine shading as the story unfolds is very rewarding for me as a writer.
I agree. As a reader, I like big ideas and an interesting world. But I need a character that hooks me at an emotional level. I recently read 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson. It was the main character Swan that kept me reading – swinging between love of her boldness, and annoyance at her egocentricity.
I have just finished “The Three Body Problem” and although I will post on it more fully, what I felt to be a lack of real character development certainly affected my engagement with the book.
By the way, Andrew Robins reviewed 2312 here in 2012 and I think much of his view accords with yours, particularly re the main character. the review is here: http://helenlowe.info/blog/2012/08/02/book-review-2312-by-kim-stanley-robinson/
Glad I wasn’t the only one. Should I be worried that Andrew and I work in the same field (radios)?
I think we should all be very afraid. 😉