Tag: how to write a novel

Should your characters be likable or relatable?

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Image: RoseofTimothywoods

Image: RoseofTimothywoods

You’ve heard about making your protagonists relatable. And you’ve heard about making them likable. Are they the same thing? If not, which is more important?

The difference between likeability and relatability

You relate to a character who is similar to you in some way. This doesn’t mean you have to have the same occupation, background, or religion (though that can help) – it means you share some of the same struggles, weaknesses, or desires. A “deep down, we all just want to be loved,” kind of a thing.

You like a character you can admire. Maybe they have qualities you wish you had or that you aspire to. Or maybe they’re just fun to be around. They could be funny or quirky or extremely loyal.

It’s like the difference between empathy and sympathy – in one, you can actually feel the other person’s pain as if it were your own. In the other, you can only imagine the other person’s pain, but you still root for them.

Relatability can create stronger emotions for the reader. Rather than simply watching your hero go through things, the reader is going through things with the hero.

Likability can create more pleasant emotions for the reader. A hero who is fun to be around, or who earns the reader’s love, can become like a best friend or brother – someone the reader doesn’t want to leave.

Which should you aim for?

They aren’t mutually exclusive: relating to a character can lead to liking him, and vice versa. They aren’t mutually dependent, either: you can like a character who’s very different from you, or you can hate a character who represents all the worst parts of yourself.

Whether you aim for likeability or relatability or both depends on the tone of the story and the traits you already know the character has.

But generally, you should try for a little of both.

How to write likable characters

I talked about this awhile back – right here. There are some relatability tips in there, too.

How to write relatable characters

Again, relatability is more about feelings (pain points and dreams) than about facts (age, sex, religion). The best path to relatability is not to avoid extremes so as not to alienate anyone (you’ll just end up with a nondescript Lego brick), but to tell the truth. Give your hero your own deepest, most powerful feelings, good and bad. Describe in detail how they affect you/him physically, and the thoughts they scream through your head. Nine times out of ten, the response will be “You, too? I thought I was the only one.”

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Who’s your favorite likable character? What character do you most relate to? Why?

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* Thanks to David for suggesting this topic.

 

 

3 ways to cure Gorgeous Hero Syndrome

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You might have noticed a similarity between the two cheesy romance examples from the post at the beginning of this month: both start with “two attractive people.” The vast majority of fictional romances share the gorgeousness trait, which seems a rather unfair statement about all the people who aren’t supermodels, like they either don’t fall in love or their stories aren’t worth writing.

But that’s not the only reason we should think twice about writing all our protagonists to look like Greek gods:

It feels amateur. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, character attractiveness is not important to the plot. Unless you’re writing about actual supermodels, taking the time to point out how drop dead gorgeous your protagonists are is a red flag that you are still just recording an elaborate daydream, rather than writing a real story.

It’s cliché. Most real people aren’t beautiful or ugly, but fall into a “kinda cute” grey area, so it might damage your story’s credibility to even hint at once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess and a handsome prince.

It feels more silver screen than literature. As Jubilare pointed out in our discussion about the three suspiciously fine looking dwarves in The Hobbit movie, looks are important on screen, but not so important on the page. I would rather look at Christian Bale for two hours than at Steve Buscemi, but the written word is a unique opportunity to get to know and love the Steves without being distracted by all the heart-fluttering nonsense of the Christians.

It doesn’t encourage reader sympathy. There are layers of immersion in fiction. There’s the first, superficial layer in which your readers can pretend for awhile that they are beautiful people doing exciting things. Then there’s a deeper layer in which readers come face to face with characters who are eerily similar to themselves. By extension, every event – good and bad – hits the reader harder, because the unconscious implication is that it could happen to them.

 

How do you cure Gorgeous Hero Syndrome?

Make their chief attraction subtle. Something only the people closest to them and/or their recently-introduced soul mate would notice. A unique mannerism that becomes an endearment, like the way he shuffles when he’s standing, or (maybe this is a bad example, but) the six smiles of Rosalee Futch in Win a Date with Tad Hamilton.

Give them something to be self-conscious about. Even the most attractive people have something about their appearance they don’t like. Something that makes them awkward, even if only in their own minds. Maybe she hates her widow’s peak, or he can’t grow facial hair to save his life. But be careful not to fall into the equally bad cliché David pointed out (and the British Biebers take constant advantage of) – the attractive character who thinks she is ugly.

Don’t talk about appearance as much. You are writing about living, breathing people. Not magazine covers. So focus on expressions, rather than features. Body language, rather than shape. Those are the things that keep telling us about the person after the first-glimpse impression.

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Related stuff:

6 ways first person narrators can describe themselves

5 ways to make your characters more believable

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In other news: Welcome to the new digs, everybody! WP Support kindly moved my followers over here yesterday, but I seem to have gained more than 100 followers in the shuffle, so I suspect some people got double-subscribed? If any of you receive this email twice, you might need to adjust your subscription settings. I’m sorry for the annoyance!

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3 tips to avoid writing a cheesy, shallow romance

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image by K Kendall

image by K Kendall

Two attractive people meet. Adventure ensues. They get shot at together. One or both of them shares a moving past experience with the other. Suddenly, it’s love.

Sound similar to the romance in your story? Sorry, it’s also the romantic subplot in pretty much every action movie.

Or maybe yours sounds more like:

Two attractive people meet. One is awkwardly hesitant. One is powerful and forward. They are inexplicably drawn to one another. There are a lot of smoldering gazes and fluttering hearts. It doesn’t matter that they’ve only known each other weeks, days, hours. They know they can’t live without each other.

The problem? You’re just making Cool Whip. The relationships are based on nothing but physical attraction and a few gushy player lines. Corn syrup, oil and air.

You might have done this unintentionally. You might have intended to write something that spoke to the human condition…and watched with horror as the cheesy Jerry Maguire you-complete-me dialogue came oozing out of your fingers. “I’m supposed to be the next Markus Zusak,” you spit at your computer, “Not Stephenie bloody Meyer!”

I know. It’s happened to me.

So here’s the approach I’m taking: Try to forget for the first eight tenths of your book that there even will be a romantic relationship.

Develop the characters individually before you develop their romance.

It might help to think of primetime dramas instead of movies or books—the ones where the two leads are always dancing around a relationship. They work together, struggle together, probably see the best and worst of each other, and still go home alone at the end of the day for years. This means:

  • The audience really gets to know the characters.
  • The characters really get to know each other.
  • You build a ton more tension.

Pretend you’re writing about two people becoming friends.

In literature, as in life, it’s best to build the friendship first. This will force you to stop depending on the cheap thrills of his devastating smile and her million stomach butterflies, and start finding substance on which to build a real relationship, like:

  • Values, fears and interests they have in common.
  • Things they can teach each other.
  • Ways they can grow together.

For some reason, we don’t usually think of these things when we think of romance. Perhaps because most of it’s so cheaply crafted. But a few classics remain shining examples; Pride & Prejudice just celebrated its 200th anniversary.

Sure, it shares elements with a lot of shallow romances: things that appeal to our most basic desires:

  • To be singled out by someone selective.
  • To be adored and sacrificed for.
  • To be protected and provided for.

But it goes much deeper. The heroine and hero of P&P:

  • Value each other’s integrity and intelligence.
  • Discover their own faults by interacting with each other.
  • Become better people from having known each other.

They should fall for each other’s actions, not each other’s words.

There’s little mention of Mr. Darcy’s looks, and no pretty words but one impassioned proposal, which didn’t work for him anyway. It’s Darcy’s actions that win our hearts, from his awkwardness in pursuing Lizzie, to his strength in saving her sister whilst enduring horrible humiliation.

And while Edward Cullen is immortal by way of being undead, Mr. Darcy has been alive and adored for centuries. And, by all accounts, for centuries more.

Aspire to that.

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6 steps to judging your own writing

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When the pages are closing in on you. [image by Thanakrit Du]

When the pages are closing in on you. [image by Thanakrit Du]

You’ve been working on your novel for so long, you no longer know what’s good and what’s bad. You can’t tell whether the tone is right, the pacing is fast enough, or the characters are believable. All you can see is a swarm of words.

You either think it’s all wonderful (you’re wrong) or it’s all terrible (you’re wrong).

And when it comes to editing, with or without beta readers, you’ll have to make your own decisions at some point.

So is it possible to look at your own work with complete impartiality?

Well, no. But with the right preparation, you can get close.

  1. Step away from the novel. Don’t even look at it for at least a month. Work on something different (NOT the sequel).
  1. Feed the machine. In that same month, read some classics and award-winners. Avoid the “guilty pleasure” books that are horribly written but that you love anyway – those are for another time. Get your brain used to the good stuff so it can recognize the bad stuff (like eating McDonald’s after months of home-cooked meals, it stays with you in a nasty way).
  1. Feed the machine some more. Also re-watch some of your favorite movies – being shorter than books, they more clearly show the plot as a whole. Note how each story is structured. How does it open? How does the tension escalate? How does the hero reach his lowest point? What ultimate decision does he make?
  1. Review. Read good books and/or movie reviews, especially ones that point out plot faults. This will help you identify problems in your own work. For instance:
    1. David’s amazingly insightful reviews at Twilight’s Warden
    2. The hilarious animated video series How It Should Have Ended
    3. The brilliant (though horribly crass, so be warned) reviews at Red Letter Media (I’ve only watched the Star Wars ones)
  1. Tell your ego to shut up. We writers have a tendency to waver between extremes of pretentiousness (“They just don’t understand my brilliance!”) and anxiety (“They’re going to think I’m an idiot.”). Tune out both these voices. Neither is truthful.
  • For the pretentious voice: Let go of the things you refused to change before. Pretty paragraphs you refused to delete. Lovable characters you refused to kill. Look at those “non-negotiables” and ask why? If you don’t have a real reason (e.g., “to be edgy” is not a real reason to be gratuitous), then change it. There are many ways a story can play out, and there’s probably a much more exciting and meaningful way yours can.
  • For the anxious voice: Every good writer is scared when he releases something new into the world. That’s normal. But ask yourself: does a certain part scare you—a certain phrase or scene? Does it scare you because it sounds juvenile, or because it exposes a piece of you? If the former, change it. If the latter, have the courage to leave it.
  1. Create a deleted scenes file. You know you should cut something—but it’s also pretty good writing; what if you need it somewhere else later? Don’t be paralyzed by uncertainty. Simply copy, cut and paste any major deletions into a new file. Soon you’ll have a much cleaner manuscript and a whole list of ideas to fall back on should you ever need it.

What part of self-editing gives you the most trouble?

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Archives for the Holidays: Show, don’t tell: what it means

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I’m feeling better for the first time in five days! How are you?

To stay on top of the Christmas cheer, I’m posting some of my favorite posts from the archives. This one was originally posted on October 7, 2011.

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It’s the first rule of writing. We hear it all the time. In fact, it’s almost all we hear. Over and over again, they tell us…

Show, don’t tell.

Show; don’t tell.

Show! Don’t tell!

In the name of all that’s good, what the heck does that mean???

Find out >>