Making a Main Character Likable

Sometimes, you can start out your story with a main character who isn't very likable, but a character must bcomee likable or, at the very least, relatable for the reader.  Here are ways to show more than the prickly outer elements of her personality.

If you give the main character a worthy goal in the first pages of the novel, then you give yourself time to make a seemingly unlikable character grow on the reader.

By worthy, I mean something the reader will want that character to succeed at-- rescuing children, helping a nice person find happiness, etc.   Even if the character starts out doing it for a base reason like money, the reader will still want him to succeed.

Simple things can help make a character start to grow on the reader.  Pets are always a good option.  Either he has one, or he can't resist the heroine's kitten, or something like that.  Having him interact positively with a child is also a good likability quickie.  

Recently, I read a short story in which the heroine breaks into the apartment of a possible villain-- a hard-ass security agent.  A teddy bear is sitting on his couch, and he later admits it belongs to his nephew.  With that simple stroke, the author made a seemingly unlikable bad guy a much nicer person.

Giving a character a vulnerability that the reader can relate to is also a good likability quickie.  It can be as simple as a chick lit heroine having a bad hair day and the boss from heck, or the bad ass hero getting into a small plane and freaking out because he finds a snake.  

Eventually, more likable elements of that character's personality will have to be shown, though, so the bad parts of her personality don't overwhelm the reader.

In some genre fiction like thrillers, the immediate likability quotient doesn't have to be high at the beginning, particularly if the character is strong and effective in what he needs to do.

But in a romance, the hero or heroine should be likable from the very beginning.  The other main character can become likable as the book progresses, but he should not start as totally horrible.  Some character traits like cruelty can't be forgiven or changed because, in real life, they never are.  

It's the Romance, Stupid

In the 1992 campaign against George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and his advisers realized that the economy was Bush’s weak spot so they decided to focus on that subject.  Around Clinton’s headquarters, the sign, “It’s the economy, Stupid,” was posted to remind everyone to stay focused on that issue.

In the same way, a writer needs to hone in on the targeted audience of her book.  

When you are writing and you get a clever idea about the romance heroine’s business problems, you need to decide if that has anything to do with her relationship with the hero.  If it doesn’t, out it should go.  

Particularly at the beginning of the novel, that target audience should be kept in mind.  The reader wants girl to meet boy as soon as possible so the heroine’s backstory and anything else must be second in importance in those first pages.  

In the same way, the mystery reader wants the murder to happen, the science fiction reader wants some brand new scientific idea or world to startle him, and the horror reader wants his pants scared off of him.

When you are rewriting, always remind yourself that “It’s the romance/mystery/sf/horror, Stupid” and focus your book to that kind of reader.

How Many Point of Views?

 QUESTION:  How many viewpoint characters can I use?  And must I have the bad guy’s point of view?

The point of view character or POV is writing jargon for the person whose head you are inside during a scene in fiction.  With the exception of omniscient viewpoint novels, all current genre novels have only one character’s POV at a time.

The number of point-of-view characters you use in a novel depends on genre needs as well as the story you have to tell. If your choice of POVs isn't mandated by the market, you use the number of POVs you need.

In STAR-CROSSED, I used six POVs because my story was so complex, and the novel was big enough at around 130,000 words to allow so many characters.  One of the POVs was my villain.  

I have also created complex suspense plots with only one or two POVs because the plot was so tightly connected that those POVs were enough.  None of those had the antagonist's POV.  

If the antagonist doesn't have a POV, the reader will still get a sense of the person because of what he does.  

The main characters are also discovering who or what this person is by following the clues of the crime or the situation.  As the characters learn about this criminal so does the reader.  

If this person's crimes are methodical, this gives the reader a bit of information about him.  If he cuts off the victims' fingers with a surgical knife, the reader learns something else about him.  

By the time the bad guy is unveiled, the reader should have a very good sense of this character without a POV.  At the moment of unveiling, the reader will usually be given the final pieces of this character's emotional puzzle.

Some writers have trouble writing the bad guys because they are concentrating on the good guys and the plot needs of the novel.  I always suggest that a writer write a summary of the plot from the point of view of the bad guy starting with the crime, if there was one, and move from that point to the final unveiling.

The bad guy's choices and his story must be as logical for his personality as the plot choices and story of the main characters.  

Marilyn Monroe and Writing

 After film beauty Marilyn Monroe was dressed for going out and finished with her makeup, she'd study herself in a full length mirror, then turn her back and glance back at herself. Whatever element of her makeup jumped out at her, she'd make less noticeable.  She'd do this until she had a complete look.

I've always thought this story is an excellent metaphor for writing genre fiction.  Anything like overwriting, fancy words, and moments of being too clever need to be toned down.

That doesn't mean that a viewpoint character can't be clever or use an occasional big word if it fits his personality, but it should be the viewpoint character, not the author.

During the rewriting process, be sure to look for things that stand out too much and remove them so the story is what is important, not your writing.

The Cast of Thousands Syndrome

Have you ever been at a party or professional event where you have met a small group of the attendees some time back so you barely remember them, and there are dozens of other people attending as well?

You stood there with a glazed look in your eyes as you struggled to remember the names and relationships of the people you've already met while even more people are introduced to you, and you have to figure out how these people fit in with the first group.

A nightmare, wasn't it?

Yet many writers forget how hard it is to keep up with characters in a novel.  They insist on starting the novel with a group scene in which all the heroine's coworkers are introduced.  Each character enters the scene, does a little song and dance so you have some idea of who they are, then the next one enters and does the same thing.  By the fourth or fifth character, the reader is in shell shock if she's still reading.  

Then, the novel opens up, and even more characters are introduced.  

Other writers of series, particularly paranormal romance series, have an ongoing group of characters--usually the happily married heroes and heroines of past novels who have to have a cameo or minor role--as well as the new hero and heroine to include with their short term bad guys and minor characters, but, wait, the author really wants you to meet the half a dozen new hunks waiting for their own novels, heroines, and happily-ever-after as well as the bad guys waiting in the wings for their comeuppance.   

Some readers can keep up with all these people, but most of us can't.  We reach a point where there's so much character clutter that we can't connect with the major characters and the main plot so we close the book and vow never to read another of them.  

How do you escape this cast of thousands syndrome?

First, you must realize that while you spend many months with these characters and know them very well, the reader won't.  

Keep the introductions to a very few at a time.  Secondary characters should only be introduced when they are needed in the plot.  Those officemates of the heroine may play big parts in later books, but only the wacky receptionist who will introduce the heroine to her new love interest and play clumsy matchmaker will be needed in this book so only she should be introduced.

As great as the other characters are and no matter how eager you are to introduce them, don't.  

If you have characters from other books, don't bring them back unless they serve a specific plot purpose.

If you have new characters for the next book in the series, don't put them in unless they serve a very specific plot purpose.

If you are lucky enough to have readers wanting to know how Lance and Patty from your first book are doing and whether their baby has been born, you can write a short story or novella about them as a freebie on your website.  Fans love that.  

Many of us don't love the author tossing these former characters into the current novel with no other reason than to please a few fans.

Why Does This First Sentence Work?

 “The Friday before winter break, my mom packed me an overnight bag and a few deadly weapons and took me to a new boarding school.”  THE TITAN’S CURSE, Rick Riordan.

The first line of THE TITAN’S CURSE stopped me in my reading tracks.  

I studied it to figure out why such a simple declarative sentence grabbed me.

A few words told a huge amount about the narrator.  “My mom.”   “Winter break.”   “A new boarding school.”  Obviously a modern kid below the age of driving.

Then the juxtaposition of the common-- a boy having his bag packed by his mom to go to a new boarding school, and the uncommon--a few deadly weapons.  The mundane juxtaposed with the dangerous.  

Since this was a young adult fantasy adventure, I knew I wasn’t reading about a mass murderer family on the way to massacre some kids.  Some adventure was beginning.  

In just one sentence I was given enough information to get a sense of the book and the main character, and a surprise within that information.  

I’m also given several questions I want answered.  Why the weapons?  Why the new boarding school?  Why is his mom not upset with deadly weapons?

All this will keep me reading.

Now, that’s a good first sentence.

The Emo Dump of Horror

The heroine is grumpy.  Her cab driver is paying too much attention to the weird birthmark on her wrist although anyone who has seen it does the same thing so she should be used to it.  She is grumpy about this for several pages.  She gets out of the cab and spends several more pages thinking about how miserable the hot weather is, and how stinky her arm pits are now becoming.  

After finally paying attention to her location, an office building, she acknowledges to herself how stressed she is with little specifics for several more pages, then how she dreads seeing Mark for several more pages.  

She really misses her dead mom for about five pages.  Then she walks into the building.  Then another eight pages of minor info dump backstory about how her mom worked here, and how she really, really misses her mom.  Mark, Mom’s boss, shows up and apologizes that she must deal with being at her mom’s place of business.  She weeps on his chest for another bunch of pages.  We are now a long chapter into the book and nothing of real importance has happened.

But we know that the heroine who is supposed to be a kick-ass heroine in this urban fantasy is an emotional mess about bloody everything from the weather to her mom’s death. We also know that the writer doesn’t know spit about pacing and how to intersperse emotion with action.  

Readers, at this point, are stuck in the emo dump of horror where everything is too, too much to deal with.   

At this realization, most readers will decide that they don’t care to spend hours of their lives with this mopey, poorly written mess, and they won’t go forward with the book.

Sadly, this opening is from a book I just tossed after the first chapter, and it’s the third one with an opening emo dump in the last few weeks.  

And, yes, I know losing your mom is hard.  I’ve been through it, and I sympathize, but dumping loss across many opening pages like so much emotional sludge is poor writing.  It’s the equivalent for the reader of being forced to read a hormonal teen’s diary about how horrible and dramatic her life is.  A mother’s death and stinky armpits have the same level of drama.

Emotion, like information, needs to be given in little bits and pieces, particularly at the beginning of the story.  It also should be inferred by what the character does.  That heroine could have felt a tightness in her chest as she entered the building, straightened her spine, and forced herself forward.  The mother’s boss could have mentioned the mother’s death, and the heroine could have lost it for a few minutes.  All this is shown in action, not by a long inner monologue about being really, really sad.  It also makes the heroine appear strong despite her pain, and the reader would have sympathized instead of wishing that the drama queen heroine get a grip and move the story forward.

We want our readers to connect with our main character, sympathize with her, and admire her a little in that opening scene.  We don’t want them to take one look at a weeping drama queen and run far, far away.  

No Prologue Needed, Beginnings

 You want to start a novel at an exciting moment that involves the main character which will draw the reader into the story to see what will happen next, but you can't give too much information too soon.

Instead, you give the reader just enough information to understand what's going on.

For example, the main character faces an angry goblin in a dark alley of some big city.

She can hear a police siren which, unfortunately, is moving away from where she is. Mentally or aloud, she cusses her luck for choosing a job like this.

The goblin knocks her gun out of her hand, and it lands in the sewer drain so she lifts her hands, whispers a spell, and flames shoot of her hands, but the goblin doesn't go down. The injury makes him even angrier. 

We now know she's a magic user of some sort, the modern world is ours or isn't ours by little details, that magical creatures can enter here, and it's her job to stop them.  She is also in seriously deep poo because she is now defenseless against a furious goblin.

Later, you'll tell the reader about her role as a guardian of normal Earth and, later still, about her home on a parallel magic world, but you'll do it in bits and pieces like clues to a puzzle the reader is trying to understand.

Having these clues of the world and trying to understand it is as important a puzzle for the reader as the plot, and it's as enjoyable. Don't cheat the reader by giving away too much.   

Others' Goals

Last week, I told you about a first chapter I read, and I talked about the danger of having a Scene Stealer Secondary Character at the beginning of your novel.  

To remind you, here’s a plot summary of the first chapter.

The heroine enters an expensive restaurant and sits down at her father’s table.

He complains she is late, which she is not, and proceeds to berate her for various failings, none of which she thinks she has.  They share a prickly conversation full of personal history subtext and anger.

He tells her that his corporation is having financial troubles, and he’s arranged to have a corporate investor meet him on his private estate for the weekend.  He wants his beautiful daughter there to entertain the corporate savior and show a positive side to his personality.

The heroine has her own financial success thanks to her own hard work and acumen, and she has less than charitable feelings for her father who threw her and her mother out so he could marry a trophy wife and have the son he wanted to inherit the business.  She agrees, however, because she’ll get a chance to see her much younger half-brother whom she adores.  

In the next, much shorter scene, the handsome corporate investor, aka the hero, arrives at the estate in his private plane.  Rather than the limo and the designer clothes her father wanted, she shows up in the caretaker’s Land Rover and she is wearing riding clothes.  Despite this, sexual sparks fly, and they share a bit of banter.  They head to a meeting with Daddy Dearest.

What’s the second major error in this first chapter?  The only person with a strong goal in the first chapter is Dearest Daddy.  The heroine refuses to buy into this goal.

At best, one of her goals is to see her little half-brother which is fine on the small scale but hardly strong to carry a chapter, let alone enough to carry a whole novel forward.  

Her second goal is to annoy her father by not helping him gain the funding.  This goal could carry the whole novel forward, but it isn’t a worthy goal and makes her a heroine the reader can’t root for.  If anything, this goal makes her appear remarkably immature and unworthy of either the hero or the reader’s interest.  

The main character must have a worthy goal that the reader can root for.

Beware the Scene Stealer

Here’s a plot summary of a first chapter I read recently.

The heroine enters an expensive restaurant and sits down at her father’s table.

He complains she is late, which she is not, and proceeds to berate her for various failings, none of which she thinks she has.  They share a prickly conversation full of personal history subtext and anger.

He tells her that his corporation is having financial troubles, and he’s arranged to have a corporate investor meet him on his private estate for the weekend.  He wants his beautiful daughter there to entertain the corporate savior and show a positive side to his personality.

The heroine has her own financial success thanks to her own hard work and acumen, and she has less than charitable feelings for her father who threw her and her mother out so he could marry a trophy wife and have the son he wanted to inherit the business.  She agrees, however, because she’ll get a chance to see her much younger half-brother whom she adores.  

In the next, much shorter scene, the handsome corporate investor, aka the hero, arrives at the estate in his private plane.  Rather than the limo and the designer clothes her father wanted, she shows up in the caretaker’s Land Rover and she is wearing riding clothes.  Despite this, sexual sparks fly, and they share a bit of banter.  They head to a meeting with Daddy Dearest.

After I read this chapter, something was bothering me, and I stopped to analyze my feelings.  Sure, this first chapter was pretty standard and cliche-ridden with a I’ve-read-this-more-than-once feeling, but something else was wrong here.  

The first scene was much too long, and this is a romance where the hero and heroine should meet as soon as possible, but, beyond the length, I recognized a greater problem.  In the first scene Daddy Dearest and the heroine’s conversation is filled with emotional subtext, anger, and past history.  Daddy leapt off the page.

In the next scene, the hero was the standard and well-written sexy hero, but he was a flat character in comparison to Daddy Dearest, and the heroine was more about annoying Daddy than she was about the sexy hero.  

Daddy Dearest is a classic example of the Scene Stealer Secondary Character--the character with the interesting past history or the personal swagger and background to make him far more interesting than the main character or characters.

Scene Stealer Secondaries aren’t necessarily a bad thing, they can liven up a story at times, but they should never be one of the first characters introduced, particularly if the hero hasn’t been introduced.

Here are a few other examples.

In the original STAR WARS movie, what if Han Solo with his sexy swagger, sneer, and interesting history had been introduced before callow farm boy Luke?  

What if in the first PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, Captain Jack Sparrow had been introduced before Orlando Bloom’s character Will?

In both cases, we’d have had less connection and emotional attachment to the main character, less of a sense of who is the hero of the story, and less desire for the main character to reach his goal, not the secondary character’s goal.   We’d be undermining our main characters and pulling the reader away from the story we wanted to tell.

So, beware the Secondary Scene Stealer because he can also steal your story’s successful telling.

In my original example, Daddy Dearest isn’t the only problem with this first chapter.  In next week’s blog, I’ll discuss the other failure in this first chapter.