Bonding Moments: Tips to Make Audiences Fall in Love with your Characters.
1. Allow your good guys to actually be good people (or, alternatively: evil qualities do not automatically equate an interesting character.)
Everyone loves the new Star Wars movies.
Okay, that might not be 100% true: the inclusion of a Black stormtrooper as a main character, a female “Mary Sue” Jedi, and the very possibility that Poe Dameron might not be straight as an arrow provokes outrage in the Dudley Dursleys of white, heterosexual male fandom, who are used to getting copious quantities of what they specifically want at all times.
But excluding this crowd, its safe to say that almost everyone loves the new Star Wars movies, successfully combining originality with nostalgia, and of course, three-dimensional, interesting, and most relevant to the point at hand, good main characters.
All three are overcoming huge obstacles: Rey was an orphan whose only life experience has been a lonely existence in a desert wasteland, who was implied to have been abandoned or left behind by her loved ones at a very young age. Finn was brought up in a strictly conformist, fascist dictatorship run by mass-murderers, who didn’t even get an actual name until he was well into his young adulthood. Poe is captured, tortured for information, and presumed dead for the majority of the first movie.
Yet they are all continuously, unambiguously good people, and are no the less charismatic, believable, or interesting because of it.
And Star Wars isn’t the only series that’s currently showcasing the three-dimensionality and potential of emphatically good (albeit flawed) characters: Stranger Things, for example, unabashedly showcasing its characters’ qualities of innocence, tenacity, complexity, and unconditional love. In other words, it draws the viewer’s attention to their redeeming qualities, and is no less awesome because of it.
I, as a person whose grown up surrounded by scholastically-minded individuals (mostly college-age, metro-sexual straight men) explaining the complexities of Humbert Humbert (the affluent pedophile of Lolita), Flowers in the Attic (in which one of the protagonists rapes his twin sister and suffers no foreseeable consequences because of it), or Clockwork Orange (enough said), could not appreciate this development enough.
Let me tell you, as someone who voraciously consumes all forms of fiction and media, the morally grey antihero shtick gets old really, really fast. At a certain point, I’d personally like to be able to enjoy a complex character without constantly having to wonder if they’re good or bad, or worse, being consistently distracted with my own repulsion towards their actions.
I don’t want to consume media that considers itself complex just because it is morally ambiguous, or “makes you think” about the allegiances of its protagonists. Moreover, I’ve been a little taken aback by the number of “classics” that are little more than vintage-style orgies of misogyny and violence, simply for the sake of their being thought-provoking.
I’ve been thrilled that media has begun to provide good, pure-hearted characters with the spotlight they deserve, and would love to see more of it in all forms of fiction.
So I bid you, aspiring authors, to write soft characters, sympathetic characters, and unabashedly nice characters. Moreover, write them being rewarded for their actions rather than killing them off for shock value, a la Orange is the New Black, The Walking Dead, Harry Potter, and every other series that killed off at least one benevolent and beloved characters for no discernible reason.
If you want your work to be edgy, this is the way to do it.
But: this is not to say that all your characters should be inherently sympathetic, nor should your villains be unfeeling monsters.
2. Allow everyone sympathetic qualities (even the villains.)
It’s your protagonist’s story, but sometimes considering things from the opposite point of view can be just as interesting.
And I’m not talking about going the full Maleficent route, re-purposing a character who’s traditionally pure evil as flawed but ultimately sympathetic anti-heroes, though this can be an interesting trope in its own right.
I’m talking about works such as, say, the animated Batman series. While DC’s cinematic universe might currently centralize around contrived edginess and grit, the animated Batman universe of my childhood was uncommonly tender and profound. Its villains were unabashedly villains, but many were given clearly definable reasons for their behavior, some of which could tug at the heartstrings of even the most emotionally tepid viewer.
Take, for example, this interaction with Mr. Freeze:
(Example courtesy of @wetwareproblem.)
Or the final days of this semi-omnipotent child psychic:
https://youtu.be/YOooJW5SSDA
(Example via @eric-coldfire.)
Perhaps just as important to note is exactly how human the Batman himself is here, as opposed to the cold-hearted, borderline sociopath he’s been portrayed as in more recent endeavors: we see him helping Harley Quinn out of her situation with the Joker and buying her a dress in “Harley’s Day Out,” consoling Baby Doll after a breakdown, and compulsively adopting orphaned children.
All the characters are flawed, some of them dangerous, and most (Batman included) a little bit deranged. But all of them are unambiguously human.
And this is what makes the series so much better than almost all of its big-screen counterparts.
Look. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a happy endings kind of person. I will fight tooth and nail towards pretentious writers’ proclivity towards thinking that a dark and disturbing story with no pay-off is inherently more “deep” than one in which good and kind characters are eventually rewarded and granted an appropriately soft and happy epilogue.
That said, there are definitive benefits towards inflicting copious amounts of pain on your characters.
I know it sounds bad, but think about it: would characters like Bucky Barnes, Jon Snow, or Spencer Reid be so beloved by their respective fandoms if their lives weren’t so wrought with tragedy and tribulation? Would A Song of Ice and Fire have been such a sensation if it had just been about the Stark’s summertime adventures, or Life of Pi been such a smash hit if it had just been about a little Indian boy’s idyllic childhood in a zoo?
Admittedly, it could be argued that George R.R. Martin and company may go a little too far with the senseless killing and torture of his characters, but we’ll get to that later. For now, let’s have a look at an example even closer to home, a show famous for its sadistic writing, yet paradoxically, one in which its main characters rarely stay dead: you guessed it. Supernatural.
I started watching Supernatural in late 2015, because I love campy horror and had just run out of Game of Thrones episodes. I didn’t interact much with fandom at the time, and as such, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
I immediately found it to be an enjoyable, easy watch, but I didn’t really begin my downward spiral of obsession until around season three. I.e. the point at which (spoiler alert) Dean goes to hell.
Before this point, I had liked Dean: he was a lovable character played by an obviously talented actor, who’d already made me cry on several occasions (”What is and What Should Never Be,” both season finales, etc.) But I didn’t realize how attached to him I’d become until I was confronted with the possibility of his eternal damnation.
But of course, in all my naivety at the time, I didn’t think that sending one of their main characters to hell was actually something the writers would do, so I sat back, laughed and cried through the emotionally confusing absurdities that were “A Very Supernatural Christmas” and “Mystery Spot,” and waited for the inevitable, last minute rescue, all while the plot inched steadily closer towards a worst-case scenario I didn’t possibly think could happen.
And then it happened. After a tearful goodbye, Sam watches in horror as his brother is ripped to shreds by an unseen assailant. Dean is then seen suspended from hooks in a vast, nightmarish landscape, his pained cries for his brother the last thing the horrified viewer hears as the screen goes black.
Of course, a socially awkward, angelic white knight eventually comes to his rescue, but the damage is done: Dean has spent all of four decades being continuously tortured in hell, and the aftermath is painful to watch. Moreover, the writers are all too eager to inflict one physical and psychological torment after another on the three main characters in the seasons that follow, cackling madly through the viewers’ pleas to stop.
But it paid off. I speak from personal experience when I say that you will never meet someone more protective of their favorite character than a Supernatural fan, collectively producing more character-driven fanfiction than almost any other demographic. Indeed, I’ve talked to quite a few people who have continued to read and create fandom-produced works long after becoming disenfranchised with the show itself.
Incidentally, Supernatural is also a great example as to how creating lovable, three-dimensional (and of course, long-suffering) characters can foster a devoted following, and even make up for serious plot-related shortcomings.
For example: has the show gone on longer than it probably artistically should have? Yes. Does the plot occasionally amble on like a nonsensical country road? Yes. Is it occasionally subpar in its treatment of female and minority characters? Yes. Has Dean’s unconfirmed bisexuality dangled in front of my nose like a pink purple and blue carrot since day one? Yes.
But would I still, without question, legally adopt any or all of the main characters if the opportunity were to somehow present itself? Yes, yes, and yes.
4. No when not to kill them.
We all know that killing the occasional character can help build suspense, further the story, and provoke an emotional response in the audience.
But I’m going to say it: I really resent popular writers’ apparent proclivity towards killing off beloved characters for shock value. I think it’s lazy writing, and as a bona fide fiction nerd, I can’t count on all my fingers and toes how many times I’ve devoted hours and days of my life to characters, only to have them killed off for no discernible reason.
Here, I’m going to list a few examples of what I mean, so sufficed to say, spoiler alert:
Poussey Washington, Orange is the New Black.
Aside from being a genuinely wonderful character, Poussey’s death has been described as “tragedy porn for White people.” And rightly so: it serves no narrative purpose other than emotionally devastating the viewer and showing people how terrible and hopeless the lives of Black women are. Moreover, Black, lesbian women are a vastly underrepresented demographic, and I personally think the writers should have considered this more before electing to kill her off.
Another lesbian, I resented the fact that Lexa was killed off directly after becoming a canonical love interest to Clarke. It was almost as if she was killed off specifically so Clarke would have a reason to return to her heterosexual male love interest instead, as is typically the route taken with bisexual women (and bisexuals in general) in popular media.
Charlie Bradbury, Supernatural.
Wow, look at that. What a crazy coincidence: it’s another dead lesbian, killed for no specific reason! Why ever could this be? Okay, as a bisexual gal myself, I might be a little more embittered than the average viewer to watch my fellow Women who Love Women bite the dust, but this is arguably just an example of why you should consider the real-world implications of which characters die. If not, you’re going to wind up with a lot of angry queers on your ass.
On that note, the same goes for disabled colors and characters of color: if its a marginalized group, letting them live and giving them a happy ending can go a long, long way.
Another issue I’ve noticed is that some writers are just plain trigger-happy: they kill off characters to the point at which death loses its value and narrative punch.
For example: I love Game of Thrones, both the onscreen adaption and the Song of Ice and Fire series off of which it was based. But the sheer number of onscreen deaths has reached a point at which I’m utterly desensitized to them. You’ve gotta let some characters live, George: it should be a question of if a character will die, not when.
Finally, resurrection can be amazing when done right, but it can remove suspense when its overdone. Too many characters back from the grave can make death lose all meaning, and is arguably one of the points where Sherlock lost its footing in its latter seasons.
As a disclaimer, I’m not saying you should forgo killing characters entirely. I speak from experience when I say killing people has its benefits. Just do it sparingly, and use your best judgement. Kill responsibly.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go re-watch that one episode of Black Mirror.
5. At the end of the day, nothing makes up for layered, three-dimensional, and charismatic personalities.
Finally, the simple truth is that you can apply tips and tricks till the cows come home, but nothing makes up for truly human characters the audience can relate to.
So make your characters sympathetic to you. Apply your own life experience. And write religiously, as this is very often a skill that can only be acquired with time and perseverance.
It takes courage to write, because to write truly good literature that speaks to the soul is to bare an intimate part of yourself, often to total strangers. To write about personal experiences, feelings, and motivations, and hope that they are at some level universal.
This is what makes good fiction such an amazing thing to consume, as it is truly a form of intimacy between souls that can’t be replicated anywhere else.
So be proud of your writing, be proud of your characters, and be proud of the substantial courage it takes to even attempt to portray the human experience. Good luck, and know that I’m rooting for you.
There will be essays like this published at least once every other week, so be sure to follow my blog and stay tuned for future writing advice and observations!
