A good author

[African_Love]

makes you love his/her characters. Otherwise, how can you care what happens to them. Does you agree?

[Heteronym]

I must disagree for some reasons:

a) We don't know if the writer wants to make the reader care or not;

b) Caring is the reader's and not the writer's prerogative; I'm sure many readers come to care for characters the writers don't want us to care;

c) Some writers aren't interested in characters.

[Desolation]

I must disagree for some reasons:

a) We don't know if the writer wants to make the reader care or not;

b) Caring is the reader's and not the writer's prerogative; I'm sure many readers come to care for characters the writers don't want us to care;

c) Some writers aren't interested in characters.

I agree with the above, and would like to add that there are plenty of good books that have been written with characters that the author wants to make the reader despise.

[mayneverhave]

The more I connect with a given character, the less I am able to make any sort of objective analysis of it.

[Drkshadow03]

makes you love his/her characters. Otherwise, how can you care what happens to them. Does you agree?

Yes, and no. One comment I have heard about some of my own fiction drafts from fellow writers is, "your character is unsympathetic."

In fact, generally you want to make your main character sympathetic. Someone we can relate to, someone we want to root for, someone we feel bad about when things go bad. Often the antagonists are sympathetic too to a degree. (we can, of course, list specific works if anyone wants to play that game). I think this happens naturally because many good authors who do spend time crafting believable characters will fall into this pattern naturally; since real people are fine shades of sins and virtue, good and bad, etc.

However, like all rules of writing these are merely guidelines. Not actual rules. There are plenty of examples where an author writes an unsympathetic character, a downright vicious vile excuse for a human being, but an interesting one and makes it work.

[_Shannon_]

Not if it's not character driven fiction, and not if the characters are not particularly likable.

I don't think the point of Native Son was to get the reader to love Bigger Thomas...or of Crime and Punishment to love Raskolnikov.

[laymonite]

I am reminded of Nabokov's university lecture that touches on this thread topic. He states that the worse thing a good reader can do is identity with a character or a situation, among other things. Check it out here:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcmsweb1.loudoun.k12.va.us%2F52220 82812383487%2Flib%2F5222082812383487%2FNabokov_ess ay.doc&rct=j&q=nabokov%20good%20readers%20and%20good%20writers&ei=Lxp9TJOaLoaBlAfezK3sCw&usg=AFQjCNHmQLiykatkCXRDgSlfuIh8goedSA&cad=rja

[Seasider]

I don't think you have to love characters but you do have to feel they are real and believable and not merely stereotypes or cardboard cut-outs. No one could love Mr Darcy until he reveals the best of his character as a result of the Wickham episode.Up to then I found him romantic and rather fascinating...but love. No way. But then if he had been kind and nice at the beginning there would have been no story.

[RobinoftheMoor]

makes you love his/her characters. Otherwise, how can you care what happens to them. Does you agree?

The process of art is the irrational, to express what cannot be expressed directly. The writer chooses characters to flesh out noetic qualities, and we recognize these qualities, either in our internal selves or our external environments. A character does not have to represent a positive aspect for us to recognize or even "love" them.
If we do not connect with one or more of the characters on some level, then what is the purpose of the literature? Propoganda?
Rob

[RobinoftheMoor]

I must disagree for some reasons:

a) We don't know if the writer wants to make the reader care or not;

b) Caring is the reader's and not the writer's prerogative; I'm sure many readers come to care for characters the writers don't want us to care;

c) Some writers aren't interested in characters.



For what reason would a writer write for publication, if not to be read? In order to be read, a writer must engage the reader in characters on some level.
Can you give examples of writer's who do not care about their characters?
Rob

[African_Love]

Not if it's not character driven fiction, and not if the characters are not particularly likable.

I don't think the point of Native Son was to get the reader to love Bigger Thomas...or of Crime and Punishment to love Raskolnikov.

In a way, I thought the author was trying to get you to see things from Bigger's point of view, even though he was far from likeable. I remember Richard Wright once saying that Native Son was a warning to White America about what will happen if racial inequality continues and Blacks remain locked away in economically depressed ghettos. Bigger was a monster because he was a loser.



what is the purpose of the literature

The purpose of stories, imo, is to stimulate imagination and empathy.

[Seasider]

The process of art is the irrational, to express what cannot be expressed directly. The writer chooses characters to flesh out noetic qualities, and we recognize these qualities, either in our internal selves or our external environments. A character does not have to represent a positive aspect for us to recognize or even "love" them.
If we do not connect with one or more of the characters on some level, then what is the purpose of the literature? Propoganda?
Rob
Noetic? Intellectual? Thinking? What do you mean? Please

[Mr.lucifer]

Depending on the author's intentions, I think a sign of a good author is getting us to be facisnated with his characters.

[scaltz]

Yes, and no. One comment I have heard about some of my own fiction drafts from fellow writers is, "your character is unsympathetic."

In fact, generally you want to make your main character sympathetic. Someone we can relate to, someone we want to root for, someone we feel bad about when things go bad. Often the antagonists are sympathetic too to a degree. (we can, of course, list specific works if anyone wants to play that game). I think this happens naturally because many good authors who do spend time crafting believable characters will fall into this pattern naturally; since real people are fine shades of sins and virtue, good and bad, etc.

However, like all rules of writing these are merely guidelines. Not actual rules. There are plenty of examples where an author writes an unsympathetic character, a downright vicious vile excuse for a human being, but an interesting one and makes it work.


I don't entirely agree with you because I take pleasure on reading novellas where the protagonist's vile attitude about life eventually leads to his/her own destruction :D.

[Heteronym]

For what reason would a writer write for publication, if not to be read? In order to be read, a writer must engage the reader in characters on some level.
Can you give examples of writer's who do not care about their characters?
Rob

Well, now this is open to speculation, but I would suggest the following examples:

Satan in Paradise Lost; John Milton was a Christian who wrote the poem to justify the ways of God to men. I'm sure he wouldn't want modern readers looking up to him as a hero.

Stavrogin in Demons; Dostoyevsky abhorred nihilists.

God in The Gospel According to Jesus Christ; José Saramago is an absolute atheist and despised religion with an intensity shared by few contemporary novelists. You won't find an iota of sympathy for God.

O'Brien in 1984; George Orwell makes the embodiment of the Big Brother ideology.

[mayneverhave]

Satan in Paradise Lost; John Milton was a Christian who wrote the poem to justify the ways of God to men. I'm sure he wouldn't want modern readers looking up to him as a hero.

We don't know how Milton felt about Satan in Paradise Lost, and that's the entire point. He's certainly the most interesting character in the poem, but as for Milton's opinion of him, who knows, or really, who even cares?

I'd suggest that it's impossible to ascertain an author's opinion regarding his characters, or that that opinion is even important. The only thing I would say is that the author cares about how his characters are constructed, that they are precisely represented, but as for his actual moral opinion about them? that delves into a psychoanalysis of the author.

[Heteronym]

In the sense that the author's opinion is irrelevant in modern criticism, no one cares. But for the matter that we're discussing, which is trying to come up with possible examples of characters the authors didn't like, this thread demonstrates some care.

And I think Satan is a central character in this question. Indeed we don't know what Milton thought of him, but if we consider that Milton was a Christian believer, I think it's not much of a stretch to say that he wouldn't have cared (i.e. have tender feelings) about the enemy of God and Mankind.

[Drkshadow03]

I don't entirely agree with you because I take pleasure on reading novellas where the protagonist's vile attitude about life eventually leads to his/her own destruction :D.

Then you are in fact agreeing with me. If read carefully my comments that you quote perfectly allow for a novella with a vile protagonist.

[Drkshadow03]

Well, now this is open to speculation, but I would suggest the following examples:

Satan in Paradise Lost; John Milton was a Christian who wrote the poem to justify the ways of God to men. I'm sure he wouldn't want modern readers looking up to him as a hero.

Stavrogin in Demons; Dostoyevsky abhorred nihilists.

God in The Gospel According to Jesus Christ; José Saramago is an absolute atheist and despised religion with an intensity shared by few contemporary novelists. You won't find an iota of sympathy for God.

O'Brien in 1984; George Orwell makes the embodiment of the Big Brother ideology.

Except Winston Smith is the protagonist of 1984,, not O'Brien, and a sympathetic character . . .

Not to mention Adam is just as much the protagonist of Paradise Lost as Satan . . .

[scaltz]

Then you are in fact agreeing with me. If read carefully my comments that you quote perfectly allow for a novella with a vile protagonist.

Sorry, I jumped the last paragraph :P.

[mayneverhave]

And I think Satan is a central character in this question. Indeed we don't know what Milton thought of him, but if we consider that Milton was a Christian believer, I think it's not much of a stretch to say that he wouldn't have cared (i.e. have tender feelings) about the enemy of God and Mankind.

This is fairly obvious with an author like Milton, whose beliefs and affiliations were well know. But what if we weren't familiar with Milton's personal life? Sure we could ascertain some of the poet's personal beliefs from the poem. Adam is the central protagonist, after all, it's his paradise to lose, not Satan's. But Satan is without a doubt the most interesting character, perhaps the driving force, in the poem, perhaps due to our inherent interest in the Byronic hero, the bad-boy, but mostly due to Satan's unparalleled rhetoric, and in an art form built on rhetoric like poetry, the one with the best rhetoric wins.

That's slightly off topic however. Mainly, what I am saying is: putting aside what we already know about Milton as a man, it's entirely possible to say that drawing the flesh-and-blood poet's views out of the poem is off-base. It's possible that the entire poem and its ethics is a posturing, and that the epic narrator of the poem is a merely a voice adopted by the actual, physical poet to speak for him. This is entirely appropriate to an epic, especially one like Paradise Lost, which is written in such a grand, inflated style. This is not a poet who postures at spontaneity like Byron, but one who makes no effort whatsoever to not come off as contrived. For god's sake, each book opens with an argument detailing what is about to take place.