How to Make Readers Root for Your Characters
by New York Times bestselling author, Joseph Finder
VANISHED, the book that’s coming out in just a few days (!), will be the first in a series featuring Nick Heller, a high-powered investigator with a private intelligence firm . . . and his friends and family.
Creating Nick’s world took longer than I expected, because it was so important to me to get these characters right. It wasn’t just the facts about what guys like Nick - “private spies” - do. It was the essence of the man, the personality, the likes and dislikes, the quirks and the rough edges. It’s always been important to me to like my characters - even the bad guys - and since this gang will be with me for years to come, if all goes well, it was even more important than usual.
Never forget: novels are about people. The more interesting the character, the more interesting the book. Good characters can sometimes save a bad plot, but - with very rare exceptions — good plots can’t save paper-thin characters.
But does that mean that your hero, or your main protagonists, have to be likable? Yes, I really think so. When you’re writing a thriller, it’s especially important.
Don’t get me wrong, there are all sorts of remarkable novels in which the main character isn’t appealing (Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections comes to mind - I loved that book, but I sure didn’t like the protagonist). But when you’re writing popular fiction, a mystery or a thriller, it’s essential that your reader connect on a deep level with the hero with whom she’s going to embark on this journey. It’s like taking a long plane or train ride: the trip goes a lot faster if you enjoy the company of the person you’re traveling with, or next to.
But likeable doesn’t mean boring or obvious or clichéd. You want to give your hero “elbows,” the kind of traits and habits we know and tolerate in our own friends and family. They’re flaws, but they’re flaws readers identify with: Kinsey Millhone’s need for solitude, Jack Reacher’s inability to stay in one place, Dave Robicheaux’s fierce self-righteousness. These aren’t quirks; they’re elements of character that come from deep inside, and make readers curious about what makes these fictional people tick. Why can’t Reacher settle down? Will Stephanie Plum ever make a decision between Joe Morelli and Ranger? And why aren’t Spenser and Susan married, anyway?
A character without flaws isn’t believable, and isn’t someone readers want to spend time with. Remember that kid in your third-grade class who did everything perfectly? Didn’t everyone want to beat him up? Fictional characters work the same way. A character who has the answer to every question and never makes a mistake is both annoying and boring, a fatal combination.
Ed McBain, winner of just about every award given to crime writers, said that finding this balance was one of his primary challenges when starting the 87th Precinct novels. “When I first started writing the Cop Story,” he wrote, “I knew only one thing about policemen: They were inhuman beasts. The problem was how to turn them into likable, sympathetic human beings. The answer was simple. Give them head colds. And first names.”
So what makes a character likable? First and foremost, the character has to want something, and the reader has to understand why. The word “protagonist” comes from the Greek, and literally means “first competitor.” Your protagonist can win or lose, but he or she has to be out there swinging, fighting for his or her heart’s desire. Your character’s the sports team, and the readers are his or her fans. We all love characters who are active and committed and involved and passionate.
Take Babe Levy, the main character of William Goldman’s classic novel MARATHON MAN. When we meet him - before anything happens, before his mysterious brother shows up or he even dreams of the disasters about to befall him - he’s a graduate student in New York, going for a run:
He was going to run the marathon. Like Nurmi. Like the already mythical Nurmi. Years from now, all across the world, track buffs would agonize over who was greatest, the mighty Finn or the fabled T. B. Levy … For Levy was not going to be a marathon man; anyone could be that if you just devoted your life to it. No, he was going to be the marathon man. That, plus an intellect of staggering accomplishment coupled with an unequaled breadth of knowledge, the entire mixture bounded by a sense of modesty as deep as it was sincere.
What have we learned? We’ve learned what Babe wants, we’ve learned how extravagant and wild his ambitions are, and we’ve also learned that he’s got a pretty good sense of humor about it.
The sense of humor is a key aspect of likability, I think. In thrillers, the main characters are facing a situation that’s desperately serious, a matter of life or death. The way you make him likable in that situation is not to let him take himself too seriously. Your main character has to be self-aware enough that the reader can put himself or herself in that character’s place, behaving in a way your readers only hope they’d do in a similar situation.
An example of this in my own work is PARANOIA, which starts with Adam Cassidy feeling like one of many invisible cogs in a corporate machine. Adam, young and brash, asserts himself with an expensive prank - the kind of thing a lot of us might do, if only we thought we could get away with it. Adam doesn’t get away with it, and neither would we; that feeling that Adam is just like us, and subject to the rules the rest of us have to play by, goes a long way toward making him likable. Beyond that, the reason for Adam’s prank is to throw a lavish retirement party for an old guy he works with, who would otherwise have been ignored. Yes, Adam made a mistake, but he did it for the best of reasons; he’s a smart-aleck, but with a good heart.
(That, by the way, is what Hollywood calls the “pet the dog moment” - the action that lets us see what a good person your main character is, deep down. We see this early on in Power Play, when Jake Landry tells the shipping clerk at the factory that Jake knows he screwed up, but won’t turn him in. And later on, we know that Ali is one of the good guys, too, because of the conversation she and Jake have while watching the TV show about - yes - dogs. A character who likes dogs is already on the road to likability, as far as I’m concerned.)
Every writer has his or her own approach to creating likable characters, and I thought it might help to share a few of the techniques I’ve developed.
Desire defines character. Too many writers think you can create a character by just throwing together a basket of quirks, habits and attributes. That’s not enough. As I said earlier, every character has to want something, or you don’t have a story. Beyond that, whatever the character wants has to be something the reader can sympathize with and understand, even if it’s completely eccentric - like Jason Steadman in KILLER INSTINCT, who’s addicted to business self-help books.
The desire, whatever it is, has to be what makes the character act rather than react. That’s essential. One of the biggest mistakes beginning writers make is having the main character simply react to external events, bouncing from one crisis to the next without a will of his or her own. That gets tiresome in a hurry, besides stretching credibility; how much can happen to one ordinary person? Why would a reader care about a main character who’s only trying to respond to what everyone around him says or does?
Details illuminate character. Although the desire is most important, the quirks and habits do matter. Once you know what the character wants, you know why she collects ceramic thimbles, or why he has a jaywalking phobia, and those become essential parts of showing who these characters are. The texture of a character’s life makes him feel real to us - and that makes it easier to identify with him. Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta, for example, is a professional woman who spends money on beautiful clothes and shoes; she cares what she looks like, she’s not the sort of woman who wants to blend in. Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum can’t quit the Tastykakes, which not only reveals character but also places her in southern New Jersey, where Tastykakes are almost a religion.
A character’s friends and family illuminate character even more. If the main character is someone we like, it’s fun for us to see him or her interacting with friends, and it allows the reader to imagine what it would be like to spend time with them. Nick, in VANISHED, has two very good friends who have different but equally important perspectives on him, and different but equally important types of friendship with him. We learn a lot about Nick from how he behaves around his friends and family, and should be able to identify with the way those relationships work. Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole has Joe Pike; Robert B. Parker’s Spenser has Hawk and Susan; James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux has Clete Purcel.
Exploring the differences between the protagonists and their closest friends is one of the easiest ways to reveal character attributes. In Robert Crais’s early Elvis Cole novels, for example, Elvis is wise-cracking, emotional and undisciplined, while Joe Pike is rigid, reliable, and very nearly humorless. As that series has developed, Crais has used the friendship between those men to develop both characters; over time, Elvis has become much more responsible, while Pike turns out to be downright funny (although still in a scary, well-controlled way).
Series succeed because readers come to know the characters well, and each new installment feels like visiting old friends. I hope that Nick and his world will become your old friends, too.
Vanished can be purchased at popular book stores and Joseph’s web site.
Tags: desire, details, develop characters, family, flaws, friends, habits, passionate, protagonist, quirks, sense of humor
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