The pictures make it look so easy... {source}

 May I just say that there are few things worse for the temporary state of mind than working nights. One of those few things is thinking one is going to work a night and then being put on call. This throws one's tenuously-regular sleep schedule into further depths of Weird and Insane. All this to say, if my brainwaves seem to vacillate in terms of general coherence and cohesiveness, do me the undeserved favor of chalking it up to sleep patterns.

Heigh-ho, we strike the third-way mark! I think I am not alone when I say that this one gave me an inordinate amount of trouble (as a matter of fact, I know I am not; Jenny has already posted hers).


The trouble with this question is, I am (in general) a hideous optimist when it comes to people. Characters are people. Therefore, I don't generally stop in the middle of any story and think, 'Man, this person is just the limit!' Furthermore, I think the only people who can hate or even genuinely dislike their characters are people who hate writing.

'Wait!' you say. 'What about villains? Surely you can't like a villain - there must be something said for principle here!' Well... an author can hardly be principled in the usual way of likes and dislikes, and let me tell you why. A character the reader classifies as unlikable for the sake of villainry is, to the writer's eyes, filling his or her function in a plot as ... unlikable characters. This allows us (as writers) to like them insofar as they fill a role, and fill a role well. Oftentimes, they even make us laugh or give us a small amount of pleasure by virtue of their being Interesting. My experience as a writer is not broad (much less universal), but I think it must be difficult for any writer who enjoys his craft to dislike any of his characters, provided they tell the story along with him and it is a story the writer finds worth hearing.

Where do unlikeable characters come from - characters that belong on the "Unfavourite" list? Could it be when characters don't do what we mean them to do? Oftentimes, when characters step outside the scope of the role we give them, the frustration of that does not make them unlikeable because of the added joy of seeing the story develop in ways we did not foresee. The true frustration - the tedious, slow, weight-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach sort of frustration - is when everything goes as planned, and the flaw is in the plan. This is when the author irrationally turns to the character and says "It's all your fault!" and decides that character is her least favourite to write. And if that is how we take least favourite to mean, I have one character who comes pretty darn close.

I actually did make this one, though the background doesn't belong to me.

This is the recalcitrant hero of last year's NaNoWriMo novel. He was meant to be mediocre, honest, and a little shabby - the sort of fellow who doesn't intend to do anything great, but by working an honest job and being faithful in little things turns out the greatest of them all. But there didn't seem to be any way past the first part about never doing anything great, and he became a rather shifty and lazy chap.

To worsen his plight by contrast, he kept making fascinating friends, while he himself remained tedious and mediocre. He had a fascinating cousin who went to university, and then he made a hilariously dour friend who traveled the country by jumping trains - but would he take a hint? No; he just sludged on through like so much proverbial dull slime. The moments that should have captivated my heart - moments of emotional fire and mental lucidity - only made things worse, because they were contrived and not part of him. Perhaps the worst thing was that I had made him that way on purpose, meaning to Make Something of him, and it turned out my hand was not equal to the task.

It was mostly the wrong sort of thing to try to develop during the rush and bustle of NaNo - that wasn't his fault. Barnabas needed to be grown slowly, and I couldn't afford slowness then. I've set that chap aside 'til I'm ready to let him make his own story; I'm not capable of forcing that kind of plot, which is why it really was nothing short of a moron's game to try it for NaNo. I squeezed past the fifty-thousand-word mark and collapsed in a state of relief at not having to force myself to slog along with my poor, underdone hero. Ah well; live and learn - and I do mean to try his tale again. Slowly. A few sentences at a time. For the sake of the fascinating cousin, if nothing else.

2 Missages

1. Jenny Freitag on August 5, 2011 at 12:24 PM

   Raymond is actually a little like that. Uh, Raymond Godshall, not Uncle Raymond. I foresee difficulty with clarity. Raymond is the closest I have come to a Dickensian character: he's a real brick, really nice, the sort of person you are naturally at ease with, perfectly safe with, you know he will never let you down. You love him for that. But his is not the drive, the action, the wild emotion - at least, not for a good long while. It's the cast around him that fills in the energized Everything that goes into a thrilling story. He is like the king on the chessboard, and everyone else is a player on the field.
   
   I think I was in the shower when I realized that - these things always come to me in the shower. At first it worried me, because I didn't want the reader to not invest emotion in Raymond, but I realized I needn't worry. Raymond in and of himself is a decent, upstanding chap, the sort of person you care about; and the actions of the others, I hope, will bring the reader back to wondering, "But how will this effect Raymond?"
   
   It will be a tough story, but I'm pretty confident about it. For the moment. :P

    
2. A Reformed Hippie on August 5, 2011 at 4:08 PM

   It's quite hard when characters rufuse to be what you want them to be. Like they sit there and snicker at your hardship in makeing them do what you want them to it.
   
   ~Lèrowen