Into the Fire

My son and I watched Benny and Joon tonight. I love that film. It has my all time second favorite love scene in it between Sam (Johnny Depp) and Joon (Mary Stuart Masterson). Sam and Joon are quirky but lovable, and isn’t that what we’ve been talking about with characters?

As a writer, you can do just about anything with your characters, but if you don’t give a reader something to draw them into the lives of those characters, the plot suffers and the reader either exits the story early or finishes disappointed at best.

I’ve just completed two novels in a row where I could not relate to the protagonists. It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand or empathize with their circumstances. On the contrary, but it was how they elected to handle those circumstances which showed them to be shallow and mechanical, and, to tell you the truth, I didn’t respect their actions. Made for some not so pleasant reading.

Of course different readers react differently to diverse characters. It might depend on their own life experiences. We tend to sympathize with those who are in the grip of similar situations we encounter. We understand certain reactions to specific stimuli. Our personalities contribute to our responses. We might relate to one protagonist and not another. But even so, in order to sell the story those characters have to impact the readers and accrue some favoritism—at least enough to make them interesting and enough to make the story enticing.

If characters read as hollow stick figures, the story isn’t going to bale them out. They have to seem real even if they’re in a fantasy novel or an espionage thriller. As readers, we have to believe in them—either in their goodness, their vulnerability, their suffering, their sense of humor, their conniving, their evil, their merciful personality. We won’t engage in the story about them if we can’t relate in some way.

Those authors who write historical novels must do considerable research so astute readers don’t catch them with characters dressed in the wrong clothing for the period or using an inappropriate weapon for the age. Likewise, our people research must render a credible and believable character on the page whether we head back to a time of nostalgia or we’re present in a current dash of reality.

Father, we all want to write “real” regardless of what you give us to write about. Help us to never forget how ultimate realism originates and is found in you. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.