What Makes a Character?

I loved boys’ books when I was a kid. Boys’ books involved excitement, adventure, people working things out. Girls’ books never seemed to get any more exciting than girls sneaking comics into school, or Flora MacDonald rowing her Bonnie Prince Charlie boat – since he was declared “bonnie” I really wasn’t that interested. So I read my brothers’ Christmas gifts before I read my own. And I considered myself in reading heaven when my parents bought me a complete set of Conan Doyle stories. Yay!

Today’s books are different. There are lots of female protagonists rising above terrible dangers. I’m almost embarrassed to recommend books to my husband because I wonder if he feels as I once did, that all the best books are for girls. But we’ve learned together, it really doesn’t matter if the protagonist is male or female – I loved my brothers’ boys’ adventure tales, and what mattered was the story, the characters, events, ideas and places in some kind of balance. Same now; my husband loves Ninth House.

Before we married, my husband introduced me to his favorite science fiction books. The balance was different. The ideas and places mattered more than story and character. And I was intrigued. So many cool ideas.

Modern books – at least the ones we’ve been enjoying – give greater prominence to characters. But, rather like the ideas of those old scifi novels, they have to be convincing characters. They don’t have to be male or female, or bi, or trans, or… But they have to be believable.

I got hooked on Ursula LeGuin at some point. Her books have fantastic balance. The characters are part of the idea and part of the place, and everything comes together in a convincing whole. I wish I could write like her! But, meanwhile, I’ll work on creating convincing characters for my novels, stories, novellas… and even for poems?

So what makes a good character?

Influenced by Le Guin, I’d suggest a character has to be a natural part of the story’s time and place; they have to belong to the idea that’s driving the story. Because ideas are “outside” the “normal”, I guess that means the character has to not quite belong, even though they’re naturally part of the setting. A child protagonist will have to be inquisitive, maybe even disruptive. An adult will have to be, at least in part, an outsider. An alien will learn. An octopus will ponder (I loved Remarkably Bright Creatures!)…

Where does that leave the observer narrator – not part of the story at all; just watching it play out? I guess I’d want my observer to enjoy the same sort of curiosity as the reader, or else to be so different that the reader wants to understand the observer as well as the story.

Which leaves me still pondering… what makes a good character? Maybe it’s just someone who lives in the author’s head and talks so much the author has to let them out. I need to get back to letting my characters out!

Who would You Identify with?

I’m rereading the draft of my next “Five-Minute Bible Stories” book and adding pictures as I go. I add the pictures to keep myself attentive. Otherwise I just read what I’ve written and think, Yes, that’s about right, without considering whether it’s told the right way – whether anyone will care what it says. The images, of course, just illustrate someone or something – usually an ancient Biblical character because there are lots of free Bible images out there. And it’s hard to identify with Biblical characters, be they good guys or bad guys. But the stories, I hope, might make you identify, at least while you’re reading, with someone a little more everyday.

My plan for the Bible stories is that they tell something the adults might already know, and provide a spin that might attract children too. They’re meant as bedtime stories, Sunday school stories, easy readers, etc. And they’ll only work if the protagonist is relatable (ideally to kids and adults) and interesting. My characters may or may not be Biblical, but the world they live in is as close as I can make it to the Bible’s historical world. And the stories they tell… well they depend on the stories in the Bible (and history, science, social studies, etc.) and on the character who’s going to tell the tale.

The last book I released was John’s Joy, a child’s version of Revelation. Scary, right? And seriously unsuitable for kids about to go to sleep. Except I told it from the point of view of a pretty normal kid hanging around with a slightly weird bloke. The weird guy, John, had been kicked out of his country by the government and was now a refugee, masquerading as a servant, writing books and letters to friends and churches back home.

Would you identify with the kid? With the refugee? With the (fairly rich) household that had taken him on as a servant? With the townsfolk, trying to cope with earthquakes and other disasters…? When we identify with someone, that’s when a story starts to become real. And that why I write these stories. They’re real to me, and I want to make them real to kids and their parents.

I love reading the book of Revelation. It’s full of zany images, fascinating tidbits of history, and great ideas. I loved writing John’s Joy while I read Revelation. And I hope you might enjoy it too.