Have You Heard Monthly Author Interview

Everyone tells you to make your main character appealing, but few tell you how. An appealing character does not have to be likeable, but it usually helps. A character like Patton can be appealing, but would you really want to have dinner with him? Making a character appealing means making the reader like or care about or be interested in or be impressed by the character.

This is more tricky than it might seem. You may have read articles which give some particular character as a clear example of an appealing character, and you are horrified. You can’t stand that character! What is wrong here? Do you need to see a shrink? No. What is going on here is that readers differ from each other in what type of character they find appealing just as they differ as to what people they find appealing. This is a fact of life, and it is not going to change.

This fact of reader differences affects every aspect of fiction writing, from what type of mysteries will intrigue readers to what goals will hook them. One woman’s deeply moving love story is another woman’s incredible, unrealistic mush. As a writer, you must try to figure out what these differences are in order to know whether your appealing character is going to be appealing to very many readers (other than you).

So, how do you make your character appealing? There are many methods: making the character important, presenting some emotionally significant events or some achievements or milestones in the character’s past life, having certain events happen in the present story you are telling, such as having other characters injure or insult or treat your character unfairly, giving the character a certain personality style that is appealing, creating caring relationships with other characters who themselves are appealing, etc.

Under each of these suggestions, there are many, many ways of making a character appealing, but this article is limited to a certain number of words. For instance, consider the present situation of the character. Making your main character physically attractive can make the character appealing (although you have to take care not to create jealousy in your same-sex readers). Also, having a character suffer is one of the most effective and most often used methods of gaining the reader's sympathy for the character. There are, of course, many ways in which a human being can suffer and the writer can use several different kinds for the same character. Also, main characters, especially in bestseller fiction, are often at a disadvantage relative to the bad guys. A character like Jim Thorpe, who is an underdog because of his race, is a strongly appealing character. In addition, a character who lives in a continual state of hope can be appealing, for instance, Jay Gatsby's longing for Daisy, which controls and directs his entire life. A related method is a character's having conflicting motives. George Bailey in “It's a Wonderful Life” is conflicted between leaving his small town to see the world and staying and marrying the woman he loves. Two motives that are understandable and sympathetic to the reader can increase the character's appeal because the reader realizes that one or the other motive must remain unsatisfied.

One way to test whether you have succeeded in making a character appealing is to ask: What would you feel if this character were to die? If the answer is mild sadness, then the character is not sufficiently appealing to be a main character.

Unfortunately, there really are no ten easy ways to learn to be a good fiction writer. The good news is that the methods can be learned, and you don’t have to be a genius to learn them. What you do have to do is to avoid being fooled by all the articles and books that tell you that after you have learned these ten easy ways, you are a good writer. Instead, you have to go on to find the few sources that will take you beyond the basics and the generalities and will give you the advanced information and lots of it. Naturally, I would recommend my own book, Advanced Writing: Fiction and Film, a one-hundred-and-four thousand word book that (sadly) lacks all the chit-chat but does give you a lot of solid information and useable techniques.

Wells Earl Draughon is the author of the novels “Always”, “Heather”, “Traci”, “Lies”, and “Last Things, First Things,” as well as "Advanced Writing: Fiction and Film," and its companion volume, “A Book Worth Reading.”