Poor Little Me, a Character to Avoid

Fiona's comment on Playing What If got me thinking about my terrible tendency to write Poor Little Me. I can guarantee that the first draft of chapter 1 will begin with some character moaning on about how life is unfair, nobody likes her, nobody loves her, she's trying really hard but it's all going wrong, oh, oh, oh, poor little me. I'm not sure quite what it says about my innermost being but poor little me is, I'm afraid to say, my default setting.

The problem is two fold. First, I want you to like my central character. Show the character as the underdog and - goes the reasoning - bingo! We automatically like them. Maybe, but in real life while we may offer sympathy as our friend moans on about how hard done by they are, unless there's something really dreadful going on, secretly we're thinking: Get a grip!

Same with characters. Making them put upon doesn't actually make us like them. Just as we avoid the real life heartsink friend when they phone, we don't want to read about books about moaners - even if by p15 they've got their act together and are now kicking ass. It's too late.

Secondly, novels are about people with problems solving them. Characters without problems don't work. If you're writing contemporary women's fiction, as I do, then problems are more likely to be domestic in scale rather than baddie makes a bid for world domination a la James Bond novels. Husbands, children, boyfriends, jobs, parents, lovers, pets, money - it's the stuff of most of our lives, and most of us will have a good moan about some aspect of it some of the time. So, make the character someone with an everyday problem at the beginning, and we'll like them, yes? Actually, no.

Because I know whinging moaners are my natural setting, I have to forcibly make my characters cheery and resourceful, constantly plotting and planning to improve their lives. I think I'm getting better at it. Although Natalie, in A Single to Rome, is first met getting dumped by her boyfriend, she is determined that she can get him back and plans accordingly. Lu starts Kissing Mr Wrong on a mission to get Marcus and find out about Jack.

So, bringing this post back to Fiona's What If comment, if I make my character not like her job at the start I can guarantee that my innermost self is getting all geared up for a quick round of Poor Little Me. It's best avoided.

PC or not PC

I was reading the blurbs from my local cinema and came across this for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus: Cert 12A: Contains infrequent strong language, scenes of threat, hanging and smoking. It made me laugh that smoking had become something that we have to warn concerned parents of, but then I started to think about censorship when writing.

It's unconscious, but reluctantly I have to admit I self-censor my work. My characters don't smoke, mainly because I don't and nor do the majority of my friends, but I'm also aware that I believe - I haven't asked her - a habitual smoker wouldn't get past my editor. In Nice Girls Do, Anna gets led astray into a coke-sniffing party lifestyle, but I was careful to show the negative effects this has on her and not present it as a sensible choice.

Would I get away with writing about a character who makes what are seen as negative choices - sleeping around, drinking too much, taking drugs, eating to excess - and presenting them in a positive light? I think not. I did once write a scene for one of my characters where she gets drunk and sleeps with a stranger which I felt was true to the character's distressed and confused state of mind, but it didn't make it past the editor. She felt readers would be disgusted and unsympathetic. I ditched the scene. Is that being PC, or over-sensitive to reader sensibilities?

I'm not sure. In retrospect, I'd gone overboard on making the scene too negative an experience and perhaps a sexy dalliance with a handsome stranger would have passed without comment. So long as they didn't smoke, of course.