3 Ways to Make a Depressed Character Interesting

A common story arc is to start a novel with a main character who is down in the dumps and to show their recovery from whatever it was that was depressing them in the first place. For example, a woman who's recovering from a bruising divorce will end up triumphant with a new life that was much better than the old one.

Triumph over disaster, hope springs eternal, never say die, the worm turns - they're all good themes to use for a novel. However, there is an inherent problem. A depressed main character can be, well, depressing to read. Once they're on the road to recovery their lives will be more fun to read about, but those beginning pages when it's established just how miserable/sad/downbeat their lives are can be miserable/sad/downbeat for the reader too. And that means the reader may never get to p 25 when it all picks up.

There are three solutions, and ideally you'd apply all at the same time.

One is to make the character self-aware. If your character lacks self confidence, then make them aware of that. Let them acknowledge how pathetic they're being, let us see them struggle to try to get out of the mire. If their well meaning friend suggests something, then don't have the character immediately stamp on the idea (it'll never work, I can't do that because...). Have them think about it in a positive way before being knocked back.

The second solution is for them to have some area of positivity in their lives. Yes, everything else in their life may have crumbled but their painting, garden, wood-working, whatever is still a source of pleasure and consolation. Make them skilled, knowledgeable or gifted in some way and show that there is some positivity in their life.

Thirdly, let them display positive qualities outside their depression. Just because the character's situation is sad, it doesn't exempt them from humanity. Actually the opposite applies - we may pay lip service about being nice to the sad and depressed, but not many of us actively go our of our way to spend time with them unless they are our nearest and dearest (and let's face it, we might well be staying with them out of duty rather than pleasure). So while the character may be sad, let them also be resourceful or ingenious. Let them be generous to others. Let them be loyal, brave and kind. Best of all, let them be funny...

Positive people planning with purpose is my motto, so while your character may be depressed work hard to make them depressed in positive way. Put bluntly, no one wants to read about someone who is moaning. So don't let them.

Character Arc

When you think about it, what I've been writing about most of this week has been character arc, although I've put it in terms of plot.  Of course, character and plot are inextricably linked, and I expect now I'm going to talk about character, it'll end up being about plot.  Still, here goes.

A character arc is the development that takes place in a character's emotional life over the course of the story.  They start emotionally at A and end up at B.  With luck, they've also been through C, D, E, F, G etc on their way to B, but put simply, by the end they have changed.  Usually they have learned something about themselves and/or the way the world works.

Take The Great Gatsby. Nick Carraway, the narrator, comes East.  He's from the Mid-West, and thinks his cousin Daisy is wonderful with her rich husband and glamorous Eastern lifestyle.  Mid-Western values of honesty, hard work, thrift etc are forgotten as he gets sucked into a more sophisticated way of life.  But by the end he has changed.  He returns home, disillusioned by the East, emotionally scarred and generally sadder and wiser than when he started. That's his character arc.  

Isabel in Adultery for Beginners starts out as being entirely dependent on her husband, not just financially but also emotionally.  By the end, she is reaching towards financial independence, she is taking responsibility for her own life and actions, she is making her own future instead on relying on others. She has learned about self-reliance and self-determination, and when she establishes a new relationship it will be as equals.  

Often, when the novel starts we see our main character as having this virtue, that fault.  Over the course of the story we usually learn why they have those virtues/faults.  We learn what are the problems created by those virtues/faults.  We learn how they're going to overcome those specific problems and crucially, how THEY are learning not to make those mistakes again by recognising their virtues/faults and changing. 

In Adultery for Beginners, my editor said she wanted only a hint that Isabel and Adam were going to get together, rather than a full blown passionate embrace, explaining that readers could fill in the gaps for themselves. She didn't explain further than that - she may not have known why it was deep down the right thing to do.  Neither did I; I just accepted the situation and amended it.  

In retrospect I know why it was right for Isabel. Isabel at the beginning of the novel is impetuous; she behaves like a child wanting things now.  She rushes headlong into a relationship, and gets badly burned. But by the end she has grown up.  She has learned not to do that again.  She will take things with Adam slowly, and let the relationship develop at its own pace.  

I believe that one of the reasons we read fiction is to discover how other people deal with change.  Without change there is no point to reading.  In a novel the character will change on many levels, in a short story there will usually be space for only one or two changes.  But change there will be.