When Infallible Heroes Work (And When They Don't)

The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth's first novel, was turned down by many publishers because - as it concerns an assassin who is after General de Gaulle - they reasoned that readers wouldn't be gripped as they would know the main character doesn't succeed in his aim, and therefore there would be no tension.  

They were wrong - it became an international best seller and a tension-packed film.  Why?  We know the main character won't succeed, because de Gaulle wasn't assassinated.  So why are we waiting to see if he will be?  

The main character in The Day of the Jackal is an exception to the usual rule. He is an Infallible Hero.  Every setback he's already planned for.  He's got lots of passports, knows how to disguise a car and smuggle guns through customs.  He's ruthless about killing anyone who gets in his way.  He runs rings around the poor old police, plodding along in his wake.  He appears invincible.  We know he won't succeed, so instead of the more usual: Will the hero succeed in their quest (the answer usually being Yes), the question becomes, firstly, how can this Infallible Hero be stopped? and secondly, Who is this Infallible Hero? 

We're not stupid, us readers.  We know most stories start at A and end with Z, whether they're a romance (which always ends with a kiss and Happy Ever After) or a murder mystery (the detective finds out who dunnit) or a thriller (the secret is unmasked).  It's how we get to Z that matters, not what Z is.  The more Z appears impossible to achieve (the lovers have a quarrel, the main suspect is murdered, the trail goes cold etc) the more we like it.  

The easiest way to make Z impossible to achieve is to make the main character fallible.  They muck things up.  They get it wrong.  They forget the important gadget.  They go off in a huff.  Or make a bad decision.  Just like us, in fact.  They are fallible, but achieve their goal in the end.  

We often pitch our fallible characters against apparently infallible antagonists, often authority figures like parents, head teachers, megalomaniac bosses or evil corporations.  Think of The Terminator.  Arnie's robotic character is unstoppable but the poor fallible humans have to stop him somehow.  How will they do that?  It's impossible!  But by the end they do.  They get to Z (against all the odds, as the cliche has it). 

If our main protagonist was infallible, and got everything right AND achieved their goal, how irritating would that be?  We'd be utterly fed up with them.  So we need to know that the apparently infallible hero won't succeed a la Day of the Jackal.  Similarly, if our apparently infallible antagonists turn out to be infallible and the poor hero fails utterly, then the story is limp and ends unsuccessfully.  (How to make apparently down beat endings up beat is the subject of another post.)

It's the struggle we like.  We hope that in real life our struggle will be rewarded by success.  If there's no struggle, then we hope the rewards won't follow. Sadly real life isn't fair like this, but fiction can be.  As an author part of our job is to make it so.

Depth Not Breadth

Recently I was looking at someone's short story and was struck by how many problems the main character had. Girlfriend problems, work problems, boss problems, family problems...he had the lot and they were cluttering up the main story which was nothing to do with girlfriend, work, boss and family. I asked why they'd chosen to give the character so much to deal with, and they answered that they'd wanted to make the character 3D by giving him lots of conflict in his life.

Well, yes. And no.

What was happening was problem overload, none of which was dealt with in any detail - it was a short story, there wasn't time - so it was coming across as a series of cliched situations. There was none of the specific detail that makes a character seem real. The writer had gone for breadth - lots of problems - but not depth, so the character appeared shallow.

I learned that lesson when I was writing Adultery for Beginners. I wanted people to feel sympathetic for my main character, Isabel, right from the start because she was going to have an affair (there was a clue in the title). So I needed her to have an excuse to stray from her husband, one that people would forgive her later actions. I knew they were going to be ex-pats; I'd been told that in Syria, there was abortion on demand, but you were also sterilised at the same time. That sounded like an interesting situation, so I gave her a backstory that involved her being pressurised by her husband to have an abortion because they'd already got two children.

But I couldn't really make it work. So I gave her a backstory that involved her having a baby out in Africa and it dying because the husband didn't take her concerns seriously. He was a civil engineer, so I tried to add into the scenario some issue around water shortages. That didn't work either. I tried a few other things, but all the time I was pushing ahead with the actual story.

By the time I got to the end of the first draft I ditched the backstories because I didn't need them. I knew the characters so much better - deeper - I didn't need to bolt on some invented scenarios. They were ordinary, flawed people in a long term marriage who were tempted to stray. That was all I needed.

Giving characters extraordinary problems doesn't make them interesting, nor does giving them interesting hair, strange deformities or quirky habits that seem inconsistent with what the characters do.

Get to know them well through their actions, and their deeper character will reveal themselves. Go for depth, not breadth.

What The Reader Needs To Know

Think of your three closest friends. Now answer these questions: What did their parents do for a living?  Did they have a pet when growing up and if so, what was it called?  What is their favourite film? 

The chances are you're struggling (unless you're 15, in which case you probably got a full house).  Why?  You don't need to know this information to be friends.  It's just the same when we write characters.  

I've just finished reading One Day by David Nicholls and it's startling the lack of hard information we know about the characters throughout. In the opening pages - we only discover their names on the 3rd page by the way - we very quickly get an impression of who the characters really are, through knowing their thoughts and attitudes.  For example, " 'I think reality is over-rated,' he said in the hope that this might come across as dark and charismatic."  We know immediately he is young and not as confident as he might appear to be.  

This is much more interesting than knowing, for example, where he was born or what his father did for a living.  And it also reflects real life.  You are far more likely to know your friend's attitudes to life than you are to know facts about their past history.  So, the reader needs to know about characters' attitudes to life, but not necessarily facts about their past history.

Secondly, how did you learn about your friend's attitudes to life?  You probably knew little bits straight away from how they spoke and dressed, a few more from what they said on that first meeting.  Then, each time you met up you learned a little bit more about what made them tick. You might have had a long heart to heart conversation at some point, but it's unlikely that happened on your first meeting, and even more unlikely that it happens every time you meet up with your friend.  This is exactly the same as when you're writing.  You want to drip feed information to the reader so they gradually build up a picture of your characters.  

Finally, have you ever been to a party where you've met someone who seems on a mission to fill you in on the most interesting topic in the world: them? I've been trapped by someone like this several times in my life. They tell you about themselves in exhaustive detail while you stand there glazing over and hoping you'll be able escape soon.  People like this are bores.  Well, guess what - so are characters who you know everything about when they first turn up.  

One Day is a good example of information being carefully rationed, and the gradual release of information about the characters is one of the factors that have made it such a success.  You really don't need that much backstory information to hook a reader into your characters.   Concentrate on making them interesting, not the facts about them.

 

Do We Have To Like Characters?

I've just finished reading Edmund de Waal's The Hare with the Amber Eyes.  It's about a collection of netsuke - Japanese carvings - that the author inherited, and he uses the story of the collection to trace his family's history over the past two centuries.  It is a beguiling read and I enjoyed it, especially the tactile descriptions of objects and the places evoked such as Belle Epoque Paris and inter-war Vienna, but all the while I had a nagging sense of dissatisfaction, of unease.

It took time to put my finger on it, but I worked out that the feeling started when I realised that the collection - 264 netsuke in all - hadn't been lovingly assembled by a connoisseur but bought as a job lot by a staggeringly rich bloke as part of a massive accumulation of stuff.  de Waal writes beautifully, but it can't be denied that this is essentially the story of some very rich people buying a lot of expensive things. The family come across as stifled by the sheer quantity of their possessions, brains and imaginations stunted by all this wealth.  

Being fabulously wealthy doesn't, in itself, make for interesting characters, and doing nothing much with that wealth beyond spending it on themselves doesn't make for appealing people.  I once gave feedback on someone's novel which started with the main character being wealthy, but worrying about paying what would have been a relatively small amount to them.  It wasn't attractive, and I recommended either that the character wasn't so well off - or that the amount to be paid would have ruined them.  

We can't all be heroic or live dramatic lives.  This is a memoir and these people were real.  I tussle in my head whether it's fair to judge them for being, essentially, average?  For example, the great grandfather who is bored going into work everyday and would rather be doing something else, but continues through duty to the family.  Or his wife, married very young, who is only interested in dresses and socialising.  The daughter, desperate to get away from her family and escape via education.  

I'm sure most of us can recognise people in similar situations, which should give them an appeal, but there is still that nagging sense of 'So what? Why should I care?' 

As a reader I may tussle with that in a memoir, but as a novelist I can't allow my readers to feel like that about my characters.  So, given that we can understand their situations, what is it that makes me keep the family at arms length?  I think it's the lack of balance.  The family is wealthy, but they do nothing but the obvious with the money ie spend it.  There are no interesting projects to help others, no libraries founded, no good works done.  

Does it matter?  Yes, even though it is non-fiction.  For fiction, the balance would be essential. The rich man would have secret heartache, or perhaps an accident would reverse his fortunes.  The socialite would discover the kind of lives lived by most people most of the time and learn compassion and generosity.  The bored man would cast off his family duty and live his own life. 

The most appealing family members in The Hare with Amber Eyes were, for me, the ones who got away, who rejected the lives they'd been born into.  

'Like' is such a general word, it's hard to pin down what we mean by it. Essentially, would we have been happy to spend time in these real life characters' company?  For me the answer would have to be, 'they're all right, I suppose, but dull.'  And that's not great for any book, no matter how wonderful the writing.

Nasty Characters

When I started writing I had a tendency to write unlikeable characters. It was the most usual bit of feedback for my writing and it always puzzled me. Why did characters have to be likable? Wouldn't interesting do instead? In fact, wasn't nasty more fun?

At the time I used to be part of a workshopping group, and one of the writers was working on a detective story where the main character was just perfect. Her clothes never creased, her hair was just so, she always knew the answer when everyone else was floundering. I hated that character; I couldn't stand her smug perfection and know-it-allness.

What I couldn't see was that my characters were just as flawed as her character. Her character was nothing other than perfect; mine were nothing other than nasty. Pure nastiness is just as dull as pure perfection. It's the contrast that is needed, the good and the bad. My nasty characters needed to have some nice aspects, her perfect character needed some flaws. None of us are perfect, and it's the imperfections that make us ourselves - and make us lovable.

Working Too Hard for Character Sympathy

Writing about Liam Neeson in Taken has told me at least one thing: that he is adored by many. That blog post wrote about the devices employed by the scriptwriters to make him sympathetic. It worked. But by the end it had worked too well, and even the wondrous Liam appeared, well, a bit of a sap.

He goes through hell and back to save his daughter. Battered, bruised, he gets her home and she promptly goes off with her mother and her stepfather, waving bye bye to her rescuer. Liam's sole return for all the effort is to give her an amazing, treat which she does at least bother (just) to say thank you for. I can't have been the only person watching who thought he'd have been better off leaving her to her fate.

So, his daughter is a selfish bimbo. What does that make the character? No one acknowledges his actions, and he gets no reward. Now, you could argue that a father's selfless love doesn't think to ask for a reward but being a doormat is not a shining example of parenthood. If all he wants is 'to make his daughter happy', then that's as wet as a Miss World contestant simpering about World Peace. Even Liam can't retrieve his character from being wetter than the Atlantic.

Maybe you're thinking, that's Liam in Taken. It's nothing to do with MY characters. But I have read many stories which start with a character being put upon. Their partner doesn't appreciate them. Their boss doesn't appreciate them. Their children/parents/friends/pets don't appreciate them. But still the character carries on, cheerfully putting up with being dumped on and only occasionally sighing wistfully.

A few pages down the line they will turn and then the story will get going - but by then it will be Too Late. If the reader gets that far, they'll be so fed up with the Poor Little Me character they'll be rooting for the boss/partner/child/dog.

Do you know anyone with Poor Little Me tendencies in real life? I do. I feel guilty because although I know I ought to be sympathetic to them and their woes, I actually feel like giving them a good shake and telling them to get some backbone. The same in fiction. We're supposed to admire the selfless, instead we really want to give them a slap. No wonder we love reading about baddies.

NEW!!! I've finally got round to organising some course dates....

How to WRITE a Novel: London 3rd May/Birmingham 7th May/

Oxford 8th May/Exeter 21st May/Bath 12th June

How to SELL a Novel: London 24th May/Exeter 4th June/

Bath 3rd July Details are on my website

Creating Identification

A student read out the start of his novel in class a couple of weeks ago. It featured a policeman dealing with his first experience of a riot and was well written. It went down a storm. But what struck me was how cleverly he'd engaged the readers right from the start by having the policeman try out what had worked in training. In the training session the pretend rioters had run away. But in the real situation the rioters stood their ground and attacked back. They didn't react as they were supposed to do, and the policeman was overwhelmed by feelings of panic.

Now, most of us don't have direct experience of riots. It's interesting, but we're at one step removed from it. But I think everybody has had the experience of being shown how X is supposed to work, then having a go ourselves and discovering it's one thing when the instructor does it, quite another when we do it.

So, although the exact situation was different, we'd all been through the same general emotions. We could identify with the character, and wanted him to succeed - as we ourselves had wanted succeed when we were in the equivalent situation. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the riot, we were rooting for the character and his very human emotions, which were so like ours.

Put your characters in situations where they experience emotions we can identify with, and we'll engage with them.