Do Your Characters Speak For You?

A commenter mentioned being annoyed that in a post about scenes, I spoke about my characters "male-bashing" (with words, not bludgeons :).  Wasn't that sexist? If it were reversed, and these were male characters trashing women as a group, would I be more sensitive?

That brought up an interesting issue! At what point does our portrayal of characters being offensive become offensive "from us"? If I have a character who insults a group or is otherwise objectionable, does that mean I am espousing those sentiments? What if there are several characters like that? (I don't mean just politically incorrect offensiveness, but maybe also violence or discrimination.) When does it stop being just offensive characters and become an offensive book by an offensive author?

But... it gets so complicated when we're working with fictional characters. Every character we create is within us, they say, so perhaps a reflection of us. Yet if we create only characters that reflect what is best about us, well, there won't be much conflict in our books! Not to mention, you can't always know ahead of time what will offend someone somewhere.

 

Recently I was teaching character point of view to college students, and this issue came up. Most of their "novels" are really sort of fictionalized memoirs, with (probably idealized) selves as narrators. There was some bafflement when we read "A Cask of Amontillado" where the first-person narrator is truly an evil guy. (One of the worst ever-- walls up a friend for committing "an insult" and leaves him to die). They weren't sure how Poe might write a bad narrator without being bad himself, and who knows? Can we create a character who is not within us? Or should we even try? (And Poe of all writers has probably suffered the most slings and arrows because his first-person narrators are so nasty... many readers and his first biographer succumbed to the belief that they were him.)

I often wonder if mystery writers or thriller writers are associated with the bad behavior of their characters. We think, oh, yes, it's just fiction, but deep within, we might wonder... well, if she created this plausible serial murderer, does she have a serial murderer within??? 

I bet we've all read books where the entire tone and plot seem to push some offensive button-- it's not just one character who hates Italians, it's all of them, and there are three scenes where someone gets food poisoning at an Italian restaurant, and then there are all those metaphors referring to the Mafia, and the only joke in the book has a punchline about the dirtiness of Venice canals, and.... Yeah, it's not just "subtext" that's screaming out there.

 

In my own writing, sometimes I'll notice I have a character will reflect some silly prejudice of my own, usually something like "only children" or  "people who bring potato chips to a potluck dinner" or "those annoying sorts who are cheerful at 6 am." And I do sense sometimes I just give it a bit too much emphasis to this Thing I Don't Like, you know, sliding into rant-territory.

 

There's probably a point where this stops being a story with a character or two who is offensive, and becomes an offensive story overall. But I don't know where that point is. What do you all think? Is it safer to avoid characters being offensive, or instead just impart all the potential offense to a villain character so it's clear I Disapprove Of Male-Bashing and Only Bad Guys Hate Spaghetti? Is it worth examining our own subtexts and tone to see if we're conveying some offense we don't want to convey? What do you do? Have you ever changed a story or character because you thought you'd gone too far?

My example:

One of my characters was "authentic" in a lot of ways, bristly and angry and sardonic, but at some point, it just went too far, and readers didn't like her or sympathize with her. Worst of all, they didn't want to spend time with her. I don't think we need to make characters "likeable" to keep readers interested, but there is a point where the character just gets tiresome. I didn't want to make her a wimp or trivialize her justifiable anger about the past. But I found several "offense-ticklers" and phased them out. Like she had a habit of endowing people with slightly mean nicknames. And she was always thinking if not saying defensive responses to other characters' conversations. Once I could isolate the "too much", I was able (I hope) to make her both herself and reader-involving.

I notice I keep saying, "There's a point where...." That indicates, I guess, that this is a matter of degree, that what's acceptable at 48% can become annoying at 55%.

 

Alicia

Anti-hero

Back to blogging! One new year's resolution is to post more. Anyway, Wes mentioned the anti-hero, and I thought maybe we could talk about anti-heroes, how you would define that kind of protagonist, examples maybe?

In my understanding, the anti-hero is usually someone who isn't heroic in the standard sense because he lacks some of the striking "good" qualities of a hero, while he has the heroic qualities of strength or purpose or something that gives him power. And he uses that power (and perhaps some underhanded "unheroic aspects") to do something good. That is, his character might not be heroic, and his motivation might not be heroic (he might want the right thing for the wrong reasons, like revenge or money), and his methods might not be heroic, but what he achieves is heroic (the results). And for whatever reason (this is tricky to accomplish), the reader identifies with him in some way.

The classsic pairing has been Superman (hero), Batman-Dark Knight (anti-hero). Superman does the right thing for the right reason. Batman does the right thing for the wrong reason. Both use heroic strengths to achieve something good, but Batman also uses bad tactics.

Scarlet O'Hara is an anti-heroine in that she has heroic strengths that help her survive the war but more than that, to help others (her whole family, her beloved's wife that she hated ever) survive the war. She's willing to do anything to save her farm, including marrying her sister's fiance (not heroic, but achieved a good end). She's actually more of an anti-hero than Rhett (who actually realizes that his romantic need to be a hero in the war was pretty stupid).

There was a time that "antihero" was used to refer to "nebbishy guys" like Benjamin in The Graduate, who have no heroic strengths and aren't at all "Bad", but that didn't last, fortunately. They aren't anti-heroes but more like "everymen".

The Byronic hero is generally considered to be artistic and "moody" and obsessed with women. I wouldn't say they're anti-heroes, but what we romance writers would call "the romantic hero"-- heroically tormented emotionally.

But the antihero usually is the one who does the right thing for the wrong reasons (but with some strength or power that would ordinarily be considered heroic). A villain will often do use heroic strengths to do the WRONG thing (though it might be for the "right" reasons like religion or patriotism).

Alicia

Dr. Who Tears

I'm way behind on my Doctor Who watching, because, well, really, David Tennant. I mean, he's gone. And I haven't been able to really accept this new guy, though I think he's on his third year. It's got to be hard following David Tennant.

Anyway, I'm up to sometime in his second year, and came across something important. It's actually amplified by this Doctor being sort of manic and unanchored, because the contrast when he pauses and say something wise is more pronounced. So he's talking to a young woman whose husband was killed in the war, and it's Christmas so she hasn't told her children because she doesn't want to spoil Christmas forever for them.

So he says that he understands, that she's angry because they're happy now and they'll be so sad later, and what's the point? He says, "They're happy now. They'll be sad later. So what use is the happiness?"

Then, very gently, she says, "Because they'll be sad later."

And that's it.

I was trying to reverse-engineer why this was so powerful. First, of course, the situation (children losing father, always sad). But also I think it's because the mom is having to pretend. She knows her husband is dead, but has to pretend that he's going to join them. The tension and conflict that deception adds is wonderfully poignant. I think often we want to portray the exact experience, but in fact the depth of emotion is often in the complications, the what-ifs and if-onlies, not the exact reality. If we can impose some complication, we might intensify the emotion.

The other thought though is that emotion is always paradoxical, and when we express it as a paradox, we are presenting its power.  How meaningless it is that they are happy now but only because they don't know they'll be sad later. And yet, there's exactly where the emotion is-- that they will be sad later, so the happiness now is even more important. And then -- we can look ahead-- the future pain will be that much greater because of the present happiness.

The paradox, the complication, can't really be explained, but can be expressed, and in simple terms, the simpler the more affecting:
Because they'll be sad later.

Emotion is complicated, and it's simple. The experience is complicated, but the expression is simple. Think about that. Our response to great emotion, however complicated, is tears, you know? Great joy. Great confusion, Great pain. Tears.

Complicated emotion, simple expression.

Alicia