How to make a likeable non-orphan protagonist?

[negesydd]

This is sort of a general question. I need to come up with some sort of interest factor for a main character I'm trying to create.

I have the main concept already in my head, the thing that makes him "special" and inherently interesting and pivotal to the plot and the book's setting.

But at the moment he's a bit of a blank canvas; the only interesting thing about him is that ability, and frankly I don't think it's enough.

I started out having him in a regular upper-middle-class suburban family, with a mom and a dad (which these days is getting to be a bit of an anomaly) and a decent home life.

But I realize maybe that's "against the rules"? It seems like any piece of children's fiction that I've read, the child is either an orphan, estranged from his or her parents, or living with stepparents or surrogate parents. In almost every case there are serious identity issues -- they are treated like crap, or they are mercilessly teased and undervalued by their family, or sometimes they are even servants and/or slaves.

All of these options are enormously cliche to me. Is there any way around this -- is it possible for the main character to have an ok home life? Or must there really be something right there, in the first chapter, that immediately makes the character likeable?

I was thinking back to the first Harry Potter book, and while not original in the slightest, the absurdity of Harry's domestic situation was an immediate hook, especially in relation to his cousin Dudley. Far from being subtle and nuanced, it was heavy-handed and sloppy, I thought, but nevertheless effective. You couldn't help but root for Harry right from the start.

I need something that would accomplish the same thing.

I thought about, for example, having one of the parents be disabled in some way, and have the main character be ashamed of that parent (and of course feel guilty and conflicted about that shame). But maybe that's a bit too subtle.

Maybe he can have a decent home life but some major source of conflict and tension at school? Something he can't bring to share with his parents and teachers?

Or, perhaps maybe his parents are just misguided, or there is a huge disparity between his perspective and theirs. Perhaps they are overprotective to a fault, because they lost a previous child to an accident, or a miscarriage, or something. And the restrictions they place on their child cause a debilitating resentment and an "escape mentality."

Any thoughts are appreciated. Oh, I should point out this would be for the, I don't know exactly, 9-13ish age bracket.

[Sage]

I think this is another one of those "there's no correct way to do it" subjects. There are plenty of childrens/YA novels where the kid has two parents, & the family is non-dysfunctional. That doesn't mean the family won't have it's quirks. And most kids don't see eye-to-eye w/ the parents, so seeing it from their POV might make the parents seem unfair, even when they aren't.

The key to making a kid likeable... is making the kid likeable. There are times that I felt that Harry wasn't all that likeable (luckily it was after Rowling had already hooked me... & I'm not just talking the 5th book here either), but the faults were realistic for his character. You don't want to make the kid perfect, but if the readers identify w/ him - his situation, his feelings on a subject, his reaction to something - they'll keep reading.

That's at least what I hope. 'Cuz all my main characters have perfectly fine families.

[negesydd]

Thanks for your input.

About Harry, I think his background made him likeable at the start. The first chapter was amazingly effective and it put the reader into a state of empathetic elation when you finally found out what his Hogwarts letter contained. It represented not just something exciting and mysterious, but also a place where Harry could spread his wings and make a life for himself, free of the shackles from his Muggle life.

Later on, say by the second or third book, especially be the fourth, I began to hate Harry. He is totally unlikeable in every way. It's hard to get behind a character who seems to be the center of the universe, constantly, and from every possible angle.

So his parents died and he had a rough time with the Dursleys, so what? In the wizarding world, apart from Snape and Malfoy, he is a celebrity superstar, beloved by his house, amazing at the studly sport, constantly the center of plots to kill him (and yet he, having not much talent aside from choosing good friends, always escapes to great amazement and praise). He is practically worshipped by Hagrid and Dumbledore, and the major events in the magical world seem to be moved by people who either love Harry or hate him -- he is not unknown to anyone of importance. I mean, come on -- Mrs. Weasley is in the Order of the Phoenix? Ridiculous.


But anyway, getting back to the point, it would be nice to create an immediate empathy with the character right at the start. But if I want to avoid the absurdities that Rowling did not shy away from, maybe I have to be content with a gradual build-up of likeability.

Maybe mystery is enough to hook the reader at first?

One possibility that is growing on me is the parental strictness factor. My parents, bless them for their best intentions, made my childhood rather unpleasant and agonizing in many ways. What is worse than feeling you don't fit in because you CAN'T, is the feeling that you could easily fit in but are held back by parents sabotaging your every move.

Maybe that would fly?

[Jenny]

Reading your question made me think of Diana Wynne Jones' Archer's Goon. Archer has two parents, a sister, but the challenge for him is navigating their absurdities. No, not quite that, it's more that the reader can see the weight of Archer's self-perceived responsibilities. I think sometimes, writing as adults, we forget that kids have a sense of responsibililty, an awareness that they have to cope with things which their parents/adults in charge can't comprehend. Archer is sympathetic partly because he's beleaguered by the same people who he loves and who love him. Jones has given the family quirks, but the underlying love and durability shines through. I like stories that show hope.

Anyway, I'm posting this before I re-read it and realise I was rambling. I hope it's some help, and best of luck

[negesydd]

Thanks. I've only read the Lives of Christopher Chant, but I did like her writing, somewhat.

Your post reminded me of another potential problem I'd like to run by you guys.

My character is going to be "pulled into" sort of a secret, underground society that functions, basically, while most normal people are asleep. I have chosen to have this society inextricably intertwined with the regular world, so for example, unlike Harry Potter, the character can't just "go off to boarding school" for an entire year and return only for 8 weeks in the summer.

Because the separation of these worlds is not total and absolute, it has many consequences. I think juggling the two lives will be a source of difficulty and tension. But the main focus of the story is going to be on the night-time activities and this underworld, and the problem I will have there is this: his family won't be part of that world.

Therefore I find myself reluctant to even work on developing his relationship with his family, because so much of the story will take place away from them and without their knowledge.

Then again, perhaps I can have his time WITH them be extremely restrictive to an unpleasant and debilitating degree. Maybe, even if they aren't horrible tyrants and still love their child, his home life will begin to feel like a prison, in contrast with his same-age compatriots in the underground world (who, for example, might have parents complicit in that world).

I realize this is all abstract, but what do you think?

And, reading it over, I realize it may be a little too close to Harry Potter anyway. It needs refinement. I can't have it black and white, "mom and dad you just don't understand" and him wanting to be gallivanting around with his friend on various adventures.

But it is quite realistic for children to sublimate all their hopes and dreams into a compartment that they believe will allow them to express themselves without restriction.

[Sage]

It doesn't sound too Harry Potter-ish to me. Actually the escape into the other world at night reminds me more of the other book you mention, The Lives of Christopher Chant (I happen to be rereading the Chrestomanci novels & on this particular one), but I'm sure there are many differences in the details.

I think it'd be good to show the normal world too, to see where the character is escaping from before we get to see where he escapes to. How much you want to go back & forth between the two is up to you, & might depend on how much of what the character brings w/ him into the fantasy world you want to include. Either way, you should probably figure out for your own self & for his characterization what's going on at home.

[Niesta]

Depending on the nature of this underground world, it may actually be dangerous for his family to know too much or be drawn into it. Maybe he has to keep them out of it because he loves them, and thinks he can protect them?

Or, if the secret world is something amazing and wonderful, maybe he just wants to keep it to himself? Even kids from really nice families can feel smothered, or like they need something that's theirs alone. The latter, in particular, if there are a lot of siblings. Everything is shared, and there's just too much togetherness. Kid needs space, and an identity, and having a wonderful secret world would give him that.

Could there be guilt trips involved? An ethic espoused by his parents that not sharing (or being completely open) is selfish, and selfish is bad, so he feels guilty for not letting them in on the secret?

I can think of a hundred other things, having come from an intact, close-knit, wonderful, smothering family that later exploded into a million pieces... one could just write about family forever, and never get to the bottom of it, really... or is that what you're afraid of? ;)

[negesydd]

Whoa, you guys are really supportive. Do you mind if I continue posting in this thread? I won't resent anyone if they lose interest. :)

I can identify with the "wanting something of one's own" motivation. I only had a couple of younger brothers, but sometimes that's enough. And there are other dynamics that can push a child to want to be separate, even before adolescence hits (when that drive becomes overwhelming).

I think there really should be a sense that he needs to escape from something, before it actually happens. I am just a little wary of making a caricature out of the daytime world (school+family).

And to set the record straight, these worlds are not separate at all. They are the same world, but when I say "night-time world," I mean effectively a different life, with different teachers (and schooling), different friends, different responsibilities and adventures.

However, I recall now, with great horror, that Christopher Chant has some sort of magical ability whereby he can travel to alternate worlds in his dreams.

The reason this alarms me is that (at the moment) dreams figure heavily in my grand designs. Since I am writing about a subculture of insomniacs, or rather insomnolescents, I think there is a very obvious and natural association between sleep and dreams.

I don't plan to use dreams in the same way at all, though. Quite the contrary. And I hope what I plan is fairly original. But -- what does everyone think? Is it too much of a rip-off to use dreams as a main story concept? Would I be ripping off Diana Wynne-Jones as much as someone writing about a boy wizard would (these days) be plagiarising Rowling?

Niesta: guilt will figure prominently in the thematic structure of the book, I hope. Guilt that comes after the elation at being "gifted" subsides. I think as much as children like to compete with each other, they have a more heightened sense of disparity between themselves and their peers. Partially because children are not nearly as good as adults at hiding things like jealousy, bitterness, and insecurity.

On top of the guilt theme, I hope to work in the idea of the responsibility that is tied to being special. Perhaps even build up certain gifts as being a curse and a burden as much as a gift.

[brokenfingers]

But I realize maybe that's "against the rules"? It seems like any piece of children's fiction that I've read, the child is either an orphan, estranged from his or her parents, or living with stepparents or surrogate parents. In almost every case there are serious identity issues -- they are treated like crap, or they are mercilessly teased and undervalued by their family, or sometimes they are even servants and/or slaves.

All of these options are enormously cliche to me. Is there any way around this -- is it possible for the main character to have an ok home life? Or must there really be something right there, in the first chapter, that immediately makes the character likeable?I don't write children's literature but the attributes you've described are the attributes of the "classic hero".

Luke Skywalker, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Frodo Baggins, Oliver Twist and a whole lot more I can't think of off the top of my head, are the archetypal heroes. Even mythological and religious heroes follow this pattern - like Oedipus, Theseus, Hercules, Moses, Jesus and many more.

Why? I don't know why but obviously there's something there that resonates within the human psyche. All the above follow the exact same pattern you've described and I would say it worked.

There are certain elemants in a story that people (and kids) just automatically respond to and that's one of them.

[negesydd]

I agree, but I guess I should point out that Luke Skywalker doesn't completely fit in with that.

He does have a surrogate family, and never knew his parents. So maybe for him the hero psyche comes from his incomplete identity. But his Aunt and Uncle certainly didn't mistreat him and gave him as much love and care and trust as they could.

Then again, I guess the "not-knowing-real-parents" element was the real instigator of Luke's wanderlust, and his sense that the life he was leading wasn't good enough for him.

[brokenfingers]

Hmmm... I'm not disagreeing but his uncle did demand that Luke work even though he wanted to go off to the academy and there really wasn't much warmth there. He had to work to earn his keep. They treated him like one of the droids, get up and work - everything else is secondary (actually a facet of farming life.)

[Sage]

And to set the record straight, these worlds are not separate at all. They are the same world, but when I say "night-time world," I mean effectively a different life, with different teachers (and schooling), different friends, different responsibilities and adventures.

However, I recall now, with great horror, that Christopher Chant has some sort of magical ability whereby he can travel to alternate worlds in his dreams.

The reason this alarms me is that (at the moment) dreams figure heavily in my grand designs. Since I am writing about a subculture of insomniacs, or rather insomnolescents, I think there is a very obvious and natural association between sleep and dreams.

I don't plan to use dreams in the same way at all, though. Quite the contrary. And I hope what I plan is fairly original. But -- what does everyone think? Is it too much of a rip-off to use dreams as a main story concept? Would I be ripping off Diana Wynne-Jones as much as someone writing about a boy wizard would (these days) be plagiarising Rowling?

I don't think you have to worry too much. Using dreams in relation to a nighttime "world" when the characters are also living in the daytime world seems practical to me, though still fantastical. And there's a lot more to the world of Chrestomanci than Christopher's trips to the Anywheres in his dreams (although that was much of the focus of that book).

Boy wizard stories have been around since b4 HP (DWJ has a few, for example), but because of the popularity of HP, any new ones get categorized as copycats. But that's also what's selling, so there are also a lot of writers riding the wave of popularity. That doesn't mean that every fantasy or boy wizard story is a copy of HP or DWJ's books or any other previously written fantasy novel. And there are plenty of stories to tell about boy wizards & dream worlds. ;)

[Spidercat]

Interesting thread! My first book has a girl hero who is part of a typical nuclear family -- one sister and both birth parents in the same household. I tried to make her a sympathetic character by making her a good-hearted screw-up -- she loves her family and her family loves her so she attempts to use some recently-acquired special abilities to get more customers to come to the family business. When her good deed backfires she feels horribly guilty and tries to make ammends -- which lands her in even more trouble and kicks off the story's main conflict. Her parents and her sister don't make a lot of appearances in the story yet they constantly serve as symbols of the normal life she desperately wants to lead. I agree that the whole "evil step parents" device is an overused (if effective) technique, so I wanted to experiment with new ways to develop sympathy for my lead. (However -- heh, heh -- my second book does have an orphan as the main character. I'm still trying to play with the conventions though -- in this case his foster parents are nice and decent people, forcing me to come up with some new strategies to generate sympathy for him)

[watcher]

1. Have you tried using a character list. There some on the web. I found when I read through the questions interesting answers came to me.

2. Though this hasn't worked for me, yet (I keep hoping) someone suggested thinking about your character right before you go to sleep.

[Canada James]

I started out having him in a regular upper-middle-class suburban family, with a mom and a dad (which these days is getting to be a bit of an anomaly) and a decent home life.

This is getting rare in YA fiction. The best novel I've read where there was a healthy relationship between the child and parents (and it was believable) was Acceleration, by McNamee. Korman's "Son of the Mob" was good, too, and it did put an interesting spin on the child/parent dynamic.

Any thoughts are appreciated. Oh, I should point out this would be for the, I don't know exactly, 9-13ish age bracket.

This is what I wanted to comment on. 9-13 is not good range to aim for, as 9 year olds read differently than 13 year-olds. Generally, kids want to read about children who are a few years older, boys want to read about boys, and once puberty hits the questions they face change.

My suggestion would be to take out a few middle readers for the 7-9 year old market, then a few tween books intended for the 10-13 year-old market. Let me know if you want book titles (aimed to boys or girls?) and I'd be glad to offer you a few suggestions.

Canada James

[mnmamma]

It is important to remember that a character's external characteristics do not make him interesting. A well drawn character is simply *interesting*. Everything else is incidentals. Take a look at Neil Gaiman's Coraline or Megan Macdonald's Judy Moody. Heck, even Artemis Fowl had happily married parents. (well, by the third book, anyway.) These characters are gripping and engaging simply because they are as they are.

Make any sense?

Kelly

[Christine N.]

The MC in my first book (see the link below) is part of a nuclear family. Mother, father and her. Very normal existence. BUT.. like most children her age, she feels "invisible" - she's very shy, few friends, parents workaholics.

Alot of the story (around the fantasy elements) is Ivy learning about herself. She comes home to a perfectly normal family, but she is different.

[Canada James]

It is important to remember that a character's external characteristics do not make him interesting. ... Take a look at Neil Gaiman's Coraline or Megan Macdonald's Judy Moody. Heck, even Artemis Fowl had happily married parents. (well, by the third book, anyway.) These characters are gripping and engaging simply because they are as they are.

I would say th contrast between Coraline's "normal" parents and her "other" parents certainly made for an interesting character. Had her 'normal" parents been neglectful and mean-spirited, would she have tried to save them?

And even Judy Moody was made far more interesting due to her relationship to her brother, Stink. Again, it would have been a far different story had her father been absent due to illness or death.

The external surroundings influence the character, and if done well can certainly make for great read.

JMHO

Canada James

[PattiTheWicked]

I think what's important -- particularly in writing for kids and Young People -- is to not throw around clever characteristics gratuitously. If the character trait, or the external surroundings, make the character more interesting or even appealing, then it's cool. On the other hand, making him/her an orphan/alien/supergenius/timetravelingcomputerhackingbrainsurgeon just because you CAN doesn't work quite as well.

Kids and YA readers are smarter than adults give them credit for, and if a trait is pointless they'll spot it a mile away. For example, Harry Potter's orphan status is important to the story -- after all, his arch enemy is the one who killed his parents -- so it's useful to have it in there. On the other hand, Ron Weasley's LACK of orphan status is equally important, because it's the Weasleys' strong sense of family that makes them so appealing -- doesn't everyone wish they had brothers like Fred and George?

[katiemac]

2. Though this hasn't worked for me, yet (I keep hoping) someone suggested thinking about your character right before you go to sleep.

Beware. This process may turn you into an insomniac, and then you'll be just like me.

[negesydd]

Not a problem.

a) I'm already an insomniac
b) my book is about insomniac children, or rather, children who NEVER sleep
c) thinking about child insomniacs somehow puts me to sleep :)