What make you care about a character?

They have to be honest. Honestly creepy. Honestly trying. Honestly hurting. Just as long as they ring true.

I think I read this someplace and so cannot claim credit, but essentially, for me to care about a character, that character must want something, and want it intensely.

They have to be real to me- written so that no matter what happens to them I feel as if I have a vested interest in how they are doing. If a writer can convey that to me- I'm theirs.

For me to care about a character, they have to be real. Real, as in, like Bluntforcetrauma said so well, the character must be honest. Whether they're honestly bad or honestly good, the point is, a character has to be real for me to truly care about them and continue reading the work.

--Sean

I'm a sucker for internal emotional conflict, rather than physical peril. Wasn't it Faulker that said the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself? That usually works for me.

They have to have some good qualities such as honesty, generosity, virtue, passion, intelligence, ethic, etc. They have to have some bad qualities or make some mistakes. The writer has to get close enough to to them that I can see these things.

Situation has a lot to do with it. Ask yourself which of these characters you identify with/care about more and why. Situation, character, temperament, vision?

Frodo or Sam
Mrs. de Winter or Max de Winter
Ahab or Ishmael
Joseph or Benjamin
Charlotte Lucas or Elizabeth Bennet
John Brown or Abraham Lincoln
Aragorn or Boromir
Rachel or Leah
Scipio Africanus or Hannibal
Hamlet or Shylock

bluntforcetrauma said:

They have to be honest. Honestly creepy. Honestly trying. Honestly hurting. Just as long as they ring true.

Click to expand...

sheadakota said:

They have to be real to me- written so that no matter what happens to them I feel as if I have a vested interest in how they are doing. If a writer can convey that to me- I'm theirs.

Click to expand...

Sean D. Schaffer said:

For me to care about a character, they have to be real. Real, as in, like Bluntforcetrauma said so well, the character must be honest. Whether they're honestly bad or honestly good, the point is, a character has to be real for me to truly care about them and continue reading the work.

--Sean

Click to expand...

QFT

Readers can tell when a character is fake or stereotyped. If they seem like an honest to God person, like they could walk right off the pages into real life, I think you have a winner. It also helps if the reader relates to the character in some way (like the example given above, I usually feel like Stephanie Plum - I'm always broke!).

Some characters are sneaky though. You start off the book feeling pretty neutral about them, couldn't care less if they're there (usually it's not the main character), and then something happens later where, say, their life is in danger, and all of a sudden you're thinking "nooooooo, don't die!"

For those types of characters, I couldn't tell you. I have no idea how they would have managed to get into my subconscious like that.

Devil Ledbetter said:

This is what I'm struggling with. In the first few pages of a book, how does one show the characters good and/or bad qualities, and what they want, to the degree that readers instantly care deeply enough about them to commit to the novel?

Click to expand...

Sometimes you can't. It's a trust thing on both sides - you have to trust the readers will care enough to keep reading, and the readers will have to trust you enough to think if they keep reading they will care about the character.

I don't have to care about them on the first page...they only have to be doing something interesting to keep me reading.

For me to care about a character I have to be able to do one of three things:
Sympathize
Empathize or
Indentify with them

If they're well written, interesting people with something interesting going on, I'm going to like them.

A great example:

When the little girl in Bridge To Teribithia dies, I wanted the world to end. She was such an individual.

Devil Ledbetter said:

One of the things were told as writers is that we have to make our audience care about the character, and right away. What is it that makes you care about characters, especially when they're first introduced?

Click to expand...

An unusual behaviour or an unusual situation gets me interested right away, but what gets me caring is actually tension. A good starting line-up for a plot is to take a credible character, put it in an interesting situation, give it an important objective, with stiff opposition and a risk of disaster. This gives you the ability to generate scene after scene of tension.

Tension really comes in two flavours:

Action: trying to do something difficult or dangerous
Reaction: trying to decide what to do when each choice offers risks

Ideally, each scene should contain some action or some reaction. In this respect a story is different from real life where (for instance), I might eat my muesli (which is neither difficult nor dangerous) and talk about the weather (which sets me no dilemmas). I could document such events, but probably nobody would want to read it.

My advice: start off with a strong action or reaction scene.

The problem is that when you kick off, you also have to do other things: establish the characters and evoke the setting, maybe set a bit of mood as well. The trick is to get your scenes to do this while keeping the tension up.

Some examples, for comparison.

Example 1: The gibbous moon rode like a galleon on the velvet sky. Spanish moss hung like the tresses of a drowned maiden, and frogs barked their lust at one another through the mist-wreathed bullrushes. Like a bone-picked whale carcass, the old asylum loomed against the sky.
(A lot of setting and mood, but what's happening?)

Example 2: By the light of the gibbous moon, Carl pulled aside mist-damp Spanish moss and contemplated how to break into the looming monstrosity of the asylum. (Ah... Carl's gonna do something difficult!)

Example 3: Carl's shocked cry silenced the barking bullfrogs. By the light of the gibbous moon, he saw that the weathered brass plate against the asylum's black iron gate bore his own name: "The Carl Joachim Veldkamp Memorial Sanatorium"
(Oo... dilemma: will he go inside?)

For the first page or 2, I usually don't care about characters but where the story is going, what they are doing and have scene setting. This is the only way I can get a mental image of what I'm reading.

Okay, What I think makes someone care for a character, someone they relate to or atleast have felt the same way. Mostly if a person gets dragged into a story they will get attached to a character and get angry when something bad happens to them and become happy when something good happens to the character. A character I got attached to was from "Far Traveler". I was angry and happy at times. But I just might be weird like that.

I tend to like characters for the same reason that I like my friends--they're funny or interesting or they whine in original ways or they're insane. Of course, that doesn't explain why I like Hannibal Lechter.

Devil Ledbetter said:

What is it that makes you care about characters, especially when they're first introduced?

Click to expand...

Everyone else has said it more elegantly and eloquently, but a simple criterion for me is : the characters are in bad or dangerous situations, and they're acting bravely or intelligently to get out of trouble.

They may be broke, they may be facing execution, they may just have been expelled from college, they may be about to have their hearts broken, any and all of the above. And they're doing their damnedest to rise above those circumstances. What made me care about Scarlett O'Hara wasn't just her realizing that Ashley was going to marry another woman. It was her decision to wear her best dress, flirt her way back into his heart and persuade him to run away with her.

For me, there has to be something redeeming about a character. They can be sneaky, conniving, unfaithful, cowardly, or any other negative trait you can name, but they need to care about something. There has to be something that elevates them.

Example: I hate books that are about scummy people committing crimes and doing drugs, etc. But let's say the book is about a scummy guy committing crimes and doing drugs... while attempting to care for his little sister. Okay, you got me.

I like characters just like I like the books I read. They need to be filled with dark emotion, very strong feelings of hate and despair, and a need to spread that hate and despair to anyone they meet. However, that character must have some sort of emotional handicap such as regret for the things they do.

I personally think that if a character is like the one I described, then their dilema won't bother me unless it's absolutely horrible.

I care about a character who cares about something. Not wants, but cares.

I really need to identify with him.
How could you achieve that?, You go for stuff that all human beings have.
You can go for more superficial stuff, like problems with a car, or money, or drugs, alcohol, family, interplanetary war, destruction of the entire existence in the universe, but deep down there, the characters are still going to be human and be made of the same stuff, you and your family and everybody you see on the street and on television is made of.

I notice that I care for a character when I identify with that character. When he or she does or says something I agree with, I feel closer to him.
If he complains about the same sort of thing I complain about, I like him more.
If he's style of humor is the same as mine, he/she 'll rise in my list of favorite characters.

They also have to be original, and interesting. They have to do things that intrigue me and that I want to see more of.
He has to be a character that I think is cool so I then want to see him in more situations because I grow curious to see how he interacts with different environments.

If want to make the readers care, be mean to that character, and make him go through hell and succeed.

Make them cute in some way. Make them have an attribute that makes you want to have him around more, that makes you want to read more scenes with him over other characters.

We can't give you what those things are, unfortunately. It is in your hands. You know the story. You know what story you want to tell. You know what would look good. You know what sort of cool character you want to put in your environment and what sort of cool situations and sad situations and funny situations and heartbreaking situations those environments bring about together with your characters.

If they blow something up, I immediately want to know why.


What can I say? I'm a guy?

Oh, also, if there's emotional depth, interesting situations, characters and so on. That stuff helps too. But the explosions are good too. Don't forget the explosions.

Devil Ledbetter said:

One of the things were told as writers is that we have to make our audience care about the character, and right away. What is it that makes you care about characters, especially when they're first introduced?

Is it his dilemma, or his constellation of traits, or what?

I have a hard time understanding the concept of "caring about a character" because I think I do it automatically. I mean, I didn't read the first few pages of Atonement and throw it aside saying "Well, why should I care if 14-year-old Briony has a play?" I didn't read the first few pages of One for the Money and toss it aside saying "Well, why should I care if Stephanie Plum is broke?" But I don't know what it is about the storytelling that made me care in the first place.

Please discuss and enlighten me.

Click to expand...

For me, I think it comes down to whether the character has an identifiable desire, conflict, want or need... something I can at least empathize, and something that is uniquely human that makes me want to find out if he or she succeeds in getting it. The more universal it is, the more empathy I feel, and the more I care about the character, even though I don't know the character at the beginning -- I am willing to find out.

You mentioned Atonement. For me, it's not about a 13-year-old girl who just wrote a play. That's nice, but big deal. But it's about the desire to be acknowledged, to be applauded, to be appreciated, to please... and the conflict associated with it (what if it's not very good?... etc.) Briony didn't just finish the play, she was nervous about presenting it to her dear brother, and she was nervous about having her cousins play the parts -- she had never had anyone work with her, collaborating -- she had always been a lone writer. It was a huge step for her, and she wanted to impress. And the first thing she did was to ask for her mother's approval. So it's not the fact that Briony wrote a play -- la di da. It's all the other stuff that goes with it -- and that's universal. We've all wanted to be acknowledged, applauded, appreciated... that makes me care about her.

The first scenes of There Will Be Blood, for example. We know NOTHING about Daniel Plainview, but the we see what he's after and how he operates. He has a strong desire and the character literally jumps of the page/screen. Granted, his character becomes less and less "likable" as the story clips along, but at least in the beginning, we care about him or at least care enough to want to follow him because he has a strong desire, and it's something that we can empathize and identify with (the desire for success, for example, or independence).

If they blow something up, I immediately want to know why.


What can I say? I'm a guy?

Oh, also, if there's emotional depth, interesting situations, characters and so on. That stuff helps too. But the explosions are good too. Don't forget the explosions.

Click to expand...

Yes, explosions are good. All books should have at least one explosion in the first five pages

Right, characters. I like characters with deep, strong emotions. I like to see unique characters who take strong and risky action, maybe the actions I've always wanted to take but am afraid to try. Like so many others have said, the character has to have something they truly care about, even if that something is only themselves and their own success. I like troubled and complicated characters who keep you guessing until the very last page. I love it when you can't quite decide if the MC is a hero or a villain (after all, most of us are a little of both).

Wow, that was all really vague and probably no help at all, lol.