Why would readers like your characters?

Because the traits that they have that make them likable.

Because there's something in each of them that would make readers say, "OMG! That sounds so much like ________!" or "Get out of my head! That's something I would do!" I try to make them realistic to let readers relate to them.

Because my Helen is strong, slightly wicked, generous, exacting, demanding, still captivating after all these years and unafraid to speak her mind. As she might say, "Who wouldn't find me alarmingly interesting?"

Because some of you ARE my characters.

My characters are mean, jealous, spiteful, crazy, criminal, thoughtful and thoughtless, deranged and brilliant. Lovers and fighters, bystanders and ne-er-do-wells, freaks and frauds. They lie, cheat, steal, teach, taunt, fight, cry and boldly plan. They reek and rant and rave and crave and have chillingly insane dreams. all while oohing and aahing, cooing and cawing and living, loving and saving lives in heroic action. they act uncaring about their own families, yet willingly save lives of unknown masses of those doomed with little to live for, and give freely of untold reserves of love.

The live. like us. They are us.
That's why you care.

I am you and you are me and we are all together...

I would hope they would find something to relate to. I try to make my characters real and fallible with hints of heroism. I would want my reader to root for them and see themselves in both their fallibility and their courage.

Don't think there's a simple answer to this one. But ...

Story: The story itself is as much a part of developing a likable character as figuring out who the character is. Every time he thinks he's got things worked out, the story should be throwing him a curve ball that takes him a different direction and challenges him. In Louise Marley's wonderful book Sing the Light, the main character completely changes because of a curveball--someone tries to kill her, and she ends up doing something that she would have been appalled at before to save her own life.

Motivation: This is a big part of characterization, even for a bad guy. If they're off endangering themselves, there should be a reason why they're risking their lives when they could do something else. A story is made up a lot of things happening, and part of what happens is caused the decisions the character makes. There was a review of a romance novel a while back that described how a character went all out after a job, doing some pretty incredible things--but the motivation as to why she had to have this particular job with this particular company was completely left out.

Balance: The character should have a balance of good traits and not so good traits. In one of my early projects, one of the characters was a "nice guy." It was awfully hard to do anything with him because he just wasn't an interesting character--too nice. Yet, I've seen characters that are too nasty, without any good traits (usually bad guy characters), and they're just ugly to read.

Backstory: This plays into motivation, story, and even how the character reacts to any given situation. For the backstory for mine, the main character witnessed his parents' assassination at the age of five and sees his reaction on TV every year on the anniversary. The assassin was never caught. His cousins keep saying "Get over it," but it's something that influences everything he does.

I think "like" is a misnomer. You don't have to like the characters, but you must be interested/fascinated enough to follow the story, and empathize enough to feel the emotions. That the readers can see something in themselves in these characters, that they're human -- whether they're flawed or epic heroes.

For example, many people (especially men) said that the protagonist in The Pacific Between was a jerk, and they couldn't believe the things he did to trample on other people's feelings, but a the same time, they knew he was going to learn something eventually, and they were interested like watching a train wreck. Others thought my protagonist was a jerk but had enough redeeming values that they just wanted to feed him soup.

So there are many ways to make the readers care, and they don't necessarily have to like the characters....

You just need to make sure you don't turn them off completely.

I don't make any attempt to convince my readers to like any of my characters.

Instead, I try to help the reader understand my characters. Their motivations, their decisions, their personalities.

If I've managed that, I consider my characterization a success. Then the reader is free to decide which, if any, characters they like.

Because they're weird.

I like that. Maybe it's just me, but I doubt it.

I hope that people see something of themselves, both in strengths and weaknesses, in my characters. And I hope that if they don't always like them, they understand them. Eventually, anyways...

I don't want readers to like my characters. I want them to raise an eyebrow and mutter "WTF" under their breaths as they read.

I don't even mind if readers HATE my characters, because that's what I want from my readers, reaction.
I my bad guys in my novel piss people off, then I'm doing my job right.

What I really want, is when my readers get to the end of my story, is for them to say, 'I wish this novel were 25, 50, or 100 pages longer, because I want MORE!'

Depends on the character. Some are interesting because they are strong and sympathetic. Some are interesting because they are so vile. Some because of their intelligence, some because of their blinding stupidity. I try to make a point to play up the character's hidden trait.

HourglassMemory said:

I don't want this to turn into a publicity thing.

My questions is why would readers like your characters? What is it in them that holds the reader? Why is your character interesting?
If you don't want to get into detail, that's fine but....do contribute.

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Because my characters deal with physical and emotional difficulties in a tough situation that has no easy answers.

Myarin Tague, for example, has angered the equivalent of a major crime boss and now must deal with the problems he has caused himself and others.

Nathan Arunuki is a bastard who learns he can't be a bastard forever and that he has to stand up and face that which frightens him (he hated to admit he was scared, though, like so many of us). Nathan also had his little brother, Ivan, to worry about, too.

***

I think it's important to know why readers will like our characters. Even the meanest character has to have something that readers like and can sympathize with. A writer who can't identify why a reader would sympathize with and like his/her characters is one who's heading for trouble. That's my opinion, at least. Your mileage may vary.

DamaNegra said:

I don't want readers to like my characters. I want them to raise an eyebrow and mutter "WTF" under their breaths as they read.

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I think this is the equivalent of avant garde art that people raise their eyebrows at and say WTF. You don't want to stun your readers.

Like others have said, I want readers to understand, not necessarily like, my characters. I think I have a good mix of mistakes--some of them huge--with humanity, so pretty much every character makes perfect sense, and...incredibly, maybe one of them is downright likeable.

As some others have said, I don't try to make my characters likable so much as understandable. I think sympathy is almost automatic once you have a true understanding of how the character thinks and why they act the way they do (assuming all these thoughts and reasons make sense in some way). Some of my characters do very bad things (steal, murder in cold blood, even rape) and never repent. If I've left my readers doubting that this makes them bad people, then I've done my job.

I've never written about a 'normal' person, and doubt I ever will. It seems like a lot of books feature the 'normal everyday person suddenly finds self in exceptional/dangerous/exciting situation' kind of character. Frankly, those characters almost always bore me. Sure, they're realistic, but reality is boring. If I want reality, I'll live my real life. In a book I want things bigger, better, and larger than life. So that's how I do my characters. Now my characters are NOT unrealistic. In fact, they all have a basis in real psychology and people I've met in real life or read about in (non-fiction) books and articles. But they certainly aren't 'normal everyday people'. In my fantasy books they're elite pirates, thieves, assassins, and spies, and in my contemporary they're serial killers. They're extreme characters, forged by extreme expierences, who take extreme action. The part of writing I enjoy most is taking all these extremes down to a level 'normal everyday readers' can understand, and even relate to. Most of us will never be in situations as intense as those I write about (myself included), but we've all felt things like anger, love, hope, desperation, fear, and loss. I think most readers are imaginative enough to take these basics, and imagine what the character must be feeling. If the writing is good enough and the character is well-developed enough, I think anyone can relate to anyone.

Oh, and humor. Humor goes a long ways towards making readers like characters.

Because my character walks out of marriage and a respectable life. Through his own actions, he puts himself "beyond the Pale" (an expression that is based on Irish geography, and christ I can see why.)

I think there are many many people who are lost, frightened, trapped and full of rage who long to do the same thing.

Though the story is told from the point of view of the people who fail to understand this.

I guess so.
It would be like they can relate to them, so even if they were fighting aliens in an alternate universe 5 milllion light years away from the Earth, their traits would make them feel that they are still everyday people.

According to my fave beta, "The positive characters are very sympathetic, the negative ones are powerfully repulsive and the neutral ones demonstrate well both the negative and positive (or at least, more pitiable than fully despicable) aspects of the passive and 'follower' personality. ...well-rounded, consistent and believable..."

'Nother words, I seem to succeed in creating characters that are very easy for human beans to identify with. Or sumpin like that.

I want my readers to be interested enough to keep turning the pages. My sorceress--you wouldn't like her. She tends to kill people in creative ways and that sometimes can take forever. You wouldn't like my demon queen, she eats skin, flesh, bones, and souls, roughly in that order. My human queen will do anything for power--including having her own city destroyed. No, don't have to like them, need to find them fascinating in a trainwreck sort of way.

I think people like my characters because they are realistic. The best way to put it, is that they always have a legitimate reason for being the way they are. They make mistakes, but sometimes have moments of clarity like we all do.

I just try to make them human.

People like my characters because they're funny, outrageous, charming, and eminently likeable with all the quirks and nasties thrown in that make them human.

I don't think so much about readers liking my characters as about being interested in my characters and then starting to understand them. If I worried too much about "like" then I'd censor things too much and my characters wouldn't be realistic.