He has no redeeming features...

In fictional characters, is that an issue?

a few years ago at Chatsworth House, North Yorkshire

When I woke up this morning a sentence popped into my head. A beginning. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Soon after that another followed, and I was forced to salvage my little notebook from the bathroom and write them down. A rough seventy words or so. And after I had done so, it immediately became clear that those clumsy sentences were the embryo of a character - and one with whom I was already besotted.

90 minutes later and the seventy words have become six hundred (I checked!) and the opening couple of sentences two pages and the shallow foundation of ‘something’.

At this stage I’ve no idea what I’m going to do with my unnamed character, nor - beyond a defining characteristic already sketched out - what sort of individual they will be. What happens to them - and to as yet unknown others in the story (included the narrator) - is a fog. But what is already clear is my sense of attachment to my invention; almost an obligation to ‘tell his story’.

In processing all of this (across a mere 90 minutes which also included breakfast, a shower, and getting dressed!) I find myself asking whether or not he will be a ‘nice’ character, whether he will be ‘good’ or ‘sympathetic’ - and whether any of that actually matters.

I have heard knowledgable people espouse the theory that a reader needs to ‘like’ a character for them to work. I wholeheartedly disagree. There are far too many people in the real world who are thoroughly unlikeable; are we not supposed to represent them? Or maybe the argument is that even the ‘bad’ ones should have at least one redeeming feature (the murder who loves his mother, perhaps) in order to give the reader something to cling on to. Again, I’m not sold on that idea either.

But then it occurs to me to ask whether the most important relationship - at least at the beginning - is the one between character and creator. There needs to be a bond of some kind to make the writer want to bring the individual to life - and the fictional character being ‘nice’ simply doesn’t cut the mustard.

I want to be fascinated by my characters, enthralled by them, excited by them. I want them to be rounded, complete, flawed even - and I want to be able to invest in them the kind of dynamic which allows them to surprise me along the way. “I didn’t know she was gong to say that!”

That’s a bare minimum.

And if we can achieve that - and get it across in the writing - then surely that’s what the reader will feed off. A reader can only be enthralled, excited, shocked, if the character’s creator has been similarly shocked, excited and enthralled.

Being ‘nice’ or ‘likeable’ has nothing to do with it.

Not that long ago I wrote a novel - On Parliament Hill - where the main character is pretty unpleasant; an immoral slime bag. But the story is one concerning his redemption (however partial); I take him as low as he can go, and see if I can return him to some degree of humanity. It was risky. About a third of the way in it would be perfectly feasible for a reader to throw the book aside, not caring what happened to the tosser: “he got what he deserved!” But to mitigate against that, to allow the reader to like him just enough, would mean being untrue to the story - and to the character too. Yes, he’s not a nice person, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be interesting or redeemed, or disqualify him from having his story told… There’s a scene later in the book that still makes me tear-up - and I wrote the damn thing!

Anyway, this new man of today who’s beginning to bubble to the surface won’t be anything like that slime bag - though he may end up doing something pretty unspeakable, who knows? But the most important thing - and the conclusion I draw - is that, first and foremost, I have to embrace him. After that, everything else is a bonus…

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