Warmth
By Donald Maass | October 5, 2011 |
Some people have the knack. They’re easy to meet. We like them right away. Trust is instant. Talk flows without effort. They’re open. We feel like we know them after just a short while. Our kind of folks.
Then there’s the other kind. They’re closed. Cool. Stand-offish. Reluctant to reveal themselves. We don’t quite trust them. Conversation is strained. After meeting them several times, we still may feel that we don’t know them much at all. Cold fish.
The same is true of protagonists. When they’re warmly portrayed we attach to them easily. When they’re cool and mysterious we don’t quite trust them. It’s not about being nice, gregarious or glad-handers. It’s about being open to the reader.
You can really see the difference in dark protagonists. All are tormented. We should turn away from their misery, yet some we warm up to quickly while others leave us cold.
This matters because readers either like our characters quickly or not at all. They know them or they don’t. They walk in their skin or observe them from a distance. They care or they shrug. Which set of responses would you prefer?
Portraying characters with warmth starts with warming up to them yourself. Most novelists will tell you it’s hard to write about characters you don’t understand. Building profiles and back stories is thus key to character construction. But knowing isn’t the same as liking. An ounce of openness will do more than a mountain of back story.
Here are some starting points:
What do you like best about your main character? How can we see more of that? How can we experience that right away?
You are your main character’s best friend. What secret do you know about him or her that nobody else does? What are ten people, places or things about which he or she has powerful feelings? What makes him wince? When is she strong? What delights? What disgusts? Find a spot in each POV scene to convey the essence of this person.
Make a cast list. For each character, write down their problem (large or small) with every other character on the list. How many of these issues can you use? (Same goes for what’s beautiful about every other character on the list.)
For this character, what’s the deeper meaning in something small? What’s the common wisdom that’s utter crap? What’s a staunch principle? What’s a powerful temptation? Who’s the greatest left handed pitcher of all time? Who’s the worst poet? What is there to be proud of? Of what should we all be ashamed?
Some plot-driven storytellers worry about getting too mushy, while some literary types do nothing but. There’s a balance. It’s necessary to be natural. But for protagonists to capture us they’ve got to open up.
So do you.
Photo courtesy Flickr’s Jack Batchelor
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
Wow, great stuff here. I’m going to print this out and use it as a worksheet with my current protagonist. Thanks so much.
Another incredibly helpful post just when I need it most…thank you for reading my mind yet again!
Mr. Maass said: “Some plot-driven storytellers worry about getting too mushy”
LOL! This describes me to a T, and sometimes it does lend itself to characters feeling cold on the page. This is a very useful list of questions to ask to help remedy that.
Thanks.
Great advice, and something we too often forget when populating our stories. Thanks for sharing.
Yes, even if you need a characters to be cold or unlikable, you still have to get inside their heads for their motives, neuroses and anxieties. Writing the character sketches is as much fun for me as plotting out the story arc. They’re people, people. I have to fight my urge to throw in the character profiles whole and have to invent more subtle ways of revelation.
I’ve been thinking about this regarding social media. Some folks I immeditately warm to, others more slowly, some not at all. It’s occurred to me that I more quickly warm to people who use pictures of themselves as avatars. I’m thinking it’s not an attractiveness issue so much as a trustworthiness issue (the eyes are the windows to the soul?). In fiction, with few exceptions, we have to give our charaters warmth with no avatar. We have to draw the picture of them with our prose. It can be daunting, but exciting. It can be extaordinary hearing my characters described back to me by readers (physically and otherwise). If not, I know I have work to do.
Thanks again, Donald, for giving us the proper questions to ask ourselves.
Lot to think about here, as always! I have a tendency of keeping too much hidden, or just dropping obscure clues, because I hate it when too much information about a character is frontloaded. I think I’ve been over-correcting, though… I’ll be referencing this post again, definitely. Thanks!
As usual from Mr. Maass (whose books are full of essential truths like this) great nuggets: creating warm, approachable characters is the key to everything. Portraying emotion while getting the plot rolling, not as easy as it sounds (and it sounds hard). The cool thing about writing a novel is that you get to do it again with the next one, and use everything you learned. A writing life is like a college education where you never graduate! Thanks, WU, for the mini courses!
You have to be as brilliant as John Grisham with pacing as well as plot to get away with next to zero character development. He has good guys and bad guys and really, not so many complex guys.
Years ago, an editor advised me to write a few pages of backstory for each of my major characters. Just for my own reference. I was surprised how much it helped to flip back to those little biographic sketches when I was re-reading my drafts. It was an instant check on whether the character was behaving or speaking in character.
To Vaughan’s point, how do I add a photo to my comments on this blog? Thanks!
Mari,
You have to register at Gravatar.com with the photo of your choice, linking to both the email addy and web addy you use to leave comments.
Looking forward to seeing you!
Don, I think I have all your posts saved, because they are so helpful. This one particularly appeals. I can tell when an author has affection for their characters, even the “baddies,” and those books are the ones which most stick for me.
Mari Passananti, if I recall, to have a personalized avatar, you need to register for CommentLuv with a site that has a photo attached.
Thanks for this excellent post. It speaks directly to some struggles I’m having with the opening of my latest WIP and how much to reveal about the main character. I think you just helped me make a choice!
Can’t wait to dive even deeper at your SiWC workshops again this year!
Great post – as always Mr. Maass. I love WU, it’s the gift that keeps on giving!
“But for protagonists to capture us they’ve got to open up.”
This is the sentence that clinched it to me, because I was thinking of any number of protagonists who are cold, brooding, mysterious, and yet thought interesting or intriguing by readers–and I realized the reason is because we get to see into and past that exterior. The character opens up before us, no matter how closed off s/he is to the world. Once we get inside their heads we can empathize, and from there it’s easier to end up liking them.
Kristin-
Yes, you see the point exactly. If a character is cold as a person they still can be open to the reader. And if a character’s open to the reader you still can withhold something important to create a mystery.
D
I think my main problem is connecting with my antagonists more than my main characters. My MCs are just starting to deal with drama and trouble while my antagonists are troubled, tortured, and set in their evil ways. It’s so much more work to get in the head of a nice person but worth every moment of contemplation and mental anguish to make them believable.
Thanks again, Donald. For some time I struggled with a protagonist that I wanted to be cold and distant and, sure enough, readers just refused to connect. But she was a healer and had a big heart. One beta reader suggested that she help someone at the very beginning and reveal that inner warmth. It worked. She went on to be a riveting character in “Finding Magic.”
But for protagonists to capture us they’ve got to open up.
So do you.
This has been reinforced with my work-in-progress, which features a colder sort of character. It took forever for me to break her down and reveal the real issue she grappled with. Once I did, I realized it was my issue as well–though hopefully I’m not so cold.
Thanks for a great post, Don, as always.
Don,
Thanks for a great post. The main takeaway for me is that authors should know as much about their characters as possible before they start writing, especially the big picture stuff (motivations, dreams, fears, secrets). Developing characters before you sit down to write leads to richer, more complex characters and also opens up new plot possibilities. By the way, your book on writing the breakout novel is excellent. I refer to it often.
Thank you, Donald. This is a fantastic and thought-provoking post. Warmth is such an illusive quality, one that I always struggle with in writing. But you have opened up a new bridge to understanding it, in my mind. Thank you!
Oh a really great post and full of stuff to get on with, you have pointed out a very relevant point. And given us ways to break it down and deal with it. I love homework. c
Great post. Timely for me because I’ve been re-working my MC and this post helps quite bit. Thanks.
Great advice!!
Right on time for me! Got some notes from my agent and need to flesh out a couple of characters, and this really helps. Thanks!
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