“Relatable”
By Marisa de los Santos | May 30, 2018 |
I have spent the last few years wrestling with the word “relatable.” It is a word I find personally irritating. On the occasions when my teenage children use it—to describe a song lyric, a Black Mirror episode, a scrap of wisdom featured in an Instagram meme—I cringe so hard and emanate scorn so nakedly that they either apologize or laugh and use it again, depending on the kid and the situation.
I tell them, “It’s not a real word,” but this is sort of silly coming from me, since I understand and appreciate that language is alive and, therefore, ever evolving, and also since I routinely make up words myself and sometimes even put them into books. But “relatable” feels cheap to me, a shortcut, one of those empty-vessel-type adjectives that can contain almost anything an individual speaker (or writer or Amazon reviewer) wants to toss into it. When my kids say, “That’s so relatable,” I press them to go further, deeper, to be more specific: “This thing speaks to me, resonates with me, attracts me, fascinates me, engages me because . . .”
But when the word is applied, as it has been more times than I can count, to the characters in my novels, I become even more impatient.
I should stop here and say that I am not impatient with the people who use it, the ones who read my books and who are thoughtful enough to share their opinions about them. To the users of the word I am grateful. I know that it is a compliment that they take the time and know as well that word itself is a compliment. While the meaning of it feels ambiguous to me, it is clearly always intended as praise, which is probably where I should leave it: with a thank you.
Instead, though, I parse and sort and analyze. I chase possible meanings around like buzzing flies—lots of irritated flailing on my part, then swat, miss, swat, miss. Does it mean that the reader sees herself in the character? Does it mean that everything the character does makes sense to the reader? Does it mean the reader would like to be friends with the character, maybe sit down and have a conversation? Is it simply another word for “likeable”? For “nice”?
There is nothing intrinsically problematic about any of these responses, and as a reader, I’ve experienced them all myself. I see Lucy Honeychurch having a bad day mostly because her dress is the absolute wrong color for her, and I think, “Yep. Been there, Lucy!” I’ve fallen in love just exactly the way Dorothea Brook fell for Will Ladislaw. I cherish Kent Haruf’s characters for their profound decency. I would hang out with nearly every one of Elinor Lipman’s characters all day long.
But as a writer, I find myself wanting to make a case for messiness, for inconsistency and surprise, for complexity and weirdness, for flaws and tics and obsessions, even for thoughtlessness, self-centeredness, pettiness, spite. I want to say, “Okay, yes, but what about the character who makes you want to shake some sense into her? What about the one who gets in his own way at almost every opportunity? What about the one who hurts people?”
And if right now you’re thinking that someone should shake me and ask—with an eye-roll worthy of an eighth grader—why in the world I care so much, you’re smart. You’re right. Obviously, I am spending too much time on the word “relatable.” Obviously, the real difficulty for me is that “relatable” has lodged itself in my psyche in a way that words from readers and reviewers never should.
I have always prided myself on not trying to please readers (please note that this does not say “on trying not to please readers”), on shutting out all the outside voices, on staying true to my characters and to my story. I don’t mean that I don’t care about pleasing readers. I would like to sell a million copies of every book I write; and when a reader tells me that she read my book while sitting at her mother’s hospital bed and it’s what got her through, every thought of sales figures goes up in a puff of smoke, and I am the most humble kind of grateful for this job I get to do. I like to please readers. I love to please readers. But while I’m writing, I need not to think about what might or might not please them; I need not to think of them at all.
But this word: “relatable.” It won’t leave me alone. It’s been used against my characters, too. “I had to put this book down because, oh my God, that Taisy, she was so eager to please her jerk of a father; she just wasn’t relatable.” Or “Cornelia with all those classic film references! I hate black and white movies. She wasn’t relatable!” Or, as in my most recent novel, I’ll Be Your Blue Sky: “Clare was stupid to ever get involved with Zach in the first place, and then she left him at the altar and broke his heart! So delusional. So careless. Not relatable.”
I’m writing a book now with a protagonist named Ginny. When Ginny was eighteen, she let her best friend down in a terrible way and then ran away from her wild, beautiful, imaginative self and made straight for a safe life with a safe man. When he book opens, she is thirty-eight, and in a single day, her safe life turns on her, and her past and all her bad decisions come storming back. I struggled with this book without knowing why for months and months: two steps forward, one step back; one step forward, two steps back; four steps forward, nineteen steps back straight into an open manhole. And then I realized that the problem is that I was trying to make Ginny too nice. I was trying to let her off the hook, to explain away her mistakes, to make her hapless, wide-eyed, sad, innocent, likable. And even though she is at certain moments in the plot all of these things, she’s also knowing, intentional, gritty, occasionally abrasive, a little bitter, full of self-irony, full of ferocious love for her daughter.
In trying to make Ginny relatable, I lost her for a long time. I had her wry, funny, regret-tinged, thorny voice all wrong. In a moment of clarity, I got her back, got her right. But even as I write, I worry that she’s too caustic, too flawed. I worry that people won’t like her, won’t relate to her. Every day, when I sit down at my computer, I need to shut down those worries. I need to pick up the word “relatable” and wring its scrawny little annoying neck. Every day.
Even so, I hope readers will relate to Ginny, my quirky bird. Oh gosh, of course I do. Not because she is nice. Not because they see themselves in her. Not because every decision she makes makes sense. But because they recognize her humanity. Bringing to life her individual brand of humanness is, in the end, my only job. I hope people will see it and see her and root for her. And if they do, no matter what words they use to tell me, I will be glad. I will try not to fret and analyze and grapple, to say only “thank you” from my heart (and it is always from my heart) and, then, I will sit down and start to write the next book.
What does “relatable” mean to you and affect you as a reader, as a writer? Which characters in novels you’ve read are relatable to you, based upon your own definition? Has a “non-relatable” character every chased you away from a novel, made you set it aside? The floor is yours.
A New York Times bestselling author and award-winning poet with a PhD in literature and creative writing, Marisa de los Santos lives in Wilmington, Delaware, with her family.
“Relatable” as a word has become vague and debased.
It reminds me of a similar word that became equally vague and debased in the Sixties: “relevant.” As in, “That’s not relevant, man!” Usually said with a dismissive wave. “Relevant” swept up all of the Younger Generation’s disdain for the “Establishment.” But what does the word actually mean?
Relatable in our context means…well, what *does* it mean? It may nag you, Marisa, because it has lost its precise definition. It’s not diagnostic, but rather a broom that sweeps up a host of vague dislike of characters whom some readers don’t get or, maybe, simply don’t want to understand.
In this respect, it’s akin to other vague literary terms like “dark” and “edgy” and “voice”. What are we talking about–actually and precisely–when we use those terms?
Ask me, it’s time to pin down what relatable is. As you say, it’s not about whether characters are likeable, or even like us. If that was the criterion, then we would never connect to characters from different cultures or even of different genders. We would not “relate” to The Kite Runner or Gone with the Wind.
Relatable is something else. I propose that it means touchstones; meaning the little habits or big passions that make any character universal. Not a “sympathetic” nature, in the technical sense, but similarities that say, hey, this character isn’t so different than me.
I am not a woman of the South in the 1860’s, but when I read, “Tomorrow is another day”, I nod. That means hope. Endurance. Carry on. I can relate. There are a million other examples, but this is only my comment on your relatable frustration. Thanks.
I remember when the word “interesting” was used as an insult.
I feel compelled to out myself. I have used the word. Perhaps even overused it. Including right here on WU. Including in my most recent essay.
And part of what compels me is gratitude. I’m grateful to have read this lovely essay. And though I won’t promise to stop using the word, I do vow to try to be less vague. Thank you!
I’m weighing in as the voice of ‘woo-woo’ here because I think so much of what we try to pin down and make work in our stories in intrinsically un-pin-downable (is that word?) I’m thinking of those moments as a reader when one a sentence or even a few words make something shift in me towards a character. That’s the moment I see a tiny piece of myself in them, even if I don’t really like them. It’s the little flash of light that makes me walk all the way of down the beach to see what just caught the light. Don mentioned GWTW, which I read in high school. I vividly remember not liking Scarlet at first (spoiled, vain, etc). But she won me over when Mammy alluded to her unladylike appetite, and when she hid behind the couch in the library, I was a goner. Thanks for the great post this morning,
Hi Marisa! To me, “ relatable” has always meant, “I recognize this character’s humanity,” so for me your essay comes full circle. So defined, “relatable” is a goal for me in writing characters. I’ll take it over “likable” any day!
To me relatable means something in a particular character twangs a universal human chord. I get them/their motivation. I don’t have to like them, not at all. But I do need to understand them, on an intrinsically human/emotional level. And thus I feel for them.
First of all, I think I’m regretting getting post alerts from WU in my email inbox. I should be working, but I can’t resist the pull of writers I admire.
Even if we have different interpretations of “relatable”, such as “resonating with the reader” or “finding common ground with the character”, I think it’s the ultimate compliment. I’m primarily a non-fiction writer, but my grounding in fiction has informed my work and it’s better for it. Readers will tell me how easy it was to connect with my message, or how they felt as if they were sitting down with a conversation. And I’m writing about things like regulations, freight forwarders and customs brokers! But injecting my own experiences into the dry details (mostly mistakes I made early on) has apparently formed a connection for people, a sense that if a bumbling fool like me could become an expert in my field, they probably could too!
I’m extremely grateful that my readers take the time to contact me or write a review. If they want to tell me how relatable my work is I’ll accept it gratefully. In my case, it also means they are more likely to learn what I’m trying to impart on my subject.
As for my own reading, I think it comes down to the same thing – recognition of the humanity in a flawed character. Even a deeply damaged individual who manipulates others and commits crimes can engage me, as long as there are also redeeming qualities. The book I put down because there was literally nothing I felt was relatable about the main characters? Gone Girl.
I’m not sure what writers are supposed to do if not please readers.
Please themselves first – and then hope there are readers out among the 7 billion+ on the planet who will ‘get’ them.
I agree! But as a writer (and I speak only for myself), I have no hope of writing a book that could please anyone if, while writing, I try to guess what will make readers happy and write with that goal in mind. Instead, I find I need to focus on the demands of the story and of my characters and to stay true to both of those–and to nothing else–as I make decisions during the writing process.
By the time the trilogy I’m writing is finished, the reader should be thoroughly exhausted – and not be able to find fault with any of the steps in the plot.
Because I’m taking a premise no one would believe, and taking the time to make the conclusion so utterly right that no one can DISbelieve it.
Takes a lot of words and a lot of work. And first I have to persuade myself.
First book is published, and readers have begged me to take shortcuts – the same readers who would dismiss the ending if I did.
Late to the comment party, but I just want to say, Marisa, that I so appreciate your struggle with Ginny. I have struggled with the exact same thing, usually after a beta reader told me a character wasn’t relatable!
(Aside, you’re right! Relatable is underlined here as I type it. Suggested corrections: relocatable, repeatable, treatable.)
I think I have sometimes erred by then trying to niceify (suggested correction: nicety) that character when instead I should have been making her motivation and her backstory more clear to the reader, which might have then made her more understandable.
I think that’s often what readers mean when they say “relatable.” I could understand this person, why she did what she did in her situation. She seemed real to me. I know someone like that. Or I’m like that.
I agree wholeheartedly that when we’re writing, we need to not try to please readers. I bristle against the advice to write to a particular reader. Because then I’m not following what the story and character demand but what this ideal reader demands. And her ideas and expectations are always going to be formed by what she’s already read. If I follow her expectations, I’ll never surprise her.
Great, thoughtful post.