Character

What makes a character interesting and memorable to begin with? It's worthwhile to take time to think about our own favorite characters and what worked so well with them. What makes Elizabeth Bennet so memorable?

Someone (Jacob?) said that the best characters are fundamentally good people in impossible situations, which might be what makes her character work so well. She's intelligent and interesting and sarcastic, but in an impossible position in which she HAS to find a husband from among these extremely unpromising options, with the added handicap of her embarrassing mother and annoying younger sisters. Look at her choices. Mr. Collins is atrocious! Yet we see Charlotte accept his proposal, simply because she has to. Elizabeth also has to, but doesn't. Everything that happens in the novel makes her situation worse and worse, adding pressure to her already precarious life. Yet she still rejects Darcy's first proposal. She has the strength of her convictions even in the face of probable destitution if her father dies. That's an amazing character!

Take a person with convictions and put them into an impossible situation where those convictions are challenged. 

Not to fixate on Star Trek: Discovery, but it started in the pilot with exactly this type of situation. Michael Burnham was faced with two options and had to make an impossible choice. Commit mutiny and maybe save the Federation from a war with the Klingons, or follow her captain's orders and allow the war to happen. As it turned out, she committed the mutiny but the captain woke up and overruled her and so both bad results took place. Amazing!

I was so pleased with that beginning. Season Four seems to be back on track with that kind of thing.

Character is about the choices the person makes. That's it. It's not about what your past or your potential or your future or what you might have done or would do. It's about choices in the here and now. 

Character is the choice a person makes when they face a conflict. I suspect we all have our own patterns because that's what character means, the ways a person tends to jump when there's a crisis.

In a crisis, do they tend to:

• run away
• panic
• hide
• back the stronger side
• switch sides
• delay a decision
• make a decision then change it
• overthink
• act rashly
• blame others
• blame their past
• blame their current circumstances
• distract themselves
• focus on irrelevancies
• dismiss the concerns of others
• save themselves over all others
• plan ten steps ahead before making a move
  
• distract others
  
• try to change the conversation
• make it about the accuser instead
• fight
• worry about others who are weaker or can't defend themselves
• follow the rules
• find a loophole
• jump from one option to another
• sit still and think
• ask for advice
• tell others what to do
• resort to violence
• argue points
  

It's uncomfortable to look at these about ourselves, but it's fascinating to look at them with a fictional character, especially if you're just building one. These patterns determine what kind of person this is, which determines which choice they will make when things get tough. And what do they do after they make that choice?

I know my move is always to flee a crisis. Flight! Breaking character traits broadly down to fight or flight is a useful place to start, it's true. If there's a bad situation, I want to get out of it. I don't want to talk it out or resolve things or negotiate. I want to run. It's so bad that I pack when I'm extremely stressed. It's like there's a list of options and only one of them is in hundred point font, so I can't even see the others.

I'm not sure that's a sympathetic trait. Well, I assume I'm a fundamentally good person--who doesn't?--but when I'm in an impossible situation, running away is pretty unsympathetic, as well as being psychologically iffy. 

I've never seen Runaway Bride, as I will avoid anything to do with weddings, but I can't imagine it's a very sympathetic character if she's constantly setting people up for emotional devastation that also embarrasses them in front of everyone they care about and wastes thousands of dollars. Not to mention the catering. Well, I suppose the guests can still eat that. Does she invite her family and friends every time? Who would keep on showing up? Are there bridesmaids? Maybe I should watch this thing, just to answer some questions I have. But I will hate it.

I might not be a sympathetic character in general, now that I think about it. Independent to the point of it being pathological, self-contained, focused on my own work to the exclusion of all else, impatient with other people's nonsense, full of panic and terror all the time, and of course ready to move three thousand miles away for no apparent reason. I mean, I will joyously come help you move furniture or paint things or do whatever needs doing, especially if it involves power tools or machinery of some kind. Or my cute little 4'x8' trailer. But I almost never ask for help and I assume the answer is no so I don't ask anyone to do anything fun. (In my defense, the answer is always no.) Is that a sympathetic character?

One way we know how to feel about characters is by how others treat them, which obviously is a self-fulfilling and circular situation. It's ugly, but we assume people are being treated the way they deserve. If nobody hangs out with someone, we assume there's a good reason. In fiction, we take our cues about someone by how others treat them.

I'm still moved by how characters on Discovery would join someone who was being ostracized and sitting alone in the cafeteria. That is a perfect example of others treating someone the way others are treating them, then someone breaking that pattern. (It's Tilly. Tilly is SUCH a good and kind person.) And then others join them and the person is part of the group again.

Characters are what they do. That's the tricky part about thinking we're good people, right? Are you a good person if you don't actually do anything good? That's a kite that's not up in the sky. How can we tell? We can't. Imagine it as something more tangible, like DOING good. Have you done anything good lately?

So characters have to DO in order to BE. 

I get why Elizabeth Bennet is sarcastic and snarky about people. I get why she makes fun of this snooty jerk who said rude things about her at the dance. I find it highly relatable. She's punching up! She has nothing and is mocked by this rich asshole. Who wouldn't want to make fun of him in private? It's not the most sympathetic action, though. Being mean never is. It's understandable but not sympathetic. It almost makes me retroactively think she deserves the mean comments he made. They're both mean! Why would I like them?

But we do, because we can relate to being unkind out of paralyzing social anxiety, or injured pride, or any of a million reasons that we think are absolutely great reasons for doing the thing we did. 

Character is the choice a person makes when they face a conflict.

Character, conflict, choice, consequences. That's everything that makes up every story ever. 

Do you pick up the gold ring you find on the floor in the store? And what do you do with it after that? That choice presents a conflict. Which way the character jumps tells us everything about them. And that choice leads to consequences. Do you keep the ring? Do you wear it out and about? Do you give it to someone who was despondent and turn their life around? Do you try to sell the ring? If so, what if it's recognized and now you're wanted for robbery? Or does the money save your house? Do you give it to someone else, who then wears it around, where it gets recognized, so they get accused of stealing it? Do you give it to the store manager, who denies having it when the person who lost it asks, then gets all sorts of trouble from that? Or they get a promotion and move to the big city?

I had to go back and insert all those positive outcomes. I tend to imagine only terrifying scenarios. It's something I'm working on. See, unsympathetic! Oh no!

I can't stress enough how much ACTIONS are who a character is and determine how we feel about them. Definitely not what they say they are. In fact, someone who insists on who they are is nearly always wrong. "I'm a good person!" is something someone says when the evidence is stacking up against them to demonstrate that they aren't. Maybe they are, but if it were obvious, they wouldn't need to argue for it. 

Or maybe events are piling up against them, through no fault of their own. I tend to find that extremely sympathetic, but it's not good drama, when things *happen to* someone, versus when they are making choices of their own. Victimhood is not interesting. Choices are interesting. So if bad things happen, how the person tackles that is what makes them a sympathetic character. Complaining and feeling put upon are never, ever sympathetic, even when they're absolutely justified. (Oh no, do I complain too much? This discussion is making me self-conscious, yet another unsympathetic trait.) (It would be hilarious to change my life because I'm afraid I'm an unsympathetic character.)

Elizabeth Bennet has such a profoundly excellent character situation. She's in a bad situation not of her own making (the family, the desperate need to marry for financial stability, the poverty) and has to accomplish a goal in order to solve it. She has character traits that actively hinder her accomplishment of that goal. She has to overcome both inner traits and external obstacles to get where she needs to be. 

Just being in a bad situation alone is never enough to make someone sympathetic. In fact, as discussed above, we tend to think people deserve what happens to them, so it has to be extremely clear that they didn't get into that situation by themselves or it makes them even less sympathetic. 

To take a totally unfair example, imagine someone with an abusive husband. All we think is: get out of there! People say every time, "Why doesn't she just leave him?" Obviously it's not that easy. Emotional abuse is profoundly damaging and there are often crucial financial reasons and dependents and other factors. That person *could* leave, but they *can't* leave. We tend not to see that as a sympathetic character necessarily because we focus on what we would do to solve it, instead of what that person in that situation can and can't do to get out of the situation. It's not easy (for anyone but me, apparently) to leave their entire life behind. And I take a 26 foot Penske truck when I go. 

There are great stories about abused partners who claim there are bedbugs or say they're having a yard sale and bag up all their stuff and put it in the garage, then flee in the night. Imagine if even looking like you're packing will get you beaten up. How do you leave? Often these people end up with literally just the clothes they're wearing. No money, nothing, and the knowledge that a terrifying monster is out there willing and able to hurt or kill them if they are found. That leaves out going to family or anywhere familiar, too. 

I find that incredibly sympathetic, personally, but I know that situation brings out a lot of "why don't they just" or "they never should have" reactions. Those are tricky when we're writing a character who we want to be sympathetic. It's much better when our reactions are more like, "Yes, go go go!" or "Look out, he's coming home!" 

Incidentally, I just realized how to improve the beginning of my favorite of my novels. Right in the beginning, add a strong choice the character makes that sets her up to be much more sympathetic. 

I always picture someone on the high dive. Have you ever backed away and climbed back down the ladder? I sure have. I couldn't make myself do it. Everyone was cheering me on but I was much too scared. I did eventually get myself to go back up there and jump off. Big steps are scary! We all want you to do the thing! What does it take, though? What's the crucial thing that makes you able to take that step?

In this novel, in the first sentence, the character *considers* dropping out of college. If I change it to *decides,* it's infinitely stronger. It's a choice, not just a thought. It's something she's doing to do. She just has to figure it out. It's not a coincidence that I keep talking about how people leave controlling situations. This character is in one, rigidly controlled and constantly monitored by phone calls, always put in the wrong no matter what she does, not allowed to work or have any money, and so on. 

Again, we tend to think people deserve the situations they're in. It's unfair, but it's true. We have to see her taking steps to change things if we want to find her sympathetic. Just like Elizabeth Bennet, out there at the dance and trying her best, with her mother being loud and embarrassing and her sisters being terribly pious, excessively flirty, or singing like a cat getting its shots at the vet. She's taking action! She's trying to do the thing! And so we're on her side.

This character is facing a conflict, but as it stands, isn't making a choice. She has to make that choice and try to do the thing, otherwise we don't find her sympathetic. 

Character, conflict, choice, consequences.