I love my characters too much

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KiwiChick

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I'm really emotionally attached to some of the characters in my WIP, but I suspect this makes for cr@&&y writing. I mean, I know how wonderful they are, so I probably skip writing in all the bits that would make readers think they're wonderful. And of course I reread what I've written with rose-tinted reading glasses. ;)

I finished the first draft about 6 weeks ago and I've just started editing, but the time apart has only made me more fond of them. I just can't seem to see objectively.

Can anyone help me? Anyone have the same problem?

KiwiChick
 

swvaughn

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KiwiChick -- get thee a beta reader. :D Find someone who would be willing to read what you've got and offer their completely honest opinion on your characters. And don't let any negativity get you down. It's hard... like getting rejections hard. But it's hugely useful to have a fresh pair of eyes!

(I'm in love with my characters too. They haunt me. :D)
 

KiwiChick

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chaostitan said:
I don't want to read a novel about wonderful characters. I want to read a novel about conflicted, unusual, driven, REAL people.

Don't worry - they're not wonderful in that way. :) A better description would be "awfully screwed up".
 

Nickie

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Kiwichick, it's not a bad thing to love your characters! After more than 20 years, I'm still in love with the lead male character of my first novel. You can figure that I put a lot of myself in the heroine! She is the girl I once was, he is the man I'd still want to meet... Mind you, having a twisted mind (according to my family members) this person is not nice. He's got a temper, a lot of 'character' and he's scarred for life. But I still dream that he takes me into his arms and ardently loves me!


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MikeAngel

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Character treatment is perhaps the greatest challenge facing a fiction writer. I try to evaluate what it is about great characters that makes them so, and it's seldom that they're purely "wonderful" or "lovable."

Elmore Leonard creates these quirky characters and puts them together in interesting situations. Out flows intriguing plots.

Dickens, perhaps best known for his characters, created eccentric personas in nearly every story, and gave us wonderful description and actions/speech from them. Who can forget Scrooge? Micawber? Miss Havisham? and, shudder, Uriah Heep?

Twain gave us Huck Finn;Melville Captain Ahab. If you think of all the great characters in literature, it becomes clear that we remember these more than the plots they move in. It also becomes clear than none of the greatest characters are simply "wonderful" in a conventional sense.

So, I suggest you give your characters (at least your main ones) some sort of quirkiness, obsession, passion, even deviancy, to set them apart from the run-of-the-mill persons we deal with daily. In other words, exaggerate notable things about them and give them flaws, even gaping ones.
 

Éclairer

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Nickie said:
After more than 20 years, I'm still in love with the lead male character of my first novel.

Me too.

Anyway, KiwiChick, don't worry about your characters being "awfully screwed up." People are screwey; it' real. I mean... HAH, if I could only psychologically rip apart all the people I know--but yeah, *coughs,* on another note, I just watched a Polly Pocket movie (k, all cred just got flushed down the drain) and she's like perfect, but her dad dated a real "hard core devious" woman, to use one of her friend's drescriptions, and I liked her dad... gullibly oblivious or not. That's a horrid example of imperfection; how can you hate a blonde blue-eyed cartoon character, widowed and wealthy... BUT, I had a point: yes, screwey is okay. It is also okay, however, to have it looked over.
 

Beyondian

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I can understand what you're talking about KiwiChick. Heck, get me started on my characters and I could blab about them all day.
Maybe what you should do is post part of your story up in ShareYourWork and ask for commentary. As you say, you may be too close to the characters and the sotry to be able to judge objectively. Just tell everyone what you want them to look for and critique and... DUCK!!! (jk)
As to falling in love with your characters... personally i find that my chracters seem like my children. It seems wrong (in my head... which is, admittedly, a very strange place) to 'love' love them. Beside, I pair most of 'em up at the end anyway. I'm rather like a proud parent beaming benefactorily.

P.S... does your user name mean you are a Kiwi? As in a NZer? Cos I am.
 

KiwiChick

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Beyondian said:
P.S... does your user name mean you are a Kiwi? As in a NZer? Cos I am.

Yep, from Chch, but currently slumming it in the US. You're not Aucklander, are you? :) (It's okay if you are. Nobody's perfect.)
 

KiwiChick

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Beyondian said:
Lol. Yes. I am. But I wasn't born here, if that makes it any better.

I'll forgive you, then.

Re posting on SYW, I think I need to do a major rewrite before I get to that point. I just posted the start of another novel, and the responses were really helpful. I think for this particular problem beta readers would be able to give more rounded opinions, though.

KiwiChick
 

maddythemad

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Ha, I have the opposite problem. I usually start to hate my characters half way throught the book. Unusually enough, though, my MC in this new book is a total b*tch, and yet I'm still loving her. So much fun to write. Heehee.

As for thinking your characters are "wonderful," I think that's prolly a good thing. Just let someoene else read it over (or several someones), and with those other opinions you can decide if your characters need to be changed at all or not.
 
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