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Characters–Cardboard or Electric?

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Blogger: Etta Wilson

Location: Books&Such office, Nashville

Weather: 70s and breezy

One thing is clear–a whole lot of people are writing about “fictional character development”! According to Google today, there are 372,000 entries for that topic. Reading a few of them convinces me that the process of creating characters is serious business in the field of fiction. I’m also impressed with the responses from our blog readers who are generating new characters. No slouches there.

Two things started my train of thought on character: Reading again Natalie Babbit’s Tuck Everlasting (c1975) and realizing how seamlessly she had woven the lives of Winnie Foster, who lived in time as we know it, and the Tucks, who had entered a sort of eternity after drinking water from a secret source. I wondered why the movie of this book didn’t do any better at the box office–lots of possible answers there. Maybe the audience had moved on from that sort of story, or maybe the characters were not electric enough for current tastes.

The other stimulus for thinking about character development was reading Joelle Anthony’s article in the March/April SCBWI Bulletin on “Avoiding the Character Cliche.” She offers some basic pointers worth reading for creating minor characters and antagonists in middle grade and teen fiction. Most fiction writers concentrate on main character(s), but the lesser ones can too easily fall into the trap of being altogether evil or stand for all that the main character opposes. This was a classic approach in an earlier age such as the Elsie books, which Martha Finley wrote in the late 1800s. Not that there aren’t really evil people, but it takes more work to create an antagonist who is at fault but has some redeeming aspects of humanity.

Well, as you can see, I’m still wrestling! We all want unique and memorable characters. What characters in middle grade or teen novels stand out to you?

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  1. Edmund from Narnia. It’s fun to read about a “naughty” character. The other kids seem so sweet and nice–Edmund is a nice twist to their personalities.

    Also, in later Narnia books, Eustace Scrubb. He plays a similar role to that of Edmund, and he has a great name.

    Peter Pan. What boy wouldn’t want to be him?–even if he is something of a brat at times. Hey, maybe boys want to be him because he is a brat! Sheesh, what a lousy role model.

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  2. I actually loved the movie “Tuck Everlasting.” I do think it was a bit “literary” for a kid’s film, but the story was still intriguing and touching.

    To answer your question at the end of the post:

    Anne from Anne of Green Gables, she has such strong convictions and a big imagination, and her life was so hard that you can’t help loving her.

    Christy Miller from Robin Jones Gunn’s Christy Miller series. Christy is so real that her life and her friends become part of the reader’s life.

    Harry Potter in the early books. He was a sweet kid drawn into something he didn’t ask for. He was likable until the later books.

    Ponyboy in The Outsiders. I was drawn into his life and felt very connected to him by the end of the book. This was surprising because he wasn’t like me at all to begin with, but his character was so good that I really cared about him.

    I know there are more, but they aren’t coming to mind right now. 🙂

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  3. Eustace Scrubbs is a great character! He started as such a pimple but came around in a thoroughly satisfying way.

    I had problems, though, with Artemis Fowl in the first book in that series and he was the same way. Maybe it was because it was so unclear that there was any “good” character in the story at all and Artemis as the main character was so one-dimensionally self-centered and bad to start. There was no hint of redemption. But he did eventually come around so I read more. Mulch really became my favorite character from that series though.

    This is going back a bit but I liked Trixie Beldon – at heart a good, warm-hearted character but still so easy to relate to with her very human failings and tendencies (which were also nicely offset by her more polished friend, Honey).

    And I like Greg from Diary of a Wimpy Kid. He’s just so much fun to look at.

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  4. Val, I had problems with Artemis Fowl as well. Your “one-dimensional” comment nailed it in my opinion. It’s ultimately unsatisfying to read about characters that don’t grow or change which points to the interconnection of plot and character in strong fiction.

    Etta

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  5. I absolutely loved Anne of Green Gables and the Outsiders.
    I also really liked that movie Tuck Everlasting. I have no clue why it didn’t do better. I also didn’t know that it was based on a book. Interesting.
    The question of creation likable characters is something I think about a lot. Mine tend to be unlikable and that’s something I’m still working on. LOL

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  6. Good taste in characters, Jessica! (I want to go to Nova Scotia primarily because of Anne.) Sometimes it’s a help to study in detail the characters we love in books. What do their dialog and movement show about their personality? Not that we would create the same character, but we could use the principles the author used.
    Etta

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  7. I agree on Anne of Green Gables. You couldn’t help, but fall in love with the character, but some of her personality traits made you feel embarrassed for her. It was a nice balance though in which a memorable character was created.

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