Thursday, September 19, 2013

Discussion: Do characters/MCs need to be relatable?

As the title says: do you need to be able to relate to a character or like them in order to enjoy a book and form a connection to it?
This is a question I ask myself quite often and that arose a few days ago because I was reading Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers. Regina, the protagonist, is someone I both feel sympathy for (she is first almost raped and then ridiculed, outcast and bullied by her former friends) and despise (she used to bully a lot of other people at her school and since I've been a victim of bullying myself, that makes it hard to like her).

However, I think that tension makes her an even more interesting protagonist. I can connect to her and the story, even though I've never been even close to her actual situation or in the kind of toxic girl-group relationship she is stuck in. I enjoyed the tension between these two sides of her and her struggle against herself and her peers.

So in general I think being able to relate to a character is not all that important to me. I don't even have to like them. It just has to be an interesting, complex character. For instance, I don't think many people like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, but that doesn't mean he isn't interesting or that the book is bad. In some cases I find myself reading the book to a great part because of the villain (or maybe-villain).

Still, I often read in reviews that people liked a book/character because they could relate to him/her, or that they didn't like a book because they couldn't connect with/relate to/like the protagonist. I think there's also a pressure on authors to write this type of character, and sometimes I feel like it shows. For instance, the character is introduced/constructed in such a way that I feel like the author wanted him/her to be as similar to the anticipated reader as possible so they'd like him/her. If it's that transparent, it actually makes me dislike the character. It somehow feels insincere and  like I'm being sucked up to.

Maybe the fundamental question is what you're reading for. Do you want to find characters with traits that are similar to you, want to find someone who is 'like' you? Or do you want to disappear into a story populated with people who are completely different from yourself? I tend to find difference/otherness/strangeness more interesting than similarity/sameness. But that's just me, and it's not absolutely always the case. I guess in the end it comes down to the quality of the writing.

What's your opinion? Do characters need to be relatable? Likeable? Morally upstanding? Is that necessary for you to connect to the story? Or are there other elements that are more important to you in a book? I'd really like to know :)

10 comments:

  1. Personally, I dont need to relate to a character (that's why they are fiction), but they do need to make believable choices and act in believable ways. For example, a girl fighting a professional fighter and winning? Not believable, unless she's not human! Mmm, complicated, eh?

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    1. It is! Even if it's unlikely, the author has to construct the story in a way that makes it possible to suspend disbelief.

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  2. I agree...I don't need to relate to a character at all to enjoy the story. However, I do need to feel some *connection* to them and their story, otherwise, what is there to keep me reading? I need to feel invested in their story, that despite their background or their actions, I still feel compelled to read more of it. But the connection also has a lot to do with the writing and not just the characters themselves.

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    1. I agree about feeling invested in the story, but for me that doesn't necessarily have to be via connecting to the characters (though it's easier if I like at least one of them). I also think that the connection mostly comes from the writing! If the writing is great, I'll read on pretty much no matter what.
      It's actually really complicated to pick the characters and the writing apart...

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  3. I agree with some of the above points. I don't expect a character to be just like me, it'd get boring really quickly. But if a main character is extremely broody or angry or negative for no given reasons, or makes completely outlandish decisions, then I don't usually care about the rest of the book. I at least want a believable level of difference.... If that made sense? Haha.

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    1. I hear you about outlandish decisions! No matter what I think about a character, their decisions have to make sense based on how they are and how they tick.
      Sometimes I like broody or angry characters though. It's something else to be in such a person's head. I like trying to figure out how they became that way (especially if it turns out to be more than the ususal go-to childhood trauma). If it's a villain though, I sometimes like it if they're just evil because they can, not because they are such a 'poor, tortured soul'.

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  4. Hm, I need to like the characters in order to like their story, but I think likeable means different things to different people. To me likeable does NOT equal with nice,good, relatable etc. I love my antiheroes ;) I also don't need them to be relatable. I can like all sorts of characters as long as they are well-written.

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    1. Give me the antiheros!!! I just read The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks and I despised and liked Durzo Blint equally. Conflicted characters make for some of the best, in my opinion. And I think I know what you mean with liking them despite them not being what you'd normally call likeable.

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  5. Personally, I don't think I need to relate to a character to enjoy a book. A compelling, complex and layered character that is engaging and well-developed can just as easily hold my interest and show you something different all at the same time. I do think that even if a character is very different from me, if they have that moment where where I can really *get* them, it does help me build a stronger connection.

    On the other hand, if the character is a combination of someone I admire and someone who I can relate to how they are reacting & behaving, I'll love them that much more because I can see myself acting similarly IF I were in a similar situation :) Really interesting discussion topic Carmen^^

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    1. You say it! Even if the character is different, you need to be able to get who they are and what they're doing and why they're doing it, even if you disagree.
      Hm... maybe it's the difference between an intellectual connection and an emotional one? If you can separate this type of thing. Gah, this is way more complicated than I realized when I wrote this post >.< Thanks for stopping by, hun :)

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