Character Attraction

My youngest son is writing a mystery novel. He’s been making notes on his ideas in the tiny bits of time he’s had between teaching writing classes as an adjunct at one university with an hour’s commute each way and more online writing classes at another. For those of you who’ve never done it, teaching writing is very time-intensive because a good teacher gives a number of assignments and then goes over them each in detail, giving feedback as well as a grade on the final versions. But now, he has a permanent, full-time position with the one university and will be moving to live within walking distance in a few months, so he can see himself really getting started on his book.

He’s told me quite a bit about the series he wants to write, and I think it’s going to be a great and unique mystery series. (But of course, I am his mother.) Right from the beginning, one character he’s described has caught my imagination. I can imagine writing a fabulous series of books with this character as the protagonist. Because of her background, I can see so many stories opening out of her character. There’s so much possibility there. My son, on the other hand, likes this character he’s created and described to me, but he sees her as a sidekick, not the protagonist. He has a different character in mind for that. So we have a bit of good-natured give-and-take on this subject.

This has led me to think about character and, in particular, about why one character catches this author’s imagination and why a different character sets the imagination of another writer on fire. I think it’s that sense of doors and windows opening out into the world of story from the character. When I feel that sense of multiplicities of options opening out of a character, that character tends to light up for me in a way that others don’t. It’s the potential, the possibilities, which attract me to one character rather than another.

This happens in different ways for different writers. In my novel writing group, I have dedicated writer comrades who are excited and attracted by characters that I would never want to write an entire novel about, although I love reading theirs. I enjoy reading well-written novels about characters in whom I doubt I would ever find the spark of fascination that it would take for me to want to write their stories. That sense of potential is not necessary to read and enjoy a book or series about a character, but I do think it’s necessary to sustain the labor of writing a good novel or, certainly, a series of novels revolving around a certain character.

I have written novels that were ultimately unsuccessful, books that I couldn’t revise into anything more than quite competent, no matter how I tried, manuscripts that I’ve buried and made sure will never see the light of day again. Always, the problem with these novels has been that I was intrigued by a situation and invented characters to go with it, but then there wasn’t that sense of possibility unfolding out that I needed to really catch fire in writing that book. They just never rise above high-quality professional exercises. They never come to life. So I’ve learned to start with character and to find at least one character that opens windows and doors of potential narrative for me—if I can find more than one in a book, that’s a huge plus.

If you’re a writer, have you found similar things in regard to your attitudes toward what characters you’ll write about? If you’re a reader, have you read books where the author obviously never made that kind of magnetic connection with character? What do you think of my thesis?