Relatable Characters

I was surfing DeviantART’s daily deviation section one day and I found a gem in the form of a critique of typical internet stories. The premise was that every story he came across on the internet had the same basic plotline: the main character was a victim and every bad thing imaginable was happening to him or her. He went on to say that bad happenings were not enough to get the reader to give a damn about the main character. Harsh tone aside, the guy who wrote this editorial actually made a good point there. The question now is, how does an author make likable characters? To my understanding, a main character, no matter what the alignment, should NOT be perfect in every way and should have qualities that the reader would find interesting such as witty dialogue, an indomitable will, or even a sweet disposition. Suppose you had a big beefy barbarian who had a special place in his heart for puppies. That would make him more interesting. What if you had a super villain who made dark jokes that actually tickled funny bones more often than offended people. That might also be a reason to care. But in order to have these things in a main character, there has to be enough narration in the prose to develop him beyond the guy who has a lot of bad shit happen to him. Short stories, particularly in the flash fiction genre, don’t always allow the space for such development. So then what, Mr. Snappy Pants? Do short story authors just fuck off from the face of the internet? Bzzt! Wrong! They do what UFC commentator Joe Rogan likes to call “fighting in a phone booth”, which means make the most of the space you’re granted. Perhaps that would mean expanding a short story beyond the 2000 or 5000 word limit. But you could get the job done. Your sanity depends on it. Judging from the aggression in the daily deviation author’s voice, you can’t afford to make huge mistakes. In that case, do as much horrible shit to your main character as possible. It may be your only chance despite going against Mr. Drill Instructor’s advice. If you need help editing your story afterwards, seek the council of someone with the disposition of a baby bunny. I’ll bet you anything that the editor you seek out will give you a set of questions to answer within the space of your prose and once you have those questions emphatically answered, everything will work out right and you may get published. While this may not have been the most entertaining blog post I’ve done, I hope it was one of the more helpful ones. In the end, that’s pretty much all that counts.

　

***MOVIE QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“You get me slapped with a fine, you argue with the customers and I have to patch everything up, you get us thrown out of a funeral home for violating a corpse, and to top it all off, you ruin my relationship! What is your encore?! Do you anally rape my mother while pouring sugar in my gas tank?!”

-Dante Hicks from “Clerks”-