Dear Authors... Main Characters [Part 2]

okay so today we are going to be doing main characters part two specifically honing in on making main characters compelling interesting relatable not exclusively relatable just something that the readers can latch onto if you're new here dear authors is the series where readers chat with readers about what we like and don't like to see in books this is a reading community and for this series i post a community tab and i ask other readers to chat with me about what we like and don't like to see and then we all come together here and i read off some of the most popular comments some of the most insightful comments that i read that i have deemed insightful and we kind of try to narrow down what the general consent consensus amongst readers at least readers in this community um and what we like to see and don't like to see i'm gonna start off by saying don't worry i read your comments i see all the requests i know we have a lot of topics to cover still before we start doing part twos on topics that we've already talked about this is not a theme i'm not gonna be redoing a bunch of videos or anything like that um we have we have a lot of topics still to discuss honestly this is for me there weren't even any requests for this it's just something that i gotta talk about the thing is that i read i read a lot of books right and so often i am reading a book and uh the plot's really interesting the side characters are fantastic but the main character is not interesting it's just that same copy and paste model that i read over and over again completely forgettable i i couldn't care less if the main character dies i'm way more invested in the side characters than i am in the main character and it's just it's just not the ideal setup and i'm starting to think that maybe a compelling main character is incredibly difficult to write so i want to break down why that is so hard and maybe find some solutions to make it a little bit more accessible i will also at the end of this video be giving a ton of examples of excellent main characters that are filled with personality i think we ended up coming away with a really interesting conversation i definitely the main comment that came up was make the main character feel real don't just make them nothing give them traits give them personality give them things that make them feel like a real life human and not just a character but we also got a lot of really great comments talking about how to do that and that's what i'll be focusing on side characters seem to always be more interesting because there's always an air of mystery around them i always appreciate main characters more when they're introduced to question marks about their actions and motives as opposed to having everything given to you up front it's always nice to find things out about them as the story progresses sanderson mentioned in one of his many recorded lectures about writing that when authors make promises about characters and plot we tend to be more interested so i love seeing this done with the main character's backstory and capabilities going forward in the story so i think that this is absolutely true an example i'm going to use is going to be foundry side so in foundry side we have a very standard main character she's been through things she's seen a rough life she has been betrayed and hardened because of her past she's on her own she doesn't need anybody to rely on she can do everything herself she's rough she's tough she won't take any back talk from anybody she's your standard female fantasy protagonist especially nya this is adult it also happens to adult female protagonists she's your standard tough guy female protagonist but there's some mystery about her there are key things laid out from the very beginning that lee that led me to be very interested in her despite her being that same protagonist i've read many many times i was so curious to see what it was that she wasn't telling me about her yet not that she was intentionally it didn't it didn't feel like the author was keeping stuff from me even though that's exactly what was happening it just felt like there's something she's not ready to talk about yet and i need to hang out with her longer to gain her trust so that she'll tell me even though i'm a third-party observer that is a great feeling that is such a good feeling when you know that there's something going on with this protagonist that's really really unique to them that leads me to need to spend more time with them so that i can break down their walls and get to the point of knowing that thing another example i'm gonna give for a different reason is skyward by brandon sanderson spensa is also in a lot of ways that standard protagonist i've seen bad things i have grief i have pain in my life i'm a tough guy because of it i'm guarded no one talked to me i don't need you i'm on my own the difference with spensa though is not only is she hiding things from us is the author withholding information from us to make us interested in her but unlike the protagonist in foundry side whose name i've forgotten because she's pretty standard but spensa does all those same things has all the same baggage not not exactly the same baggage but that same type of just i've been hurt so i'm tough now she has that same thing but done in a non-copy and paste way she's actually really unique she also has a level of vulnerability to her that a lot of these tough guy protagonists don't display at least not early on at all she has a layer of humanity to her that takes her away from that copy and paste i feel grief relate to me i'm tough watch my arc that makes her incredibly human i've said this many many times in other videos but in case you're only here for the dear authors which is fine i'll say it again spensa if you want to know what ages 13 to 16 year old murphy looked like read this book in all my many years of reading books spensa is the one character that i've ever one of the only characters that i've ever read and thought oh my goodness this is what i looked like when i was working through my trauma this is me i've never seen myself in a character like i've seen myself in spencer written by a 40 year old man it's weird it it it's a weird feeling to feel so understood by someone i just i it it just goes to show that humanity is is something that anyone can achieve in their characters and this vulnerability that spensa displays in her pain and the way she tries to handle it is one of the most relatable things i've ever read eventually i got an arc and i'm excited to watch spencer's arc happen too let's go in the other direction specifically we just talked about grief and pain and tough guys stuff um we you can over correct and this is also something that happens ah when a character pouts all the time my life is horrible and nothing goes my way i shall die a slow death and never live again i shall never love again we want to connect emotionally to a character but this is not the way to go about it i want to feel like they have a normal life that's just not going their way give us some good plot but you can make it bad when you give us a bad character for a good plot now let's talk about the opposite of this comment when a character actually breaks down when the character is just going along with everything that happens to them and never has any feelings about it they don't feel like an actual person when a character actually breaks down in a situation i can relate to them and it allows me to see the flaws of the character this is true for all characters but since the main character is most likely the pov character you can see their thoughts and understand them better so i want to hit on this because i think a massive way to make a character feel human is to give them emotions they're not just in it to save the day their motivation isn't just i need to save the world because i am good i'm a good guy i make all the right decisions i am good i am superman a bland imma save the day personality is not very interesting a good way to add layers to that character is giving them real human emotions and struggles show them breaking down when when something happens to someone they love when they face opposition it doesn't just have a physical impact on them but an emotional one too however that can also go to the extreme other side where when they face opposition they're throwing a fit and throwing a tantrum acting childlike instead of acting grief-ridden and human there's definitely a balance and over-correction comes off childish and comical as opposed to human and relatable and every time i say relatable that doesn't exclude morally gray characters or following the villain some of the most relatable characters i've ever read are in the first law trilogy and that's not because i think like them act like them or ever want to be like them it's because the raw human reactions to what's happening around them the reality of how selfish they are sometimes even though i don't relate to them i relate to the reality of their human emotions and human reactions a character doesn't have to look exactly like me to be relatable just the humanity of them is relatable enough to make me latch onto them like nothing else there were tons of comments about since of about characters with a sense of humor i think that this one is a little bit more widely understood so i don't feel a lot of need to go into it but i'll go ahead and talk about it i really love a character with a sense of humor especially when the sense of humor is internalized two good examples of this are in percy jackson and murderbot the inner dialogue of these two are hilarious and make the stories so much more fun to read i love when their humor is ingrained into the way they think it makes characters endearing to see them having these ridiculous thoughts that don't get said so i fully i fully agree to this and i fully agree to the two examples given i think that murderbot and percy jackson are two great examples of characters that are so incredibly easy to love and to latch onto with murderbot specifically i've only read the first novella where is that thing it's probably over there somewhere i've only read the first novella and in the first novella the side characters weren't well built up the world wasn't well built up i'm told those things come in the next novellas that's perfectly fine and novella cannot accomplish what a novel does so it's okay that novellas take little sections of what they're building up at a time the first novella was about murderbot and getting attached to murderbot and wow was that effective that self-depreciating dry unfiltered sarcastic humor was amazing to read not only was it fresh and different and fun but it also just made it so easy for me to latch onto this robot talk about not being human i'm talking about making as much humanity for this character as you can human emotions this robot is so easy to latch onto even though it's a robot because of this dry witty clever removed humor that is so much fun to read and also ridiculously relatable now i want to talk about flaws because this is another bit of standard writing advice that i hear all the time make your character flaw make your main character flawed they're not the perfect superhero um protagonist they have to have flaws but here's the problem is that the same flaws the same general not interesting flaws tend to get repeated so let's talk about how to fix that i want more flawed main characters and not just some stupid pseudo flaws like clumsiness which isn't even part of your personality can be a jerk if she's annoyed or thinks with her heart not with her head but real flaws flaws that make characters interesting give me main characters that are really egotistic vain arrogant naive stoic refuse to apologize or refuse to accept that they're wrong give me short tempered main characters and main characters that don't know how to show empathy even though they are able to empathize with others main characters that have no filter and say whatever they think at the right moment main characters that always blame others for their mistakes or main characters that always blame themselves and think that they can't do anything right give me main characters with anger issues give me a flawed hero that wants to save the world but only because he or she wants glory and attention and would even sabotage the mission if they think that they aren't going to get enough glory just make them human kaladin has a god complex and takes on the uh responsibility for things that in no way could ever be his fault and he no way could have ever affected that's annoying cal is one of my favorite main characters ever that one irritating character flaw of his does not ruin his character and even though that thing that thing sometimes makes me roll my eyes at him it also makes him that much more human having a real life flaw that is annoying to read about sometimes makes the character more realistic and relatable it does not ruin the character tau is bent on revenge boy will make the dumbest decision sometimes rush into danger leave his sword brothers for someone who is very invested in friendship you gonna betray your friends in any small way it's gonna be a problem for me he's so bent on his revenge that he's an idiot sometimes that's kind of annoying does it ruin his character not even a little bit in fact it enhances his character just because i'm annoyed at a protagonist sometimes doesn't mean the protagonist is ruined it means that i relate to them because i'm annoying sometimes flaws that sometimes make the character frustrating to read are not a negative thing it makes the character real that's not the same thing as that whiny character we talked about two minutes ago and it's not the same thing as a stupid character that can't make a good choice to save their lives because plot needs to happen again there's a balance and over correcting is bad there are ways to make characters totally unlikable not because they're meant to be unlikable but because they're annoying as all get out that's not ideal we like characters that have some part of them that's incredibly admirable whether that be their sense of honor and loyalty or be their drive and determination to accomplish their goal no matter what it takes giving us something to look at that character and go wow that's amazing alongside things in that character that makes you go oh my goodness i want to hit you in the head right now this is great this makes characters feel real and human and not a body that moves the plot forward another small thing to do that ends up making a big difference is in little things that don't actually matter for the plot they're just the character i'd like more main characters to have hobbies that have zero impact on the plot like fishing or drawing or something i think it'd be a great way to make them feel more human i don't read this very often generally side characters can have little quirks flaws weird things about them that just make them ridiculously unique and make them so much fun to read about but main characters don't have that so much main characters a lot of times everything about them matters to the story but one very humanizing thing to do is to give characters something some sort of hobby some sort of interest some sort of weird personality quirk that has nothing to do with the plot if you remove it the story stays exactly the same but this thing is unique to them and so it matters to them i'm not talking about a 50-page side rant about them drawing a tree and i'm not talking about something that's going to take a lot of page time talking about something relatively simple that doesn't make the reader feel bored or like we're on a side tangent but something that does get some page time that makes the reader feel like this character is real feeling like you're getting a glimpse into what relaxes a character what makes a character feel creative what makes a character feel unique to themselves getting a little glimpse into that not a 50 page side tangent a little glimpse into that humanizes that character in a really accessible way i'm gonna end it on this and this might be my favorite comment of the day i think it stems from fear of making the main character unlikable rather than trying to make them appeal to everyone side characters are allowed to have more flaws and often depth because to the author it doesn't matter as much if a wide swath of the audience doesn't like that character because of said flaw sadly what this leaves the main character with is either blandness or mary sued him i love this comment because it's so ridiculously true we've already covered it a little bit but i really want to hone in on this a lot of times authors want to make characters relatable to the masses and that makes them relatable to no one that copy and paste that uh insert self here i want the readers to be able to see themselves on the main character i want the readers to be able to project themselves on the main character put themselves in the story what this does is make your character totally boring forgettable unrelatable we don't care if they die if readers come out of a story having an intense love or hatred for side characters and the main character they've forgotten the name and wha what was their personality like again th this ain't good i'm coming back to the stormlight archive because caledon is one of my favorite characters in the series and one of my favorite characters of all time he's very layered he he has a lot of flaws that are so human he also has a lot of traits that i absolutely admire and make me want to be more like him a lot of people don't like kaladin a lot of people consider kaladin and he's one of their least favorite perspectives in this series my brother is one of those people my brother also finds lac lamora to be whiny and annoying but this is one of my brother's favorite series and my brother read all three of the lies of locke lamora series before deciding that he doesn't like the series and he's not going to continue on it's okay sometimes readers are just objectively wrong we can't win them all the point is some characters that some people absolutely love and can't shut up about are going to be annoying to the next person and the reason is because there is no perfect book for every reader there is no one book to rule them all there is no one main character that is going to make everybody fall in love with them and no one be irritated with them to think that that's possible is ridiculous and should be thrown out the window but to over correct that and make that character then bland a blank slate not having much personality so that no reader can latch onto them well what that does is it makes no reader latch on to them so now you've removed the risk of people hating a main character but instead nobody cares about them and in my opinion that's a that's that's a worse problem to have my brother not liking these main characters that i love and a lot of people love and a lot of people don't listen these are kaladin and lock are characters that you either love or you hate there are tons of people that hate these characters and tons of people that love them having a main character that some people would die for and never stop talking about and cram down other reader's throats at the risk of some people picking it up and saying yeah that guy was annoying that's a good problem to have having readers want to die for your characters and wanting to live their life with these characters at the risk of losing a few because their personality is too fill and blank here is fine but having every single reader like the plot of your story but not really be interested in your character sucks it's a bad problem to have this is something that i feel really strongly about and i know that not every single reader feels strongly about sometimes that villain blank here body character copy and paste i've seen this a million times before doesn't actively irritate readers it's just another book with that character in it and fine at least the plot's good at least the side characters are good a lot of people don't feel as strongly about this as i do i feel very strongly about this which is why i wanted to do a video on breaking down how we can maybe make it less frequent i've recently started writing again and i found myself falling into this my main character was pretty standard and i really wanted to break down why why was it so easy for me to fall into this when i hate this and i feel like this video has helped me kind of figure that out so i'm going to end this video on a couple of real quick recommendations for strong characters we've already done that somewhat here are some that were talked about a lot sherlock holmes is an obvious example of a very strong deeply flawed super fun to read character jonathan strange and mr norrell i feel like if you like the sherlock series you're gonna love this fantasy because i think narelle is very similar to sherlock also deeply deeply deeply flawed but in such a lovable interesting fun to read way and the heart's invisible furies is another one that i wrote down to give an example this one is a very character-focused historical fiction um but it's one where the book wasn't my type of book but i came away thinking wow this is one of my favorite characters of all time because he was so relatable at first in the beginning of the book i didn't like him but through his arc i realized ooh i love this character also unpopular opinion rand is one of my favorite characters in the wheel of time series even though in the first like six seven eight books i don't even remember how long i thought that he was the most bland that ever did bland i used to call him rand the bland now he's one of my favorites because through his arc which i don't recommend taking six seven eight books to get to that arc but also most series aren't 14 books long through his arc i saw so much inner pain and turmoil and suffering and how he worked through that and how he failed to work through it in some cases and how that affected him and he ended up being such a complex nuanced character that despite being someone that i would never want to spend any time with i loved reading his character arc anyway that's all i have to say in this video i'd love to continue chatting with you in the comments about anything that we discussed today anything that you'd like to add on to it as well as i would love to have a bunch of comments in this video of really incredibly strong characters whether it be a strong character that is coupled with a really strong plot or you can also recommend really character focused character-based stories that don't have as much of an emphasis on plot because really right now i just want to be reading a lot of books with really strong characters so that i can wrap my head around how to do this well i post videos every sunday tuesday thursday and saturday i'll see you guys again soon [Music] you

Channel: Merphy Napier

Views: 121,483

Keywords: dear authors, dear authors part two, dear authors main characters, main characters, how to write main characters, how to write, writing advice, read, reads, reader, reading, booktube, booktuber, main character, protagonist, author, writing, writer, artist, dear, how, to, merphy, napier, 2020

Id: QCIlJJh9ydo

Length: 25min 17sec (1517 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 20 2020