The warning is plastered all over
the internet – write multi-dimensional characters, or risk losing your readers’
interest before the story’s even begun! Yet time and again as I attempt to bury
myself in one of Amazon’s bestsellers or the NYT’s top ten, I find myself
disappointed by their repetitive MCs and cardboard casts. This is especially
the case in the YA genre. It’s not as if the creators of these characters are
without talent. Their story plots are often ingenious and their flavorful
writing styles have more than once sparked my admiration. But the characters,
oh, the characters! Flat, uninteresting individuals who never rise above
mediocrity except to thrash about in some kind of melodramatic confrontation!
Their love is cliché, their suffering is artificial, and their ambitions are weak
and unsophisticated. They lack the spark of life which infuses our own daily
lives with significance, which causes us to consider the people around us as…
As what?
That, my friends, is the real
question.
You see, I have come to the
conclusion that the root problem many modern writers face with characterization
does not lie in their approach to writing. It lies in their approach to life
itself. And it is not solely a problem with writers. Literature merely reflects
the spirit of the age, holding up a mirror to reality which, if examined
carefully, forces us to confront our own weaknesses. Looking into the mirror of
modern literature would seem to suggest that our characters reflect the people
we have become: a people obsessed with ourselves, and therefore utterly boring.
Pick up any YA novel off the front page of
Amazon’s catalog and examine its young protagonist. Note how she views the
people she comes in contact with. I guarantee you that her observations about
people will be limited to their relation to herself. Do they threaten her or do
they make her feel good about herself? Are they useful or are they obstructing
her goals? Almost universally, the only individual who will be considered for
his own sake will be the character who becomes her love interest. And even
then, most of her concerns about him will be how he makes her feel and whether
he returns her affection. If someone suffers, it is presented as efficiently as
possible, because the suffering is only a plot device that moves the story
forward.
Compare this to a novel such as
Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
Consider how even a minor character such as Katerina Ivanovna, the step-mother
of Sonya, is portrayed. We see only what the main character sees of her, but his
observations of her sufferings preserve their full intensity. Through Raskolnikov,
we hear her rants and see her tears, we experience her nobility and her agony
and her wretchedness. The author doesn’t need to spend much time describing
Raskolnikov’s emotional reaction to Katerina because the reader is reacting for
him. We are the ones moved by her sufferings, so honestly portrayed, and
Raskolnikov’s behavioral changes are enough to show that he feels exactly as we
do.
Just now, a fellow student reading
over my shoulder rolled his eyes at me and informed me that, “You can’t compare
a modern writer to someone like Dostoevsky. That guy is top notch. You have to
use someone, I dunno, who still writes good but is less [insert flapping
gesture].”
I disagree. What makes Dostoevsky
such an incredible novelist is not necessarily his writing ability, but his ability
to understand people. Dostoevsky experienced incredible suffering in his life,
and he allowed this suffering to deepen his connections with the rest of
humanity. When he looked around him, he saw beauty and significance in each person
that he met. When he looked in someone’s eyes, he saw hope and potential for
greatness, no matter their background.
When we look in other people’s
eyes, what do we see? Is that girl simply a waitress who should be serving your
food faster? Is your classmate simply that kid who never shuts up and makes
everyone hate him? Is your boyfriend simply a man who exists to make you feel
loved?
Because real people mattered to
Dostoevsky for their own sakes, regardless of how they impacted him, he was
able to write characters who matter to readers regardless of how they impact
the other characters of the novel. His relationships with people were deeper
than their utility to him, so he knew how to write relationships that have meaning
deeper than their usefulness to the story plot.
As Razumikhin and Porfiry (my
favorite Dostoevsky characters) are so fond of saying, people are more than the
facts that surround them. If we only recognize the facts about them that are
useful or pleasant to us, then the characters we create will only be a
conglomeration of useful or pleasant facts. Not to mention that’s just a bad
way to look at people in general.
Among all
other of our age, writers have a special responsibility to hold up the mirror
of truth to ourselves and recognize our weaknesses. How we grapple with these
weaknesses will become immortalized in our works, and we become a part of the
great historical tradition of literature. It’s fine and good to write for
pleasure, to write simply for the sake of writing, but even this can have
immense value for ourselves and our readers if we allow our craft to deepen who we are as people.
