Character Keith: A story contains a number of characters, some significant, and some less significant, but each contributes to the plot and its eventual outcome. The characters of a story can carry out the plot and interact with the setting. It is in doing so that the story develops its heroes or heroines, its villains and victims. It is these people the reader comes to know and admire, or perhaps even despise, and in doing so, brings the words on a page alive in their minds.
There's been many, many characters in literature, over the years, who are permanently etched in popular culture. It doesn't matter how many years go by, characters stick in people's mind. People will speak metaphorically with regards to characters, and it's a testament to the writing of the author, without a doubt. What sort of characters in books have you found yourself most attracted to?
David: Most attracted to characters who are, probably, very much like me, and ones that are completely different from me. Those are the ones that excite me the most, for the reason that I said before, I have a character that is me. Especially when I was a kid, that's what really got me excited about reading books, was that I could be alone, with myself and the book, reading about somebody who was just like me in a situation that I would never face in my life, and that just really thrilled me. And also characters that I don't know anything about, or characters that are unlike me, are perplexing to me, and I think most people just have a natural inclination to want to understand. So I want to understand the motivations of certain characters. The characters in Dickens, for instance, a character like Pip is someone that everyone can relate to-a young boy who's optimistic and has fallen on hard times-you relate to a character like that. There's other characters that you despise what they do, but they're also fascinating characters and you're not like them, but they make for a fantastic read. Jill: I find that generally I am attracted to characters that I relate to, more so than ones that-villains or evil-doers or whatever, I find even though they could be interesting, they're not usually the characters that I really am attracted to. It's usually the people that evoke sympathy or compassion from me, those are usually the ones that I-you know, even a character such as Frankenstein, who was just this scary character, but really he wasn't, you know, he just was struggling so hard to be understood. So you can make the parallels with your life and most people's lives, and those are the characters I relate to the most. Keith: Like setting, sometimes characters can be overdeveloped and overwritten, at least I find personally. Do you have any examples where a character's been overdone, overwritten? I find with regards to overwritten characters-I love Alexander Dumas and the novels he writes; however, I do find on occasion that he overwrites characters. But I still quite enjoy his books. He transports me, especially with regards to setting, to a whole another world. But, like I said, my only complaint would be that on occasion he will overwrite-perhaps not the entire character, but a scene-he'll overwrite the situation which the character is in. David: I read a book recently that had a character that did have so many sides to the personality, but that was supposed to be a part of the allure of this character-he was a doctor, he was a brilliant professor, he went into the war and became a sadistic murderer, he went to America and became a great salesman, then became a fervent anti-Semite. It was a crazy story, but a character like that got me feeling detached from the character because I couldn't relate to anybody that would have so many- Jill: Facets? David: So many facets to their-so many intersecting and disputing facets to themselves. The writer tried to pile on too much into this one individual character.
Jill: And it seemed unbelievable?
David: And it seemed unbelievable.
