Category Archives: characters

May 06, 2011   Lauren   characters, fun, Lauren, lists  
8

Oh, Mama!

With Mother’s Day coming up, I’ve been thinking about the best and worst mothers in literature.  I’ve got a pretty excellent mom if I do say so myself, but so many literary characters seem a bit lacking in that department.

By far the worst, in my estimation, is Beth Jarrett in Ordinary People.  Poor Conrad Jarrett—I still can’t look at Mary Tyler Moore the same way after seeing her spot-on depiction of Beth in the film adaptation.  You toss that hat in the air, Mary, like you’re a happy, warm-hearted person, but I know deep down inside you’re awful.  I’m not buying it for a second.

There are many runners up, though.  I think we can all agree that Flowers in the Attic’s Corinne is seriously failing her children.  The mom in Carrie isn’t winning any prizes.  And if we’re counting Christina Crawford’s Mommie Dearest, well, I think we all know about the wire hangers.

I’m hard pressed to come up with a best.  Marmee from Little Women is close, but she did produce Amy, so that’s some points off for her.  A recent entry into the canon might be Ma in Room—it’s hard to imagine better mothering under such circumstances.  Plenty of mothers are much worse without such dire constraints.  Caroline Ingalls is pretty great, as I recall, though I remember Pa better, frankly.

But I bet you all can come up with even better options.  There must be some reallllllly lovable mom out there in the world of books, right?  Who would you nominate for best and worst literary mom?

To all the mothers out there, including Jane, Miriam, Stacey, Jessica, and most especially the world’s greatest mother, mine, have a wonderful Mother’s Day on Sunday!  If you’re in one of those countries where mother’s day has already passed or is yet to come, go ahead and have a great day anyway!

April 12, 2011   Stephanie   characters, opinion, Stephanie, writing  
8

Likeable?

Over the weekend, I came to the sudden realization that the manuscript I was considering wasn’t working for me for a specific reason: I found some of the characters to be completely unlikable. Of course, I admit that this is a pretty subjective reason to turn down a book. I don’t think that characters should be entirely free of unlikable qualities, necessarily, but I do think that characters need to be likable in order for the book as a whole to work.

I wouldn’t say this is an easy fix, though. There has to be something about that character that allows the reader to be connected emotionally to their story. There also has to be a certain complexity to a character’s personality, one that allows for gradually revealing different traits and characteristics over the course of the story. There has to be a certain vulnerability to the character. I think the perfect character is one who is far from perfect, but for whatever reason we as readers can’t help but be drawn to them.

So for a writer, if a person comes back to you, having read your manuscript, with the critique that your characters are unlikable, how do you fix something like this? Admittedly, you could just take your manuscript to someone else, who hopefully does like you characters, but if the goal is to improve the story, how do you tackle this? Writing strong characters can be tricky, and I’m curious to know what techniques, if any, do you as writers utilize to clear a hurdle like this.

April 01, 2011   Rachel   characters, fun, Rachel S., reading  
6

Living in my imagination

Having been alerted to the existence of this veritable wonderland of Harry Potter excitement, I immediately rationalized the $25 entrance fee as a small price to pay for the chance to pretend to be a witch AND go to England (Scotland? Is Hogwarts supposed to be in Scotland?), if only for a short amount of time. Luckily, I’m already in New York, so I won’t run the risk of splinching myself (my apparating skills are, regrettably, sub-par).*

While I would, of course, prefer the exhibit not to be an exact replica of the films’ takes on J.K. Rowling’s universe, I can also understand that any other sort of representation would be strange after the movies have so universally presented visual and tangible scenery, that now it’s really all anyone can imagine. Books-to-film always have that unpleasant effect on the mind during subsequent readings of an old favorite.

In any case, no one can deny the incredible effects that total immersion in a work of literature has on the mind, nor the almost impossibility of reading without some sort of picture, hazy or not, forming there. It’s no surprise that the Harry Potter series has been replicated in so many ways, but it gets me thinking about what other sorts of books I would love to be able to take part in. Of course, fantasies are the first that jump to mind, followed perhaps by historical narratives, but surely there are many much more familiar worlds that are enticing purely because of characters or events.

Off the top of my head, I would love to be able to visit, or I suppose, live in, Georges Perec’s Paris apartment in Life: A User’s Manual with all of the knowledge of its inhabitants, of course. Narnia, obviously I would go there, and I would probably pay money to be best friends with Jo March, Jessica Darling, Bridget Jones or Anne Shirley—I begged my parents for a vacation to Prince Edward Island just so I could be like Sara Stanley and Anne.

Or maybe the magic of books lies in the fact that the experience of living them, knowing the characters, is so wholly personal—whether or not the settings are fictitious. I can’t decide what I’d like better, in all honesty. Where would you go? Who would you befriend?

While you decide, I’m going to run off to Potions class—don’t want to be late for Snape, you know.**

*Bear with my Harry Potter humor.
**Twice.

March 23, 2011   Miriam   celebrity, characters, fun, in memoriam, Miriam, opinion  
1

Heroes of their own life stories

There’s a dusting of snow in the grassy areas all over the tri-state area today and a cold rain is falling from the leaden skies here in the City.  The fact that April is eight days away and that this has been one of the more gruesome winters I’ve experienced in a couple of decades is enough to make me want to just go back home, get in bed and pull the covers over my head (and not emerge until June).  But, if the general foulness of the weather wasn’t enough, the news this morning that Elizabeth Taylor has died makes the grayness feel a bit more enveloping.  Needless to say, I was (and am) a big fan of  Ms. Taylor, a great beauty, a sometimes brilliant actress, and a larger-than-life public figure who often used her powers for good, rather than evil.  A woman who could have coasted on her looks all her life instead demanded to be taken seriously as an artist, businesswoman, and humanitarian, while never losing her sense of humor and her ability to mock her own faults, excesses and failures.  Upon being named a Dame of the British Empire, she famously quipped, “I’ve always been a broad, now I’m a dame.”

Thinking about how much I’ve always admired Elizabeth Taylor’s spirit and resilience I came across this piece in the Huff Post featuring eight women writers’ female heroes (one of the authors is our own, wonderful Tayari Jones).  I expected that the heroes chosen would be literary types—the usual suspects such as Jane Eyre, Jo March, or even some unusual ones like Olive Kitteridge—but instead, these authors picked women like Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rosa Parks, and Zelda Fitzgerald.   Dynamic, smart, dogged, defiant, and mostly unforgettable real women.  It occurs to me that these iconic figures spark our imaginations in ways that eventually find their lives and actions reinvented and reinterpreted (and sometimes rediscovered) in books, plays, and songs.   From Joan of Arc to Eleanor of Aquitaine to Evita Peron our female heroes have become great fictional characters as well.

But how about all the literary figures who are merely based on a real female hero?  What are your favorite examples of veiled portrayals of great or famous or notorious women who made their mark in the real world and whose avatars live on in fiction?

March 18, 2011   Lauren   adaptation, characters, fun, Lauren, opinion  
12

Playing a part

Apparently a storm is a-brewing among fans of the Hunger Games trilogy:  an actress whose name means nothing to me has been cast to play Katniss Everdeen, and apparently she is all wrong for the part according to a vocal section of the audience.  Now before I get too far into this, I must confess that I’ve only read book one so far, so pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease, I beg you, don’t spoil the rest of the trilogy in the comments.  It’s miraculous that I don’t already know what happens, and I know I’m years behind on this one, but still, please indulge me.  Thanks!

This is really just an excuse for me to talk about characters again.  Not long ago, I mentioned character names and how they affect my reading, but film adaptations can have an even more significant impact.  I almost always read books before seeing movies—if I know I want to see the movie, I’ll usually read the book even if for some reason the book had never interested me—but I’ve found that the actor will often erase my pre-existing impression of the character, for better or worse.  I love Scott Spencer’s Waking the Dead, both book and film, but I think I love Fielding Pierce more because I love Billy Crudup and his portrayal of him.  Would I be quite so stubborn about Little Women if I wasn’t completely convinced that Christian Bale was a better catch than Gabriel Byrne?  (OK, maybe not in real life since Byrne seems lovely and Bale a touch ragey.  But young me found Byrne unforgivably old and Bale indisputably adorable.)  And I’ve never really forgiven Kirsten Dunst, who I had previously loved, for playing Amy.  On the flip side, my affection for the stars of The Outsiders because of their roles in that film is totally disproportionate to their subsequent careers.  It doesn’t really matter what career heights Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, and C. Thomas Howell might’ve failed to reach later on, nor that they’re largely better known for other things—I just can’t hold anything against them.

I recall, initially, being opposed to Brad Pitt’s casting in Fight Club, but I have no quibble with it having seen the performance.  Jimmy Fallon taking a role in Fever Pitch made it clear to me that I shouldn’t bother to see it—though, I did, on TV, at a desperate moment, which corroborated that impression—but he can’t be entirely to blame, since I’m pretty sure that movie was made simply upon the realization that the pun in the title would work for baseball as well as soccer.  (Colin Firth in that role I can’t object to, because one simply cannot object to Colin Firth.)  And while I’m not all that passionate about The Scarlet Letter as a novel, I’m pretty confident that Demi Moore ought not to be Hester Prynne.

Since I was having trouble coming up with any casting choices that really raised my hackles as Lawrence does other Hunger Games fans, I polled some of the folks here.  Jim was not at all pleased with the casting of Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island—a choice so horrible that it made him subconsciously replace the “u” in shutter with an “i” when he IM’d me his choice.  Rachel’s not entirely down with the Harry Potter crew, though while she was particularly annoyed about Daniel Radcliffe, he has grown on her: “He looks Harry-er than he used to.”  John takes issue with Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code, “if only because of the haircut.”

What do you think?  Hunger Games fans think they should have gone another way?  Who would you rather have?  Or are you pro-Lawrence?  And who really just ruined a movie for you—or conversely, caught you pleasantly by surprise?  Has anyone ever cast exactly who you would’ve chosen?  And finally, and maybe most intriguingly, if you’re an author, have you already picked out the actor or actress you’d like to play your protagonist?

March 18, 2011   Rachel   characters, favorites, great books, Rachel S.  
4

If real life were books.

It’s funny how, like with memories of things that actually happened, there are images derived from passages of books read that stick with us forever, despite their particular existence in individual minds alone. Reading Little Women for the first time as a girl, I was immediately drawn to Jo March—not because of her energy, independence, wit or general endearing qualities—though those later became ideals as well, but because of a single scene very early on in the story. There is an image of Jo carting a bag of apples up to a window seat in the attic (or at least somewhere high up in the March house) and spending hours reading and eating the fruit one after another. I remember thinking that this was perfection, that this was something that I would do and from that moment on, I allied myself with Jo in the story thinking that surely, we would be very good friends in real life. I love reading! I rarely go a day without devouring at least one apple! I didn’t have a window seat, but in lieu of it, on nice days, I used to climb up a particularly well-suited tree in our front yard and sit on a strong branch with my back against the trunk to read and watch people go by. Jo would do that too, right?

I have always carried this impression with me as the perfect day. With the kind of high spirits that are unique to spring, particularly those first days when it is warm in the morning as well as the rest of the day, the picture of Jo March reading and eating apples, curled up in a sunlit seat came to me today…and I’m pretty sure that I know how I’ll be spending my Saturday, now. While I still don’t have a window seat (mental note for future house), there’s a park and a farmer’s market for apples and plenty of books to make the afternoon worth it.

Are there any particularly lovely or strong literary memories—or characters—that come back to you every once in awhile? This weather does it for me, though I am sure there are other scenes and dialogues that will come to me just as clearly when something else triggers my memory in that right way.

February 18, 2011   Lauren   characters, fun, Lauren, opinion, reading  
14

What’s in a name?

I’ve been thinking about character names having recently tried to complete this surprisingly difficult Sporcle quiz.  (Do you Sporcle?  You should.  Unless you feel the internet already provides too many distractions, in which case do not click that under any circumstances.)  There are so many associations people have with certain names—some predictable, if they’re the names of famous people or popular characters in books, TV shows, and movies, and others just because of people they happen to know.  I grew up under the impression that Lauren was not a terribly popular name since I never seemed to see it in books or hear it on TV—not uncommon, mind you, but rarer than the seemingly omnipresent Laura—but I now know that I was wrong since it was exceedingly popular when I was born.  In the last few years, I’ve come to associate my own name with a rather unfortunate type of person, thanks in no small part to Lauren Conrad.  After she came on the scene, suddenly it seemed that that was what a Lauren was and every time a Lauren cropped up anywhere, she was kind of awful.  Similarly, Bella has always been one of my favorite names and was up until recently the name that I had always said I’d give a theoretical future daughter, but that’s out now, because I wouldn’t want people thinking I’d named this imaginary hypothetical child after Twilight—which surely plenty of people are doing—since if people are going to make name-based assumptions, I’d rather they be the ones I’m actually aiming for.  I wouldn’t be opposed to naming children after literary characters, but I’d be selecting them pretty carefully, and I don’t think Ms. Swan would make the cut.

When I read, though, I’m also bringing those opinions to bear.  I think part of my attachment to 1984 initially sprung from my fondness for the name Julia.  Reading Bridget Jones’s Diary, for about half the book, I had trouble realigning my impression of Bridgets from the Bridget I grew up with to Bridget Jones—they couldn’t be more different.  Jo March was an early favorite because my grandmother is Josephine, but I’ve long had to resist holding Amy March against people I meet named Amy.

So tell me, authors, do you find yourself deliberating about the associations you have with names you might give your characters?  Do you ever name anyone after people you know, but then feel odd about making that character go through something difficult?  Do you worry that people you know will think you’re assigning their attributes to characters who happen to share their names?  Or do you deliberately avoid names of anyone you actually know and anyone famous, so that the names don’t bring anything to the table?  With so many names out there, how do you choose?

November 05, 2010   DG&B   characters, inspiration, Rachel S., writing  
3

My life would make a boring memoir

by Rachel

This morning, as I was locking up my bike by the subway out of Brooklyn and into the city, a man and his son approached me asking about a phone number for a local cab company. Thinking nothing of it and glad that I was actually able to help, I happily gave it and turned to take the steps down into the train. It was only at that moment that I noticed the dozens of people milling about, frantically calling co-workers, friends and car services. Another large group anxiously waited for an oncoming bus. Of course this would happen at 8:30 on a weekday morning- there was an emergency in the subway and all trains into Manhattan were stopped.

After a moment of panic, genius that I am, I remembered that I did in fact have a bicycle and could pedal over the bridge just as fast, if not faster than any subway making stops or car in traffic. Though it wasn’t my ideal mode of transport on a workday, and I was totally out of bridge-biking shape as it’s been at least a month since I’ve done so, it would have to do. As I bent down to unlock my bike, a girl pulled up next to me and I ruefully informed her of the situation. She wasn’t too put out and we both went off together over the bridge and into the city, chatting all the way as if we’d known each other for years instead of minutes.

Oddly, this sort of thing happens to me all of the time. With relative frequency, I am approached by an incredible variety of people who say they see me all over the place and feel obliged to make an introduction. In my head, I affectionately refer to these people as my “neighborhood friends.” I don’t know why I come across as particularly approachable, but it’s certainly led me to all sorts of people I would never have known otherwise. Some are interested in the book I’m reading, many inquire on the progress I’ve made on that day’s crossword (invariably, I can be found every morning in the same coffee shop, using their New York Times solely for that one page in the Arts section) and others still find another instrument of acquaintance.

However it happens, I’ve grown to know some of these people beyond a casual chat on the street. There’s the amazing painter who also writes science questions for standardized tests, the girl who works in a wine shop while designing album covers and logos and the unicyclist who works in trend forecasting- among many, many others. I find these people fascinating and enjoy the friendly waves and hellos that come my way when we pass. But more than that, each is so fantastically unique and none are personae that I could myself have crafted.

There has been a lot of talk about memoirs on this blog recently, and while using personal experiences in writing is a wonderful thing, not everyone has lead a life interesting enough to make other people want to read about it. Inspiration has to come from outside as well as from within. Personally, if I were to ever sit down and attempt to pen something that might be somewhere inside me (who knows), it would be from all of these unique people- those that were never friends that I initially sought out, that I would draw my character details, motivations and intricacies from.

Who inspires you?

(And I did make it to work on time…just a little windblown and breathless.)

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