9 Types of Characters I Can’t Get Enough Of
Or, how to write a book, no matter how bad, that Sarah will devour. It’s simple — all you have to do is cram in one or more of the following:
1. Characters who have trouble identifying and expressing their emotions but who care about others very deeply.
Examples: at least one character in every show and book I love
There’s something I find so compelling about characters who aren’t good with all the feelings stuff. Some of my friends point out this is probably because I, too, am more of a Spock than a McCoy, and that’s at least partly true. But there’s much more to it — the built-in conflict is so exciting.
After all, Spock is interesting only because we know he secretly cares about Kirk and McCoy very much and feels deep pain from his estranged relationship with his father. If his stone face merely reflected a stone heart, he wouldn’t be fun at all. The, well, fascinating part is watching his two strong selves battle for dominance, and never being sure that the one we’re rooting for will win.
2. Characters who are lonely but have convinced themselves they’re not.
Examples:
Dr. Gregory House (David Shore’s House, M. D.)
Severus Snape (J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and series)
I can’t stand characters who do nothing but whine the whole book long about not having any friends, because, dangit, this is fiction, go fight a ninja on dinosaur-back or something. Also because generally, in real life as well as stories, most of the time someone repeats, “Nobody understands me! Everyone hates me!” the solution is to stop saying that over and over and instead go concentrate on understanding and not hating other people.
But I like characters who are lonely but don’t or won’t know it in part because they’re variations on #1 but also because, well, everyone feels lonely sometimes. It’s nice to see a non-annoying character who does the same. And it’s also a nice pathos kind of feeling when you read a story and think, “I’d be your friend, lonely character!”
3. Characters who are consciously trying to be good while aware of their shortcomings.
Examples:
Alicia Florrick (Robert and Michelle King’s The Good Wife)
the unnamed target (C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters)
Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole (C. S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair)
While I appreciate that people doing and thinking bad things make exciting plots, I find people trying to be good so interesting, at least when portrayed with full philosophical ramifications. Being good is tough! Knowing what it means to be good is tough! It’s a journey that never ends that continually wears down even the most formidable souls.
It’s difficult for writers and other storytellers to balance introspection with action — to keep ambitiously good characters from being whiny or annoying. But when it’s done right, I can’t tear my eyes away.
4. Characters who are surrounded by talented people to whom they compare themselves unfavourably, but who find out in the end that they have the most special talent of all.
Examples:
Gair (Diana Wynne Jones’s The Power of Three)
Eff (Patricia C. Wrede’s Thirteenth Child)
Who doesn’t love that moment of HA! catharsis when the underdog comes through? In real life, if you take advantage of everything humanity has to offer and surround yourself with fantastic people, it can be disheartening when all you can see in others is awesomeness and all you can see in yourself is the unwitting comic relief. And it’s even worse when you know you shouldn’t feel bad that people you care about are awesome, because that makes you a bad friend.
Sometimes fiction is about getting to review and conquer negative feelings that would be inappropriate to tackle in real life.
5. Characters with secret identities that are secret even to themselves.
Examples:
[REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] (Diana Wynne Jones’s [ALSO REDACTED FOR SPOILERS])
Characters with secret identities are fun in general. It’s nice to know something special about a character that no one else does and being in on the “surprise” when, ZOMG, the character who was being a dick to Clark Kent needs Superman’s help. Taking that one step further, it can be fun to know something special about a character that even he or she doesn’t know.
But for me, most fun of all is getting surprised along with the character. First, it’s cool to share that rug-pulled-out-from-under-your-feet feeling. Diana Wynne Jones is the best at this — it’s perfectly logical that the character in question should really turn out to be this other character we’ve heard so much about. If you imagine the story from an alternate viewpoint, you realize the big reveal would be quite clear, but you’re thrown for as big a loop as the characters when you find out.
Also, I think I like these characters because they generally raise questions about how we remember and what happens when we can’t trust our own memory and how we might know if that were the case. And that’s so cool. Yes, it is. Shut up.
6. Characters who love each other despite one doing things the other finds morally repugnant.
Examples:
Debra and Dexter Morgan (Jeff Lindsay’s Darkly Dreaming Dexter and sequels)
[REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] (Michael Dibdin’s The Last Sherlock Holmes Story)
For me, the appeal of this one lies in the fact that I believe in love over hate, even when the other person has done something absolutely terrible. And, storywise, it gives immediate tension: the characters involved always have the personal conflict of being nice to the person they care about or fighting him or her because they have incompatible worldviews. It’s the extreme contrast of each side that makes it so interesting.
Also, well, real life is messy. So many times the people we love have done or thought things we find untenable. How do we reconcile this emotional dissonance? Can we do so without abandoning our moral responsibilities? These are intriguing questions.
7. Characters who seem stupid or untalented for most of the story but who turn out to be crafty or powerful at an important moment.
Examples:
every superhero in every major superhero comic book ever
Will Stanton (Susan Cooper’s Greenwich)
Sudden reversals. Are you getting that theme from this list? Because I totally am. I love reversals, and this type of character sets them up by the truckload. Whether they’re your viewpoint character who’s totally unaware of his own power until it sets in or a Sneaky McSneakerson who hides her special abilities until they can be unleashed at the most climactic moment, I can’t get enough of it.
Special props to the trope where we, the reader or viewer, already know that a character is awesome, but we’re transferred to the POV of other characters we know who buy the whole hiding-my-final-form thing and dislike the first character for not being awesome. It’s fun to anticipate the moment when: boom! AWESOMENESS REVEALED! and all the cool characters can be friends at last.
8. Characters who are other people’s secret weapons.
Examples:
Mr. Spock (Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek)
Eli Gold and Kalinda Sharma (Robert and Michelle King’s The Good Wife)
These characters are really good at what they do, but they’re not the main characters. When it comes to their talents, they’re more like trump cards that the protagonist can play against fools who dare challenge them in the area their secret-weapon friend is good at. Part of the fun is seeing the nasty bad guys try to cook up a plan against these powerhouses — I, the viewer, can’t see for the life of me how Eli Gold is going to PR the main characters out of this mess, but I know for darned tootin’ sure that he’s going to do it, and, boy, won’t the bad guys be surprised!
9. Characters who hate each other and then love each other.
Examples:
*sigh* every buddy comedy and at least half of all the love stories ever
Benedick and Beatrice (William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing)
Elphaba and Glinda (Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s Wicked)
In some ways, this is less a “characters I like” thing and more “characters I don’t like, but cheating” entry on this list. I don’t like Romeo and Juliet style romances, maybe because I’ve never had the experience of falling in love at first sight or loving someone “more than reason” (as Benedick and Beatrice would put it). Maybe it’s also because one of the things that attracts me most, in friends or otherwise, is intelligence and wit, which tends to come out more in characters’ bickering and sniping than in their sappiness. And maybe it’s also that the other types of character I like (see #1) tend to fall into this kind of romance or bromance more than the other.
Regardless, this trope makes its way onto the list because I’m a total sucker for it whenever it happens. Which, as I pointed out in the “Examples” is, yeah, everywhere. When it’s done poorly or decently, I still like it, but when it’s done well, good luck prying that novel or remote control from my hands.