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Writing & Publishing Dissecting your experience as readers...

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Jessie P

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We all know how important it is to get readers invested in your character early, and there are articles upon articles of tips on ways to do this.

But I'm more interested in the cases studies - in your personal experience! What are some characters that had you on the hook right away, and if you can remember, what do you think was the moment that made you care?
 
This is an interesting question! Here are some of the most memorable characters I can recall - and what I think made them that way.

Jack Manning from "In His Steps" by Charles Sheldon: he was my favorite character from the moment he walked into the story. Outspoken, destitute, ill, and just plain sick of it all, Jack is the one who really deserves credit for starting the religious movement that forms the book's main plot. I was really mad that he wasn't in the story longer.

Johnny Nolan from "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith: a man constantly teetering between sober and drunk, caring and not caring, berating himself and wanting to better himself. He's a pipe dreamer rather than a hard worker, and I guess you could say he cares about his family, but doesn't quite know how to care for them. He's sympathetic and likeable, and I wanted to see him succeed, and I was sad when he didn't.

John Ames from "Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson: I guess I liked him so much because he reminded me of one of my own characters. Brave, quiet, and facing his own imminent demise, I appreciated his strength of character and spiritual introspection. Basically, I cared because he was a very likable character.

Adah Price in "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver: I know this is a controversial book; I absolutely don't agree with the doctrine presented in it, and I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone. Nonetheless it is a marvelously written book with beautiful prose and description, and a haunting style. To me, Adah was the most interesting and memorable character. The way she would communicate with no one but herself and the reader - shunning the other characters in the story, and her obsession with palindromes and the like. I appreciated her uniqueness, and sympathized with her harsh view of the world and those around her.

Scout AND Atticus Finch from "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee: I can't bring myself to leave them out, even though it is a bit obvious. So I'll keep it brief. Scout because she's so inherently relatable, and Atticus because he's, well - Atticus.

Those are the ones who jumped to mind, no doubt there are other deserving characters I left out here.
 
David in David Copperfield and Pip in Great Expectations hooked me, their hardships as young children (portrayed sympathetically by themselves as the adult author). Of course, a character undergoing hardship needs to be plucky and brave in some way for us to like them.

Clarice in Silence of the Lambs hooked me from the first page. She's vulnerable, struggling, but she knows what she wants and is pursuing it. A character who knows what they want is likeable.

Macon Leary in the book and movie The Accidental Tourist always gets me too. Again, his struggles, I suppose. Muriel is a wonderful character as well, knows what she wants but also has her vulnerabilities.
 
In all of my novels, of course! (I'm only kidding!)

I'd say Ben Mears, in Stephen King's Salem Lot. Also detective Dave Robicheaux in In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead, by James Lee Burke.
 
Jessie P said:
But I'm more interested in the cases studies - in your personal experience! What are some characters that had you on the hook right away, and if you can remember, what do you think was the moment that made you care?
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Great question! Here are a few of mine:

The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)
I liked Katniss right away because I could relate to her way of thinking. She loved her family, she would do anything to protect Prim, and she loved her mom but felt betrayed and distant from her. She loved her father and missed him, she modeled herself after him. She was practical to a fault and extremely loyal. She was driven by love and survival. She looked at everything through a lens of how does this help me help the ones I love survive. Every single action she took was ultimately driven by her love of family and her drive to make sure they were okay. To keep them alive she had to keep herself alive. There wasn't a specific moment that I started to like this character, I think I liked her because she was consistant from book 1 page 1 until the very end of the last book.

Daughter of Light (Morgan L. Busse)
I liked Rowen because I could relate to feeling rejected. In the first chapter of the book, she's recovering from being severely ill. Her mother passed away and her father is deployed. A few people helped her, more out of obligation than out of genuinely caring for her. She clings to their scraps of attention because she's desperate for acceptance. Deep down she knows they don't really care for her that much. What little acceptance she has is shattered when someone tells a lie about her. While most of us don't have a dramatic story, I think it's easy to relate to feeling rejected and it's so painful on the page that pulls your heartstrings to see a kind character get emotionally kicked around like that. I think the moment I liked this character was when she was reflecting on the kindness others had shown her while she was sick and you as the reader see through their motives (obligation) and the character sees it as love, so you as the reader see her grasping at these scraps of affection Rowen is clinging to and it breaks your heart.


Firebird (Kathy Tyers)
I liked Firebird because she was curious and brave. It's been a while since I read the book but the story starts out with her sneaking around the castle spying to find out what was going on. It's a complicated story but I liked how she tried to face her fears bravely. She was an excess heir and expected to commit suicide for the family honor. She accepts her fate, even though she hates it, and tries to live what she knows will be a short life to the full. One of my favorite scenes is when she figures out her sister's prank and tries to make it backfire, I think that is when I really started to like her. Her character falls more into the I wish I were a little more like her category.

A Voice in the Wind (Francine Rivers)
It's funny because Hadassah was a character that actually took a little while for me to like, but this is a book I've read and reread over and over. This character gets a bit of a wrap for being a goody two shoes. But what I liked about her was that she was kind in spite of all that happened in the books. What was relatable was that she was fearful. The story itself was so descriptive and well thought out it was hard to put down. The characters were likable. Most were very flawed. Hadassah could have used a few more but I still liked her character. I think where I started to like her was when she told the Roman thank you for the grain. She was able to see the good even during the worst parts of her life.

I guess for me, I like characters that I can relate to for one reason or another. I think what those writers did well was that they narrowly focused their stories. They didn't try to cast the net too wide to appeal to too many. The characters had distinct personalities and relatable stories or drives or characteristics or they were characters I wanted to be more like.
 
Thinking over my own experiences, I'm realizing I put a premium on competence/capability (Mattie from True Grit, Aragorn, Ford Prefect from Hitchhiker's) and pity. I'll never remember where I heard this, but someone once argued that pity is one of the most powerful feelings a reader can feel for a character, and in my experience that has held true.
 
Orual from “Till We Have Faces” by C.S. Lewis, because her struggles were internal, like mine, as a child.

Jeanette Walls, herself, in her memoir “The Glass Castle”. It was the first memoir I ever read and changed who I was as a reader forever. Up to that point, I only read fantasy and fiction. When I realized that our actual stories have the power to touch the human heart, it changed my perspective. I always loved people watching and striking up conversations with strangers, but after reading Glass Castle, I started to understand that everyone had a story, that we were all created with a purpose. Growing up in a Christian household, I always heard the term “created with a purpose”, but that book made me see how.
 
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