You Want Me to Spend Time with You?

By Paula Messina

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We all have different measures for what keep us reading. One of mine is characters I’m willing to live with all the way to the end. The gift of a mystery got me thinking about this. Why do some characters meet my requirement and others fail?

The novel looked promising. The author had won a prestigious award. The main character is an archaeologist. I enjoy books that involve an expertise, especially one I’m not schooled in. Alas, my interest dwindled quickly.

The story is told through the main character’s viewpoint. She is miserable and self-loathing because of her weight. This was not a good sign, but I read on. Soon enough a detective needs her help on a murder case. He comes not with hat in hand. Rather, he’s downright nasty. Not only is the detective as off-putting as the main character, his approach is irrational. The characters have no history together. His unprofessional behavior is inexplicable, even cause for termination. Didn’t he learn at his mother’s knee you catch more flies with honey than vinegar?

Actually, he was terminated. I stopped reading the book.

For me to sustain interest, I don’t demand that the characters be Mother Teresa incarnate or a Nobel Peace Prize winner or even a Boy Scout rescuing abandoned dogs. It’s those one-note grumpy characters I can live without. 

I’m not alone in this. After I closed that book, I read the online reviews. I have plenty of company. The negative reviews essentially said the same thing: I don’t want to waste my time on these characters.

It’s next to impossible to imagine anyone more dislikable than Ebenezer Scrooge. Dickens is emphatic that absolutely everyone avoids him. “Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him; and, when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, ‘No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!’”

And yet Scrooge is one of the most enduring and, dare I say, beloved characters in English literature. Ebenezer is proof that flaws are fine. It’s how flaws are presented that makes all the difference. Characters need not be perfect. Indeed, they shouldn’t be.

Dickens pulls the reader into A Christmas Carol by raising questions. Who is Marley and why should we care that he died? Why was Scrooge “his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner.”?

Dickens quickly establishes Scrooge’s wretched personality. No reader would invite Ebenezer over to watch the Super Bowl, at least not until the three Ghosts of Christmas get through with him. Dicken’s delicious descriptions keep us curious about how one being could be so miserable and disliked, but delicious descriptions only satisfy for so long. Dickens could have easily pushed Scrooge into an unbearable, unreadable character.

Yet Ebenezer Scrooge endures. Why?

The answer is simple. Scrooge doesn’t tell the story. An intimate, chatty, gossipy narrator does. If Scrooge told A Christmas Carol, it is highly doubtful even the inestimable Dickens could keep readers turning the pages for one hundred eighty years.

Arthur Conan Doyle and Rex Stout used the same technique for the odd genius Sherlock Holmes and the often belligerent but brilliant Nero Wolfe. We see Holmes and Wolfe through the eyes of their friends, and because Watson and Goodwin find redeeming social value in Sherlock and Wolfe, the reader does as well.

It’s no accident that Dr. John Watson is a cheerful, friendly character, or that Archie Goodwin is only a few IQ points short of Wolfe’s genius. Archie is wittier than Wolfe, likes women, and is a great dancer. Our view of Sherlock and Nero is filtered through these immensely enjoyable narrators, and we’re willing to stick around until the end.

A narrator isn’t the only technique to make an unpleasant character palatable. We often describe our lives in absolute terms. I’ll never be anything than an utter failure. My husband never compliments me. My mother never has a kind word for anyone. There’s a name for this kind of thinking: cognitive distortion.

We humans are not a never-ending one note, miserable or ecstatic. Even in the worst of times, we laugh at a good joke, make goo-goo eyes at an infant, and enjoy the warm sun on our skin. It’s impossible to be miserable all the time, just as it’s impossible to be endlessly upbeat.

Humans experience ups and downs throughout a day, a year, a lifetime. Characters do as well. Good characters are complex. They enjoy life one minute and complain in the next. They lament about their weight, then promise to diet tomorrow.

In the mystery mentioned, a little levity, for example, would have made the character’s self-loathing tolerable. An explanation and an apology would have made the detective’s initial bad impression understandable and relatable. In other words, mitigating circumstances make an unpleasant character more lifelike, but even mitigating circumstances only carry a reader so far. 

Sherlock’s genius makes him impatient with lesser mortals. Wolfe has a dark past that is never explained. It possibly involves a bitter betrayal by a woman. Dickens shows us Scrooge’s descent into a spiritual wasteland through a series of flashbacks while also showing Scrooge’s journey to reclaim his soul. It is those flashbacks that make his redemption on Christmas Eve believable. His goodness was always there to be brought to life. We know in our hearts that Ebenezer Scrooge does become “as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.”

It’s not flaws that are off-putting. A character without a flaw is malformed. It’s how those flaws and foibles are presented that makes the difference. A main character can be stubborn and uncooperative. Supporting characters can goad the protagonist into a better disposition. Archie Goodwin is a master at this. Introduce a humorless character to a cutup. Dr. Watson on the page isn’t the bumbling Nigel Bruce, but he does lighten Holmes’ intensity. A dour woman populating pages needs to meet a ray of sunshine. Conversely, that main character who insists on imitating Pollyanna is just waiting for someone to burst her bubble.

Contrasts work wonders. Characters bring out different aspects of the main character. Best-selling author Barbara A. Shapiro says different friends bring out different aspects of our personalities.

Think about it. You discuss politics and solve the world’s problems with one friend. You’re a veritable joke machine with another, and a third has you discussing how to grow mushrooms and make kimchi and sauerkraut. Scrooge interacts differently with Bob Cratchit than he does with his nephew Fred. Scrooge moves from disbelief, to insolence, fear, and finally to submission as he travels with each ghost.

This works both ways. No human is always bubbly and positive. Characters aren’t either. What my friend Marilyn says of life is also true of fiction. “If you don’t have a problem now, wait two weeks.”

In the novel I’m writing, Donatello, my main character, is essentially a good guy, but he vents his fury on his parish priest. The priest deserves the drubbing, but Donatello believes it’s a sin to scream at a priest. He screams anyway. Donatello would be a weak character if he ignored the priest’s nastiness.

Donatello’s anger serves another purpose. It displays Donatello’s determination to reclaim his life after an accident robs him of his dream to pitch pro ball. Donatello’s anger says he’s not giving up. No one’s pushing him around, not even his parish priest. This anger intensifies Donatello’s commitment to find his sister’s murderer.

When I pick up something to read, I want to be carried along in a story filled with characters I’d invite to share my life for a while. They can be a pompous Sherlock, a ton of immovable flesh a la Wolfe, or a Scrooge so nasty even dogs avoid him. But I only keep reading if those negative traits are balanced by positive ones. In short, for this reader, how a writer presents his characters is vitally important. 

As for the kvetchers, the malcontents, the one-note nasties, I’d rather not even open the book.

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Paula Messina lives near America’s first public beach. When she isn’t sloshing barefoot through the Atlantic, she’s writing short stories and essays. Her humorous caper, “Which Way New England?” appears in Wolfsbane, Best New England Crime Stories 2023. “Science for the Senses,” an essay, is in issue 7 of Indelible Literary and Arts Journal. You can listen to her reading works in the public domain at librivox.org.