Characters you can relate to?

[Weaver]

I read an essay not long ago in which the author explained why the major characters in his novels were all deliberately written as ordinary. According to him, readers cannot identify with characters who are geniuses, or are more than barely competent at their jobs, or are better-than-average in looks... Readers want a protagonist like themselves, which means average, he said.

Recently on some forum thread here (I cannot recall which one, and it doesn't matter), someone made a passing comment that readers could not relate to a 'shapeshifting half-elf.' (Says you!) However, also in that thread was something about characters who feel the kinds of emotions the reader feels, wants the things the reader wants, fears the things the reader fears...

So, that leads to my question(s): What kind of characters do you relate to the best? Do you need the protagonist, at least, to be human (assuming you are -- if not, please state that in your response )? Does it make any difference to you whether or not the MC is the same gender as yourself? What if the MC had different views on religion, politics, etc.? Are there things that would make a character totally un-relatable for you?

 

[ecdavis]

For me, I think the deciding factor for me is how well the MC is portrayed. For example, I've read a handful of Robert E. Howard's original Conan books and Conan is so plastic that he absolutely doesn't interest me. There was very little character development in the original series. I think even an anti-hero can relate to a reader, if they are shown as a person, not just a stereotype. Michael Moorcock's Elric was one of my favorites.

As for race, I enjoy reading about other races other than human (or a mixed race). As for gender, either sex is okay; I've been fond of MCs of both genders. I really liked Arafel from "The Dreamstone' by C.J. Cherryh and she was a Daoine Sidhe (or in human terms, an Elf) because she was both strong and vulnerable at the same time.

I think characters that are always invulnerable -- either physically or emotionally-- are unappealing. On the other hand, you don't want a MC that is all wimpy and unsure all the time.

 

[Penpilot]

A character does not have to be average looking and have average intelligence so I can identify with them. That's silly. There are so many counter examples to this. Sherlock Holms anyone? Look at all the books where the main character is the chosen one or have skills that make them special. Eg Harry Potter. Look at the Greek myths. Achilles was not ordinary. Tell me nobody wants to read about superheroes.

As for the shapeshifting half-elf comment, they're wrong.

Ray Bradbury wrote a story called There Will Come Soft Rains where a house was the main character. I've read a story called Trailhead published in the New Yorker where an ant colony was the main character. E. O. Wilson: Trailhead : The New Yorker

If people only wanted ordinary people, how do we explain Hollywood movies.

Characters don't need to feel the same emotions as us. What the writer should do is create empathy/understanding and interest for the character. There are stores, which I can't recall off the top of my head, where it's told from the point of view of an alien. One of them the alien doesn't think in the same way as humans. It doesn't even perceive the universe in the same way.

 

[Feo Takahari]

In my personal opinion, **** relatability. Relatability is why when Hollywood makes a movie set in Africa or Asia, it feels compelled to make a white American the protagonist--how will white audiences relate to someone who doesn't look like them? Relatability is why video games that have an unchangeable female protagonist almost never put her in a het relationship--how will male players relate to a character who's in love with a man? Me, I just want a main character who's interesting.

(Okay, to answer honestly, I probably wouldn't want to read about a main character who's a rapist, or who kills innocent people. I also get a bit bored when the main character doesn't seem to have a personality at all. There's not much else that's guaranteed to drive me off, though--I'm much more likely to be frustrated with a story as a whole than with the characters in it.)

 

[Mythopoet]

The character that I relate to the most in all of the books I have read is Paul Atreides from Dune. He is also the one character I have seen the most people say they found it hard to relate to.

You see, readers are a wide and varied group of people. Every time I see someone make a blanket statement about "readers" such as "readers like _____" or "readers relate to _____ type of character" I cringe inside. There is not one single element of any story that ALL readers will agree on. There is not a single story written in all of human history that all readers like. (If they did, that would be creepy. Like that story where everyone in the town has to agree on and like everything the freaky kid with the mind powers wants and likes or he'll kill them.) I think writers who write stories to try to please readers are more likely to fail. Writers who write what they personally like and relate to will be more likely to write about those things effectively and thus more likely to attract a fanbase of readers that like and relate to the same things.

 

[Chilari]

You've hit the nail on the head there, Mythopoet (so your avatar is appropriate). "Readers" isn't this homogeonous glob made up of everyone who can read, where everyone likes or relates to the same thing. Readers like everyone, and reader hate everything, and readers are indifferent to everything; or rather, for every story there is, if enough people have read it, there will be at least one person who related to the characters and one person who didn't.

For my part, I'll just try and write a character I can relate to, because if I can't I'll struggle to get others to relate. After that, I'll just have to see how the dice fall.

 

[Jessquoi]

Aside from the word 'readers' being too general, it could be possible that writers and novelists perceive characters and how well they are done differently to other readers. Which, sadly, pretty much makes all our answers redundant. It's hard to be objective about your own work too. I'm with Chilari on the next point. I just try to write someone who I relate to myself. The same way musicians will only write and play music they themselves enjoy.

 

[Scribble]

The characters that I most identified with when I was young (12-16) were Hermann Hesse's characters. They were often outsiders, slightly brighter and more sensitive than the people around them, and possessed of a rich inner life and struggle. I was a very introspective kid, and this was how I felt about myself. I felt like his characters were me. I felt I was the characters.

Later on, the other writer whose characters I related to were those of Albert Camus. I always felt that the conventions of our society were fabrications, and I struggle between trying to live as a decent person and have intellectual integrity. Camus's characters had the same struggles and found themselves in the crucible.

Later on still, Ian McEwan's characters were more modern versions of these same kind of people, but weighed down by the complexity and moral ambiguity of our modern life.

I like reading fantasy adventure fiction for escape and entertainment. I expect a certain kind of character there. I am not looking to explore all the complexities of life. I want a believable character who undergoes some kind of change. It's a hero story. Heroes are archetypes, myths. I read these stories in the same way our ancestors listened to tales of Achilles, or Cuchulain, Odysseus, or Sigurd, and how many of us still read bible stories of David, or read tales of Percival or King Arthur.

In the modern sensibility, I tend to look for some realism in my hero stories, so it makes sense for me, so I can relate to it. There are, if you'll allow me to make two very general buckets for simplicity, two different kind of stories here. What writers like McEwan are doing today is quite different than what Sanderson or Williams or Gavriel Kay do. McEwan explores the human condition through story in the modern age. In my opinion, what fantasy writers are doing, as I see it, is the active making of myth stories for modern people, filling the same role as Homer, as Virgil, as Tolkien. You take the hero and put them through their paces and see what comes out the other end. Through those stories, we are making our hero myths modern. So, I need to relate to them. I don't really understand Beowulf, he doesn't live here. But I understand Rand Al Thor, he's kind of like me.

He doesn't have the same depth of troubles. He's young, I'm 40. I can put myself in his place, but I'm not a farm boy, I don't have the same simplistic view of the world. He does and thinks things that I accept because he is young. I don't expect the great depth of character I would come to expect in a different kind of book, he's a hero. But, he has to be believable enough for me to follow him on his journey.


My 0.02

 

[Weaver]

Thanks to everyone who has answered so far. Your responses are encouraging.

I should clear something up: I didn't ask all this because I want advice on how to write a relatable character. As just about everyone here has said, writers should just write about characters they relate to, whatever that happens to mean.

And as much as I've occasionally enjoyed novels by the writer mentioned in the first paragraph of my original post, I think he's full of fewmets when it comes to his 'readers want average protagonists because they are themselves average' statement. Speak for yourself, Jack! I am far from the statistical average in many things: I have green eyes, like only 1 human in 50. My percentile for height is ridiculous. I'm an identical twin. ("Ohmigod, there's... two of them!") If I required a protagonist who was just like me for me to be able to relate to him at all... *shakes head* And yes, a lot of people want to read about superheroes and wizards and telepaths and dragons and the unutterably rich and beautiful... Not a lot of potential readers in any one of those categories, if readers have to be like the characters to like them, y'know?


(I typed a lot more stuff here but then deleted it. I tend to overstate my case and annoy even the people who agree with me, and I'm trying not to do that.)

 

[Weaver]

I don't really understand Beowulf, he doesn't live here. But I understand Rand Al Thor, he's kind of like me.

That is... a great way of expressing that idea, Scribble.

Beowulf doesn't live here, either. There's a Hrothgar who lives here sometimes, but he isn't the Hrothgar from that story.


There was a character I identified with very much, years ago. We weren't the same age; I was only 20 years old when I first met him, and he was 29. He was really, really good at math and physics, and I'm... not. Well, I'm good enough at those things, but nowhere near his level, and unlike him, I have no desire to have a career that uses such skills to any great degree. Both of us had mothers who'd studied the biosciences (in this instance, I refer to the woman who raised me, not my biological mother), but unlike him, I had two parents. (This doesn't mean what you probably think it means.) My twin would say that what I've most got in common with this character is some kind of chronic-pain thing, except mine isn't ever going away, ever. And, well, certain quirks of brain function which I don't have nearly as much problem with as the other guy did... (I think his author overlooked a few 'side-effects' that one of her friends addressed in one of her own novels much later. Sensory overload is a b!#ch, but at least I get it a much slower rate.)

 

[Scribble]

I think we relate to other characters primarily if we can feel their emotions, and secondarily if we can think their thoughts. I've never been a wizard or an orc or a dragon, but I can get into the skin of one if they feel and think in ways I can understand.

 

[PaulineMRoss]

I think I'm the prat who mentioned the difficulty of relating to shape-shifting half-elves, and even at the time, I thought someone would call me out on it Here's the original wording (from the thread on what people look for in writing):

I like realistic characters who behave in believable ways. Not necessarily relatable (how do you relate to a mage anyway? Or a shape-shifting half-elf?), but characters who are recognisably human (if appropriate) or 'other' (if non-human), and whose actions are determined by their own desires and personalities, and not just the needs of the plot.

I don't think readers need characters they can 'relate' to, in the sense that they are familiar in some way, and I don't think any of us can fully 'relate' to a shape-shifting half-elf (which is the old what's-it-like-to-be-a-bat theory). But the best writers can get under the skin of any protagonist, human or non-human, ordinary or extraordinary, and get the reader to feel some part of what that character is feeling.

But I really don't like the term 'relatable' anyway. Too many possible interpretations.

 

[Weaver]

I think I'm the prat who mentioned the difficulty of relating to shape-shifting half-elves, and even at the time, I thought someone would call me out on it

I'm not at all offended at the comment. I understood perfectly what you meant: that a character, no matter what their species or whatever, needs to have motivations and feelings that the reader can understand.

If the shapeshifting half-elf has nothing to him except the fact that he's a shapeshifting half-elf, if he's no more than an elaborately decorated cardboard stand-up, the reader probably isn't going to care what happens to him. On the other hand, if he has friends that he occasionally has heated arguments with (over things the reader can understand), if he fears things and hopes for things and makes mistakes despite his best efforts... That's a 'relatable' character. (I'm not overly fond of the term either, but it seems to be the one most people use, and I don't know of another with a close enough meaning, as undefined as the meaning of this is. If we were all telepaths, the discussion would be easier -- maybe. )





Here's the original wording (from the thread on what people look for in writing):



I don't think readers need characters they can 'relate' to, in the sense that they are familiar in some way, and I don't think any of us can fully 'relate' to a shape-shifting half-elf (which is the old what's-it-like-to-be-a-bat theory). But the best writers can get under the skin of any protagonist, human or non-human, ordinary or extraordinary, and get the reader to feel some part of what that character is feeling.

But I really don't like the term 'relatable' anyway. Too many possible interpretations.[/QUOTE]

 

[Steerpike]

Do you have to find a main character relatable in order to enjoy a book? I don't think so.

 

[Weaver]

Do you have to find a main character relatable in order to enjoy a book? I don't think so.

Up to a point. Sometimes I very much enjoy spending some time seeing the world through an alien viewpoint (C. J. Cherryh is VERY good at the 'alien viewpoint' thing), but some things will ALWAYS make a character so totally 'unrelatable' to me that I cannot read the book, much less enjoy it. Someone mentioned not being able to relate to a character who's a rapist, for example. Any character who enjoys committing that kind of violence against other people is a character whose viewpoint I don't ever want to spend time in.

 

[Steerpike]

I've mentioned it before, but read Ian Graham's Monument. Very good fantasy novel, and if you can relate to the main character, Ballas, I'll be surprised

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I've mentioned it before, but read Ian Graham's Monument. Very good fantasy novel, and if you can relate to the main character, Ballas, I'll be surprised

But what exactly do we mean by "relatable?" Do we mean "identify" or "sympathize?" For example, I'm sure plenty of people find Elric sympathetic, if not relatable. But, whatever we mean, there must be some connection with the character, be that character a person or a house or an ant colony.