Creating interest in characters the reader knows won't succeed

[Feo Takahari]

Let's say your main characters are doomed to fail at their primary goal, and the reader knows this from early on in the story. How would you get the reader invested in them, precluding the classical tragic arc in which the mighty are brought low by their own hubris?

To give some context for this, I just reached the ending of Sine Mora, easily the most depressing video game I've ever played. Most of the cast has no reasonable hope of a better future, stumbling blindly onward for no better reason than that they're too stubborn to admit defeat.* The game's narrative has at least three glaring flaws, but to me, the most interesting is the lack of investment brought on by the game's relentless dreariness. This sense of inevitable doom is so deeply embedded in the story that outright removing it would create a completely different and possibly inferior narrative. But was there any way to maintain it while still forcing the player to care about the characters?

*The father seeking to avenge his son's death knows that vengeance is a temporary salve for the pain, the rebels know their rebellion has been almost completely wiped out and will never be revived, and it's made clear that the presence of time travel in the setting won't and can't be the magic cure-all they want it to be. The one character who has a chance of escape is a survivor of both rape and cancer who spends the whole game being blackmailed with information that could get her put in a concentration camp. (This game is many things, but subtle is not one of them.)

 

[FatCat]

It's a tough question, but I'd have to say let the readers enjoy small triumphs with the characters. Yeah, maybe the hero knows he will fail, but what about an amazing night with a beautiful women, or a good laugh on the way to the journey. Even if the readers know the outcome, injecting some positive elements, I'd imagine, would keep interest afloat, and make the tragic ending even more heartbreaking.

 

[wordwalker]

Sounds like you're talking partly about plot, partly about tone.

After reading the "not too subtle" example, I'll just leave the ubergrim tone for someone else...

But for plot and its character variations, I'd say it's a matter of playing up what dead-end momentum people can build up with how they mean well, what good they do succeed at or happy moments they steal along the way, and how maybe some of them survive to get on with their lives.

Then there's having other characters make them look good by contrast, but that's tricky. If you overuse the "this many people compromise themselves while the MCs sticks to their quest" (and the quest doesn't turn out to Win After All), you risk making the MCs look even more blind if some of those copouts manage to profit from their pragmatism. Or if "everyone lies, so everyone dies," you're in Life Sucks territory after all. (Ditto if the other characters aren't acting out of selfishness, they're wild enough to make the doomed MCs look levelheaded.)

(Then again, considering how much dramatic license and "impossible odds" tropes are out there, maybe the hardest thing about a truly hopeless quest is convincing the reader it's going to stay hopeless after all :rolleyes2:. So maybe it does need the ubergrimness, since taking that kind of effort would show the reader there's no payoff left in any kind of happy ending...)

 

[tlbodine]

I suspect that this might work better in a video game than fiction -- if you're playing, you're already going to be somewhat invested because you ARE the character. Also, you'll have small achievements along the way that can make you proud. Factors that don't really exist in other mediums.

That said, there's plenty of stories that we know are doomed from the get-go but still elicit sympathy. Look at 300, for example. You know going into it that 300 Spartans are going to be dead by the end of the movie, because we're all familiar with the Battle of Thermopylae. Or in Titanic. It's not like we don't see that one coming.

I think there's a couple ways you can go with it:
-- Give the characters small victories and lots of redeeming qualities, but just be swallowed by impossibly long odds
-- Show that even though the characters died/failed, the loss was worth something in the end
-- Connect their insignificant lives to the greater world in some way so the story still matters even if they're all dead

There's another way to go, which is where the entire cast fails spectacularly without the audience necessarily knowing that's about to happen. Like the novel The White Bone, or the anime Berserk. Basically nobody is left standing at the end of those stories, and the message is pretty clear (and insanely bleak): Don't trust anyone, don't have hope in anything. (Despite this, I think The White Bone is one of the most exquisite books I have ever read).

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Have you read Stephen Donaldson's The Gap series? Because this game sounds horribly close to it.

But no stick to the example given by tlbodine in my view - the 300. They lose. They were always going to lose. They were always going to die. But that's not the point. It's not what makes their story great. It's the glorious loss. The triumph even in defeat. The never giving up and striking a powerful blow. The courage. Can't remember who said it but there is victory even in defeat.

That's what you need to aim for.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Penpilot]

You can end the story on a high point but still have it be a failure for the hero. Look at Empire Strikes back. What's the ending. The rebels are on the run, Luke had his hand cut off, Han Solo is in the clutches of Boba Fett. Basically the Rebel Alliance got their asses handed to them But they end it on a hopeful note. Lando--wearing Han's cloths WTF--and Chewbacca are heading off to search for Han, and the Rebels are off to search for a new home. If there was never another movie, Empire left you with the impression they would rescue Han and defeat the empire eventually.

As for making people accept it, look at it this way, it's not the destination that's important, but the journey. The telling of the story is what's going to draw people in, not the ending. The ending is just a moment. So long as it's an honest ending, it doesn't matter. Remember the movie Titanic. Before it was made people were saying who wants to watch a movie where they know the boat's going to sink. Well, it didn't matter that the boat sank. What was important was the struggle and how it played out. If both Rose and Jack both died at the end, I think the movie would have still worked if that's the type of story they wanted to tell.

 

[Sheriff Woody]

Readers will always be drawn toward characters that have strong desires. If your character wants something, and wants it BADLY, people will become invested in that character's journey. The harder they must work to get what they desire, the more we will care.

 

[Shockley]

I'm going to suggest slight disagreement with the actual question - unless it is something like the Titanic or the three hundred Spartans, I don't know if there's any reason that the reader should *know* that the protagonist will fail.

 

[wordwalker]

I'm going to suggest slight disagreement with the actual question - unless it is something like the Titanic or the three hundred Spartans, I don't know if there's any reason that the reader should *know* that the protagonist will fail.

A point. The question was more about when there doesn't look like any sane way they could win --and I guess using tone or other tools to ensure it doesn't just look epic.

 

[Amanita]

For me, it would be hard, but I'm not a fan of overly depressing reads anyway. At least not, as long as they don't manage to catch my interest some other way but that's rarely happening. I prefer if there's some hope left at least for someone.
This opinion isn't universal though, many of the most famous classical works have been tragedies and the readers/viewers usually did know that before, I think. If such stories are about something that matters to people today and tells it in a good way, there will be people who are interested in it. Take Faust and his bargain with the devil for example. (I'm thinking of Goethe's version, but others are probably similar) It's clear from the beginning that this won't end well, the main character's final fate isn't the interesting part. The things that are interesting are the events happening on the way, the view on society the author is expressing through them and the reasons why the characters does end the way he does.

Most of those classical tragedies I can think of at the moment have a main character who's actively doing the wrong thing and doomed to fail for this reason though. A character who's having suffering heaped on him or her without any chance to do anything about it won't really make for an interesting work. Certain kinds of psychological stories might be an exception but I'm certain those are very hard to do well.
Something like the game mentioned in the initial post probably wouldn't get me interested at all. I'd be more likely to refuse to take anything seriously because it's way too much, at least if the description is anything to go by.