Do Stories Need Good Characters?/Characters Aren't Fun to Write

Some first person horror stories, like the old weird tales, don't necessarily have to have a "good" character, just someone who convinces us of how terrifying the events they experience are.

Not liking to write characters is going to limit what you can write, more than not allowing you to be a writer at all.

Why don't you find them fun to write?

 

If you can find it, Robert Silverberg's Worlds of Wonder might be a good book to pick up. It's a collection of science fiction stories Silverberg thinks are useful to analyze from a writer's perspective, each with an essay dissecting it. Only the very last story in the anthology is character-focused, and Silverberg repeatedly complains about sci-fi writers who waste too much time on what he sees as pointless characterization.

 

I think there are lots of great books that are not heavily dependent on character for their success.

Assimov's Foundation work springs to mind right away, as does the Lemmus trilogy, both written on very large canvasses and huge scales that I enjoyed very much and had some substantial success.

Having said that, both of the successes are decades away. I think audiences and expectations have changed and it would be much harder to write a commercially successful book these days without engaging and fascinating characters. I believe that one of the most important aspects of successful fiction writing is characters that the reader wants to learn more about, wants to see succeed or can identify with.

I am not saying it cannot be done, and there are not successful examples of it, I am just saying that it runs significantly counter to what most people believe current tastes are.

 

Randolph Carter, Lovecraft's main protagonist, is a character that isn't developed all that much, compared to your typical hero; yet the adventures he takes part in are still thrilling. The Dream quest of Unknown Kadath is probably my favorite of Lovecraft's longer stories, and is where we learn a little about Carter but the plot itself is more important than fully fleshing him out.

Kadath itself was such a fascinating place, both in a physical and metaphysical way, that I'm putting in something similar in my fantasy series. Though I'm trying to not make the main antagonist of the second half of the story be like Nyarlathotep.

 

I relate very much to this issue. I’m not a people person at all, though I’m mostly friendly and easy to talk to. I have two things working against me, as far as writing success goes. One is that I’m a dreadfully slow writer, and the other is this ‘character’ issue.

For some of my stories, I put in a bunch of work on the characters, stuff that didn’t even end up in the texts. I gave them back-stories, personalities, skills, motivations, specific details, attitudes, relationships with others, everything I could think of to make them individuals.

Judging from the response from readers, this work was largely wasteful. I don’t know if it was the chosen details, or my execution within the story itself, but few care about or relate to my characters (actually, I’ve made one character that some people don’t hate). I’ll continue to work on it in the hopes of reaching a minimum level of characterization, but I’m resigned to being an ‘idea’ or ‘conceptual’ type of writer. I can only put in a story the kinds of things I myself respond to as a reader, and warm and fuzzy isn’t it for me.

Here’s the thing though. There are at least two of us. I suspect there are a lot more than that. I’m writing for you and me, and for the rest of us weirdos. I do it knowing full well I’m likely to be considered cold, cerebral, detached, and intellectual, and expect near-endless rejection on that basis.

And yet I read book after book after book that I would say do not have a strong character element to them. Of course many are on the older side, but can still be found on bookshelves today.

I still plan on creating characters I would be interested in reading about. I’ve just accepted that no one else is likely to. For good or ill, I’m not stopping.

 

Give a character a reason to be passionate about a goal and then put an obstacle in their way.

Even if your character lacks depth, their pain will be identifiable and tie the reader into the story.

 

It would be nice if it were that simple--so many of my issues would evaporate. My novel has this element, but I expect it won't be nearly enough.

 

@Evolution_Rex, it would serve you well to learn how to write good characters if selling books is something you desire to do in the future. I understand where you're coming from, but the truth is that (even gonna say most) readers prefer to have protagonists or other characters in the story that they can connect with. Think about when you watch a movie or t.v. show. It turns out that you always have a favorite. If you're entertaining through words, readers are going to be brought into your story by the viewpoint of the protagonist. Therefore, she or he needs to be a solid individual that can narrate and experience your theme, questions, etc.

Since you mentioned that you like to write about themes in your O.P., then remember that your characters, especially the protagonist, are ALL an expression of the theme in your book. Basically, characters being their own people, take different paths on the journey to expressing your theme. This might be a good starting place for you in order to soften to the idea of having to write about people. If you can get a one sentence theme on lock, then pose a question to your audience involving that theme and have your protagonist act it out in your story.

There are many craft books out there that can instruct you on how to do that, and this is one website that is worth recommending to get you started.

On a last note at those saying that stories are either plot centered or character centered, I've never agreed with this concept. The way a story is portrayed depends on the questions, themes, and essentially the subject matter the author is trying to communicate. Some stories focus on larger problems that involve communities, or a big cast of characters, or relationships between characters (romance), or magical items, etc.

All of these stories require plot, character, setting, problem in order to be well balanced and keep the readers sucked in. No one element is more or less important in books, imo, because writing a book is like baking a cake. If you don't add in the eggs, milk, or oil, your cake will come out all jacked up. The same goes for books. This is why writing is so difficult, because you're attempting to balance all of these ingredients into a coherent and interesting story.

 

Well, let's take Tolkien, since he's the most prominent and prolific writer in the fantasy genre ever. His stories weren't exactly about particular characters. His work focused more on Middle-Earth. Middle-Earth was his main character. Very few characters in his works appear through the entirety of the series. The only common thread in each book is the setting, but he brings it to life with such vivid detail.

 

But....2001 is told in a standard way.

 

Modern stories tend to be character-driven.

Making comparisons to film is unfair, because we are a species primarily driven by the visual experience, something that film and TV use to great effect. Written stories work with the imagination, which means that the visual experience immediately becomes reduced - you have to appeal emotively and empathically - and that means characters.