Emotional about your characters?

I know, I know. Meds help BPD, but they don't cure...

honey? who's the poor thing in that picture?

*sniffle*

 

Angelique my ballerina. She's the villain and the hero of my story. She's not the only one, but she's the one I think about the most. Her madness comes from me.

Im posting pictures of all the characters I've made so far in this thread. Will be a bit I have to iron some shirts. *goes back to watching YouTube video on how to properly iron dress shirts.
https://www.writingforums.org/threads/what-do-your-characters-from-your-book-look-like.158106/#post-1673094

 

I don't get visibly emotional when bad things happen to my characters, but I do care. I may write a scene where something unexpected happens (even to a side character), and I'll stop for a moment, thinking: "Oh crap, what have I done??" Or something bad might happen to a villain and I will inwardly cheer about it! I do not think that you are alone in finding yourself becoming invested, even if you never planned on it. Other writers are able to easily separate themselves from their work, but for the rest of us it can sneak up without warning. I personally think that it is healthy, as the characters we make and the events we plot can be either a conscious or unconscious extension of ourselves and what we value in the world, and if we can cry (literally or metaphorically) about fictional characters, then surely we are showing to be empathetic and human. Just my two cents, though I am no philosopher!

 

I know all that...but social media has altered the relationship between authors and their readers, so you can't let them know all that. That's all I'm saying. The readers get really invested, and you want them to come back for more. They're reading to escape those harsh realities.

 

I guess this is something I don't have to worry about lol because I want to be there with my audience and cry with them.

I mean, after the emotional journey I came up with for them and rode with them. I wanna know! To me not caring about the characters and the audience and all that. It's like a cook not caring about food! NO! lol

Again, I am self admitted a odd duck.

Going with the cook anology, I may not care about the individual ingrediants(the potatos) but I so do care about the effect those ingrediants cause. So in a way, I do care about potatos!

 

I didn't say I read about it, I said I've seen it. I see a lot of fan interactions between creative people of various forms of media and their fans because of where I live and work. Occasionally a creative person makes the mistake of indicating a character isn't real, and things go sideways. Fans get really invested, and in their mind, which isn't always rational (fan= fanatic), they've spent their time and money to care about the characters and love them, so they expect s certain reaction from the person who created the character. Pissing off a fan isn't good PR, and it's a pain in the ass from a damage control standpoint. The advent of social media means every creative person is in the customer service business, whether we like it or not.

I remember Jackie Collins on talk shows when I was a kid telling stories about her readers asking about Lucky Santagelo, but Jackie was savvy enough to speak about Lucky as if she existed in an alternate universe or something.

 

I don’t know. Like Homer, I care deeply about my work. I care about the stories I create and the emotion they (attempt) to convey to readers. But the characters? They don’t inhabit a space in my brain which would allow me to feel empathy for them. If someone asked me about my characters, relative to the story, I’d be more than happy to talk about it. But I’d also be happy to talk about the fact that I don’t feel sad when they hurt, angry when they’ve been wronged, happy when things work out for them. That’s not how I approach fiction, and it doesn’t make me prone to reader retaliation, nor does it put me at a disadvantage when it comes to creating emotion in fiction, contrary to what other people may think. Fiction is a craft, something into which I invest a tremendous amount of time and thought. Feeling empathy for my characters doesn’t factor into that equation for me. It’s not a weakness or something to withhold for fear of inciting fan-rage. (Let the record show I’m under no delusions that I have or ever will have “fans.”) When I invest so much of myself into these characters, plots, themes, whatever, it’s not any individual piece of that that I care about; it’s the story as a singular, cohesive representation of an emotion or set of emotions I wanted to explore. I care what my stories say about people, about the world, society, human nature. I do not care about the pieces I create to achieve that goal. They do not exist or matter outside of that story.

And I want to also be clear that I do not think feeling empathy for one’s characters puts one at a disadvantage either. The opposing views in this thread are merely two fundamentally different approaches to the philosophy of fiction.

 

As empathetic as I feel for her, I feel for more sorry for her hubby and kids (she has a daughter who she disowned for something relatively minor, but she's fanatically religious, and, to her, her adult daughter is still a disobedient, rebellious little brat, and not in the slightest who Miriam hoped she'd be).

Her daughter is one of the protags.

Actually, I might post the scene in which her hubby finds out she's been lying to him (in the relevant sub forum, of course). I've been wondering what part of the novel to post.

Angelique is one of you antagonists, I think I read? I find that great that you've managed to find a softer, nicer side for her. I'm struggling to do that with a character I was thinking of making one of my antags.

Bit in bold: That's so true! My mum loves watching a certain TV soap, and until recently, there was a particular villain who played the part so well, my mum said if she ever saw the actor in the street, she'd actually spit on him.

 

Oh, please do! Would love to have a look at it.

 

That's cool. But they exist and matter to the reader. Once the book or story is in their hands, it no longer belongs to you. It's theirs to pull out whatever they connect with and discard the rest. So, what I'm saying is, be prepared for that reaction, and think about what you'd say if someone rushed up to you at an airport gushing on and on about a character as if he /she were real, without mentioning other elements of your book or story.

(I have issues with this stuff, too, in a different way, by the way. I'm that writer who would prefer not to have interaction with my readers at all, because it makes me extremely uncomfortable. But, that's simply not practical in 2018.)

 

Great. I don’t have issues with any of this, and I don’t have issues talking about my work with people who may or may not read it in the future.

Again, not feeling empathy for my characters is not a weakness. It’s not something to hide because some people are strange. And no amount of anecdotal evidence will convince me otherwise. I’d still like to see some tangible evidence of fans crying foul on a writer for not feeling empathy for fictional constructs, though.

This “reader” is not a static thing, which acts uniformly and responds in a single way, taking ownership of a created text and abhorring a person who doesn’t feel the same.

My philosophical difference in approach to fiction is not something that will lose me readers. It’s a way that I think about art. And yeah, if I’m ever lucky enough to be interviewed about my fiction, I will absolutely talk about that. It’s interesting. If I’m going to lose myself readers in the future, it will be a result of one of a plethora of my actual character defects. It will not be because I don’t feel empathy for fictional characters.

 

Okay, now I'm just emotional. I barely see well enough with my glasses. It has taken me this long to recognize your avatar is a teddy bear cutting its head off!
Hilarious and Sick! Many many points awarded!

 

It's so true! A former neighbor of mine used to do hair on a soap and was good friends with one of the actresses, who happened to play the bitch.

 

Angelique before she and after she was turned she is the protagonist. Something happens

Spoiler

*cough secret*

that makes her turn against her lover Zavra. The Ballerina becomes Moriarty to Zavra's Sherlock Holmes. Something happens that sends Angelique down a rabbit whole after her turning into a vampire. She becomes madness and sees madness. The Summerlands.

 

It seems I have to offer more critique first.

 

Boo! That's no fun.

Feel free to private message it to me if you like.

 

No I cant say that I do. I may be a little bit overprotective at times but I dont have a problem with putting them through hellish experience but I dont kill any of my characters.

 

Other than having good or bad feelings about my characters, I don't get emotional about them They are who they are, and the products of my creation. As such, they exist to further the story. I do care for them, but that's not the same as being emotional about them. I do like my characters to exhibit emotions about, and for, other characters, though. I feel it's the authors job to present his or her characters, not to be emotional about them. If I need to "kill" my character to further the story, I'l do it. I can always bring him back.

 

You know... I know this isn't the first thing that comes to your mind thread but still it makes me wonder this.

Does God and Lucifer sit at a table and discuss whether they care about humans. LOL.
"Nah, I don't' give two shits about humanity, burn them all in the holy fires of Nuclear war," said Lucifer.
God Chuckled "Yeah, they have been a pretty big disappointment, but still they are my creation,"
"Nice joke to the world, Harold," said Lucifer.
"Thanks, the Wolves and Bears seem to enjoy them," said Harold (God) .
"Just ask, and i'll create super virus to wipe them out for you," said Lucfier.
"Give me till 7510, i'll make it by then,"

 

I don't agree with the "if you don't feel it, then neither will the reader" approach, not with emotional scenes or sex scenes. I think I used to write that way, just pouring my own emotions out onto the page, but I was low on technique and emotion was about all I had. I don't think I could have kept up that pace for thirty-odd novels... at some point, I had to learn how to present emotions in a way that felt believable without feeling them myself. Same with sex scenes.

I'm reminded of the famous quotation from Sir Lawrence Olivier, when he saw Dustin Hoffman dragging himself through the mire, torturing himself in the name of "method acting" a difficult role. Hoffman asked Olivier how he could create realistic performances without making himself really feel what the character felt, and Olivier responded "My dear boy, it's called acting."

 

Since this subject is back on fire I thought I would jump into the fray and maybe add a bit more to what I wrote previously.

Putting territorial issues aside, which I took fell victim to. I feel that we are generalizing this topic to much, there is a lot more that goes into the Author/Character relationship. (For lack of better phrasing). The easy things to consider are Genre, story being told, goals of the Author and the story, etc.

But also the Author as an individual and their story to tell.

Also I wonder if there is a misunderstanding here about the emotional aspect of things. For instance, I have now killed me Character three times in dream sequences with no emotions. but I still care about my Character, persay (again for lack of better phrasing) . I mean clearly I dont' sit around and have brain storming sessions or tea parties with my Characters, they are confide to the pages. And unlike real people do not demand constant attention. So I can work on other stories.

I care about them in the sense that they are my fictional characters to use and enjoy. It's different form of interaction from video games or TV.

I hope I don't sound like a rambling madman as I try to explain what I"m thinking. I do apologies for that, a lot of it comes from lack of better Phrasing.

 

Thinking about it more. I think I know one of the reasons this lack of emotion type answers is bothering me.

Because it's not a x/y type answer. Or a yes/no. Same with the food analogy I presented earlier.

Everyone cares about food. To some degree. No one is just completely uncaring about food.

I sense there has to be a similar thing with emotions and writing. Like I have cried to the point of not being able to open my eyes from writing. Which I don't think is a requirement obviously. I have written many emotional scenes without falling to pieces.

But every scene I write has some emotions. In all honesty it's more the nature of being a living breathing creature.

Whether it's a sex scene or a death scene. When you put emotions on a page. I imagine you have to draw that from somewhere. Even if you aren't crying as a result.

Ya know?

 

I know I USED to feel that way, yeah. (And I don't mean that as a "when you mature you will find it different" kind of swipe... I have no idea if my change has come from maturity or just from getting tired!)

But I write romance novels, and I don't fall in love with my characters. I don't generally fall in love with ANYBODY (I'm not at all a romance-oriented person in real life). I'm not feeling the love my characters feel when I write it, and I still manage to get it across on the page well enough to sell the books. So...?

I'm much more likely to cry or get emotionally invested in characters that someone else has created, because with them I'm just seeing the finished product, not all the nuts and bolts that went into building it.