The character you fall in love with

I read a book called "The Three Body Problem." In the story, the MC has a girlfriend who is a romance writer. He asks her, "Is the kind of love you portray in your stories real?"

She asks him to write a 50,000 word novel as her birthday present, and start by creating the MC.

He tries, but says to his girlfriend: "It's not working, she acts, but it's like she's a puppet."

She says, "You have to make her real. Figure out her favorite food, her favorite color, what kind of childhood she had, what she likes to do as a hobby, etc."

He tries that, and imagines an MC that becomes so real to him that she appears to him and he starts "spending time" with her. He imagines himself at a fireplace with her, and taking her on a long drive.

Finally, the girlfriend realizes he's fallen in love with his MC and they break up.

After reading this story, it occurs to me I have my own character like that. Her name is Artania and she appears in many of my stories. I'm not in love with her, but I do like her a lot. She has red hair, a fiery temper, but is basically a good person who wants to accomplish good for her people as a princess, and later a queen.

Does anyone else have a character like this who is so real to you like Artania is real to me?

 

The MC of my historical thriller, Owen. When I write him, I don't have to think about what he'd do in X circumstances, because I already know. Owen speaks to me more than any MC I've written, and writing him feels like a kind of magic.

He's not a good person by any means, but he's very human. Owen is still rooted in his time period, and in turn limited by it. He's not forward thinking, nor will he discard social norms (at least, most of them), due to how we see his world now. Owen makes stupid decisions, and I don't agree with many of his veiws, but I find him easy to write because of the connection I share with him. I don't know why I find a character I'd hate in real life to be my greatest, but I do. Owen, for whatever reason, he's the one who speaks to me most.

 

Hello Thomas,

25 years ago (i'm 43 now) I wrote a 30-page character sketch for a novel-writing class I was in at university. That sketch changed my life. I fell in love with my creation and from then on almost everything that I write for fun has this character in it. I love prompt writing for this exact reason. Over the years, I built a story ( complete with other characters) around my character, and last year I finally got to a point in my life where I can take the time to write books about this character and over the past year, I've written 650 pages of the series. But I find that all my characters have been written in such a way that I feel they are real people to me. Whenever I do prompt writing, I always recognize a character that would be in the prompted situation and I write the prompt flash fiction based on whatever character fits that topic. This way, all my characters are just as developed as my very first creation is.

I see nothing wrong with loving your character and feeling like that person could be real. That shows you have really developed your character and have an understanding.

Cheers

 

This book?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel)

The plot summary doesn't mention any of the plot points you highlighted.

 

The characters I create are very real to me. They live fully formed in my imagination. If I spoke to them, I know how they would respond. And yes, I have been known to talk to them.

 

I dunno, what do we mean by "real"? Does knowing more details about a character make them more real? To me, that's always seemed peripheral to knowing their core characteristics. What matters is understanding how the character thinks and acts, what their values and virtues and flaws are. If you can change the little details - favorite color, date of birth, etc - without affecting the impression the character gives while operating within the work, then aren't those details simply decoration without real relevance?

As for "falling in love", does simply liking a character make them more real, even subjectively? Put another way, is your emotional response to the character a good measure for how real they are to you? That doesn't seem quite right to me.

Maybe I don't understand the question. Anyway, in my case, I would say that my characters are real enough. Real enough for me to understand and care about them, and to know how they'll act and react in any given situation with consistency. That's about as real as I require them to be, at any rate.

 

No. It makes it harder to kill them off when it's narratively necessary for them to die.

I really don't emotionally attach myself to any of the characters. I found that they become nothing more than self-inserts when I do that. Not even the good kind. It's the annoying kind that's driven by ego.

 

I didn't want to be the one to say it, because I find it something some writers are very passionate, sensitive and can become easily offended.... but I feel the same way.

I think it is fine to love your characters to a degree, like you might love that you hit a home run or love that you got an A+ on a test or you love going for a long drive. You can love an idea, or experience or accomplishment. But if you're anywhere near "in love" you've crosses over a line and your emotionally attachment to your characters is unhealthy and unprofessional.

I love a lot of my characters, but I'm not emotionally attached to any of them, because if I was I could not be an effective writer. You need to be able to sacrifice all characters to the Gods of good storytelling. People who are too emotionally connected and invested in their characters are unlikely to listen to criticism, they are unlikely to change or remove their characters even if that would improve the story.

I've seen first had writers who are in love with the characters... their writing generally sucks.

 

So true there's a myth about it, as well as I'm sure many folk tales and fairy tales of people falling in love with their own creations. Many movies and stories in modern times draw from these souces, such as the 80's movie Mannequin, where a young man was the only person for whom a department-store mannequin became Kim Cattrall (though he didn't create her). Also to some extent Pinocchio, though that's more a fatherly love and a pure one, wanting the puppet to take on full life and become independent rather than remain his own possession forever with possibly no free will (as seems to be the case in the Pygmalion myth). There's also a story about Michelangelo having made the statue of Moses I believe, but he didn't feel it had become real and alive yet, so in frustration he struck it on the knee with his mallet and cried "Speak!" An artist knows that some creations speak and some don't.

Here's an article about the origninal Greek myth: Pygmalion And Galatea: A Myth About Creation And Love

It isn't one I've looked into yet, though I might now. Often myths contain some of the deepest wisdom.

 

You make some really good points. I know that I have been writing for close to 20 years with the same characters (about 36 characters total) for a number of reasons. And I am attached to all of them so I have to be careful not to allow myself to be offended when my writing is critiqued or a character's motivation is questioned. At the end of the day, they aren't really people but when I'm on one of my writing binges I feel like they are. But, it doesn't stop me from being creative with the stories, and yeah, I've killed off a character here and there that I rather liked and I miss writing that character so I do prequels just to have them back again. It was sad, but it was necessary for that character's story to come to an end.

 

I think it is probably better to have no attachment to the character and certainly thinking of a character as real could be a sign of some mental health issues too. But, saying that, it can also help to keep the realism in a story if you think that your character is real. I guess it depends on the person and what story you are writing. I recall an interview with Ann Rice back in the 90's where she talked about being attached to her character Lestate, from Interview WIth A Vampire. I don't recall all of what she said in that interview except that she felt he was a real person.

 

I tried to find another plot description but Goodreads has at least 6 other books of the same title, so I'll have to go solely by the OP

I'd worry there is a postmodernist angle to this and some of the writer-character's motives don't make sense except when the relationship is seen as an allegory for the creative process. I can imagine that being done by blurring a framed narrative

But the gist of the OP irritates me because I find character writing consuming and method-act them to find the next thing they'll say or the next thought they'll think

I can't relate to writing the sexual aspect of a character I'd be sexually interested in. They wouldn't be my wife. Unless they were. But then it wouldn't count as speculative fiction