I read an interesting blog post by Larry Brooks today, about writing effective main characters. The secret, he says, is to build empathy with the character. His example (would you empathize with a doctor breaking the rules to save a patient? you might root for her, but you might not empathize unless the patient was her daughter) was illustrative, but maybe misleadingly simple. Do we need to write a main character with an underlying motivation that readers can share? Not necessarily. I don't think readers have to want to be the main character, or to be motivated by the same causes. But I do think the main character has to have an underlying motive that's recognizable.
"Empathy" is being able to understand why a character is doing something, even if it's something unfamiliar to us in our actual lives (flying a fighter jet on Mars, burying a body, jumping off of a bridge). And there are a few really human motivations that make all of us tick: greed, love, envy, loneliness, ambition, debt, self-aggrandizement, loyalty --- that's by no means a full list, but you see where I'm going.
If we can give any main character, no matter how dark or bitter or full or rage or ennui, in whatever situation that character appears, an underlying motivation that comes from one of these "universals," we've given the audience a hook to hang empathy on.
"Empathy" is being able to understand why a character is doing something, even if it's something unfamiliar to us in our actual lives (flying a fighter jet on Mars, burying a body, jumping off of a bridge). And there are a few really human motivations that make all of us tick: greed, love, envy, loneliness, ambition, debt, self-aggrandizement, loyalty --- that's by no means a full list, but you see where I'm going.
If we can give any main character, no matter how dark or bitter or full or rage or ennui, in whatever situation that character appears, an underlying motivation that comes from one of these "universals," we've given the audience a hook to hang empathy on.
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