Pity and the Hero

Some time ago, I met a man whose company I enjoyed. For about a week. He was dating a friend of mine . . . and I generally thought he was great fun. Occasionally, the topic of childhood would come up and he would mention that his was . . . in a word . . . awful. Once he opened that little window of information, though, the torrent of self-pity NEVER ended. Over time, any moment when I was alone or amongst just a few people around him, he would go on . . . and on . . . and ON about his father, a family history of alcoholism . . . his mother . . . his father . . . and round and round again. Worse, these things were the REASON his own life was, in his own estimation, worthless.

And in truth . . . I can empathize and sympathize. You can't reach a certain age without becoming aware of the truly horrid in some people's backgrounds. I've had friends, dear and wonderful friends, who have experienced nearly every horror one can imagine, everything from rape, murder, tragic deaths, awful illnesses, abusive spouses . . . addictions and self-destructive behavior, suicide . . . The ones I respect the most seem to have come through with a sense of humor intact, or a dignity, or a sense of realism yet optimism about the world. More than that, I don't find they BLAME the past, just seem to wish to make sense if it. I think I like that in my fictional main characters too!

I've been fine-tuning a manuscript for my editor, and I had Oldest Daughter beta read it. It was written before the recession, and occasionally my heroine (it's a YA) lapses into self-pity about not being able to have the summer she had hoped for (which would have included a trip to Europe). Oldest underlined every time the heroine whined, and the five or so offending lines in the first four chapters were removed. As I removed them, I cringed. WHAT WAS I THINKING when I wrote them? She WAS whining!

Then I started thinking about books I have absolutely HATED. A lot of the times? I got tired to hearing the heroine or hero whine. I bought this book, expecting to love it . . . and sometimes? I have to say, the writer whined. I felt that way about Eat, Pray, Love. I know I am in the minority there. And though those are memoir, even in fiction, I like my heroes and heroines to get on with the business of life.

So how about you? We often put our heroes and heroines through A LOT. I mean, the whole point of fiction is wringing our characters through hell and back. But do you ever find a book crosses some line where you stop feeling sympathy and want them to get on with it? Do you find you have to be cautious when writing to be sure introspection doesn't go on for too long?

Who Do You Root For?

Baby Girl and I settle in at night together. She does her homework in my bed, and lately, I have been resting. Because I am too tired to even read most nights, I have been watching re-runs on TV. Having gone through every Law & Order under the sun, I expanded my re-run viewing to include NCIS and Bones one or two nights a week. And then, we will watch this show.

Here's the thing about Baby Girl and me. Over the years, we have fine-tuned the pecking order of who we will root for on shows like American Idol, Amazing Race, or So You Think You Can Dance. We don't watch other reality shows (like Survivor). We generally don't like to see people being mean and many unscripted shows have an elements of having to be unkind to win. So we don't watch those. But on the talent contest-type shows, the order of who we root for generally is: Latinos, gays, nice/sweet parent-child or sibling pairs (such as on something like Amazing Race). If any of our first two choices offered are MEAN, then we go down the list with various sub-pecking-order "rules" we have somehow devised until we settle for someone to root for. (Compelling back story? We might be persuaded!) If the Latino person happens to be Mexican or Mexican-American, that trumps all. Always.

Baby Girl LOVES George Lopez. He now has a show on at 11:00 p.m. and she is ecstatic. She loves George because his humor is similar to Baby Girl's father and stories he tells of how he grew up, poor and Mexican. Baby Girl's dad can even perfect a Mexican accent a la George Lopez. It's like me slipping into a New York accent.

Demon Baby is reminded every day that some day he will be the first Mexican-American president of the United States. Of course, right now he says he wants to be the Tooth Fairy. Which DOES sound like a good gig. But perhaps president is in his future. Basically, I suppose like many people, who my kids root for is about the people you identify with, or the people who remind you of your friends and family. It's about pride. Now that Baby Girl is in Mean Middle School (nature of middle school, I am afraid) . . . she hears SO MUCH racism. Even Oldest Son has gotten sensitive about it. So she likes seeing Mexican-Americans who do well and "represent" for her identity. And whether athletes or various movie stars like to hear it or not, how they are depicted in the media does, indeed, make an impression on kids. Baby Girl has other role models, to be sure. Lots of them. But nonetheless, we root for people based on how we identify with them.

So it is with books. Most of the time, depending on genre, you are being asked, early on, to identify with the hero or heroine and to ROOT for them. I don't know a writer alive who doesn't, at times, walk a tricky line. "How smart alecky or bitchy or difficult or flawed can I make this character before readers are turned off and stop caring? Or actively DISLIKE the main character?" A show of hands, please?

We seem willing to forgive a lot of flaws--characters who drink too much or can't sustain relationships or gamble or sleep with someone who's inherently bad for them--IF their sense of humor or their smarts or their ability to save the world means we overlook the flaws and root for them anyway.

And so much of this all is subjective. Some of us, like Baby Girl, will choose to root for a character based on our own bias, or our own identity, or our own belief system, etc. If there are two mom characters and one is hippy-dippy and disorganized? Guess which one I am rooting for. NOT the Barbie mom. The OTHER one. The slightly nutty mom. In the end, most of the times readers are just going to give you so many words or pages to ensure we're rooting for who we are supposed to be rooting for. And betrayals of who we root for . . . readers aren't likely to tolerate.

So who do YOU root for? What kind of main character? As you create your own characters, are you aware of that likability factor? Of making sure your reader roots for who they are supposed to root for? Thoughts?

The Perfect Heroine

So I think I'm on my last "perfect" post, unless I write about the perfect dog, which is a title taken by my deceased dog Honi, who WAS, indeed, the perfect dog, and at least a dozen people who knew her told me so, so then it must be true.

But what makes a perfect heroine?

For me, it is that she is utterly imperfect. Messy, quirky, neurotic, wise-mouthed . . . (hmm . . . sounds like someone I know). Better yet, she is NOT self-absorbed and cares about something bigger than herself. Billie Quinn worshipped at the altar of Chemistry and solving cold cases. Cassie Hayes sacrificed for Work. Ava in The Roofer for Family. There was always something in my heroines that they cared about far mroe than themselves.

I hate to say it, but the above reason is very often why I don't read romance and was selective about chick lit. Because so much of it, or too much of it, felt like it was all about ME (not me, per se, but Heroine). Wanting to get married, find a boyfriend, get revenge on a old boyfriend, whittle down to a size 2, shop, go to the hot spot, whatever it was . . . it wasn't from MY world. I just don't care about those things. And I generally don't care to spend my time around people who do. You want to talk politics, social causes, books, family . . . I'm with you. Well, except politics. That leads to fights.

But, dedicated to a cause or something bigger than herself, my heroine must be deeply flawed and the journey for her is discovering that flaw and repairing it. Not perfectly. But enough that she is wiser by the end. She is also, throughout, loyal to a fault. And smart. And usually funny.

So that's my perfect heroine. And when I think of books I have loved that resonate through me, I think of Jo in Little Women . . . and you know? She is a perfectly modern heroine in this vein. Loyal to a fault, funny, headstrong . . . but flawed in acting and speaking without thinking, and sometimes a little selfish. A perfect heroine.

So what's your idea of a perfect heroine?