Actually, I do have to 'like' my main characters in the traditional meaning of that word but I understand very well that many (most?) writers might not have that need. I have to feel warm towards them and I wish them the very best (even if they don't always get it). Maybe that's because I'm a beginning writer and over time I'll learn to engage without emotion (that makes me sound like a novice call-girl.) In fact I found finishing my novel a real wrench as I was leaving my two main characters behind, having lived with them for so long. One of the things that makes me feel like I have succeeded in a piece of writing is when people talk about my characters as if they were real people as opposed to commenting on the writing.
Maybe I have the wrong approach but it's how I feel about it at the moment.
Caroline, what's patronising about the quote re Sarah Waters? I think it was intended as a very positive comment and that's certainly how I took it. I suppose I'll just have to read her books to know if her characters are likeable or not.

Ashlinn

I do think the word 'likeable' is the problem - because it can mean slightly different things. Wondering whether I'd find a fictional character likeable if we met 'in real life' is perhaps beside the point - different from whether or not I warm to them in a book, as character and/or narrator.

Also, 'likeable' for me has slight connotations of 'bright and shallow'. e.g. I can imagine a young aviator in a Biggles book being described as 'a likeable chap'.

F

<Added>

Of course you have to engage with your characters emotionally, Ashlinn. That doesn't make you a 'beginning writer', quite the opposite.

Ashlinn
I don't know, really, it just suggests a cosiness that doesn't fit with her style at all. And I can't help connecting that with the fact that nearly all her characters and readers are women. Do you see where I'm going with this? I am one for leaping on my feminist high-horse, quite quickly I admit, but still....

I loved your comment about the novice call-girl!

Funnily, I don't have a problem at all with the term 'likeable'. I know exactly when I find someone likeable and being 'bright and shallow' is certainly not it. Frances, I strongly suspect that 'bright and shallow' is not what appeals to you either in real or fictional characters. I know it's a hypothetical question since these two worlds cannot intersect but I think I would like the same people in the fictional world as I do in real life (although maybe I'm a bit more tolerant in real life).

Speaking as a writer now, one of the things I like about creating likeable characters is that I can have them do horrible things and think horrible thoughts (as I suspect we all do sometimes) and still get the reader to forgive them as we do in real life.

Caroline, as for SW, if she appeals mostly to women, I'd say so what? No shame in that. Women are half the population (and well over half of the reading population), it's not as if her readership was 6ft tall firemen with blond hair aged between 30 and 32 - that would bother me. So if I were SW it wouldn't bother me a jot if the majority of my readers were women (unless it's being implied that there is something inherently superior about a male audience in which case that is sexist).

Ashlinn

No, what I mean is that the reviewer was (possibly) doing that common thing of bracketing women's fiction as 'not very serious'.

6ft tall firemen with blond hair aged between 30 and 32

Bring it on!!!



JB

Steady!!!!

ho ho! I believe quite a few men do read and enjoy SW's books - my brother for instance, who is not a fireman.

By the way, did you see some hairdressers have been arrested for that £50 million robbery? I also read recently that hairdressing is now Britain's main industry. Interesting facts, though possibly irrelevant to the current discussion - maybe I should start a separate thread on hairdressers. Or we could have one on firemen, JB?

F

<Added>

I'm all for bright and shallow on occasion, Ashlinn! - I love P.G. Wodehouse, for instance, and there are no depths in Bertie Wooster.

Well all right, JB, I suppose if the firemen were passionate fans I could adjust!!

Ashlinn

Lol! You can keep the hairdressers though...

JB

Not so sure about that, you need a haircut more often than you need a fire put out!

Not with the heat I'm planning to generate.

OK, I'll stop.

JB