We talked a lot last week about our characters, even talked about taking them to lunch. The truth is, I do. I take them everywhere I go. They're never far from my thoughts. Even the ones I no longer write about are like old friends you call and chat with once in a while. That's how real our characters are to us. If not for the fact that we're novelists, our make-believe friends could get us locked up for a very long time.~
The book I'm writing now has my first ever anti-hero for a protagonist. Wise Geek defines anti-hero this way: "The main character [in a novel] is referred to as the hero or heroine of the story ... When the main character is deeply flawed, however, lacking in the attributes we most often associate with heroism, we have the anti-hero." And my current protagonist is most definitely flawed.
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The challenge is to figure out a way to endear to my readers a woman who, on the surface, is easy to dislike. Now more than ever I need to know and understand this woman and show her fears and vulnerabilities, her deep-seated needs and desires, in order to override what she displays on the outside. My premise is validated by an April 23, 2008 Writers Digest article, "Defining and Developing Your Anti-Hero," which says, "One trick to creating an anti-hero is to fashion his primary traits so that his essential nature and personality are clear to you as you craft each scene he appears in. Then you need to know the why of these traits and beliefs --- in essence, how he came to be." Or in the case of my anti-hero, she.
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When it comes to anti-heroes there are plenty of resources to fall back on, for Hollywood has made an industry out of the anti-hero. Bogart, Cagney, Bronson, Newman, McQueen, James Dean, all anti-heroes. Han Solo, Captain Jack Sparrow too. It's harder to come by female anti-heroes, especially in film, but the quintessential literary female anti-hero would have to be Scarlett O'Hara. Her male counterpart, in my mind, is Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy.
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David Copperfield, one of my all-time favorite novels, begins: "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." I love that opening, but my experience is that most of us are more anti-hero than hero. I know I am. In that regard I tend to better relate to my current protagonist than to, say, the angelic Elizabeth Bennett. I can be moody, uncooperative, irritating, sarcastic ... and that's on a good day. But does that mean I want to read about a person like me? If the story is compelling, yes. If the anti-hero isn't cliched and one-dimensional, yes. If there's a point to the story, yes. In other words, I don't want to read or write about an anti-hero for the sake of having an anti-hero as my protagonist. This story isn't an experiment to see if I can pull it off. It just happens that the story I'm telling belongs to an anti-hero. It's her story so she gets to be the star.
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As a reader, how do you relate to a protagonist that's deeply flawed? Are you willing to give her a chance, or would it be a turn-off to you? What would make an anti-hero tolerable to you? Intolerable? Can you think of a contemporary novel you've read and enjoyed where the protagonist is an anti-hero, particularly a female? I'd love to hear from you.
