{"id":8380,"date":"2020-02-18T07:38:13","date_gmt":"2020-02-18T12:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8380"},"modified":"2020-02-18T07:38:13","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T12:38:13","slug":"characters-who-do-bad-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8380","title":{"rendered":"Characters Who Do Bad Things"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft size-large is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Handwriting.jpg?resize=233%2C426&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Handwriting, boredom\" class=\"wp-image-5858\" width=\"233\" height=\"426\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ran across an old interview with Kevin Canty, a novelist and short story writer who teaches at the University of Montana in Missoula. At the time of the interview, he had some observations that seem particularly germane to writers of crime fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To start off, he observed that people\u2014readers, and maybe, sometimes, writers too\u2014typically think \u201cpeople who do bad things are a different class of people,\u201d separate from the rest of us. Part of the writer\u2019s job is to establish common ground between character and reader, no matter how alien\u2014figuratively or literally\u2014the character is, so that when the character does that bad thing, the reader believes in it and feels the pain of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The example that comes right to mind is the loss I felt when I realized Michael Corleone was beyond redemption. I had my hopes until then. Another is the character with the doomed-to-fail love affair (Carey Mulligan in <em>An Education<\/em>). Or the character who\u2019s struggled to get clean who is again tempted by drugs (practically every musician biopic you\u2019ve ever seen). Noooooo, we say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These bad choices can\u2019t just be dismissed, because, as Canty maintains and every war has proved, there are a lot of capacities in each of us. As a writer, what he tries to do \u201cis reduce the distance between the reader and the character,\u201d so that capacity remains viable and their choices and desires retain meaning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the same time, he makes sure the story actions \u201csomehow reflect the characters, the people that are in them.\u201d Whether bad or good. I recently read a thriller in which the main character joins the French Resistance. There were many excellent reasons for a Frenchman to do so, but most did not. So what was it about this character that propelled him to that choice? The author didn&#8217;t convincingly say. The important insights revolved not around the fact that he joined, but <em>why<\/em> he did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Love your bad guys,&#8221; writing coaches say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Photo: Florian Pircher for Pixabay<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ran across an old interview with Kevin Canty, a novelist and short story writer who teaches at the University of Montana in Missoula. At the time of the interview, he had some observations that seem particularly germane to writers of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8380\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Characters Who Do Bad Things - Why do fictional characters do what they do, even the bad things? Making sure readers feel their pain.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[61,174,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-character","category-first-draft-blog","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2ba","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8381,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8380\/revisions\/8381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}