I’ve been thinking and thinking about how to make my character likable. Well it’s not that I don’t know how to make a character likable. You give her noble traits, you make people feel sorry for her, you make sure she is logical and motivated. You give your character an attractive voice (nobody likes a whiner), you make her proactive.

But here’s why it’s so dangerous to take advice from a newbie. When I learn a new thing, I get all excited about it and I write about it. But I don’t always understand the new thing. So when I was writing this book that I’m trying to revise, I had learned a shiny new thing from reading a Shannon Hale book. At the end of the chapter the character should be in worse shape than she was in at the beginning and the loss of ground should be her own fault.

But now I see that there’s more to it than that. What if at the beginning of the chapter she’s a free person and at the end of the chapter she’s in prison and she’s in prison because she murdered someone? Well she’s in worse shape at the end of the chapter than at the beginning and the loss of ground is her own doing, but no one wants to read anymore because your heroine is a creepy killer.

So to refine this I’d say: the character has to have a plan at that beginning of the chapter (or scene or section) that is reasonable and logical and moral. And then as she acts on her plan to reach her goals, she has to meet with disaster through no fault of her own.

Well, how can her loss of ground be her own fault and at the same time come about through no fault of her own?

I think she has to lose ground because of a good plan she’s working on, but not because of some moral failure.

So her plan may be to take the subway downtown because she can’t afford a cab. She only has twenty dollars and she has to save that money to buy her little brother the medicine he needs to live. So she takes the subway, which has been foreshadowed to be dangerous, because she really has a noble and logical reason to take the subway, and then she is mugged and she loses the twenty bucks and has a lump on her head besides. That is a disaster caused by her plan but it’s also through no fault of her own. She did the best thing and she was still thwarted.

As long as the steps your character takes to achieve her goal are steps any smart and noble person would take, the reader will sympathize with her when she moves from the frying pan into the fire. But if she causes her own downfall by being stupid (oh, what’s that noise? I bet the killer that just escaped from the prison a block away has broken into my house. I better set my cell phone down and lock my dog up and then go upstairs in my nightgown with no weapon to find out if the killer is hiding behind the door with a big knife.) or by being mean (I want to cover up my sin of adultery so I’ll kill my husband and then he won’t be able to tell anyone that the baby is not his.) then no one will like her.

Yee haw! I think I know why people keep saying my sweet heroine is unlikable. I’m almost ready to stop thinking and actually start revising.

I just have one more thing to try to work out first: What to do when your character really does have some flaws? How much moral failure can she have and still keep readers following along and hoping she learns and grows and succeeds in the end? Why did readers stay with Scarlett O’Hara?

So here’s a huge beef I have: cardboard characters. I’ve written them myself. I hate to admit it.

What are cardboard characters? They are people who aren’t real. They come into a story because the author needs them to do something. They act without motivation, to do the thing the author needs them to do, and then they leave or stand quietly in the corner until they are needed again.

In my first novel my hero had two little sisters he cared for. The sisters were twins and one was talkative and tom-boyish and the other was quiet and feminine, but they weren’t real. They just kind of stood around and cried when I needed them to cry. They didn’t react to situations the way real flesh and blood little girls would react.

I was talking to a writer several weeks ago who suggested that since boys only read books with male protagonists we should write books with male protagonists. I said I had trouble doing a boy pov because I didn’t understand boys’ minds. She said that wasn’t really a problem because we can write a book with a female main character and then, after we are done, we can change it to make her into a him.

Um…not really. You can’t just make a girl into a boy. You’d have to change the way she walked, the way she talked, the way she viewed other boys and the way she viewed girls. You can’t just make a character into anything you want that character to be.

If you view your character as a prop that can be twisted into whatever sex you want, if you can put words into your character’s mouth, then the character is not a real person in your mind. And if your character is not a real person in your mind, then he won’t convince readers to adopt him as a friend.

No, your characters aren’t real. I’m not saying you need to hear them speak to you. I’m saying that you should know them so well that they feel real. I’m saying they have to have personalities of their own.