Thirteen clocks, thirteen days, thirteen triskaidekaphobes

[shalanna]

Here's fodder for the fiction readers (and writers) among us.

Do you require/expect the hero or heroine (protagonist . . . main character, point of view character) to be "good" and admirable before he or she can be sympathetic? I mean, will you read a book about someone who seems to be playing the scoundrel (but doesn't seem to have a black heart or to be evil, but is just in a bad situation and has been dealt scary blows and it's a matter of coping with circumstances as best she can)? Did you ever read Donald E. Westlake's Dortmunder books or Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr Burglar series novels? And like them?

Because I'm working on a Book of my Heart that's going to be a tough sell to agents who've read somewhere that "readers won't read on if the protagonist is not sympathetic."

So . . . I can find the oddest protags sympathetic. I always see more complex people as more interesting. It has something to do with the personality quirks I have. Mama always scolded me for bringing home all those interesting wounded sparrows and the runts of the litter and the ones who were left out, and never being interested in talking to the vapid cheerleader types or the "party crowd."

In my currently neglected masterpiece-in-progress, which is a gritty little urban fantasy that no one is going to want to buy (so I may end up putting it on my website piecemeal someday), my heroine is trying to get rid of the magical maguffin. It LOOKS like a Japanese netsuke when it pokes into our dimension, but it's actually not. It's actually the 3D manifestation of a multidimensional entity that has chosen a human to use in gathering power for its next project. And it chooses my heroine when she pickpockets it out of her last john's pants as a little souvenir. (She is the other reason this one won't sell--a runaway for good reason, scared and sixteen to start with, but soon becoming streetwise in the ways of the road--"grass, gas, or a**" for a ride, and that's how she finally ends up getting the money to keep going to where she can find a home, or so she figures--and I find her charming and manipulative and sympathetic, but an alarming number of people tell me they want to read a HEROine, not some scumbag of a kid. Yet my girl will quickly begin to redeem herself--she has only been "bad" in the sense that she isn't a Young Republican for a short time, after all--and will keep this entity from doing its dirty deed in the end. It's too bad--if it's really true--that most readers won't stick with a fascinating character if she has a flaw to begin with, 'cause that makes a true and meaningful character change and arc less possible. Sigh.)

It is definitely NOT a YA, although many agents have told me that if the protag is a young adult, it's a YA or teen book. Horsefeathers, I say, whomping them with copies of To Kill a Mockingbird and Bastard Out of Carolina.

I don't find as many contemporary fantasy novels to read as I'd like. Tim Powers has done some, and so has Emma Bull. But I finished all those, so I had to write one, and here came this character . . . oh, well. *I* like it, and *I* am proud of the thing, so. So it goes.

The world needs more Hotwheels of Tyme and Scabbards of Destinnie series tomes instead. *wry grin*

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I also think I'm in trouble telling people that yes, my pseudo-ChickLit novel is kind of a paranormal or has paranormal elements; what it does have is a thread of magical thinking and stuff that may or may not have anything much to do with "luck," whatever "luck" is (I like the way that the writers of the Liavek compilations see it--as something you have a certain amount of that follows you all your life.)

Little Rituals, my ChickLit (or literary novel masquerading as same) is not really about paranormal nothin'. Daphne is a screwball like me, a neurotic with perhaps mild OCD who comes to believe that her life's screwed-up-ness has come to a head because she has a hex/curse on her. One she has put on herself. So she tries the "easy way out" with a thread of magical thinking, hoping that this will fix it. She's kinda like my cousin, who does have mild OCD (but didn't want to take the pills 'cause they dulled her out) because as a child, the alcoholic game of "Uproar" that her parents played nightly was intolerable to her, and she invented rituals that "if I can do this perfectly fifteen times in a row, Daddy won't drink tonight." It's also like the animals in the Pavlovian or whatever studies--the ones who learned best when the rewards were intermittent. You probably know about them--if you reward the monkey EVERY time for pushing the button, he'll eat until he's barfing. But if you make the reward random and don't do it EVERY time, he gets obsessed like a gambler with "making the number come up" and starts pressing it and will not even eat the treats--just is pressing the button to figure out what is making it work sometime, and not work sometime. Up to his knees in M&Ms, and he doesn't even see them, trying as he is to figure out his world situation, hoping to gain some control or have some power over his own life. Poor bahsted.

But Daphne's not dysfunctional. She copes fairly well (until the world starts to fall apart.) And some of the things she comes up with do seem to work. She has that Korean friend who sends her (later in the book) to a woman who holds "sessions" that are supposed to clear your energy . . . but when Daphne and Elaine get there, it's more of an occult deal and scares them half to death (in this part, the reader won't be sure whether there was a real paranormal experience or not--the characters aren't sure.) Anyhow, though, the "curse" finally stops affecting her when she stops caring about all the things it was messing up. And it ends with the three friends on a road trip. It may make no sense whatsoever. I was just hoping that since they're willing to print such garbage as I see on the shelves stacked ten deep between pink covers, I would finally luck into the same fate and get some of MY garbage published. After all . . . why shouldn't I luck into it the way some apparently have? (Rhetorical question. Feel free to roll eyes.)

And *mine* is actually thought-out around a center. Has a significant character change (which I do not see in most chick lit, unless you count "she loses weight and it changes her entire life instantly" or "she cuts her hair and suddenly the world relates to her in a whole new way," both bogus in MY worldview--those are only outward manifestations of an inner change that has to be showing up in actions and thoughts.) All three main characters have an arc. Daphne tries to save herself the whole time (instead of, as in Bridget Jones and the endless Shopaholic series, the guys coming to the rescue inadvertently at the last minute) and DOES save herself when she discards the old patterns. Anyhow, the book is as good as many of the big-time hyped ones lying around on the tables at Barnes and Noble . . . **in my own view**. As I may have mentioned before, most people say, "But you can't be a good writer if you haven't been published. Look at the stuff I read--it's not that well written. So you must not even be THAT good."

However . . . that's another protag who may or may not seem "sympathetic" to the marketing gurus. I'm still going to continue trying to find someone who will publish the books.

Revoke those false gurus' hilltops, is what I say.

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I see that my meme (the one with the nutty questions) is propagating well. Very exciting! Bwaa-ha-ha!

* * *
A pertinent election-related quotation came to my attention today:

"Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?"-- Mark Twain

*sigh*

Comments

[koh4711.livejournal.com]

I love the Burglar books, and I've partially based my protagonist on Bernie. The key element to sympathy, at least in my view, is that the reader has to be able to understand why a character acts a certain way. The character you described sounds a lot more interesting than the cookie cutter fantasy leads shoved down our throats by so many other writers. A character who undergoes a radical, but believable, transformation is a character that sticks with you for a long time.

And I tend to think any agent who has a little pocket reference of rules about writing isn't going to be the best person to sell a book, anyhow. If I was told by someone, "Oh, I love the book, but you violate Tenant A, and Rule #47, and if you just change those, I think we can sell it", that they're wanting to conform to an outline more than representing a book they either have a passion, or at least some enthusiasm, for.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I agree with the above, and would add that the key to Dortmunder is the humor. Some humor will go a long way toward making the most oddball protags acceptable.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Good and honorable protagonists: Nah. Why would I want to read about someone whose qualities I might have to live up to? :)

Personally, two of my favorite kinds of protagonists are the ones who (1) often start out scoundrels, but not necessarily in an avil way, and (2) people who start out scoundrels and eventually work their way to being good and honorable.

I'm also into the ones who are just trying to get by day to day. They may find good and honorable things within themselves when tested, but for now they just think things like "Why me?" and "Uncle Seamus will kill me if I don't finish bringing in that bottom hundred tonight!"

[pameladean]

I don't have any specific requirements for a protagonist. There must be a lot of readers like me -- think of books like Ruth Rendell's where the viewpoint character is either the criminal or at least deeply wrong about a lot of things -- One Across, Two Down or Going Wrong or Live Flesh. It's not the protagonist per se but the treatment by the author that determines whether I can read a book or not.

Pamela

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

I'd read either of the books you describe.