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Every second and fourth Tuesdays of each month, MYSTERY OF CHARACTER FEATURING SHANNON MUIR focuses on the art and craft of writing, from Shannon’s perspective or give you insight on her process as an author. To catch up on all posts, check out the MYSTERY OF CHARACTER FEATURING SHANNON MUIR portion of the website!
This week features Shannon’s thoughts on what makes a character attractive.
What makes a character attractive?
By this, I’m not just meaning the physical characteristics of a character. I’m also not meaning what causes other characters in the story.
What makes characters attractive to readers?
The character doesn’t have to be ‘likeable,’ to throw around a sometimes overused (in my opinion, anyway) buzz phrase. It’s not even required that the character be a hero; more than a few anti-heroes are attractive to readers. So what seems to be the commonality?
What seems to matter is that the character be someone the readers care about. Even this seems like a real surface statement, because going back to the anti-heroes, they’re not always good people; still, readers can care about finding more about the character. That investment can only be made if writers set up interesting enough characters (please note I didn’t say complex; archetypes can be interesting too) to encourage readers to invest in them.
Until next time!
Shannon