What Makes A Good Read?
For me, it’s all about the characters. If I care about the main characters, I have a hard time putting the book down because I NEED to know what happens to them.
I am reading Lisa Gardner’s HIDE right now and the main character, Annabelle Granger, has been hiding, thanks to her parents, since she was seven-years old. Her father moved her and her mother from city to city, state to state, always changing their identities, never staying in one place for long. Her mother dies and years later her father is hit by a taxi and killed. Annabelle has no idea why her father forced them to run and hide for all those years. No pictures. No relatives. No fond memories. Her father has taught her to be paranoid, prepared, always on guard. She goes by the name of Tanya now. She’s still on guard but she is glad to finally settle down and have a life. She gets a dog and starts a business. She’s still not ready to use her real name, and she’s not sure why…until she sees on the news that the body of Annabelle Granger has been found. How can that be?
The first chapter is in Annabelle’s point of view and right away I feel for her as she’s swept away in the middle of the night time after time, never able to make friends, always told to look over her shoulder and be aware of her surroundings. Poor girl! What is she hiding from? Why is her father doing this to her? Is he crazy? What’s going to happen next?
What makes you read a book late into the night? Is it the story question, the characters, the fast pace, the great dialogue? Look at your own work in progress…what is it about your story that is going to make it difficult for the reader to set your book down? Feel free to share!
Labels: a good read, books, characters
posted by Theresa Ragan @ 2:31 AM
18 Comments:
Theresa, I agree with you. I have to care about the characters first and foremost. Then I like them to be in an interesting situation so that I turn the pages to find out what happens to them and how it will all work out.
Lisa's book sounds wonderful. What a great premise.
I agree. I need the characters to be either someone I care about or someone with whom I am intrigued - someone who makes me think "What makes them tick?" After that I want to see what happens to them and how they are going to deal with it.
One of the most touted books last year was a complete bust for me because I didn't like the heroine and therefore didn't really care what happened to her. I didn't even want to know what made her tick.
Me, too! It's definitely the characters first. If I like the characters well enough, I don't much care if there's a huge bigger plot. I'm quite content to simply see the characters progress. And there is nothing more disappointing than seeing characters I genuinely liked not reach their full potential.
Judy, good point! If the characters don't grow or progress by the end, that's frustrating.
In the book I am working on now, my heroine was abducted as a young girl and she is now known as the "one who got away." She is a private investigator and she volunteers her time once a week teaching teenagers to defend themselves. But my agent thought she was a little too "damaged" so I'm working on that. I'm also having a hard time making my hero three dimensional. I feel like he's just sort of "there" just "hanging out." I put in a troubled past and that didn't work...took it out...then I gave him a few "real" family problems and he's coming to life...I think. Argghhhh.
What do you do to make your characters come to life?
Give me and other WNP readers some tips!!!
It's always about the characters. If the characters are interesting, I want to know what happened. I think that's why I'm less enthused with some books, and even movies, like Terminator (my family can't wait to see the upcoming release). Those characters didn't interest me, no matter how much action was going on.
Characters, characters, characters. Love series (mystery mostly) where you get to follow them over many, many books.
The book sounds great! Now I want to read it!!
Christine, you have to read this book. Lots of twists and turns. I can't wait to find out what's going to happen. All of Lisa Gardner's books so far make me care about the characters. She knows how to make every single scene count. Filled with conflict and surprises.
Characters become more real, to me, when they are not only flawed but vulnerable. If they're too perfect, they're boring. Too flawed is a problem when the character is expected to change in a snap. It's also annoying when a character finally gets a concept, and then they're back in the old habits the very next chapter. The character didn't progress, and then at the end everything neatly fell into place. I don't know about anyone else, but I find life to be progressive changes, not a puzzle that's shaken up and suddenly falls magically into perfect place because there are only two pages left. :-)
I agree, Christine. The best characters for me are the one's who know they're damaged/flawed and who want to live a better life, and they do their best to make a difference for themselves and for those around them and at the end of the book they might not have magically changed, but we have hope that they are on the right path...
Good characterization for me includes DETAILS. They have a past, don't we all, they have dreams and fears and little daily rituals. And the author gives me just enough to intrigue but not an info dump of character traits...little bread crumbs all the way through. :)
Not to beat a dead horse, but I'm with ya'll on the "Characters are most important" bandwagon.
I want to meet a man and a woman who intrigues me, or makes me wish I could sit and chat with them over coffee at Starbucks. I guess a character who becomes a real person to me. That's hard to do.
Theresa, you asked for suggestions or advice, but I'm still working on this with my writing, so I hesitate to chime in with guidance. :-)
Pris, thanks! I think I might have answered my own question. Sometimes we/me just need a reminder. My hero needs more detail to make him real...like the people you like to read about. To become real we need to know just enough about their fears and dreams and hopes to make us care.
Thanks for chiming in!
Yes, Theresa! It's in the details, and not the paragraph after paragraph of details, but the little things like "He snapped to attention" as opposed to "He squared his shoulders, his back straight." Same thing but a very different feel to the character. The first leans toward military, police, etc, whereas the second could be cowboy, businessman, etc.
Judy, yes! Here is another example of a detail that makes me care about a character. Back to the book I'm reading...in Lisa Gardner's HIDE, the main guy used to be a sniper, but he doesn't particularly like guns, especially after he was forced to kill a man who was about to hurt a woman and child. After that, he becomes a detective instead and he's called in to help with a case. Okay, so in the book we're in his POV and he's the only one who's good enough with guns to sit in a tree with a rifle and a scope and protect the sargeant who is supposed to meet with the bad guy alone...
He'd never been a gun guy. Hadn't fired his first rifle until he'd attended the police academy. There, he'd made the discovery that he was quite good. With a bit of training, he scored expert. With a bit of nudging, he became a sniper. But it had never been true love. The rifle was not an extension of his arm, a calling of his soul. It was a tool he happened to be extremely skilled at using.
This small paragraph makes me sympathize with him. He doesn't like guns. He doesn't want to kill anyone...and yet he wants to protect the female sargeant who is also a good friend.
Oh, and I guess I don't know how to spell "sergeant"
sheesh
When I pick up a book to read, I'm already rooting for the characters and hoping things work out well for them--otherwise, I'm not going to want to spend several hours in their world. So I'm usually easy to please :-).
Great characters can definitely make a particular story linger in my mind, but it's the way the story's told--the author's voice, her skill with things like details and dialogue--that will make me pick up another book by that author. Again, I'm easy--I'll forgive the occasional discomfort with a character if the storytelling keeps me turning pages.
All about the characters... and if there's a great villain, so much the better! I think Julie Anne Long writes great villains, because they're often so sympathetic (and yet totally, totally wrong...)
Terry, I definitely agree with STORYTELLING being important. I will forgive all sorts of writing flaws if the story grabs me and keeps pulling!
Kate, a cruel yet sympathetic villain--I don't read many of those. I'll have to give Julie Anne Long a try!
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