I've just finished reading The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom, and one of his quotes sparked an idea in me and got me thinking about how writers create characters they'd avoid in real life.
I'm quite a passionate person. So everything I feel, I feel strongly. If I feel sad, I really feel it. If I feel happy, I really feel it.
But the one emotion I always struggle with is anger, because I'm not really an angry kind of person.
Which can be both a good, and bad, thing.
If I'm pissed off with someone, it's a short, sharp burst and then I'm over it. I don't ever hold onto anger, because I don't believe it does you any good.
Which is why I love Mitch Albom's quote so much:
"Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves."
And he's right. Because holding on to anger is rarely a good thing.
But at the same time I can see the positives in anger as well.
Anger can motivate you into action. It can keep you fighting, when you need to keep fighting. It allows you to refuse to let bullies beat you down.
My problem with anger though is that I always feel guilty feeling it. But why should I? Because actually anger, when directed in the right way, can be a healthy expression of how we are feeling. It's the holding on to it that's not good for us.
But this quandary over anger got me thinking about how as writers we are able to create characters that we'd hate, dislike, or avoid in real life. More often than not, as writers, we also create these characters with some empathy and sympathy too.
I've always felt, even as a young child, that people are the way they are for a reason. The messed up, crazy adults messing with their employees, or screwing with the heads of their partners, or getting a kick out of demeaning someone publicly, there's a reason behind their behaviour. Because if they were truly happy, they wouldn't do it, would they?
There was an interesting video on the BBC website with Scarlett Moffatt, talking about how she decided to become a Samaritans ambassador after she sought help from them for some online trolling.
Now though, instead of getting upset by trolls, she sends them a private message asking them if they are ok, and giving them the number for the Samaritans. And, interestingly, instead of getting more abuse back, Scarlett told reporters that the same people often apologise before taking the number.
It's still hard, though, to be sympathetic towards someone who is being horrible to you in real life.
As a whole, I think I'm a pretty empathetic person. But if someone's really foul, I can't tend to rouse any empathy for them. Because there's a big part of me that thinks there's lots of people who have had a hard time in life, who don't go around behaving badly and making people feel like crap, so why should someone else behave that way?
Even more so, if you know what it's like to have a hard time and to be made to feel crap by someone's actions, why would you then recreate that for someone else, or get a kick out of doing it?
In real life, I avoid those types of people - angry bullies who get a kick out of making others feel small.
But as a writer I can't.
I need to create those characters in my stories so that they feel real and believable.
Not all of them need empathy from the reader, but some do.
For instance in my debut novel, Boom's Graffiti Boy, which hinges around domestic violence, there is absolutely no need for anyone to feel any sympathy at all towards the aggressor, Oli. In fact, the more repulsive he is, the better.
But Feisty Girl is a different matter.
The girl in the photo could be her. In fact, it's kind of how I picture her. Sweet-faced, young. Just hurt from all the crap that's come her way. And for her, the hurt just happens to come out as anger. She's not a bad person, it's just her anger empowers her and allows her to regain some kind of self-esteem, by not allowing what's happening in her life to beat her.
So although she's someone I would *probably* avoid in real life (I say probably, because actually if she opened up about why she was behaving the way she was behaving, I know I'd feel sorry for her and try to help), as a writer I needed to show what was happening in her life in order to garner some empathy from the reader.
I guess the difference between real life and writing is that with writing, you can take a step back from what's happening. It might be based on a true story, or stories, but you don't have to personally feel all the horrible things your characters make others feel.
In real life, though, it's harder to avoid how these types of people make you feel.
A bit like the Maya Angelou quote... "I've learnt that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
So in real life, someone like Oli would make you feel destroyed.
But as a writer you can create his character because you know you don't have to deal with him, AND because you know you need someone like him for your readers to dislike or hate.
So maybe as a writer I should take advantage of the 'writer's distance' and create a few more evil, horrible characters. Characters, who in real life, I wouldn't want to be in the same room as for even a second. But characters - who for the sake of the story - help to make it what it is.
That's how writers do it.
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