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Ok, so I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t log in on here! Phew!

@joelle-stone

Ha ha, yeah. What with all the forest fires last summer, I learned not to take the security of the mountains for granted. We had so much smoke that my favorite mountains (and the ones closest to us) completely disappeared, leaving… flatness. It was honestly pretty scary. XD

Whoa! That sounds creepy! I’ve never experienced anything like that; that’s a TON of smoke! Once, in our old neighborhood, we made so much smoke burning wet leaves that it blocked out the road, but we didn’t realize it, so the fire department came and us kids got to have a tour of the firetruck while my dad put the fire out with our hose, which took forever, LOL

And your dog sounds cool, as does your (hopefully) new property. 🙂 We have a creek that we play in in the summer; my older sib’s dog really loves it. 😀

Ha ha, thank you! 😀 And yeah, there is totally something about creeks that dogs love. . . . maybe it’s the getting covered in muck part, LOL . . . and the eating dead fish part.

@jasmine

You did awesome with the first person narrative! I really like it 😀

@rusted-knight

Klein sounds super cool!!! Can’t wait to see him in action 😉

@rose-colored-fancy  @this-is-not-an-alien (I didn’t see your post, Cathy, but Rose was mentioning what you said 😉 )

Like Cathy said, (IDK if y’all saw that post, it isn’t showing up, for some reason?) people like characters that are interesting, not necessarily perfect.

I totally agree with Cathy and you!!! (and no, I don’t see her post 🙁 But I know what Ehud and Rosario did from reading your post)

In my opinion, relatability is subjective, and often overrated. I have loved characters that are totally different from me in every way, but I think what makes them relatable, likable, and interesting is their motivations, not their actions. This goes mainly for Fantasy and Sci-fi, but for other genres too. I mean, I don’t think any of us have found out we are a long-lost princess/prince or have defeated dragons and evil empires, or been in a war, but most of us have found out something about our heritage/family we didn’t know, we’ve overcome things we struggled with and gone through hard situations. You can relate to the motivations and feelings, even if not to the events.

(I don’t even know if that rant was relevant, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot)

YES!!!! And it was totally relevant, actually. We like characters when we can relate (in at least some small way) to them!

As for likable characters, I always feel as though the characters are my friends, more than that I ‘become’ the character I’m reading about, so I can either approve or disapprove of their actions. I also admire some characters because they’re awesome XD

SAME! EXACTLY! It’s like when you’re watching a movie and shout at the character to “look up for Pete’s sake, LOOK UP!” or “I told you so” or “what? I would totally not do that!”

Also, I can excuse a lot of dumb decisions in a character if I understand why they’re acting as they are.  If a character spontaneously punches someone that mocked her, I’ll think the character is dumb, but if I know that the character was bullied in the past and still feels like a failure because she never stood up for herself, and reacted out of a deep memory that caused her pain, I’ll sympathize and understand.

Totally (and great example, btw)! A lot of the articles on here talk about that, and its something I have to keep in mind as I write. 😉

And, as Cathy said, characters that have deep flaws, motivations, and conflicting actions are fascinating, even if they do frankly awful things.

Yes! It makes you want to learn more about them so that you can better understand why they did this terrible thing, instead of making you want to stop reading.

On that note, there’s a clear difference between a character doing bad things because of their personality/motivations and a character doing bad things because they’re excused in the story. An example of this I distinctly remember was the book series “Gladiator” by Simon Scarrow. (I didn’t finish them, and I do not recommend them. XD) The books weren’t objectively ‘bad’ as far as I can remember, but I remember how the character’s obsessive and merciless search for vengeance was justified and written as though it was supposed to be satisfying. It wasn’t. I wasn’t rooting for the protagonist (I don’t even remember his name XD) Because I didn’t agree with any of his actions, and especially not with how he was portrayed, as though he was doing the right thing. I can’t exactly explain the difference, but it’s definitely there.

I’ve never heard of that series, but, IF YOU’RE DOING BAD THINGS THEY ARE BAD! That’s a very unrealistic perception portrayed in that book. Evil cannot be portrayed as good; if anything, the book should show how his wrong decisions caused pain and more trouble, and then reconciliation — he realizes he’s wrong and there’s a better way.

I think a factor is a balance, if all your hero/good characters agree on a point, and all the villain/bad characters disagree, you’ll assume the point is correct. But if a character is believing and acting out of a lie and other ‘hero’ characters disagree with them, you’ll immediately get the feeling that the character might be wrong. I think this is mostly a pitfall with non-Christian authors, but it’s just something I’ve noticed.

That is a really interesting observation (how do you notice this stuff???)! It brought this scenario to my mind: in Star Wars (have you seen it?), Anakin doesn’t agree with everything the Jedi Order believes (such as their take on love), but the other Jedi seem quite fine with it and try to correct him. It makes you think Anakin was wrong . . . or was he actually right, on some points at least?

So characters who aren’t too perfect are more likely to be liked I think, and characters who do things out of character a little sometimes like the tough girl who cries at least once in the story or the emotional kid who doesn’t cry at a horrible event or the bubbly character who turns serious under a crisis and all that.

Ooooo, YES!!!!! I completely agree, Cathy!

And another thing I’ve found out is that I like characters who have at least one scene where they have their metaphorical emotional armor off. It makes you sympathize with them more.

Yes! Like they let someone else they are really close to know how they really feel!

Also, I LOVED the Mysterious Benedict Society! The characters are so so so interesting! My favorites are ‘The Great Kate Weathermachine’, and Constance Contraire. (Her insult-poetry makes me laugh) And I don’t know if you read The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey, but the depiction of the Netherlands was SOOO accurate. Especially the ‘why aren’t you in school??’ scenes. I’m not kidding, Dutch people do that. SO. MUCH.

Oh, I read that a long time ago, y’all! I don’t remember much, but I do remember that I was TOTALLY hooked (and that the characters were some of the most colorful I’ve ever read of)! And are you saying that you skip school? 😛

I love Schnauzers! The owners of the stable where I ride have a ton of dogs (Like, I’m not kidding, they have like eight dogs), including regular schnauzers and Giant Schnauzers, who literally look like domesticated teddy-bears. They’re so adorable!

AWWWW!  That is so cute!!! I love Schnauzers, they are literally some of the best dogs!!!!!!