ARE WRITERS EXPECTED TO CREATE GOOD-LOOKING CHARACTERS?

ARE WRITERS EXPECTED TO CREATE GOOD-LOOKING CHARACTERS?

The question provoked controversy a while back at The Kill Zone, a website by and for crime-fiction writers.  Regular contributor Kathryn Lilley titled her post “Must our heroes be handsome?”  Lilley was moved to write on the topic after attending a workshop.  A well-known novelist had said he made his characters good-looking because “I like to write books that sell.”

When Lilley recovered from being shocked by simple honesty (the writer’s thrillers are  nothing if not commercial), she realized her favorite novels did in fact have “handsome and brilliant” protagonists.  Even so, most of those who wrote comments on her piece expressed outrage over the idea:  How dare any reader expect heroes or heroines to be lookers!   

Still, it's a question worth asking.  But it should also be said that good writers don’t give readers elaborately detailed descriptions, either of people or places (never say never: the exceptions are certain kinds of romance novels). Instead, good writers carefully select a few details that will lead their readers to imagine the rest.

But that begs the question: do readers want to be led to imagine a hunk or  dish, or characters like themselves and their neighbors?    

Those who read mostly to be entertained want idealized characters. They don’t have to be beautiful, but they should be exceptional in some way: charming, ruthless, menacing, witty, etc. In life, of course, people can be charming or ruthless or both.  Just not all the time.

Look at the person in the photo. Everything about her says she's beautiful, witty, charming--especially charming, considering her hat. My first impression of it was of an impossibly bizarre birth defect. Anyone who wears a hat like that to a funeral (Margaret Thatcher's) has got to be charming.  But wearing such a hat also makes the wearer look even better.

OK. Now imagine that when we next meet up with this real person, we're in a pub having lunch.  And she sneezes.  And she has a nasty sinus infection.  God--she gets something really disgusting on her dress, and yells “Don’t look at me!” She snatches a dirty napkin off the table and works to wipe off what’s on her front--but the napkin now adds ketchup from some fries (excuse me, chips, she's British) to what’s already there, which, understandably, leads to more not-so-charm-school behavior.

Funny. Come to think of it, I like her better already.  
(photo courtesy of Julian Mason)
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