Characters are our avatars

John Yorke, in Into the Woods, reminds us that "all great drama is character-based".  "Without credible, vibrant, exciting, living, breathing, empathetic characters, drama simply doesn't work" he says.  He points out that "characters effectively become your avatar in the drama.  You live the essence of the story vicariously through them".  And "A good writer can force us to connect to anyone".

So how do we get people to care about those avatars?  First, there are the usual suspects.  Something happens to them that throws them out of their cozy everyday life.  They acquire a problem to solve, or face a challenge they must overcome.  And, just like us, they're none too keen on leaving the comfort of their sofas to go on a long and maybe dangerous adventure.

But that's where fiction differs from real life.  Because that character does eventually get up off their sofa and answer the Call to Adventure.  And it's a good thing they do, for without them deciding to go on that adventure there would be no story.  The avatar we usually follow is the protagonist, the person around whom the story revolves.  At the very least, the protagonist will be the person the audience cares most about, even if they're not the biggest action hero in the story.

But what do we mean by 'care'?  It doesn't mean we necessarily have to like that character.  Yes, we need to relate to them in some way.  And the chances are that we'll need to know something about their life in order to relate to them.  But they don't need to be'good'.  We often relate to well-drawn 'bad' characters, because we understand how they got to the place they are in today.  Knowing their history, we know they can't act in any other way than they do in the story,

And our avatars can do things we'd never dream of doing in real life.  Most of us, if someone close to us is murdered, won't go out and murder the killer in revenge.  We'll want to see the perpetrator brought to justice, but we would never pick up a gun or a knife and end that person's life.  Characters, as our avatar, can and do do those things.  

But we have to be careful about what we make them do.  There is a military SF series that I love, apart from one detail.  And that detail is that the military protagonist takes pleasure from killing.  Ultimately, that means I can't love that character.  Her love of killing goes against my moral compass. There are limits to how completely a reader is willing to merge with an avatar.

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