Working on my manuscript this week, I've found that I really enjoy my time with the story. Of course, I'm not exactly just hanging out with it, and there are plenty of moments of frustration with sentences or uncertainty about how a scene should go, but I just have truly enjoyed both how the story is turning out and the actual process of writing itself. So this got me thinking why? Why is this project seeming so fun (at least for now!)? What exactly is so different about it?
Well, I think a large part of the answer could be that after coming off of 3+ months of intensive revising, it feels nice to be writing again. Creating, exploring, describing, experimenting — that's sometimes a lot more fun than cutting and rewording and staring at the same sentence that you could rewriting five different ways but still you don't know which one is best. So there's that reason!
But I think the truth is also that sometimes, some characters are just more fun to work with than others, and in this project, I find my character to be really likable and fun to write. I like spending time discovery her more. I like the ways she responds to life around her and the things she seeks. Maybe I find more of myself in her, or perhaps even the person I want to be. But after realizing just how much I enjoy my current protagonist, I started worrying about my past projects. Is it bad that I didn't enjoy my previous book's protagonist quite as much, or in quite the same way? And does that say anything about the quality of my story or my characters themselves?
I think the answer to both questions is 'no'. Writing a good character is not dictated by your feeling toward that character. You don't need to love them all the same way. And perhaps with villains, you might not even need to love them at all. But when I say "love", I am talking more about how you, the person, feel about your characters rather than the way that you, the writer, acts toward them. Perhaps your feeling toward a characters depends on your stage in life, how you feel one day, or the fact that their story is so much different than yours. I mean, it's no secret that I am not a boy, or never was one. So maybe I do not feel as much connection to my last protagonist Carter as I do with my current one, simply because she's a girl. But, at the same time, I could tell you that I do love another boy character I've written, so really, it could all just be about who the character is and how you connect with them from the standpoint of a person rather than a writer.
So, all of this to say, it's really not a bad thing to love your characters unequally (*gasp*), because they are not real and they are not your children, even if you might feel like they are most day. However, there is a caveat. It doesn't matter that you love your characters differently in the emotional sense, as long as you give them the same amount of love and concern. Ultimately, as long as you develop them to the best of your ability and work with them until they shine with emotion and can get some, and hopefully most, people to connect with them, then it is totally fine!
Emotions are necessarily a good indicator of how good the story is. Emotions are really just telling you about yourself. And, making a good story isn't all about emotion — not your own at least. Do we have to make the reader feel for your character and enter into their journey? Absolutely. But do we have to be fully in love with that character? Not necessarily. See, I think there is a fine line between loving our character as if they were real and we wanted to be there friend, and loving your character in the way a writer needs to — with concern and careful detail to their needs and actions and thoughts and struggles. Just because I might not want to hang out with one of my characters as much I would like to hang out with another one doesn't mean I do not have a love for him. It might just be less emotional in terms of my personal self, and more objective on the part of my writing self.
Every project will bring a new feeling with it. But a project, just like a character, is not made only by your personal response to it. It's made from hard work and the love a writer brings to their characters. Certainly it can be a plus to want to be best friends with your character, but not a prerequisite to making a great novel. Objectivity can even benefit your characters. So while I am greatly enjoying my character right now, I don't need to have insecurity about my other characters, and neither do you. As long as you work with your characters equally, you don't need to love them equally. But of course we hope our readers will love them all!
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