How Damaged Is Your Character?

Damaged characters are more interesting, but there's always the question of how damaged they can be before people find it too hard to read about them (or find them too unsympathetic to care). On the visual thesaurus site, novelist Laurel Dewey writes about this issue:

"I can speak from a lot of experience because I went through four drafts of Protector and Jane Perry. When I delivered the first draft to my editor he said he loved my book. He said -- his words -- that I created one of the most real characters he had ever read in fiction. But there was a problem. Jane Perry was just too angry.

He told me to tone her down but not lose that edge. She was really, really full of rage in the first draft. When I gave the draft another read from his point of view, I realized he was right. Jane Perry was extremely irritable. She was a drunk. She was abrasive to superiors. And here she was in the book being in charge of a nine and a half year old trauma victim. I put her in a situation that was basically out of her control. But her character grew and evolved via this child she reclaimed. And by the end of the book, Jane reclaimed some of her own innocence, too. I had to go back and I had to soften her. Now that was very important. My editor told me I had to give her much more vulnerability and allow the reader to feel compassion for her. Well, when I first heard that I thought, oh my God, if I do that I'm cutting her off at the knees. It was a tenuous situation. I didn't want to make her too soft. But, vulnerable, yes -- I certainly allowed her vulnerable moments that make her more human."

This is one of those issues where it can be really helpful to get an outside opinion, because as writers it's hard to be objective about our characters.

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