Feeling Your Characters

I am working on a series of books that I describe as "children's books that aren't for children". The title character for these books is Grosso the Oso. Grosso is a large anthropomorphic bear. He stands on two legs, talks normally, and nobody bats an eye at the fact that he's a talking bear. He's kind of like Smokey the Bear. The main difference between the two being that people like Smokey.

Grosso is the most hated person in all of the city. He lives in the dank alleys in a cardboard box. People who see him shout hateful obscenities and throw trash at him. On bad days, he accepts the life that people have assigned him. On good days he slinks into a hole where nobody can judge him.

Periodically, some thing happens in Grosso's life that fills him with hope and excitement. He proceeds to act on his hope, whether it be something like getting a mattress to sleep on in the alley, or buying a big cookie from the grocery store. Invariably, it explodes in his face and usually results in an angry mob chasing him back into the shadows.

These are fairly dark stories. An innocent soul is treated like a vile wretch for no good reason. It straddles the fence between depressingly cruel and hilariously twisted. One might find me to be a truly disturbed individual for making these stories. And though I won't say that I'm not disturbed (I am a writer after all), I would say that it is not the way that one might think.

When I was writing Grosso the Oso Gets A New House, I needed to think of something to destroy his current home to provide impetus for him to find a new one. The thought comes to me, how about a heavy rain makes his cardboard box collapse? I chuckled at the thought, started writing it down, then had the follow-up, the cardboard would turn into a disgusting mush that gets matted into his fur. I laughed even more. Then I felt bad. Grosso the Oso is a tragic character; he doesn't deserve the crap that happens to him.

When I write these things down, I feel them happening to my creation. And bringing misfortune and meaningless harm to something you've created should make you feel bad. Characters are not merely puppets that you manipulate. Good characters are people. They have lives, thoughts, feelings, desires, just like a real person. And nobody knows them more closely than you.

Even if you are the god of your universe when you write, you can surprise yourself with what you come up with. When something particularly cool happens, you should feel happy about your characters. When you come up with something truly horrific that happens to them, it should make you feel bad.

This is what prevents you from being a complete monster. This is not you torturing fictional people for your own sick thrills (I hope). This is you making things happen that have to happen in order to tell a compelling story. Feel your characters' pain and their joy; then tell the best damn story you can.