You may have noted I’ve slowed down with the book reviews. This is because I’ve been writing more (for reasons I may or may not explain, depending on future events), and so have spent less time reading.
But I’m working my way through another Koontz, Midnight. One thing that strikes me as I read it is how much I appreciate the “nice” characters. This is common in Koontz, and more uncommon in novels generally than you might expect. It reminds me a little of C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength, because you have to slog through hard, dry stretches featuring evil characters who are gradually losing their humanity, which only makes the bright sections, with people you like and root for, even more enjoyable.
Good characters (I think I’ve blogged about this before) are a real problem for the novelist. Villains are easy. Good characters have tripped up authors by the dozens. Sometimes they’re so wishy-washy, dull and passive that they bore the reader. Other times they’re unconvincingly cheery and chipper, and you just want to strangle them.
I can think of two reasons why authors have this problem.
If the author is not himself a very good person, he thinks he understands good people, but probably doesn’t. John 1:5: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not comprehended it.” There’s a great scene (If I remember correctly) in Charles Williams’ All Hallows Eve, in which an evil scientist uses a device to try to monitor the mind of a virtuous woman. He finds that he can’t stand it. The environment is incomprehensible and painful for him.
On the other hand, if the author is a pretty good person, he probably isn’t paying close attention to himself, and so knows as little about how his mind works as the bad person knows.
But when it works, it works, and your reader will want to come back.
I think this is also true because the things that really make authors feel they have a tale they want to tell are the extremities, and particularly extremities of struggle.
I also think the key is to differentiate between “decent” and “good.” There is a type of goodness that shows itself when the character is thrust into nearly unimaginably bad situations and resists temptations of operatic proportions. This makes good, viscerally-stirring reading. These characters also leap from the page, going “you must write me and I will look like this and do that and people will want to read.”
Decent people, I feel, are a different type of “good.” They do normal things, make right choices (most of the time), but their goodness is thoroughly organic and internal. That’s the goodness that’s really hard to capture, I think.
I think this is an important subject; but it’s difficult to talk about… for some reason. I think it’s essential a novel have good characters. I’m reading an early book by Stephen King (Blaze; an early work) and all there is (almost) is horrid characters. As you read you wonder why anyone would bother to write such a book. As is usual with the King novels I’ve read there is a vicious anti-christian sentiment; as well as an obsession with adolescent, bathroom humor. (King makes a good apologia for an elitist dictatorship, as most of his characters are working class, and utterly evil.) One looks in vain for good people. (I suppose in King’s world the only ‘good’ people are Left wing writers.) This lack of good characters give his novels a nihilistic despair. ie. if life is really that evil, why should anyone bother? (And I’ve seen him present no upper class people as evil; not that I’ve read a great many of his novels.)
I should have added that the novel is compelling in its own way. (I’m actually listening to it; and the contrast between Blaze and George is effective; the narrator does an excellent job.) In the opinion of Charles de Lint, it’s one of King’s best works.
I read one King, and saw no reason to read another. I think the book I read (The Talisman) didn’t lack for good characters, but his bias against evangelical Christians was evident, and nothing I’ve read about his work since has caused me to revise that opinion.