When Authors Hate a Character

 Guys, it has been A Week, and on Friday almost nothing went the way it was supposed to. I am happy that it’s done. There were good things this week, too, though–I finished Arcane, I’ve watched more Alphas, I started an audiobook (Lionboy: The Chase), and I slept longer than last week.

Also I’ve started a hefty book on Irish mythology. It’s a bit more academic than I was hoping.

I talk a lot about bad writing in certain works, and because of the above-mentioned mythology text book, I almost made this about Iron Druid Chronicles again (seriously, Hearne’s take on Irish mythology is baffling). But I did not! Though it’s still something Irish-related, so onto Skulduggery Pleasant we go!

When Authors Hate a Character

I am currently re-reading the Irish book series Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy, fantasy/horror novels about a girl who becomes the apprentice of a sorcerer detective skeleton. It starts off quite fun (it is a Plot Point that everyone has an impossibly cool or dramatic name), though also pretty dark and bloody. The first book has a surprising body count for the age the books were marketed towards. I would love for people to read the first book (originally just titled Skulduggery Pleasant, but now given the subtitle “Scepter of the Ancients”). In this re-read I’ve realized that I have an alarming amount of the dialogue memorized.

But Tanith. We should talk about Tanith.

In the first book, we’re introduced to Tanith in the first book when she uses her sword to kill a troll in London. Shortly afterward, she’s recruited by Mr. Bliss (quite the recommendation), the strongest man in the world, to join our main cast and help fight the villains. She quickly establishes her sword skillz, and becomes a big sister figure to the protagonist, Stephanie. In the first novel’s final battle, she goes off to fight one of the bad guys, and she gets horribly injured, though she survives. It’s worth noting that she did win the duel and seemingly kill her opponent–it’s just that the opponent was turned undead, and she had no way of knowing how to beat him with what she had available.

And then she proceeds to never show that level of competency again. Tanith has fight scenes for the next four books, but she’s constantly being beaten to show off how tough or clever the villains of the book are. And along with being beaten, she also tends to go through something quite painful and horrible. In the fourth book, for instance, she gets nailed to a chair when one of the heroic characters is possessed by an evil spirit. She gets better because magic, but it’s still quite horrifying and she’s still understandably traumatized in the next book.

The rumor is that Derek Landy planned to have her killed off in the first book in the series, but for whatever reason the editors or publishing house convinced him not to. It doesn’t make much narrative sense for her to be killed in that book if you ask me, other than the shock value of killing off a main character. It seems as if, in order to act on being told to not to kill off a character that he wanted to, he lashes out by making this character suffer a lot throughout the story. In short, Landy hates this character, and takes it out on her throughout the series despite the fact that she’s done nothing to deserve this hatred and it doesn’t make much sense that the best fighter character is constantly getting kicked around.

My point is this: you should not hate your characters. Or at least, you should not let your personal feelings on characters get in the way of the story and their character arcs. I have not finished reading this series (I’ve only gotten six books in), but I intend to–and I suspect there’s not a compelling narrative reason for this character humiliation. It’s not to make a point other than that Landy likes having her suffer.

It’s not unusual to see authors do this with other people’s characters–it’s not uncommon for writers to create a character who is a stand-in for another character that they don’t like and write them in a way to make a point. Derek Landy does this with Caelan, a character who is clearly a riff on Edward Cullen (and works better as a character, though not having read Twilight or its sporkings in years I don’t know how accurate it is as a parody). This can go either way–either it works with the story, or it doesn’t. For an example that doesn’t work, Alan Moore infamously made plenty of characters he didn’t like into complete douchebags in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, not so much using the source material as going on about how they’re inferior to the complexity of Victorian literature.

You should not hate your characters. They’re not real, for starters. I’m tempted to say that there are ways you can do this and be fine, but the more I think about it, the more I don’t like it. If you create a character who only stands for everything you hate to be your villain or hate sink, that’s more you trying to work through your issues than tell a story (and also you shouldn’t hate real life people, either). 

What happens to characters should be part of what happens in the story. It shouldn’t be your own vendettas. You should not punish characters when you’re the one holding all the cards in the first place. It’s petty and vindictive, and it takes the reader out of the story. Obviously your personal feelings are going to affect anything you write, but don’t let it overwhelm the story.

Ugh. Tanith deserves better.

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