WHAT DO READERS WANT?

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” — Joyce Carol Oates

joanneweck.com

Joyce Carol Oates, one of the most prolific writers of our time, must know. I know I try to write the story or novel that I would want to read--one that transports me into someone else's skin and soul. I generally attempt to create an empathetic protagonist, one the reader can comfortably identify with.

 However, at other times I also enjoy inhabiting the persona of persons very different, people who are capable of total self-absorbtion at the expense of others,  who are capable of conniving, of wicked behavior. Perhaps this is why I get the criticism, at times, that my characters aren't "likable" enough. However, as an admirer of the works of Oates,  Zoe Heller and Nabokov, I aspire to accomplish what they do--drawing the reader under the spell of even a most repulsive characters.

I am currently (re) editing a novel to minimize the less attractive traits and increase the likability factor of the two main characters in my work-in-progress because my agent's assistant suggested that neither was likable enough.  Although my purpose was to portray two difficult people (each with a great deal of baggage) forced to engage with one another and adjust, and in the process to learn to open their hearts and become more empathetic, apparently (to her at least) it is necessary to draw the reader into the story with characters who start out with more immediately engaging qualities.

I'm walking a fine line now between writing the novel I wanted to write and writing a novel that my agent will want to represent, thereby giving it a better chance of going forth into the world to actually be appreciated by readers, who of course, have the final judgment. It's a challenge. But I'm up to it. (I think.) WRITE ON!