Question of the day, #1

[mrissa]

So I was thinking about the recent rants from "oh noes, girl cooties in my SF" people. I was thinking about which traits of mine are most crucial to my reading experience when reflected in characters. I do not, for example, find it particularly difficult to care about male characters, or non-white characters, or homosexual characters. But I was pretty sure that if I thought about it, I would come up with some things where I really did want characters to be "like me."

What I came up with is loyalty.

I don't require a character with whom I can identify; caring is enough. But when a character is blithely disloyal to people who are showing them loyalty, I have a hard time not putting down the book and walking away.

How about you? What traits do you want to share--or at least not blatantly not share--with a character in order to care about their story?

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

How would you count the Hitchcock-type plot where you have normal person going about normal life to whom Something Happens and who is then running around trying to stay ahead of plot developments for long enough to figure out what the heck is going on, but who really would like nothing more than for the competent authorities to take care of everything and sort it out so they can go back to their normal life ?

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

Good question. It's a type of story that sometimes works for me and sometimes doesn't. In general, it works for me to the extent that the protagonist copes with the demands of the plot, however unwillingly, and fails to work for me to the extent that the protagonist tries to pretend that the plot isn't happening or spends lots of time complaining that it's unfair that this is happening to them.