What makes a character resonate?
What makes a character resonate, is that the reader can identify with them in some way.
For example if Isobel is having computer problems, and isn’t necessarily an expert, this may cause some tension and angst with the character—and the reader. Especially if she’s just spent the last six or eight hours doing it, although making a reader go through six or eight hours of realtime is inadvisable for those who would write.
Unfortunately, it isn’t always that simple.
While Isobel can search the internet, and ultimately decide to download Adobe InDesign SC6 in order to make the book covers for her urban supernatural fantasies, and suddenly discover that she really has no idea of whether or not her system has the requirements, in this case a Pentium 4 processor and Windows XP, and a processor of 233 mhz, she doesn’t even know if it will work. Imagine her tension when the thing takes four hours to download. Imagine how it feels within her, when the screen flickers.
Is this normal? What if her computer crashes? What if she can’t make her book covers? She’s already under the gun. What with deadlines, and a sick kid in bed, and having to take time off from her real job to look after Mellie.
And what if Isobel is a left-handed German-speaking Haitian quadriplegic lesbian with red hair and a penchant for biting the big blue vein in a giraffe’s neck for her daily sustenance?
Well, we’ve lost a few readers there, haven’t we? Because we don’t have enough in common. And what kind of a name is Mellie? That’s no name for a kid. She has a big blue Afro—running down her neck and back.
The problem is that some of the readers are male, very few of them speak German, and there isn’t enough back-story to hook the reader. Never mind that Isobel has found out the thing doesn’t work, and the uninstaller she downloaded for free some time ago now wants money to take Adobe off of her computer. (This writer would submit they probably want money to take themselves off of the computer.)
(Take that, you beast, PerfectUninstaller.)
So maybe the reader can relate to that, but the other stuff is perhaps harder.
Perhaps the writer should tell the reader right up front that Isobel was trained by birth by the Sisterhood to be a stealth, and a spy, and a courtesan. She’s here on Earth to destroy the book.
Any books, really.
And that she was blown up real good in a tank battle—sea tanks—on Betelgeuse’s fourth planet in the eighth dimension. This was some years ago. Now she’s struggling along on multiple revenue streams of micro-finance, if you know what I mean. That’s because her government has collapsed and hasn’t contacted her in some time.
Maybe they should know that, eh? And maybe, Isobel should try just using her Control Panel's feature, 'add and remove programs,' to uninstall a few things, including that fucking PerfectUninstaller, to uninstall Adobe. Yeah, it’s too bad Louis went out tonight and left this imaginary character to screw around with his computer.
Boy, is he ever going to be mad when he comes home, eh?
Hopefully Mellie will be better after a little irradiation. Louis and Isobel adopted Mellie, who resembles nothing more than that weirdo Ugh-Kuthwaq or whatever his name was in ‘The Star Fox.’ (Sorry, as a fictional character I can’t recall the name of the author. Louis is better at that than I am. Oh, and I think the proper form is to put the title of the book in italics, but what the hell.) Should there be a question mark after 'hell?'
Who cares.
We’re on the internet, now. Watch out, world, here we come…to uninstall something after a tea break.
If, you know what I mean.
And it looks like poor old Isobel is looking at a long night, of uninstalling stuff, and waiting for crazy old Louis to come home.
He beats her, you know.
