One of the most common problems I see when I’m editing manuscripts is this: characters who are way too self-aware.
Often this comes in the form of an awkward diagnosis that relies on pop psychology or therapy-speak to explain a character’s actions.
Things like…
- George’s fear of intimacy left him unable to date confidently so he turned to the bottle instead.
- Barbara’s anxiety was such that she could barely leave the house.
- Kwame’s mother was terribly overbearing, resulting in a series of unhealthy relationships with women.
- Chris never learned how to be a good communicator.
Don’t do this!
The problem with authors diagnosing characters
I get it. You want to weave together someone’s present with their past to make them feel like a more well-rounded character.
But issues arise when authors play psychologist and give their characters an overly straightforward diagnosis:
- Almost no one is entirely self-aware in real life. We all have blind spots and they’re ridiculously difficult to see. Even after we become aware of them it’s almost impossible to do anything about it. It’s part of what makes us human. So when a character knows exactly why they’re doing what they’re doing: it doesn’t seem real.
- The diagnoses are usually too general. Just about everyone feels anxiety from time to time. So chalking someone’s actions up to anxiety is a variation of the show don’t tell problem. We don’t learn much about someone when we’re told they’re anxious. How does that anxiety manifest itself for that unique character?
- The diagnoses are reductive. Trust me: I’m a huge believer in therapy, and I am not trying to stigmatize mental health issues. But a diagnosis on the page is just not the same thing. As helpful as a diagnosis may be, it can’t possibly encompass the whole of someone’s actions in real life and it rarely feels believable on the page, unless the diagnosis itself becomes a plot point within the novel, e.g. the character is seeing a therapist.
- If the character already knows what their problem is, what’s left for the reader to learn about them? If the reader feels like the main character already knows exactly why he/she is the way he/she is and that is the same at the beginning as it is in the end…. why are we reading to find out more? What else is there left to discover?
What to do instead
If you find yourself generalizing or chalking all of a character’s problems up to a pat diagnosis, here’s what to do:
- Show the character’s symptoms, but let the reader draw their own conclusions about the root cause.
Essentially, let the reader be your character’s psychologist. Let them assemble the evidence, see the biography and history, gauge the symptoms, and draw their own conclusions about what ails your characters.
It’s totally fine to show a character learning a key insight about themselves, and in fact characters should learn things over the course of the novel. But whatever they learn should be imprecise, hard won, and difficult to act upon.
In other words: it should be messy, not tied up in a nice neat diagnosis. That’s your reader’s job.
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Art: Home visit by Peter Alfred Schou
Too true. Most people have no idea why they sabotage themselves. Even if a friend told them (without clinical terms), they probably wouldn’t accept it. If they did and asked that friend for help, they probably would have excuses for why the friend’s advice wouldn’t work (and may even end up in an argument).
People think psychologists fix people, but that’s not what they do. They don’t give people the answers. They guide them in working out the answer for themselves. If you don’t come to the realization for yourself, it is hard for you to see the precise thing that is hurting you (especially if it involves your relationship with a loved one). Without that aha! moment, it is nearly impossible to begin the difficult task of making changes you need to make.
While a main character might be able to summarize a friend so neatly, someone shouldn’t be able to summarize themselves so neatly because even if they did know, as far as they are concerned, it is more complicated than the simplest terms. If it is important, that aha! moment should be part of the story. If it isn’t so important, then it should be shown, instead of told so that a sharp reader can still have that aha! moment for themselves.
The diagnoses are too reductive and general? Indeed! And in real life too, all too often. Real people often profess a reductive and generalized view of themselves and others. A false and limiting narrative congruence can result. Having a character profess such a diagnosis, but then remouce/transcend it could make for an interesting story.
One way to reveal a character, or how a character appears on the outside, is to have people discuss that character when he or she is not present. This might seem like an awkward technique – and one that won’t work for several kinds of narrators – but it does give a kind of birds eye view of how that character relates to others and where they’re failing. (More often we cricitise rather than compliment others to let off steam.) And I’ve just discovered that tossing in a few comments about the mc in a query can bring them sharply into perspective.
But back to a novel length treatment of characters: under certain conditions, critical comments from a few other characters can engage more sympathy for the character, especially if that character hasn’t reacted negatively, because we actually judge others more on how they react than what others say about them.