nowday characters vs. characters in the past

[Kor]

I got into an arguement with my editor after she said that some of my characters are not human enough and readers won't be able to sympethy with them. However is it really necessary for the reader to do that? I read a fantasy novel series which was based on evil inhuman creatures who would sometimes kill for no reason. Even though they were nothing like humans, I got to like some characters becuase no matter what they did, they were always awesome and cool (maybe I'm just evil then).

But with today's characters (and from before 2 decades as well I guess) there are many examples of characters who don't act "human" yet they have many fans. Seshomaru (I will never be able to spell his name correctly), Vegita. And heck, even Gin (who is a villain) has fans and he is a real human, yet he acts nothing like that.
My editor did say that there is a gap of some generations between us. Maybe in the past it was important for the characters to be very human, but as I see it today, some viewers/readers/fans just like the character if he's cool enough and awesome.

What do you think?

[Akonyl]

tbh it really matters which characters the editor was saying it was hard to sympathize with, but for the most part I agree with them, hopefully I can use words to explain it decently.

all the characters that you mentioned aren't the portagonists, and that's one reason they're able to have fans. To use Gin as an example, although it basically goes for Vegeta as well (and I haven't watched InuYasha much so I don't know the entire schtick with Sesshoumaru):

Gin would not be a popular character if he was the main character of the series, or at the very least I doubt the series would be very popular. Although he has the "cool factor" that makes people like him, the only reason people aren't bored by him is because the spotlight shines on Conan, not him. Gin stays cool and interesting and has fans because when Gin pops up on screen, you think "AW SNAP, IT'S GIN, SHIT IS GOING DOWN", not because you think "Oh wow it's Gin I find his character to be deep and thought-provoking!" However, if the series instead focused on Gin rather than Conan, they would need to make him a sympathetic character somehow to keep the majority interested in his character (and thus the series).

In essence, the characters who have the most on-screen time have the hardest jobs and thus need to be much better, fleshed out characters (which includes the audience's ability to sympathize with them), while the characters that don't have as much screen time don't have to have the same complexity to get a good response, they just need a cool pair of sunglasses.

Although I did say that I agreed with the editor "for the most part", I will say that not all stories need sympathetic characters. All a story needs to do is be sufficiently interesting. However, it's a great deal easier to make a story interesting and get emotion from having characters that the reader/viewer care about and like than it is to write a masterpiece plot. This is why rather than writing intricate plots, stories/shows often kill off characters that the audience sympathized with, because it's a lot easier and the effect is sorta the same.

[ccppfan]

Well I like reading Warriors. Which is about a huge band of, uh, feral cats living in a forest.

AND I LOVE JAYPAW/FEATHER TO BITS.

Does that mean I'm not human? OH NOES.

[Chekhov MacGuffin]

I got into an arguement with my editor after she said that some of my characters are not human enough and readers won't be able to sympethy with them. However is it really necessary for the reader to do that? I read a fantasy novel series which was based on evil inhuman creatures who would sometimes kill for no reason. Even though they were nothing like humans, I got to like some characters becuase no matter what they did, they were always awesome and cool (maybe I'm just evil then).

But with today's characters (and from before 2 decades as well I guess) there are many examples of characters who don't act "human" yet they have many fans. Seshomaru (I will never be able to spell his name correctly), Vegita. And heck, even Gin (who is a villain) has fans and he is a real human, yet he acts nothing like that.
My editor did say that there is a gap of some generations between us. Maybe in the past it was important for the characters to be very human, but as I see it today, some viewers/readers/fans just like the character if he's cool enough and awesome.

What do you think?

   I don't think I have read anything you have written, but I write quite a bit of original work myself, usually fiction and often with fantastical aspects, although I haven't moved anything beyond the concept stages because I still haven't found that golden idea. Frankly though, you are trying to do the wrong thing by wanting to ignore the connectability to the reader in favor of mind's-eye candy. What you should be asking is how do I make my character inhuman and cool, awesome AND have the reader able to relate with them. People like characters who they are able to relate to. You will build a stronger character profile and they will have more appeal if you can do both.
   About the examples you have given: all three of them originate in a visual media. Cool appearance and action gets across an order of magnitude better in visual media than in text. Unless you are writing graphic novels, a strong characterization and vivid descriptive writing is a must to get the "awesome" aspect across successfully. I think this may be the source of the generational gap: there are visual media today that were not present or not so developed (i.e special effects in movies) in older generations. Visual media utilize more of the senses directly and are less abstract than text. In text based interfaces, trying to trigger that reaction, "this is totally awesome," in the reader is more difficult because you have to go through a layer of abstraction and interpretation before reaching the viewer's senses in his/her mind's eye. Because it is harder to do, making a character whose appeal is primarily "does things that are totally awesome" is often done less satisfactorily and thus they lose out to characters the reader connects well with.
   One thing to keep a note of: some readers will have more imagination than others as well, meaning that sometimes something that is supposed to be wicked sweet gets lost in translation because the reader has a "low res imagination card". The same thing happens if you have a fast reader. The counter for this is incredible writing: using premium English to breathe life into scene while balancing brevity to deliver the maximum effect.

  As I said previously, I probably haven't read anything by you so I don't know what your problem is exactly. It would help if you jotted down a quick plot summary centered around the character in question. In any case, here are several possible solutions which can help you can bond a character who seems completely alien in thought, deed, and motivation to a human audience.
1) Highlight the similarities in motivation with a human related experience. Your character must be doing awesome things for a reason. If it is something that humans may be motivated by (ex: wants, desire to gain recognition, revenge, basic survival), highlight it. Even if your character is just doing things for the bloody hell of it: then highlight that euphoria, the sense of being invincibility, and liberation one feels by releasing the shackles of common sense and conscience and plowing through everything reckless abandon.
2) Have a more human interpreter to see the character through. It also doubles as a convenient way to cue the audience that the character has done something awesome. An excellent example is Watson to Sherlock Holmes in the original A.C. Doyle canon. Sherlock Holmes is an alien; he doesn't think like most people do and doesn't care about or at least prioritize the things most people would - like love. It would be strange, confusing, and perhaps even irritating if we saw everything from Sherlock's viewpoint because his perspective is unintuitively foreign. What makes Holmes stories work is that we are are looking at the titular character through Watson's perspective. The readers connect and sympathize with Sherlock through Watson's bond with Sherlock, his reactions to Sherlock's actions, and his attempt to rationalize and come to understand the great detective.

long post is long...

[Kor]

I got into an arguement with my editor after she said that some of my characters are not human enough and readers won't be able to sympethy with them. However is it really necessary for the reader to do that? I read a fantasy novel series which was based on evil inhuman creatures who would sometimes kill for no reason. Even though they were nothing like humans, I got to like some characters becuase no matter what they did, they were always awesome and cool (maybe I'm just evil then).

But with today's characters (and from before 2 decades as well I guess) there are many examples of characters who don't act "human" yet they have many fans. Seshomaru (I will never be able to spell his name correctly), Vegita. And heck, even Gin (who is a villain) has fans and he is a real human, yet he acts nothing like that.
My editor did say that there is a gap of some generations between us. Maybe in the past it was important for the characters to be very human, but as I see it today, some viewers/readers/fans just like the character if he's cool enough and awesome.

What do you think?

Frankly though, you are trying to do the wrong thing by wanting to ignore the connectability to the reader in favor of mind's-eye candy. What you should be asking is how do I make my character inhuman and cool, awesome AND have the reader able to relate with them. People like characters who they are able to relate to. You will build a stronger character profile and they will have more appeal if you can do both.

I didn't explain myself. I personally think that I made my characters quite human and never had any intention to make them look inhuman. I gave to some people my work and no one had any complaint about the characters (except my editor). I even made a demon to act too human.
My basic question was does every character has to be TOO human? In a fantasy setting with two factions of demons and humans (and the main characters are demon slayers), while it was important to distinguish the difference between a human and a demon, I found it very appropriate to make one character (only at the start) as someone who really hates demons, to the extent of not noticing that she has acted a bit like a demon herself (again, it was only at the start. She realized her mistake and changed later). Aside from that, I did try to make another main character to be cool, but I always kept him to act human.
If every main character should be "harry potter"-like, I would find it to be very dull to be honest.

   I don't think I have read anything you have written, but I write quite a bit of original work myself, usually fiction and often with fantastical aspects, although I haven't moved anything beyond the concept stages because I still haven't found that golden idea.

to me it took a year...a long long year of changing settings one after another.

    About the examples you have given: all three of them originate in a visual media. Cool appearance and action gets across an order of magnitude better in visual media than in text. Unless you are writing graphic novels, a strong characterization and vivid descriptive writing is a must to get the "awesome" aspect across successfully. I think this may be the source of the generational gap: there are visual media today that were not present or not so developed (i.e special effects in movies) in older generations. Visual media utilize more of the senses directly and are less abstract than text. In text based interfaces, trying to trigger that reaction, "this is totally awesome," in the reader is more difficult because you have to go through a layer of abstraction and interpretation before reaching the viewer's senses in his/her mind's eye. Because it is harder to do, making a character whose appeal is primarily "does things that are totally awesome" is often done less satisfactorily and thus they lose out to characters the reader connects well with.

These are just examples I thought of at the moment. I don't read many popular books so I couldn't think of a popular character from a novel.

[ranger]

I'm no english major or anything, but...

I believe your editor was just stressing the common traits of characters in stories to be more relevant to the audience, aka, "more human".  I'm going to use the example of Greek tragedy, which ultimately has roots in nearly every story, because a good fiction usually has some tragedy in it.

In tragedy, the audience must be invoked with some sort of catharsis, usually pity and fear.  The protagonist has to be a human character, meaning it has to have flaws, a hamartia, an example would be hubris or some sort.

That's what Im interpreting, take it or leave it. As regarding your question "does every character have to be too human?"  If they are your main characters or you want the reader to be moved by them, I would say yes.  Now you can have a demon have human traits and flaws, but if you make one of your protagonists someone completely unrelatable, I believe that's a problem.

And like Akonyl said, the reason why people are attracted to those 'inhumane' or villainous characters is because of their lack of air time - humans always want more when there is less - and some sort of important event that will take place.  Take me for an example (lol), my favorite characters in DC are akai and gin, because they are rarely shown and have their relevance to plot advancement.  Conan isn't one of my favorite characters because, he really isn't "human", he doesn't have a hamartia and is really too perfect; I find it hard to relate to him and like him.

I would say keep your main characters/ protagonists in check with their humanity, but you can go free with your villains or minor characters.

Harry Potter? ugh, never have your characters like him XD

Also, much respect to you writers.  It is extremely difficult to sit down and really get started, especially when your starting a new fiction or writing essays..etc.  I personally hope to never touch anything related to English/Essays after high school.

[Kor]

I'm no english major or anything, but...

I believe your editor was just stressing the common traits of characters in stories to be more relevant to the audience, aka, "more human".  I'm going to use the example of Greek tragedy, which ultimately has roots in nearly every story, because a good fiction usually has some tragedy in it.

In tragedy, the audience must be invoked with some sort of catharsis, usually pity and fear.  The protagonist has to be a human character, meaning it has to have flaws, a hamartia, an example would be hubris or some sort.

That's what Im interpreting, take it or leave it. As regarding your question "does every character have to be too human?"  If they are your main characters or you want the reader to be moved by them, I would say yes.  Now you can have a demon have human traits and flaws, but if you make one of your protagonists someone completely unrelatable, I believe that's a problem.

And like Akonyl said, the reason why people are attracted to those 'inhumane' or villainous characters is because of their lack of air time - humans always want more when there is less - and some sort of important event that will take place.  Take me for an example (lol), my favorite characters in DC are akai and gin, because they are rarely shown and have their relevance to plot advancement.  Conan isn't one of my favorite characters because, he really isn't "human", he doesn't have a hamartia and is really too perfect; I find it hard to relate to him and like him.

I would say keep your main characters/ protagonists in check with their humanity, but you can go free with your villains or minor characters.

Harry Potter? ugh, never have your characters like him XD

Also, much respect to you writers.  It is extremely difficult to sit down and really get started, especially when your starting a new fiction or writing essays..etc.  I personally hope to never touch anything related to English/Essays after high school.

thanks for the reply.
I agree on Conan. When I started to write I said to myself from the start "Give all the characters flaws"
I honesty don't really know the real issue my editor commented on. The most main character which the story focuses on is a demon. Is it wrong that I tried to make the reader relate/sympethize with the demon the most? Is it the fact that the demon outshines a bit over the humans regarding "humanity"? I can see the problem in that, but just because the demon has more "screentime" to reveal her developing "humanity" doesn't mean the humans aren't human enough.

I killed off a character in a certain point (not a main character, but the character with the least flaws - the Conan of the story if you want) and my editor said "Maybe you shouldn't kill character A and make it that he just got injured and character B would nurse him and show her humanity" now, does grieving over the death of a loved one is not human enough for a character? Do I have to change the story just to make character B nurse character A? I think mourning over a character is just as human - which is why I don't understand my editor's complaints.

[Chekhov MacGuffin]

Frankly though, you are trying to do the wrong thing by wanting to ignore the connectability to the reader in favor of mind's-eye candy. What you should be asking is how do I make my character inhuman and cool, awesome AND have the reader able to relate with them. People like characters who they are able to relate to. You will build a stronger character profile and they will have more appeal if you can do both.

I didn't explain myself. I personally think that I made my characters quite human and never had any intention to make them look inhuman. I gave to some people my work and no one had any complaint about the characters (except my editor). I even made a demon to act too human.
My basic question was does every character has to be TOO human? In a fantasy setting with two factions of demons and humans (and the main characters are demon slayers), while it was important to distinguish the difference between a human and a demon, I found it very appropriate to make one character (only at the start) as someone who really hates demons, to the extent of not noticing that she has acted a bit like a demon herself (again, it was only at the start. She realized her mistake and changed later). Aside from that, I did try to make another main character to be cool, but I always kept him to act human.
If every main character should be "harry potter"-like, I would find it to be very dull to be honest.

I see what your saying and there is merit in doing characterizing them that way. I wonder what your editor really wants... Now that I have some idea of the setting and a vague idea of the character type, I would imagine the characters are under a lot of stress from frequent fight or flight scenarios. If it isn't already there, I wonder if adding some anxiety (combat stress reaction) would help balance a character without making them seem like they are walking around with their own personal raincloud.

I agree on Conan. When I started to write I said to myself from the start "Give all the characters flaws"
I honesty don't really know the real issue my editor commented on. The most main character which the story focuses on is a demon. Is it wrong that I tried to make the reader relate/sympethize with the demon the most? Is it the fact that the demon outshines a bit over the humans regarding "humanity"?

No and No. There is a certain appealing irony doing it that way.

I can see the problem in that, but just because the demon has more "screentime" to reveal her developing "humanity" doesn't mean the humans aren't human enough.

I killed off a character in a certain point (not a main character, but the character with the least flaws - the Conan of the story if you want) and my editor said "Maybe you shouldn't kill character A and make it that he just got injured and character B would nurse him and show her humanity" now, does grieving over the death of a loved one is not human enough for a character? Do I have to change the story just to make character B nurse character A? I think mourning over a character is just as human - which is why I don't understand my editor's complaints.

As a default without knowing anything else, I usually side with killing the person as it usually has a bigger impact that way. I could see a couple of ways you could tweak the scenario to try to please the editor while still killing the person in question off. If your society has sufficiently advanced medicine (or healing magic), you could make the person a vegetable. Their body is alive, and a doctor and/or the particular demon character can patch them up and keep them alive, but the character's mind is dead. So the demon has to make a very human choice, does she let them go or keep taking care of them despite the fact they will never wake up? Whichever option you pick, then allow the demon to struggle with and desire the other. Maybe she can get into a very heated argument with the other characters about what to do.
Another option that would work in a more primitive setting would be to prolong the character's death and allow the demon to struggle with trying to save that person before they eventually succumb.
A third option would be to have the demon character console one of the other characters who is also grieving at the loss.

[Kor]

As a default without knowing anything else, I usually side with killing the person as it usually has a bigger impact that way. I could see a couple of ways you could tweak the scenario to try to please the editor while still killing the person in question off. If your society has sufficiently advanced medicine (or healing magic), you could make the person a vegetable. Their body is alive, and a doctor and/or the particular demon character can patch them up and keep them alive, but the character's mind is dead. So the demon has to make a very human choice, does she let them go or keep taking care of them despite the fact they will never wake up? Whichever option you pick, then allow the demon to struggle with and desire the other. Maybe she can get into a very heated argument with the other characters about what to do.
Another option that would work in a more primitive setting would be to prolong the character's death and allow the demon to struggle with trying to save that person before they eventually succumb.
A third option would be to have the demon character console one of the other characters who is also grieving at the loss.

that's why I shouldn't be let to summarize ANYTHING at all. I'm leaving too much details outside 
The character who is grieving is a human actually.
regarding healing magic, that's the only type of magic which I chose to leave outside the settings.

I agree on Conan. When I started to write I said to myself from the start "Give all the characters flaws"
I honesty don't really know the real issue my editor commented on. The most main character which the story focuses on is a demon. Is it wrong that I tried to make the reader relate/sympethize with the demon the most? Is it the fact that the demon outshines a bit over the humans regarding "humanity"?

No and No. There is a certain appealing irony doing it that way.

that's what I thought too...

hmm...maybe after I'll finish the rewrite (yes, I need to rewrite half of the novel    ) the chapter I'm currently in, I'll try to summarize everything better from start to end.

[CoolKid3]

Hope this helps;

I personally believe
(1) PURE EVIL is not existing - a DEVIL MAY CRY
(2) ABSOLUTE PERFECTION also does not exist
(3) The world is not BLACK or WHITE - add some gray areas on the totality of your story and that would make the readers guessing...