Characters in a book are very much like personalities divvied up within a family. In the end, it all averages out to a sort of overall averageness.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Every reader knows about the feeling that characters in books seem more real than real people.
I know when I go and see a writer, the first thing I think to myself is, 'Are they the character in the book?' You just can't help it; it's the way people are.
I think, above all, the characters in my novels feel universal to the readers.
Characters develop as the book progresses, but any that start to bore me end up in the wastepaper basket. In real life, we may have to put up with tedious people, but not in novels.
The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.
As a novelist, I tend to know significantly more about my characters than I do about my friends.
Readers of novels often fall into the bad habit of being overly exacting about the characters' moral flaws. They apply to these fictional beings standards that no one they know in real life could possibly meet.
Character development is what I value most as a reader of fiction. If an author can manage to create the sort of characters who feel fully real, who I find myself worrying about while I'm walking through the grocery store aisles a week later, that to me is as close to perfection as it gets.
I don't think of the characters as being good or bad because that doesn't help me as a writer.
There is no such thing as an average person. They really are guidelines for people to grapple with the unknown, and we can always surprise expectations.