Why I love an over-the-top character.
I don't often want to read about reasonable, measured characters - the ones who always behave sanely and aim to do the right thing. In books, I want to read about someone larger than life. I want an author to show me how I might behave if I were loud, moody, furious and fearless. Let me see what that would feel like.
I've discarded so many books this year - realising a chapter in that the characters leave me cold. I toss these books onto the floor by the side of my bed. It's only March and there's already a large pile of them, a wall of meh.
I'm 55. I'm a menopausal woman. Luckily for me, I'm not experiencing mood swings, rages and hot flushes. I'm largely, gratefully, much as I have always been. Quite chilled and calm, easily happy. Not someone who'd make an interesting character in a book. But I really want to read about women and men on the edge - having tantrums, being needy and demanding, characters who are wrong but absolutely certain that they are right. I want stories of drama queens who insist on being seen and heard. Bulls in china shops, leaving chaos in their wake.
I also like them to be sorry and regretful (they're not despicable beings; just human) and then do it all over again in the next chapter, only worse. I want to be thrilled by their antics, astounded by their incessant need to be loudly at the centre of everything. I want fireworks and explosions, histrionics and epic meltdowns.
This is what I want to read about - and write about. It's so much fun writing characters who go over the top, who shake things up so that they can never quite settle the way they were before.
Every story needs drama. Pages turn because we want to know how things will be resolved. If you're stuck in the middle of a story or novel right now, unsure what to write next, throw in a hand grenade and see if the introduction of one larger than life, infuriating and majorly flawed character can liven things up and and get you to The End.
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