Who Your Favorite Character Is

Tells Us Who You Are

One of the most asked questions when talking about a favorite book with a friend, or recommending an epic new series to your co-worker, or fangirling about that cute new romance you just read with your cousin, is an incredibly simple question, that lends an incredibly intense amount of insight into the person answering the question.

The question is this: who is your favorite character?

Like I said, incredibly simple, and at surface level, quickly answered for small talk or for proving the fact that yes, you actually did read the book. But no question has just one layer.

Layer One: Characters Are The Story

For starters, the characters in a book are the book. You take away the characters, you take away the plot. Take away the characters, you take away the theme. And the message. And the storyline. And I could go on and on.

A book without characters is like a tiger without stripes: an orange cat.

Ok, that might be a far-fetched analogy, but we can roll with it. For a more specific, literal analogy, we could say a book without characters is lame. Boring. Unimportant. A waste of time.

So when you ask your friend who their favorite character was, you are asking them about the core of the story, the very cornerstone the story is built on.

And secondly, the characters in a book are the way we relate to a book. Oftentimes, we come away from a story remembering the characters and the plot they're in, not the plot and the characters that are in it.

It's always characters first, everything else second. You could have terrible prose, terrible plot, and just garbage writing in general, but people would still adore your books because they adore your characters.

That said, it is very hard to have characters that people love when you have garbage writing, so work on both. My point is that the characters in a story are what really matters.

As writers, it is our job to make readers fall in love with our characters. And so readers usually do end up doing that. That's the reason why when you ask a friend who maybe doesn't even care about the book what their favorite character is, they probably would have an answer for you.

You can't read a book and come away without at least one character that you kind of like. . . at least, you can't finish a book and come away without one.

For a deeper, longer, more professional view on the importance of characters, check out this article by yours truly.

Layer Two: Who "Your Favorite Character" Leaves Out

A lot of people are very surface when they talk, or ask questions, but taking this just one layer deeper isn't even that hard and only requires knowledge about the book you're talking about, which I hope you would have had anyway.

It's actually blatantly obvious: when you answer with who your favorite character is, you obviously leave out who your least favorite characters are. When you say yes to one thing, or character in this instance, you are, in a sense, saying no to the opposite.

So when you say yes to a favorite character, you are saying no to all the other characters.

And this provides a vital insight into your life, or the life of the person you're asking, when you see why they don't like those said characters.

For example, if someone asked me who my favorite character was in False Prince by Jennifer A Neilson, which I do not necessarily endorse, ask me about it later, I would say without blinking an eye that it is Sage.

Not Jaron.

Because despite technically being the same person, they really aren't. At all.

By me saying my favorite character is Sage, it shows that I really do not like Jaron. And this provides two glimpses into my complex internal processes.

One, I hate reading about responsible people, because I myself am a very responsible person. And I don't want to read about someone that's boring like me. So I prefer reading about characters with cocky, I-could-care-less, I'm-the-king-around-here-and-everyone-knows-it attitudes.

Like Sage. Not Jaron - he's too responsible, has too much weight on his shoulders, and is boring.

And two, I love people, and characters, therefore, with quick wit. And Sage most definitely has a quick wit, a sharp tongue, and is hilariously sarcastic.

So, when you ask someone who their favorite character is, pay attention to who their favorite character is not. You could learn a lot about them.

Layer Three: You Like Who You Relate To

I mean, everyone can at least agree with this one. You talk to who you have common interests with, or who shares something you are struggling with, or who has a similar story, etc etc. I could go on and on, but the point is that you want to hang out with the people you relate to.

And in the sense of books and characters, who your favorite character is, is who you relate to.

For example, in The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer, I relate most to Cress. From the way she's super shy around people she doesn't know, to the way she's usually afraid to speak her mind and hates having the attention on her, and yet she's super brilliant on the inside.

And then there's the fact that she's super short. I can relate to that, not because I'm short, but because I'm tall, and I know what it feels like to be different than average, and sometimes just want to be like everyone else.

I'm not saying that's right, or I should feel that way, but I'm saying sometimes I do. And when she feels self-conscious about her height, I can relate to that.

Thus if someone asked me who my favorite character was, I would most likely say Cress. . . or the guy she falls in love with. . . but we're not going to go into that here.

What I'm trying to say is that by me saying that she is my favorite character, or at least one of them, I am saying I relate to her.

And that tells you a lot about me - I'm afraid of what she's afraid of, I'm oftentimes timid in large groups of people, just like her, and almost never want to take charge.

This applies to anyone you ask this question too.

Your friend relates to the girl in the book who has trauma in her past that makes her skittish and shy. This shows that your friend has either experienced her own truama, or watched someone close to her go through that pain.

Your mom relates to the woman in the story who lost her child. She relates because she loves her own children so much, and knows how she would feel if any of them died.

No matter who you are or what you've been through when you read a good book, you're going to relate to someone. And when you relate to someone, that says something about you, your life, and what you've gone through.

In Summary. . .

Characters make up books, and the main reason we enjoy books is because we enjoy the characters that are in them.

What makes up a good story? What makes a good book good?

The characters.

Because the characters remind us of the real people around us that we love, or used to love, or wish we could love. Characters are what tie books to the real world, and what ties us to books.

And the characters we like - the characters we talk about and remember and love and care about - say a whole lot about ourselves.

Asking "who is you favorite character" is asking "who are you?"

So the next time you ask someone who their favorite character is, remember to look deeper. And maybe they will do the same for you.