The “LIKABILITY FACTOR” in Kidlit

 

One of my earliest beta readers returned feedback with “I liked the main characters.” I remember finding this comment jarring. I hadn’t thought it important, and I wondered why my Beta devoted a whole page to the likability factor, which my story had apparently cleared in spades.

 

The next time the same Beta gave me feedback, two years after the first, there was the same sentiment outpouring from her review. Again, I wondered why this didn’t seem important or even useful to me. What was wrong with me, not as a writer but as a reader, that couldn’t quite relate?

 

My first agent did one more. She returned feedback to a MG asserting she liked every character except one, and could we do something about that one? That girl in the story whines too much and isn’t as likeable as the others. Again, I wondered why a secondary character needed to be likable (when in the story she wasn’t meant to be) and what was this thing about the need for universal likability that I was missing as a reader.

 

This link to a good post about the subject brought back the memory of the long-ago feedback, as well as my still standing feeling on the matter of characters’ likability.

 

As I experience it, characters (especially the main ones) need to be relatable in some way, and not every person will relate to every character. I don’t have to like them; I have to recognize them, often as aspects of myself or someone close to me. They certainly don’t have to be “nice,” and frankly, the very nice ones are barely recognizable as full characters.

 

From the age of two until I left home at eighteen, I had, as one of my two plush stuffed animal toys, a black sheep. Lammy, as I called her, was always by my side. After I left home, my mother discarded most of my things, and Lammy disappeared into the black hole of things that were and are no more.

You should know that, leaving the homeland at the time I did, relegated me to a category of "the black sheep" who abandoned the cause in the eyes of many there. "She's always been a good girl. What happened?" was the sentiment I heard not once or thrice, not least from my mother. I became my Lammy.

Some fifteen years ago, I realized how important that black sheep was to me and how much I identified as a sort of “black sheep” in a herd of white and spotted ones. I began to search for her on eBay, Etsy, and other sites where toys of yesteryear gather to bring childhood friends back to us oldies.

There were others, but not the one I had known. Some even harked back to the 1920s and could have been my grandmother’s. But Lammy was never there.

And then, one cloudy day, there she was, on an internet seller of "vintage" items' list. Did I say “cloudy”? Like a ray of light, the day turned bright. I had found my old friend. She now sits next to me, reminding me that black sheep have an important role to play, especially in childhood.

 

You do not have to be likable to be relatable, offer support, and be loved

As an addendum to the above, I have not turned to the mentioned Beta reader for feedback since and have moved on from said agent. The gap between us, as readers, became evident.