I can't help it - I want him to be happy. I'm not sure I'd want to date Don Draper (sit across a table in a dark bar and gaze at him for a good hour or so, sure), but I care about what happens to him. We also know that perceived flaws and vulnerabilities seldom arise in a vacuum - life, as it always does, shapes and re-shapes character, deepening or hardening, softening or breaking, as the case may be.
I mean, we're all capable of vanities and tantrums and great acts of love and sacrifice. House, or Mad Men's Don Draper, or Downton Abbey's Ladies Mary and Edith - all deliciously, sometimes appallingly flawed creations whose destinies deeply interest many of us - we watch, and we cheer and curse and cringe, sympathize and relate and worry about them and hope for them, because they're all so fundamentally human. See what I did there? It's a subtle but important distinction. More specifically, what makes you like a character? Julie: Quick, off the top of your head: What makes a person likable? Think of, say, two or three qualities.
Julie Anne Long, author of Between the Devil and Ian Eversea, out this week, explores what draws readers to, or repels them from, characters in our favorite romances.
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