Do you need to "connect" to a story and/or characters?

4691mls · 02-08-2023, 06:38 PM

And if you do, what does that mean to you?

On Goodreads I often see people complain they couldn't connect to the characters or story. I'm not even sure what that means.

Does "connect" mean the reader felt they had something in common with the main character? Does it mean that the story had some kind of personal significance for the reader?

cfrizz · 02-08-2023, 07:32 PM

Yes, I have to connect with the characters, and at the very least like them. If I'm reading a story and the man is a misogynistic jerk, or the woman is a doormat who is too stupid to live, I inevitably end up dumping the book! The characters make the story.

issybird · 02-08-2023, 07:41 PM

No, I don’t need to “connect” and like you, I’m not even sure what that means.

My sense of it is what you suggest, that either or both they can identify with a character and that the story resonates personally with them. My own take on that kind of thing is that it’s irrelevant at best and frequently a signifier of cheesy story telling that engenders a cheap response. I only want characters and to be consistent and accurate within the story that’s being told.

Along similar lines and I think it has much in common with your question, I don’t understand the plaint when a story is damned because characters aren’t likable. Are they interesting, are they funny? Do they make sense within the context of the story? That’s all I need. It’s a book not a family gathering!

DiapDealer · 02-08-2023, 09:31 PM

"Connect" IS a rather ambiguous word. I suspect many readers just think they need to say something other than "didn't like it" or "couldn't get into it."

As far as characters go, I'll take interesting and unlikable over dull but likable any day. I'm not looking to make new imaginary friends when it comes to characters in a book.

I DO reserve the right to expect plots to "click" however.

Sirtel · 02-08-2023, 11:01 PM

I don't need to necessarily like them or identify with them, but I do need to be interested in them. If the characters fail to stir any interest in me, I'll usually get bored and ditch the book, no matter how well written. OTOH, make the main character too unpleasant and the result will be the same (I'm looking at you, Thomas Covenant. I know his unlikability was intended, but I sighed with relief after finishing the first book and avoided the rest of the series like the plague). Too sugary Mary Sueish main characters are no better, of course.

rkomar · 02-08-2023, 11:02 PM

Perhaps "connect" means "care about", like in personal connections. If you are not interested in finding out what is going on with the characters, the story will be a slog.

4691mls · 02-08-2023, 11:03 PM

I have a vague memory that years ago we had a thread discussing whether we liked to read about characters who were like us or different. Perhaps that's another way of saying something similar?

At one point I went through a phase of reading action/thriller novels. I have little or nothing in common with the heroes in such books and wouldn't want to hang out with them - nor they with me I'm sure! but they satisfied my need for escapism. I wouldn't say I connected with the characters though.

Sirtel · 02-08-2023, 11:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 4691mls

I have a vague memory that years ago we had a thread discussing whether we liked to read about characters who were like us or different. Perhaps that's another way of saying something similar?

At one point I went through a phase of reading action/thriller novels. I have little or nothing in common with the heroes in such books and wouldn't want to hang out with them - nor they with me I'm sure! but they satisfied my need for escapism. I wouldn't say I connected with the characters though.

It doesn't matter to me whether a character is like me or not (very few fictional characters in fact are, because a main character who is like me would not make any kind of a story at all - watching the grass grow would be more exciting). They do need to be interesting, though. And of course, what's interesting to me may be boring or annoying to other people and vice versa.

Sirtel · 02-08-2023, 11:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rkomar

If you are not interested in finding out what is going on with the characters, the story will be a slog.

Very true.

Katja_hbg · 02-09-2023, 01:40 AM

although I read a lot of crime, I do not like to read it from view inside a murderer. I skip those chapters or stop reading the book. Beside that the characters should have an understandable behaviour and the story should have some twists or an interesting environment. «connect» means for me that I can «feel» the setting and do not repel.

BelleZora · 02-09-2023, 02:22 AM

Three of the books I enjoyed most were Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson, and The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. The first featured a pedophile and the others homicidal sociopaths. I assure you that I did not connect with any of them. But they were all excellent books.

I do not need to connect with or like a protagonist. I want only a good story.

Asawi · 02-09-2023, 04:04 AM

If "connect" means to like them, then no. I don't have to like them. But I need to be interested enough to care what happens to them. I did start reading a crime series that my daughter (who usually likes the same things I do) recommended a little while ago, but put the first book down maybe 50 pages in. I realized I couldn't care less about any of the characters that had showed up so far. Especially not the main one. I didn't dislike her, I just couldn't care less about her life and what went on in it. Spoke with my daughter about it and she said "yeah, for good or bad, it IS a lot about her life" Which she apperently likes. (Maybe the 20 years between us makes a different here.)
I do like books where the bad guys' point of view is included. I absolutely do not LIKE them, but they INTEREST me. I guess that is a sort of "connection".
So I guess it's a "yes", I need to connect to at least some of the charachters!

Uncle Robin · 02-09-2023, 04:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 4691mls

And if you do, what does that mean to you?

On Goodreads I often see people complain they couldn't connect to the characters or story. I'm not even sure what that means.

Does "connect" mean the reader felt they had something in common with the main character? Does it mean that the story had some kind of personal significance for the reader?

"Connect" is vague, but I would say - yes, either/or, not necessarily both. I've finished dull stories because I did feel some sort of connection to/interest in the characters, and I've finishe stories with no characters I could relate to because the story itself resonated or caught my interest. So given that possibly idiosyncratic defintion of "connect", the answer would be yes.

gmw · 02-09-2023, 06:31 AM

I agree with the comments so far that "connect" is vague ... but perhaps deliberately so, since people are trying to find a single word to cover all the different ways a reader might connect with the characters and/or story. I do not see it as a synonym for "like".

A character may be frustrating and annoying and generally dislikeable, but if they remain all these things in a coherent way that makes sense to the reader then a connection of sorts can be formed: here is a character I understand, or even here is a character I wish to understand; or maybe here is a character I despise and which to see get their comeuppance, or here is a character I would like to see redeemed because of something I see in them. These are all connections of sorts, relationships that the author has evoked from the reader; or sometimes these connections rise unintentionally, where something in the reader's background makes them react to particular characters in unanticipated ways.

We could perhaps decide that "connect with" really means "find interest in", in this context. But replacing one vague phrase with another is probably not much help.

Am I defining "connect" too broadly just so it works for me? Perhaps. I'm not sure if I've used the phrase myself, but I feel like I get the sense of it. (And yes, "get" is another vague word.) It is nebulous, but then our reasons for liking one book over another often are.

So I think "connect" is used as a shorthand to cover a range of things, but may most usefully defined in by inversion: I tend not to like fiction where I feel disconnected from the characters and story. You see in that, that "connect" is about feeling involved in the story, not alienated from it, but how that feeling of involvement, of connection, occurs will vary with each book.