My coworker has been asking me to read Cassandra Clare's The Infernal Devices trilogy for quite some time. I tried her original Shadowhunter series, City of Bones, some years ago and never got around to finishing it. It just didn't hook me. But my coworker finally brought the first book in to lend to me. And I know what it means when someone lends you a book. So I started reading it.
I chugged through the first book, Clockwork Angel, pretty well, I was interested, entertained and enjoying myself well enough. But I certainly wasn't obsessed. Then I got to the end and . . . I immediately had to start reading the next book and then the next. And then I was sitting on my back porch. It was about 2 p.m. on a Sunday. I'd been up reading the entire night before (something I haven't done since, I don't know, high school?). My dog was next to me, lounging lazily in the lawn and enjoying the sun without a care in the world, and I was crying. Tears rolled down my face as I turned the pages of the epilogue.
It's been a few weeks since I first finished the series, and I've read it twice more in the time since then.
I still haven't recovered.
I've tried to distance myself, but I keep finding myself reading the most liked quotes on Goodreads or scrolling through fanart on Tumblr in my spare time, and I can't get over it. I need to talk about it. Not the whole story, only parts of it. One part, really.
So let's talk about William Herondale.
Will Herondale just might be my most favorite character of all time. He moves me in ways few characters ever had (Katniss, Zuko and Captain America come close). As someone who wants to write my own stories some day, it's important to me to understand why. So I've decided to use this considerable obsession of mine for the powers of good to see what we can learn about creating compelling characters.
Because I’m still thinking about this character – still feeling for this character, so much – and it’s been weeks since I finished the books.
The first reason we like Will is because he’s likeable. I know that can be a problematic word for a character (especially when they’re women). For a long time, people only wanted good characters – this is where the title for Save the Cat came from – and that became cliché and complicated, and we all know that interesting characters don’t have to be morally righteous.
So when I say Will Herondale is likable, what I mean is I like reading about him. It’s an enjoyable experience. He’s smart, he’s funny, and he’s capable. This results in a lot of devilishly charming swagger as he fights demons and saves the day, and that’s fun.
But there are lots of these sort of alpha-male heroes with bravado in spades who swashbuckle and save the world, and none of them have impacted me the way Will does (thinking about you especially here, Iron Man), so I know there’s something more that Will has going on here that affecting me.
And the second thing that comes to mind about Will’s character is that he’s caring. Like likability, this is another problematic word. I don’t quite mean it in the traditional sense, what I mean is that he cares about something deeply—and it’s important for all of our main characters to do this. It helps them make active choices and frame the course of those actions so the audience understands what they’re doing and why it’s important to them. And the thing Will cares about is Jem.
Almost Will’s opposite, Jem is Will’s best, and perhaps only, friend. Where Will is surely and sarcastic, Jem is sweet, soft and sincere. And while Will treats everyone with wry indifference or disdain, with Gem, he’s another person. In one scene, a drunk Will boasts about his bawdy adventures, only to snap into sobriety when Jem coughs violently and shepherd Tessa from the room and care for his friend.
The intense loyalty Will has for Jem, as well as his sharp dedication and soft care, not only help define his character, but they give him layers. They complicate the archetypal alpha male we meet at first, and that brings us to my third point, which is:
Will is mysterious. This isn’t a point that I see brought up on a lot of “How to Create Compelling Characters . . .” But curiosity, I think, drives most stories. It’s what keeps the readers pushing through the pages, needing to know what’s going to happen . . . how it’s all going to make sense . . .
If characters are too outlandish or contradictory, they can become confusing, so this is a fine line to tread, and one Will does perfectly. Good characters don’t just have a bunch of random traits thrown in. It doesn’t work when writers just decide someone loves peach-flavored ice cream or was terrified of the tooth fairy as a child when details like that are irrelevant to the story. What works best is when something doesn’t quite add up at first appearance but all make sense at the end. And Will hits this mark perfectly.
Because even thought he is this archetypical alpha male, who’s strong and sarcastic and selfish, there’s a catch. There’s the tenderness he shows Jem, the utter remorse he feels after killing his first human – entirely justifiably – in battle. How desperately his seems to want Tessa, how tenderly he takes her, and how entirely he dismisses her.
It doesn’t quite add up. And it’s these layers, this complexity, this contradiction, that I think makes for the greatest characters.
I’m going to spoil something here, so proceed with caution, but Will believes he’s cursed. He believes that everyone who loves him is doomed to die, and as someone whose job it is to fight demons in a world full of and magic, it’s entirely reasonable that he believes this. I wish I can come up with a story twist like this one day, because it makes everything make perfect sense, and makes the story that much better. Will is the alpha male hero. We believe he’s charming, if at times rude, equal parts selfish and selfless, never failing to save those around him or stopping himself from making rude remakes at their expense.
We believe this because we’ve seen this character before (again, looking at you, Iron Man). But this man always gets the girl at the end. Even though he’s been a jerk, he comes around to swoop the heroine off her feet and she swoons, proving he really does care, after all.
We believe Tessa’s gotten through to Will, past all of his defenses, and that he’s fallen for her. So when they share their second, magical, kiss at the end of book one, we think we know how this story is going to end.
Only, he proves himself to be the jerk through and through. He takes Tessa’s kindhearted romantic gesture and turns it back on her, telling her she could never be anything more than a sexual plaything to him, acting like she must have expected this response from him.
Tessa didn’t expect this response, and neither did we—which is why it works as a piece of writing so well. We knew Will was a jerk, we believe he was just pretending, we thought we knew how the story was going to end, and then we get that final scene on the rooftop,
We should have seen it coming. But we didn’t. That’s great writing.
And then, because Clare is a master at this, she twists this knife even further into us, because we learn about Will’s curse. What could be more cruel and heartbreaking than the person you love not loving you back? That they actually do love you but are forced to pretend they don’t, to treat you cruelly to make you hate them, all to protect you from some curse.
The premise might sound ridiculous, but the emotional beats work. It’s brilliant and it broke me and I love it.
But other authors know how to do this “twisting of the knife,” as I call it (not you, Iron Man, though imagine many felt it in the final Avengers movie, I’m thinking of The Fault in Our Star’s ending this time), and while I have shed tears at the end of that story, Hazel and Gus don’t have a hold on me like Will does.
So what is it about Will Herondale’s character that’s gripped me so? And hasn’t let go, even after all this time?
I think there’s one more key ingredient about great characters—and that’s relatability. If you're wondering how I could possibly relate to a cursed and lovelorn demon hunter from Victorian London, you've got a fair point, but bear with me here for a moment, because I think the best characters are the ones we can see some of ourselves in, ones we share some common ground with, who see the world the way we do or speak some indelible truth we share in our soul.
Will Herondale does this for me.
I'm not saying I think he's my soulmate, or even that I believe in soulmates, I'm just saying that the type of love Will believes in, it's the type of love I believe in, or have always wanted to, at least. A love that isn't just based on physical attraction, but instead, common interests between two people who see something of themselves in the another who makes them feel as though all those parts of themself that they thought were weird or wrong actually made them right from someone else.
The way that Tessa and Will felt about the each other.
I know that this type of love doesn't last (remember, I did say the epilogue to these books ruined me) and I also know love isn't happiness, but damn if I don't want to believe it can exist and that it if it does, it would be worth fighting for.
So there you have it, folks, what we can take away from this (and let's be honest, there's a lot we can take away from this, but let's just focus on writing now), is that the best characters, the ones that really grab ahold of us and don't let go, need to be likeable. This doesn't mean good or moral, but enjoyable to read about. They can be charming or contemptuous or
Compelling characters also need to be caring—by which I mean they need to care about something other than just themselves. They need to have an interest or hobby or love, and this needs to reveal their character. Bonus points if the thing they care about drives their decision making and frames the rest of the story.
These characters also need to be mysterious; they need to keep the audience curious by being contradictory in certain ways that don't at first make sense but add to the overall story.
And finally, great, compelling characters need to be relatable and share some common ground or speak some truth that will connect with certain audiences, like Will does to me. Not only because of how he loves, which I talked about above, but also because he loves books. Will and Tessa bond over a shared love of stories. And if it's not obvious, I should point out that I also love stories, that I also learn from stories, and my experiences reading mean so much to me. I think that's another way I relate to Will and believe, with some vague hope, that I might meet someone some day who also loves stories the way I do and perhaps see something worthwhile in this shared love.
Will speaks better on this topic than I do, so I'll let him conclude. Below is his letter to Tessa, and just tell me honestly, if your heart doesn't break just a bit for this boy?
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