Empty Characters

This past weekend I attended the American Association of School Librarians conference and one of the many sessions I attended was a panel discussion on boys reading and fantasy, consisting of the following authors:

Jonathan Auxier
Jon Scieszka
Adam Gidwitz
Neal Schusterman
William Alexander
Tony Abbott

So it was bound to be good, right?

This idea came up in the discussion about rich characters and empty characters. But "empty" wasn't a bad thing. An empty character is one that, yeah, might be hard to describe other than "heroic" or something like that. But, because the character is "empty" the reader can see him (or her) self as that character. Examples mentioned were Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker. Their friends are all rich characters, but these leading men don't have quite as much that defines them, and that's a good thing. The speaker even mentioned Tintin, who is drawn with minimal detail, even though the rest of the illustrations are detail rich. The reader can put himself in Tintin's shoes.

Of course this made me think of the stereotypical, archetypal characters that come out of the oral tradition. They usually have only one or two defining characteristics and are not very complex. The wrath of Achilles, anyone? Walter Ong describes how writing has allowed us to come up with more complex, more psychological characters. And yet, we still love our empty heroes.

Is it because we are nostalgic for the epics of the past? Is it because the ancient bards were on to something? Is it because we need to be connected to, to be a part of, our stories?

Another question came up about building upon folktales, myths, legends, etc. and one of the authors told the following joke:

A magician became so great a magician that he told everyone not to call him a magician anymore, but to call him a god.
The God of the land heard about this and they decided upon a duel of the gods.
The God of the land grabbed a handful of dirt, spit in it, molded it, blew on it, and away flew a bird.
The man who was once a magician grabbed a handful of dirt, and just as he went to spit in it, God said, "Hey! Use your own dirt."

The point was that all stories are built on what came before. No one is using their own dirt.

I think this was easier to see during the oral transmission of stories, because there was less focus on the author of a story. Think of how we don't know the author of most folktales, and there are so many different versions. They aren't written. They are collected.

Each telling of a story was slightly different. Stories were constantly both old and new. Connected to an earlier time, but being what they needed to be in this time.

The empty character is an invitation. The storyteller, the writer, knows he has used someone else's dirt. Now he is inviting the listener, the reader, to use his. Come on, he says, be my character.