Does a character have to define himself to be engaging?
I have a short story named Cured (which asks the question "What if you could take a pill to increase your empathy?"), in which the main character (Tony) doesn't talk or show much about himself until later, although he is described by his friends. A criticism I have received is that as a result of early self-definition, Tony is boring and completely un-engaging. This is really bad because this is supposed to be a mostly character driven story.
Is this a legitimate problem and if so, what are some heuristics that I can apply to tell if I'm not letting the main character talk/act/define himself enough?
Alternatively, if this is not a problem in general, but that my story has other issues that are crippling it, I will start a new question for the sole purpous of critique.
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Have you considered writing out a character bio? I come at writing from a bit of an RPGing background so the idea of a character sheet is sort of normal for me, but if it's not to you, just try and put together a little dossier - an FBI file - of what you know about your person. What's his demeanor like? Did his parents love each other? What was his childhood like? Describe a typical day at work for this guy. And so on and so forth. Note that not only does not of this have to be in the story proper, none of it probably should be in there. This is solely for you, the author, to understand who this person you're writing about is. Once you figure that out, my experience is that that character will start to come a lot more vibrant and have a lot more agency all on its own.
I read your story. It's not that Tony is boring; the problem is that he's too predictable and easy to understand. You only have to read the beginning of the story to know what's going on with him: he's depressed and emotionally unresponsive. There's very little the reader need to discover or know about him after that.
In order to engage the reader you have to make a character unpredictable and difficult to understand. If you do that, the reader will feel interested even if the character is boring.
Few examples:
The character spends the whole day in his apartment cooking spaghetti.
(Is he depressed? Is he an antisocial? Why spaghetti of all food?)
The character has been having a hard-on since his wife died.
(What could the hard-on symbolize? Anger? Frustration? Repressed sexual desire?
The character has decided to spend the rest of his life with a cardboard on his head.
(Reader: OK, what the hell?)
OK, not the best examples, but I think you get my idea.
Does a character (presumably the protagonist) have to be definable to be engaging? In a word, yes. The character’s nature could be defined as anything. In fact, inconsistent suggests conflicted (internal conflict), but the audience must be able to define the character in some way. Otherwise, they cannot connect or care. I’ve struggled with protagonists whom readers didn’t care about for reasons similar to what you’re facing; they were do-nothing characters.?
Plot, story, and character while independent concepts, overlap. A character driven story is not devoid of plot, because a story without plot provides no opportunity to demonstrate the protagonist’s character. Often we confuse characterization with true character. Characterization are all of the details of a character - what they look like, where they’re from, how they talk, walk, or dress. Also, what they say to themselves in they’re own head. This is all surface, adding little to the story. True character is demonstrated by the decisions the protagonist makes in response to events (plot). Particularly, in response to dilemmas, the high stakes decisions. When the bulk of the plot results from the world reacting to the protagonist’s decisions, that is a character-driven story, but the character must decide.
If I follow you’re question right, your protagonist lacks empathy. His or her initial decisions must demonstrate this lack of empathy. The events which result would then suggest to the protagonist that he or she must change. Thus, the decision to take the empathy pill. Or the world could force the taking of the pill, but this would lean away from character-driven.
Readers connect with characters who feel real. To feel real they must act (make decisions). Without the choices, the character is a sketch, a police description describing the subject’s appearance - not a person.
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