The Audacity of Earnestness in Characters

I almost broke up with a woman on our third date when she told me, without a drop of irony, that she was “optimistic about us.”

Surely she was joking—we barely knew each other! I stole a glance at her drink, hoping I could blame the booze, but it was freshly made and still very full—apparently, much like her proverbial glass.

(I Have a Conflict—And That's a Good Thing.)

I laughed nervously, but she…did not.

Walking home later, I ruminated on my reaction. I liked her—a lot—and I wanted her to like me, too. But the earnestness of it all was, well, a problem for me…

So when I was drafting my new novel, Pining for You—a queer, cozy YA romantic holiday romp from small town Connecticut to Brooklyn during a blizzard, I realized I had a similar problem… my protagonist, Bennie, showed up as a 17-year-old girl who unironically believed in Christmas magic and was so unpretentious it was almost painful, I adored her and wanted to protect her. But I was petrified readers or critics would read her purity, sincerity, and true hopefulness as simplicity, or worse, laziness on my part as an author. How could readers possibly relate?

In both cases, on the page and at the bar, I had the same problem: Without irony or cynicism or the torturous uncertainty of what someone says versus really mean, what chance was there for a compelling story?

This was very confusing, because I've always loved exactly those kinds of characters. The Muppets. Mikey Walsh in The Goonies. Rudy. Samwise Gamgee (also known as the Sean Astin Try-Hard Trilogy). The enduring, mass appeal of this kind of art is proof that these stories can work—which meant in order to let Bennie be Bennie, I just needed to understand how.

Thus began a deep dive into the annals of ardor, the canon of candid. I was looking for answers, but what I found were recurring features. The bedrock of believability in any story, is to establish relatability. Radiating sunshine need not make a character grating, but they cannot do so constantly, or their hope risks flattening them.

The funny thing is, a character who does operate with this level of optimism is anything but flat—in fact, they’re uniquely exciting to write, because they have an emotional range many others do not. They care so much that it makes them easily wounded, and in response to that pain, at times demanding, unreasonable, stubborn, self-righteous, or outraged.

When I first became acquainted with Bennie, I didn’t immediately recognize this opportunity. I tried to “fix” her with sharper edges, wry humor, shades of ironic distance, but it was always wrong, and the words were kicked off the page like a misfit Christmas snack cake from a conveyor belt.

But when I finally gave up and just wrote through it, and pressure naturally showed up, really interesting things happened… which leads to the second feature, complexity.

Bennie clings to her belief in Christmas magic especially because her life is painfully unmagical—her sister struggles with mental illness and addiction, her mother is emotionally absent, and her friendships are on the verge of major change as graduation looms. The pressure of it all is enough to make her desperate, which is why when she buys her mother a Christmas tree and it doesn’t magically bring her home from work on time, or her friends won’t commit to their annual ugly sock swap, Bennie gets frustrated and lonely, and thus controlling, indignant, and—in a turn that surprised even me—truly angry.

I, on the other hand, breathed a sigh of relief. The qualities I worried would make her too sweet actually made her difficult—and critically, more human.

Another interesting side effect of having a ball of sunshine at the center of your story is that their openness is revealing of everyone else. Some characters may try to rise to meet it while others will want to exploit it. Or maybe they mistake it for weakness because they can’t possibly imagine being that vulnerable. And then there are those who want to protect the earnest character—at times to their own detriment or demise.

It was a breakthrough to realize I didn’t need to give Bennie a lobotomy or artificially manufacture tension. Hope guarantees it just by existing in the face of grief or embarrassment, disappointment or betrayal, and of course, fear.

Earnestness in a well-developed, fully human character, tested by authentic, inescapable pressure from a world that doesn’t share their sunny worldview or other characters that won’t bend to their will, creates a unique, high stakes climactic tension. In it, heroes are asked to decide: Abandon all hope or somehow cling to it for dear life—persevere, inspire, and earn the wisdom that comes with overcoming.

That progression is what I found to be the basis of the most compelling, most vulnerable, and most enduring stories.

And there have been many more as of late, as there seems to be something of a renaissance underway. The New Yorker even devoted an episode of its Critics at Large podcast to what they deemed "the return of earnestness." In it, they speculated about the cause, from generational opinions to the political climate. But they also attempted to define this concept, which Vinson Cunningham suggested could be “the quality that reinforces our sameness with other people.”

To me, that we’re collectively searching for connection, understanding, and a shared human experience that errs on the optimistic side, is more heartening than a whole raft of individual hopeful characters.

In the end, earnestness isn’t necessarily about a happy ending; it’s about a permission structure. These stories provide a space to fully feel what we might otherwise keep to ourselves. They don’t ignore pain, disappointment, or the harsh realities of the “real” world. They present challenges to characters who at first may seem unprepared for them—and we all wait, clutching our pillows or mugs of cocoa, our partners’ or friends’ hands to see if they’ll choose to stay vulnerable, honest, and hopeful anyway. That’s what makes these narratives sophisticated rather than simple, connective, and enduringly compelling.

Now I know that if someone lays their real feelings out on the third date, it doesn’t mean they’ve skipped ahead to the last page, or that they’re naive or boring. On the contrary. It is the boldest move of all to take the risk and be vulnerable, knowing it might end with disappointment.

Because it also might not. That optimistic woman from the third date? She’s now my fiancé. How’s that for earnest.

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