When I first started writing, I remember remarking to someone that it felt like what I've assumed learning to juggle would feel like. There were all these things to keep track of at once: plot, subplot, character, dialogue, description, showing vs. telling, active voice vs. passive...
As a metaphor, I think that's still pretty accurate (even if I've since realized that you can focus on one of those aspects at a time -- that's part of the point of revisions) but I realized this week that I have another one as well: writing is like assembling a puzzle.
My current project is Karen Miller's fault. I'd written a fanfic, a short story I'd done to satisfy a question I'd long had about a particular situation a man and woman might find themselves in. (In this case, the fandom was secondary to the question of the story.) And after reading it, Karen told me she thought I could/should turn it into a novel.
I'd been assuming I'd write a contemporary novel (the 'write what you read' isn't very helpful for me, since the only genre I don't read is horror) and this would have to be fantasy or historical. I chose fantasy because it was a better fit.
With a fantasy story, which comes first -- the world or the characters? I decided first to focus on the worldbuilding, convinced that whoever the characters turned out to be, they would be heavily influenced by the world they inhabited. (We're heavily influenced by our backgrounds -- why wouldn't fictional characters be?) Building a world that was sufficiently different from the fandom I started out in then took a while.
The heroine fell into place pretty easily, given the overall story idea and the worldbuilding. But the hero has been more of a question. On the plotter/pantzer scale, I'm somewhat of a 'plotzer' -- I start out knowing the characters, how the story begins and ends...and nothing at all of the middle. So I find myself thinking about the hero and realizing that he could go this way, or he could go that way, (in terms of his goals and motivations, and the conflicts that grow out of them) or, possibly, even a third way. And whichever one I choose will drastically affect the story. It will still start the same and end the same, but...different story.
And that's what I was thinking when I realized I was approaching the whole thing as a puzzle. If the hero is like this, it will fit with this piece of the plot in that way; if he's more this other way, it will cause the subplot to go in this direction...
Nothing really earthshaking in any of that from a thoughts-on-writing perspective, though it illustrates, I think, how very different one writer's approach can be to things like plot and characters.
Oh, and I'm getting closer to figuring out who the hero is. I like puzzles -- did I mention that?
Showing posts with label characters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label characters. Show all posts
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Making characters real
(For the record, I've still been thinking about the nature of this blog. What I'd like for it to be is a series of dialogues about writing and publishing, where I'll toss out a topic that I've been thinking about in hopes of learning from others' comments. I'm not making any assumption about the value of my own opinion. I'm not an expert, nor do I play one on TV.)
I've been working on characterization the last week or two, specifically how you make a character seem completely real. A real person, if you will, rather than a cliché. One thing I've discovered is that it's not a process I've given a lot of thought to. Most of my characters have seemed to grow almost organically out of the story. (Which is a good thing, I think, but that doesn't mean the process couldn't be improved upon.)
When I wrote the fanfic novel, I decided early on that the main character would be a woman who was doing the best she could in some rather horrific situations all the while doubting herself. Everything she became and did later in the story flowed from that one decision.
But last week, I saw a question or comment somewhere to the effect of, 'how do you turn a character into more than a list of traits?' and I realized I didn't know. If you begin building a character by thinking, 'let's see...he's smart, a bit of a geek, compassionate, always learning new things' -- what's involved with fleshing that out so you get Tim McGee from NCIS rather than Daniel Jackson from Stargate SG-1?
It's not really fair to start with that kind of example, because in so many ways writing a character for a television series is very different from writing a novel. (Not the least due to the number of people from director to actor that can influence character development.) So perhaps a better example of what I mean would be if I said, 'he's a sexy man of mystery, wealthy and dangerous' ...am I thinking of Evanovich's Ranger, or Roberts' Roarke? On the surface, that statement applies to both, and yet they're very different characters, right from the first book in their respective series.
So what do you add? Or more importantly, how do you add it?
One obvious answer is background, though given the writers that create a background for a character and then divorce the two, you have to wonder how obvious it really is. If you give a character a nightmarish childhood, you either need to show that it's still affecting him, or you need to explain how he overcame it, and I don't always see that happen.
Ah, but that leads to a separate issue, doesn't it? You can't spend a lot of time in the character's background, particularly in the first part of the book. But even if you never tell the reader what the character's childhood was like, you need to know how it affected her. And you have to be consistent with it.
Another possibility, based on things I've read/heard other writers say, are goals and motives. What does the character want, and why? This one strikes me as more critical than background, actually. Two characters similar on the surface, even with similar backgrounds, are going to behave very differently if they've got different goals.
(And as I'm thinking about it, it occurs to me that if there's a link between character motivation and background, that's even better.)
The last thing I've been considering is mannerisms and habits. I admit that this is one I've not worried about in the past, but I'm rethinking that. We all have mannerisms -- things we do that aren't terribly significant in themselves but which set us apart from other people -- so why shouldn't our characters? I think this is tricky, though, because it can so easily become annoying if overused. A character playing with her hair when she's nervous can get old fast.
So...when you think of your favorite characters, what is it that sets them apart from other characters that might be similar to them on the surface? What makes them 'real'?
I've been working on characterization the last week or two, specifically how you make a character seem completely real. A real person, if you will, rather than a cliché. One thing I've discovered is that it's not a process I've given a lot of thought to. Most of my characters have seemed to grow almost organically out of the story. (Which is a good thing, I think, but that doesn't mean the process couldn't be improved upon.)
When I wrote the fanfic novel, I decided early on that the main character would be a woman who was doing the best she could in some rather horrific situations all the while doubting herself. Everything she became and did later in the story flowed from that one decision.
But last week, I saw a question or comment somewhere to the effect of, 'how do you turn a character into more than a list of traits?' and I realized I didn't know. If you begin building a character by thinking, 'let's see...he's smart, a bit of a geek, compassionate, always learning new things' -- what's involved with fleshing that out so you get Tim McGee from NCIS rather than Daniel Jackson from Stargate SG-1?
It's not really fair to start with that kind of example, because in so many ways writing a character for a television series is very different from writing a novel. (Not the least due to the number of people from director to actor that can influence character development.) So perhaps a better example of what I mean would be if I said, 'he's a sexy man of mystery, wealthy and dangerous' ...am I thinking of Evanovich's Ranger, or Roberts' Roarke? On the surface, that statement applies to both, and yet they're very different characters, right from the first book in their respective series.
So what do you add? Or more importantly, how do you add it?
One obvious answer is background, though given the writers that create a background for a character and then divorce the two, you have to wonder how obvious it really is. If you give a character a nightmarish childhood, you either need to show that it's still affecting him, or you need to explain how he overcame it, and I don't always see that happen.
Ah, but that leads to a separate issue, doesn't it? You can't spend a lot of time in the character's background, particularly in the first part of the book. But even if you never tell the reader what the character's childhood was like, you need to know how it affected her. And you have to be consistent with it.
Another possibility, based on things I've read/heard other writers say, are goals and motives. What does the character want, and why? This one strikes me as more critical than background, actually. Two characters similar on the surface, even with similar backgrounds, are going to behave very differently if they've got different goals.
(And as I'm thinking about it, it occurs to me that if there's a link between character motivation and background, that's even better.)
The last thing I've been considering is mannerisms and habits. I admit that this is one I've not worried about in the past, but I'm rethinking that. We all have mannerisms -- things we do that aren't terribly significant in themselves but which set us apart from other people -- so why shouldn't our characters? I think this is tricky, though, because it can so easily become annoying if overused. A character playing with her hair when she's nervous can get old fast.
So...when you think of your favorite characters, what is it that sets them apart from other characters that might be similar to them on the surface? What makes them 'real'?
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