Author Topic: Creating Charaters  (Read 7055 times)

wakela

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on: October 02, 2007, 11:40:05 PM
I have story ideas, but my characters always bore the crap out of me.  What do folks do to come up with interesting characters?



IT_Spook

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Reply #1 on: October 03, 2007, 12:23:06 AM
My secret is to base my characters loosely on someone I know. Typically, they have one or two unique qualities that makes them stand out in a crowd. If they don't, I may give them a quirk to make them memorable.

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Heradel

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Reply #2 on: October 03, 2007, 01:02:33 AM
Well, where exactly do you lose interest in the characters? Are your story ideas along the lines of "Aliens with weird mental power invade earth, main character is the leader of the resistance" or "Man rebels against the system put in place by psychic alien overlords, learns to love, loses love, is brainwashed, tries to break through brain washing, ends up drinking bad scotch and playing chess in a little cafe." — More simply, are your story ideas about the world/environ or about the character's journey?

Speaking personally, I've got a couple characters in my head, the main character and a few variations on archetypes. I know I base certain parts of the archetypal secondary characters on my friends (the main one's more me that I like admitting, though I try to make sure not to lapse into Dischism) and I also steal a bit from other fictional characters.

Are you sure your characters aren't, er, perfect/unchanging? The orphan that was tortured by her foster parents and then her dog who was her only friend died for not good reason but she's managed to come out well adjusted in the end and has a perfectly normal husband, two kids and a (new) dog?. Or Phil from Accounting who gets this call to action, goes on a great quest, kills the dragon, and at the end of it manages to go right back to being Phil from Accounting?

Characters without flaws tend to be/are the ones that get boring quick.

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Mr. Tweedy

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Reply #3 on: October 03, 2007, 02:58:29 PM
Qualifier: This advice comes from someone who has not yet managed to sell a story (although he's getting better).

I think it's very important for characters to be bigger than the story they're in.  I.e. you should know a lot more about your characters than is told in the story.  I recommend the technique of interviewing them.  Make sure no one else is around or is likely to walk in on you, then sit down with some coffee and cookies and talk to your characters about various topics.  Converse with them and psychoanalyze to figure out why they are the way they are.  Characters need motivations and to have motivations they need to have personalities and histories.

Of course, since you're making them up, you can do the psychoanalyzing first and then invent the characteristic.  You can posit that the character's house burned down when he was a kid and so he is afraid of fire.  Or, conversely, you can decide that he's afraid of fire and invent the house burning down to explain it.  You see this sort of phenomenon with good and bad actors.  A good actor understands their character; they know what that character is like.  A bad actor just reads lines.

Character need to have substance.  They need to be real people with real personalities, not just robots who speak lines.  If you try this, you'll find yourself inventing characters independent from your stories: "Hey, Mr. X would work great in this story.  I think I'll being him in."  Half of the characters I've got to populate a very long saga-ish story I'm working on were made up outside of the story.  Actually, the plot of the saga was more developed around the characters: "This evil psychic guy is really cool.  I'd like to stick him in," and the plot changed to incorporate him.

I'm starting to ramble, so I'll summarize: Your characters need to have lives of their own if they're going to be compelling and believable.  You might not tell the reader how they spend their Saturday afternoons, but you should know.  If you don't, then your character is going to be flat.

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Rachel Swirsky

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Reply #4 on: October 03, 2007, 03:59:34 PM
This book on characterization has detailed, practical advice for developing character, and relaying that information on the page. It's by Nancy Kress whose fiction has been featured on the podcast of late.
« Last Edit: October 03, 2007, 07:17:48 PM by Russell Nash »



Planish

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Reply #5 on: December 15, 2007, 09:06:17 AM
It might be useful to check out The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, in which he discusses the monomyth.

Quote from: wikipedia
Campbell's insight was that important myths from around the world which have survived for thousands of years, all share a fundamental structure. This fundamental structure contains a number of stages, which includes

  • A call to adventure, which the hero has to accept or decline
  • A road of trials, regarding which the hero succeeds or fails
  • Achieving the goal or "boon", which often results in important self-knowledge
  • A return to the ordinary world, again as to which the hero can succeed or fail
  • Applying the boon, in which what the hero has gained can be used to improve the world
In a well-known quote from the introduction to The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell wrote:
“ A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

Not that it is a guaranteed formula...
Quote from: wikipedia
Criticism
Thoughtless use of monomyth structure is often blamed for lack of originality and clichés in popular culture, especially big-budget Hollywood films. In addition to the popularity of Campbell-influenced guides such as The Writer's Journey, the influential book Screenplay by Syd Field also proposed an ideal three-act structure, which is easily compatible with modern screenwriters' attempts to craft a monomyth. However, since the peak popularity of cinematic monomyth narratives in the 1990s, some would-be blockbuster movies that have been seen as conscious attempts to follow the structure have met with indifference from critics and often disappointing performance at the box office, as in the case of Eragon and the second and third movies in the Matrix trilogy.
But even so, it's interesting to inspect popular literature (going way back) and movies in light of it.

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Reply #6 on: May 13, 2008, 03:42:11 PM
I just try to write about characters I'd want to read about.


Troo

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Reply #7 on: May 14, 2008, 11:51:27 AM
I write a full history of each character before I get started. So I may start out with "Android unaware of his inhuman nature," but end up with four or five pages of when he was made, by whom, how and why the secret was kept, what explanation there is for him having no memory of childhood, the people he's met in his life who have influenced his past and present, and so on. I'll just let it flow, and by the end I'll have a far better idea of who he is, what he's like, what he wants, what he truly needs, and so on.

Once they're all fleshed out in this way, I'll review them and see how they can be tied together, pushed apart, what goals they share or what will cause conflict. I'll neaten, cut, insert, rewrite until all the characters make sense and have the potential for a good story between them.

Then and only then does the writing begin.

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Reply #8 on: June 05, 2008, 08:23:55 PM
This is a quote from one of Jim's posts and I think it's germane to the conversation.

"Don't fall into the character-based/plot-based dichotomy. People, especially in writing groups and workshops, will try to categorize stories as based on either plot or character. This is a poisonous idea that will turn you into a cannibalistic freak wearing a belt made out of human spinal cords. There's no such thing as a character-based story or a plot-based story, because every story has both. Even the most incident-free Ploughshares romp or the most twisty thumpy space opera tale. If you start thinking that stories can be categorized into either pile, you'll end up writing either eventless character studies or plot-hammer symphonies starring one-dimensional nothings."

I'd like to take it one step further.  Not only does a strong story depend on both character and plot, but strong characters and plots depend upon one another.  And sometimes a strong character will simply make for an interesting plot.  Sometimes an interesting plot will make an interesting character by sheer necessity.  You take Winston Smith for instance.  As normal a character as you could ask for, a man without any real idiosynchratic qualities save for a slightly irrational fear of rats.  But boring?  Not at all.  He's the protagonist of one of the most compelling and provocative novels ever written.  Some people might say that makes "1984" plot-driven and not character-driven, but I would disagree.  The heart and soul of the novel is the profoundly disturbing effect Orwell's world has on Orwell's character.  Winston, beaten and cracked open by the very seams of his being, learns to love Big Brother in the final, horrifying sentence of the novel.  Personally, I'd call that a character-driven conclusion.

Some story concepts work.  Others don't.  Some need to sit on the backburner for awhile before they're ready.  If I have any advice, it's to start looking at concepts as wholes and not worry so much if the character is inherently interesting enough.  If the idea you're working with is actionable, just let it carry the protagonist with it.  Something interesting is bound to happen.



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Reply #9 on: June 11, 2008, 08:14:48 PM
A little late to the party, but...

I love characters.  LOVE LOVE LOVE them.  I have been known to, in first drafts, sacrifice plot for character and have to go back and fix things.

My secret is to base my characters loosely on someone I know. Typically, they have one or two unique qualities that makes them stand out in a crowd. If they don't, I may give them a quirk to make them memorable.

I do this with secondary and minor characters only.  I've been burned by making main characters too much like real people.

I think it's very important for characters to be bigger than the story they're in.  I.e. you should know a lot more about your characters than is told in the story.  I recommend the technique of interviewing them.  Make sure no one else is around or is likely to walk in on you, then sit down with some coffee and cookies and talk to your characters about various topics.  Converse with them and psychoanalyze to figure out why they are the way they are.  Characters need motivations and to have motivations they need to have personalities and histories.

I agree with the first part, but as for the second... I usually start with an opinion of the character, general appearance, and a few ideas about what caused certain personality quirks.  But like any good relationship, I like to learn more about people as I write them.  When I started "Shell Game", I didn't know why Sarah did what she did, but by the end, I knew everything about her.

Quote
I'm starting to ramble, so I'll summarize: Your characters need to have lives of their own if they're going to be compelling and believable.  You might not tell the reader how they spend their Saturday afternoons, but you should know.  If you don't, then your character is going to be flat.

EXACTLY.  Absolutely right.

Give them faults and fears. Things that they lie to themselves about. Personal biases.

People who have reviewed and beta'd my stories remark on the realism of the characters.  I always give them flaws, and the more I write, the more flaws they get.  My first stories, everyone was perfect.  I started making them have problems.  Then I started giving them appearances more in the middle of the bell curve.  Then I gave them insecurities.  I find that I love them more the less perfect they are.

I write a full history of each character before I get started. So I may start out with "Android unaware of his inhuman nature," but end up with four or five pages of when he was made, by whom, how and why the secret was kept, what explanation there is for him having no memory of childhood, the people he's met in his life who have influenced his past and present, and so on. I'll just let it flow, and by the end I'll have a far better idea of who he is, what he's like, what he wants, what he truly needs, and so on.

That works for some people, but not for me.  As I said, I like learning about the characters.  If I know everything about them beforehand, I don't care about them.

I'm writing a sequel to "Shell Game" -- it's outlined very vaguely, and one character from SG will be in it -- the second-most-hated character from SG is the star of the sequel.  I don't know everything about her.  I only know about her from what her brother and her brother's girlfriend know about her.  I look forward to getting to know her and finding out WHY she's such a bitch.

*whew* That's all I got right now.

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