Tag: characters

It’s All Character

It’s the absolute favorite word in storytelling. And the one least understood.

Ask writers or fans “Which is more important, characters or—” and you don’t even have to finish the sentence. People will answer “characters!”, eagerly, fiercely, and they’ll reference everyone from Samwise Gamgee to Hamlet.

But, what makes a good character?

My thought is: everything in the story, including parts that aren’t character at all.

 

Pieces of People

Are characters made by depth, by the sheer number of layers they have? Sometimes.

There’s a marvelous moment in Better Call Saul, where shifty lawyer Jimmy McGill confronts the mentor he’s always admired and resented for judging him so harshly. He offers to give up being a lawyer in exchange for one favor, and when his mentor warns that that would be coercion, he says “So coerce me! We both get what we want!” And we realize Jimmy really would be satisfied—besides getting his wish he’d finally make his mentor happy, and he’d prove to himself that that one unbending person actually will get down in the mud like himself when there’s enough at stake. (It’s inevitable, but a bit disappointing, that said mentor doesn’t budge from his high horse.) It’s a beautiful mix of different motivations all tangling together, and it’s only one moment.

Or it might be less the number of changes and layers a character has than facing the right changes for the story. Frodo is an appealing hero in Lord of the Rings, but he might come off as a bit ordinary if he’d shuffled all the way through his quest instead of proving at the last moment that he had only so much strength. Or if he’d gone home happy without doing justice to all the wounds from his ordeal. That side of the War of the Ring does so much to make it more than an epic for epic’s sake, and makes Frodo a deserving center for it. Even though it’s only a few uncompromising choices in the course of the story.

Sometimes it’s just how well characterization is shown. We all know a few stories where someone goes through a fairly simple journey, but their pain or love or rage comes off so fiercely we’re left shaking. Execution matters too.

Or it could be a tiny point, anything that just clicks with a reader. I’ve seen a smart, lonely orphan boy written as doing coin tricks on his knuckles and yelled “Yes! Of course that’s how he’s spent those years!” It could be a passing reference to what school someone went to that just seems right, or (this is one of my own that stuck with me) watching a man with a flying belt flinch as he’s being led underground. Of course that can be a reward for making everything about the character authentic, so nothing breaks the spell and every touch has more chances to catch the reader with how it fits.

Or sometimes a character shines from just being connected to quality storytelling, even more than the character himself provides. Nobody says Raiders of the Lost Ark was “saved” by Harrison Ford’s swagger; the movie’s real strength is outstanding action and adventure, and Ford’s performance simply added (plenty) to that. Indiana Jones is remembered as a superb action character, but in the end it would be more accurate to say he’s the hero in the ultimate adventure.

What makes a good character? Anything good.

 

For the Writer, for the Reader

So what does that mean for understanding a story?

A tale is what it is. It’s its own balance of character history, buildup, number of plot twists, and number of characters to play off each other.

Sometimes taking the space for a change that really goes to the heart of a character comes at the expense of being around other people that can explore aspects of what he’s going through. It might be the only way to make a point is how someone doesn’t say what would be obvious, because they simply never would. Or a story needs time to bring a fight or some tinkering to life, enough that we can appreciate the challenges he’s caught between.

All of it helps.

To me, “character” is a running count of how the whole story and backstory have worked to reshape each person, based on how each was different to begin with. “Plot” might be an abstract sense of one event at a time and its momentum, but “character” is the total effect of all the layers they’ve given someone, including that driving sense of what they might do next to break out of the box or crumble inside it. And it’s also how we feel we’d know how they’d live when the story ends, or if we met them in real life.

In the end, that may be the biggest distinction between the two. A story’s plot may leave implications – a claim that the more something like that happened again, the more history might repeat itself. Ambitions, lies, friendships, conspiracies and dreams might all line up the same way, yes.

But since we’re people, we remember the people who walked us through that lesson. Even the times when it wasn’t the characters who brought it to life.

On Google+

            h6

Photo by wayseeker2000

Zero to Heroes

On February 16, I’ll be at Orccon in Los Angeles giving another of my talks on writing. Here’s what I’ll be leading people through:

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

We’ve all been there. When we just don’t know what a story should be, when there’s just this vague sense of what we’d “like to have written” and no more. The times we might as well have nothing.

–Except, it isn’t nothing, is it? Despite the title up there on the page, we do have the seed of an idea.

That’s all it takes.

Writing’s too full of myths about “inspiration” and “the concept,” that hint that if you don’t get half the story all at once you’ll never get it. Except, they’re all promulgated by–and for–people who’ve never sat down with someone who’s gotten through a story. Please.

Besides, it’s no secret what usually energizes a tale, and ties its pieces together: conflict.

In other words, who’s up against what. And odds are, whatever itch we have to get a story written is going to connect with one of those sides, either the hero or the forces he’s dealing with.

 

Starting with the Hero?

If you’ve got a sense of your protagonist… is it that you know what he wants? Is he struggling to become a famous wizard, or save his sister from an unnatural plague? There, you start to see what the story needs: a sister, a plague, a way to save her and all the things that can lead to it or go wrong.

Or you might have a more general sense of what he does, not really pinned down as far. A pirate raids ships; a father tries to raise children; a monster-hunter is no good without some-Thing to hunt.

From those, you can look back and see more about how many kinds of people might find themselves in your hero’s shoes. Maybe the protagonist you want is reluctant, dragged into the story by circumstances. Or he’s eager for it, or he’s the calm product of a lifetime of training. So how does that change how he faces a rival or looks for a clue? When does where he came from make him better than the people around him, and how does it trip him up–and, what could make him doubt he’s on the right path? All of those are plots.

 

…Or the World?

Or you might come into the story search from the outside, instead of the center: maybe you’ve got a sense of what flavor of fun is there but not who’s dealing with it yet. No picture of a Pirate Hero but just that the high seas would be a perfect place for an adventure.

So: what different forces might be in that mix? Raging storms, pirate ships one at a time, or whole navies at war? Is there a sea monster or three (and are they a normal ocean hazard, or did Something Open Up between worlds?), or are you more interested in human struggles? The humans might be marines, explorers, or a Fair Lady with Secrets.

From there you could ask: how many of each could the story have, and how are they different? Is one navy captain more of a backstabber than the one on the next ship, and how do either compare to that lady? Better yet, does one start out trustworthy and change to treacherous, and why?

And the best part? With each combination we look at, we can see different people who might be the hero in the center of it all, and how all that would give him new pressures and possibilities. Imagine focusing the story on a castaway tossed into the middle of that ship… or on the ship’s first mate that the captain hates, or on a captured pirate. Any of those angles would make a very different story from putting our Secretive Lady in the center.

 

That’s all it takes, just looking for which other pieces of the puzzle could help and hurt which kind of hero. (Or heroine; now I’m starting to wonder what she’s up to…) Look at how they mesh with that center, and each other–fighting, tempting, teaching, befriending or betraying. All that’s left is to pick which combination builds up the best kind of pressure, and who knocks over whose domino first.

And look! now we’re plotting, and making more detailed choices, maybe looking up guides like my Bracketology plan for organizing a storyline. Because when we thought we barely had an idea–

Suddenly the ship has sailed.