My main character has, at risk of oversimplifying, brought down a huge army on the head of a bunch of innocent farmers. He felt responsible for this, so responsible in fact that he wouldn't let himself die. He had to warn the villagers and tell them to get ready. He's done that, and yet again he's ready to die. He is mentally shot to hell. He's going to this place where there is an Empire and he's going to beg them to send an army into the desert where the farmers live. The part about them sending the army was my writers block. I seem to have stumbled on this much larger problem, Why does he want to go back an fight anyway? My question is, can anybody give me any compelling reason that my main character would want to go back and kill more people?

I have a character that he falls in love with but she's actually pretty instrumental to the rest of the story, so it would be nice if I didn't have to kill her as a reason. Although if I get desperate I will.

Some readers have complained about Ender's death in the middle of Children of the Mind, but most seem to realize that this is part of the power of the story. Even though Ender is dead, the world goes on without him--however important he was.

I think you have some major motivation gaps here. I don't understand why farmers would live in a desert, or why a hero would let himself die. I really don't understand why he would send one army to destroy another.

While he is with this band he starts figuring out ways to make the battles more effective and his band starts winning. They attack an expedition from the East and the main character finds these maps. They have the location of most of the Oases. The leader of his band realizes their importance and he starts unifying a bunch of bands and forming an army (this is how he accidently brings an army to the Oases, or farmers). Then seeing what he's done to these innocents he feels responsible for their deaths (his leader massacres an oasis because of a complicated grudge). He warns the other Oases and helps them start getting ready for the war but then he's done everything he can do for them (or so he thinks) and paid off his debt. He is so sick of killing people that he just wants to die, in fact he's wanted to die since the massacre, but now he feels as if he's paid his debt. He then goes to the East (he saves one last caravan, but he has to kill one of his best friends to do it, so there are understandable psychological problems) and my problem is I need him to have a motive to ask the emperor to send an army into the wastelands to fight the Unforgiven, and when the emperor refuses a reason for him to go back in alone.

About having him die halfway through the story I had one thing to say: brilliant. I love that idea, I was going to switch the point of view later on anyway, but this sounds like it could have an awesome impact on the story. I might do that, but I'd still like to see if there is another way that I can get him to go back into the Wastelands, at least for a little while. (edited in later) In fact, this is a very good idea. I can do some really good stuff with this. It will change the story horrendously, but that's ok. I'll have to write from the point of view of a girl for a while, but again, that's ok. It's good practice. Thank you so much for that suggestion. (end edit)

In case it wasn't clear from the explanation (I have a problem with explaining more than nescessary) the first army is from one place and he goes to the empire to ask them to send an army to fight it.

The Great Uberslacker

Oh BTW thanks to everybody that has added something already. It got me thinking, but I need to go work on school.

Just my 2 cents.

BTW, I think I'm at about 20,000 words and halfway about 1/3 done, maybe closer to halfway.

The Great Uberslacker

P.S. I hope you guys aren't sick of me yet

someone he cares about will die or suffer terrible torture if he doesn't go back (this can be someone who is being held hostage to force him to go, or someone whom he can rescue if he goes back),

something he has always wanted will be his if he goes back (also known as "the maguffin" or the thing that everyone else wants, too),

someone does something noble for him and he feels honor bound to go back and do something for them in return (he could find out about this when he is ready to give up and die, and it can have happened long before),

he hears that someone or something terrible is heading back there and only he knows about it and what to do,

and so on and so forth.

All you really need is what is called an "or else"--something worse than what will happen if he doesn't go back.

Maybe he just decides to go back because he'd rather die with the others than without them (it would be worse to die alone).

Make a list of what could happen if he doesn't go back, and make it as awful as you can. Then pick one or two or more of the things and figure out how to let him know about them.

Problem is I have asked opinions of many people (through the net or people that I personaly know), like: Do you think my female characters are well portraited? Do you think he would do that in such a situation? etc, etc. The answers I get are chaotic, to say the least. It seems that we, humans, are very complicated beings!

But a writer --a even more complicated phsycopath! -- must, somehow, decide how his characters will react in certain evens. Yes, the One Rule about this is "know thy characters", but that also goes down to psycology. I've found that asking people helps but not much, because, for good or for ill, people usually lie about what they feel. I don't say this in a bad or critical way; it's the human nature to hide, even from its own self, something --there just are things you won't admit no matter what (b/c you think they ashame you, make you feel bad, or whatever). So I tend to watch how somebody says something, how somebody does somethimg, and then draw my own conclusions, based on the logical Why-Does-S/He-Act-That-Way. There is always a reason for something. Even if the reason is "his nature is to be rude", "her nature is to be rushy", etc.

The classic test of this is to look at Hamlet, one of the most debated, misportrayed, and one of the deepest characters I think has ever been written. You go into a room and ask everybody "Was Hamlet crazy?" and you're going to have a 50/50 split down the middle, and EVERY ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE is going to have differing opinions on WHY, EVEN IF they agree that he was/wasn't crazy. Hamlet is a GREAT illustration of how truly hard it is to dig motivation out of a script, yet the motivation is there . . that NOBODY denies!

How much harder then, is it for a writer? (and now I'm back to my point.) He has to do the process in reverse. Instead of just one question (WHY did they do that?) He has several questions. What will they do? Why will they do it? and Is that consistent with their character? and above all Does that make for an interesting story? Some people think it's a bit easier that way, working in reverse. YOU can say what your character's personality is and make the story reflect that. The problem is, is if you don't have a good idea what REALLY motivates real people, how events affect emotions, which affect decisions, which affect responses, which affect perceptions ad nauseum, people are going to read your characters and say "Yeah, right!"

I think in the end it all comes down to a gut feeling. Actors can analyze the crap out of their characters. Writers don't quite have that luxury. Now it's possible to write a story, and then create the characters' personalities to fit their actions throughout the story, occasionally adding events to make the pieces fit together. And in fact, I would say that's how most good stories are written. It's the rare writer who can take a set of characters, THROW them into the mix, and make an interesting story come out, simply because it's very hard to keep your characters true to form.

So, how do you play with psychology? My answer is, it depends on the person. Writing isn't necessarily the art of creating a story, it's more the art of rationalizing the story you've created, which in my experience is very dependent on instinct. And you'll never develop those instinct without being willing to dig a bit into your own dark side, and light side, very honestly, explore, and be ready to find the parallells between your life and everybody else's.

Okay, so that's a complicated answer, and a bit abstract for some people. So, I'll boil it down into an answer that is a clear as I can possibly make it:

I really, honestly don't have a clue!

Which brings me to my next point. When wrting sci-fi or fantasy it's difficult to straddle that line of explaining too much about the word you created and explaning to little. I'm not bashing Jordan, but I never see myself wrting a book the requires a
f--king glossary. I don't feel that's fair to the audience. A novel should not feel like reading a text book. By the same token I've attempted to read books that don't explain anything and expect the reader to pick it up based on context. A habit which is just as annoying.

I think the problem is this. An author doesn't want his reader to be lost because the don't understand the world in which their characters live be it faux medieval or futuristic. Or the author has such a vivid vision of the world he created he believes if he thrusts the audience into the too will have the same vision.

It's a hard line to straddle and the only authors I've seen do it well are Eddings, Goodkind, and Card.

WoT is one of the most impressive weavings of plot, foreshadowing, atmosphere and character I have EVER read. You WILL hit parts of it you just have to slog through, and they'll seem irrelevant. But there's nothing like getting 5 books further along and seeing something happen that he dropped a hint about all the way back at the beginning. Not a HUGE accomplishment, but the sheer number of such hints is rather astounding. I've read the whole series through about 7 times and I'm STILL finding new stuff!

BUT! If you don't like description, LOTS of detail, and the occasional bit of annoying filler, you might get worn out. Then there's the fact that the series isn't done, and he's got . . . like 3 more books left. Each spaced out by 2 years. THAT gets a bit old.

However, if you want a series that's worth re-reading at least once, and lets you read the same story for months on end (and I read fast enough, that's a VERY big story!) WoT would be the one. Oh . . . and when you get to The Shadow Rising (Book 4) . . . you WILL get bogged down in the first third of the book. If you can stick through THAT, you'll be fine.

Impressive as that is, it requires that you *remember* the hint you read 6 years and 7 books ago, which at least for me, years of college have managed to bump quite a bit of that information right out of my head.

It really wasn’t the description that I have a problem with. It’s all the people! I started on one the later (#7 or so) WoT books and I didn’t even remember anything about the person he was talking about, although he or she was apparently important. Totally clueless. And I didn’t have time to go back and re-read the other six (well I tried, but that school thing got in the way, quick reader or not). When Jordan’s finally finished, maybe I’ll try again, ‘cause the first few were great and I would like to see how it all ends.

So as far as writing is concerned, I think an author might want to watch getting things too complicated. It starts making the readers lose their grip on the story, which isn’t good for the story or for sales (I don’t know what RJ’s sales for these latter books are, but I know he isn’t getting my money recently, as well as a that of a few other people I know, which is a shame since at heart we would have been interested had things not dragged on so).

back to phsychology. if you were to, say, have a sentient species that has had no contact with humans. they're mammal based though. how would that change the way you develop an individual's character? if they were descended from carnivores? how about herbivores? any thoughts?

TTFN & lol

So, now we have an alien species. What if they derive from a carnivorous pack-type setting. In such a setting . . . survival of the fittest is EVERYTHING! Suddenly we're faced with a hero who would unflinchingly let somebody die who wasn't cabable of surviving on their own. And in fact, this hero would, by perhaps stealing food from this poor soul, be CAUSING their death, but according to their code of ethics, that's okay.

So . . . as we're developing character, we have this one problem of there being no really easy way to define who's a good guy and who's a bad guy when the GOOD guy is killing his own people, maybe even a member of his own family. That ain't much of a hero.

The problem is creating a different code of ethics and communicating that to the reader. Because if you don't, the reader's operating, quite literally, in a different world from your book, and by definition will not get immersed in the story.

Card actually plays with this idea of conflicting codes of ethics; actually makes it CENTRAL to the story by inventing . . . say it with me . . . the descolada virus. Now we have the piggies. For the longest time in Speaker for the Dead, we see these cute wonderful little creatures committing unspeakable atrocities in the name of friendship, honor and love. The descolada is a way for Card to create two COMPLETELY different cultures and have them clash in very basic ways. Then again, in the end we find out that both the piggies AND the humans have basically the same moral code, they just have different perspectives.

Perhaps a better illustration is that of the hive queen . . . or the buggers in general. Killing truly does mean nothing to them . . . only genocide does. The conflict between a hive mentality and individualism is a great way of showing how hard it is to tell a story of a COMPLETELY alien culture.

Basically, what it comes down to, is can you communicate this creature's thought processes to us in a way that makes us understand their actions, and make the motivations for those actions conform to OUR ethical standards. If you can do that succesfully, you will be able to develop character very effectively. Remember, they don't have to be able to speak English . . . after all, writers have built in universal translators. You can ALWAYS translate what they're actually saying or thinking and translate it into the reader's language. All that's left is the thoughts.

I'm getting tongue tied now. If I were TALKING about this, I'd do it much better. I can't write fast enough to get all my thoughts out.

Any of that make sense?

I think I saw part of this story posted around here, so my apologies if I am confused and thinking of the wrong story.

Now, the wastelands are barren and can support only very small populations at the edge of survival. The east is fertile lands with an established civilization. The east is also a center of technology (if their exploratory expeditions have muskets, their military probably has rifles). It is fairly clear that the east could easily withstand the attack of an unforgiven leader -- unless it was simultaneously plagued by internal instability.

This is relevant because, IIRC, the unforgiven leader is convinced that he can conquer the east. The successful conquest of an oasis should have strengthened his resolve here. He is convinced that the toughening experience of the wastelands makes their band stronger than the pampered easterners.

The protagonist, however, has made some progress decyphering the writings stolen from the eastern caravan, and realizes that the eastern army outnumbers them at least a thousand to one and has better weapons, medicine, supplies, etc., and that if the band becomes more than a small nuscience, the east will simply innhialate them.

The band leader will not hear of this, and plans to attack a second oasis. Searching for a way to minimize bloodshed, and especially the deathes of his friends, he realizes that the band will turn away if they find the oasis to be seriously fortified. He heads to the east to try to give warning and gain re-inforcements.

Once he arrives, he finds cities vast beyond his imagination, beuarocracies such as he has never dealt with, a partial (or total) language barrier, and a policy that the return of an unforgiven to civilization is punishable by torture and death.

I think I got most of what he was talking about (corrections at least). I just realized that you were giving me suggestions, and I thank you, but if it hasn't already become obvious I've got it figured out. I've written it up to where he's in the East.

BTW, you probably saw it in the young writer's workshop where I posted it a while back. If someone wants to read I'll e-mail (or put it on my website)

quote:

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My question is, can anybody give me any compelling reason that my main character would want to go back and kill more people?

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Sorry, for not talking about writing but when I saw the picture I immediately thought of the board---now back to you regularly scheduled bulletin board already in progress…

http://home.att.net/~alphabitch/Wheel.jpg

http://home.att.net/~boofner/Wheelkey.jpg

JOHN!

But the Fade, Trollocs and Draghkar are all unsuitable. The fade has a great sinuous body form, but he doesn't have the eerie draping and light absorbing effect for his clothes (he's portrayed as shiny rather than shadowy) and he definately appears to have eyes (or at least the one you can see). The Trollocs simply appear to be buff, healthy humans wearing costumes with elaborate masks. And the Draghkar has a good (but not great) bat head, but his arms and legs are way too buff and his wings aren't large enough (his head should be based on a vampire bat rather than a fox or fruit bat).

Anyway, I'm nitpicking. 'Tis a fine picture.