Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Character versus Audience

This is topic Character versus Audience in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Brendan (Member # 6044) on :

Over in Fragments, I posted a first 13 for a story. The feedback received quite rightly pointed out that it felt flippant. As the subject was about cancer, which clashed with the expectations of the audience. As I looked at this, I saw a dilemma - the characters are flippant for a significant portion of the story. However, I realised that this was legitimate, as

1. They are young and flippancy is a characteristic of this generation (or perhaps of youth)
2. The nature of what they are flippant about is no big deal in their world - which is not the same in our world
3. It is an approach that leads to a realistic relationship, including tension and humor
4. Flippancy can lead to deeper thinking and stronger themes (think MASH and the strong anti-war theme that came through)

However,
1. The audience isn't necessarily young, and therefore is reading from a completely different perspective
2. The audience may have personal experience that would be turned off by a flippant attitude toward the subject
3. In our world, the subject is more greivious than in the character's world, and therefore flippancy could be perceived as bad taste
4. Few editors, striving for sales, really want to potentially offend a significant portion of the readership.

This provides an example of a clash between the characterisation and the audience. I am not really wanting to concentrate on the merits of this particular example except to glean a wider understanding of the following questions.

How do you resolve conflicts between the character that you envision and the expectations of the audience?

When do you legitimately take the risk of alienating a certain section of the audience, and therefore potentially make the story harder to sell?

When do you change the characterisation to suite the audience, and potentially weaken your theme or story?

In addition, have you ever had to radically adjust the characterisation to meet audience expectations?

Posted by mfreivald (Member # 3413) on :

Brendan,

I don't think you have a character problem. You have a presentation problem with incongruencies between your imaginary world and our real one. None of us--as far as I can tell--have a problem with your characters' flippant attitude, per se. We have a problem with "Woohoo!" being a response to getting breast cancer without some context ahead of time. The flippancy of the characters is simply ill-used the way you do in the first 13.

ciao,
Mark

Posted by JeanneT (Member # 5709) on :

I'm going through a somewhat similar problem, although I also haven't figured out a solution. I have a situation in my novel where the characters have to express negative emotions about a subject (homosexuality) which are different than mine, but are part of their world view. It is a necessary part of a major sub-plot. I am worried that when this is expressed it will be viewed as "gay-bashing" although it is actually part of a sub-plot that isn't that at all. One of the major "good guys" turns out to be gay and dealing with the extreme negativism of his culture. But first the reader has to 1. know that it is viewed even more negatively than in our own and 2. get at least a hint that he might be so that it is believable when this is revealed it works plot-wise.

I've gotten some fairly minor negative comments from critters in the early chapters about it, then they go "Oh, I see" when they get to the later ones. I'm more concerned about how a publisher may react. They might simply stop reading.

I haven't found any way around the problem.

Sorry, I don't mean to hijack your thread. But I do understand what you're saying that sometimes what you need to do in a story might "turn off" a reader. I wish I could offer a solution.

Edit: I do agree that setting context is important. It can be difficult to do. I could, for instance, take out the dialogue where a character makes a negative remark and instead put in an info-dump to set context. It's a thought--not my first instinct, but possibly the way to go.

[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited August 18, 2007).]

Posted by WouldBe (Member # 5682) on :

There is a tricky bit when a character (especially the MC) has a large character arc in the story. The character might be unpleasant in the beginning. Editors say they like character arc, but the character must not be so obnoxious or boring that the reader does not connect. So, I guess there has to be a strong hook associated with the character (not necessarily the story's main hook) that will make the reader turn the page one more time.

A character that has a negative character arc (good-to-bad) must be interesting, too, not just nice.

Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

Well, I'd say you have to get the audience to understand the flippancy the way you do, and then we'll understand the characters and sympathize. When you start a story, we have nothing but our own personal experiences...in terms of your story, we start from zero. It is usually best, therefore, to begin in a place where you can get a character/audience connection. I haven't even read your fragment, so I can't give specific advice, but just try to think about what your characters are going through at the beginning that might make a good starting scene that the audience can understand, such as heartache or loss.

As far as flippancy goes, it's hard to make sympathetic even when ti is understandable, so you've got a tough nut to crack.

Posted by Brendan (Member # 6044) on :

Mark, while I think what you said above is well put, it is narrowing this topic away from the broader perspective that I was requesting. This topic was not meant as a means of arguing the merits of the first 13, even though the conversations of the first 13 seeded the questions. I was hoping for a broader perspective on the questions asked.

Posted by mfreivald (Member # 3413) on :

What I said is directly related to your questions. In order to deal with any of the items listed above, you need to be clear about what is a clash, and what is not. Otherwise you are asking for a method to get out of quicksand to solve the problem of high taxes.

I have no problem reading teenage flippance in a teenage character--there is no disconnect between audience and character with me when that occurs. (As a former sixth grade teacher, I read lots of juvenile literature, and I still read a significant amount. And as a former flippant jerk of a teenager, I respect the realism.)

Cheers,
Mark

Posted by TaleSpinner (Member # 5638) on :

You mentioned MASH. It had flippancy, sure, but it wasn't uninterrupted flippancy, there was danger and pathos and sympathy and genuine humour and the whole range of human emotion. As I recall the doctors were often flippant in the midst of dealing with an obvious crisis with skill and care, so the flippancy was in context and made sense to the audience. Well, it made sense to me at least.

Also, it was made about a present-day situation we all knew about, not a future world we do not understand.

Most people who encounter crisis daily understand that flippancy is one way of dealing with the undealable-with. The MASH people would not have been flippant about a child getting cancer.

"How do you resolve conflicts between the character that you envision and the expectations of the audience?"

You don't. If the audience has expectations that you do not meet, they are unlikely to read your story. I think you should reframe your thinking towards something like, "How do I persuade an audience to read about a character or situation they might find unacceptable?"

"When do you legitimately take the risk of alienating a certain section of the audience, and therefore potentially make the story harder to sell?"

Depends what you mean by 'legitimate'. If you want to remain 'true to your art', then never. And yes, that will make it hard or impossible to sell. Alienation won't attract large audiences, methinks.

"When do you change the characterisation to suite the audience, and potentially weaken your theme or story?"

Again, I think you need to reframe the question. I see no need to change characterisation to suit an audience (unless all the characters are hateful). Your question should be, how do you present a difficult character without turning the audience off?

I suppose the best answers to that lie in horror fiction, but I neither read nor understand that genre. However, ghastly villains and distasteful scenes abound in SF and thrillers, and we read them because we have sympathy with the predicament of the Good Guy. Or Gal. Indeed, there have been some disturbing first 13s just recently, yet people said they'd read further, because something hooked them.

Another answer lies in your title for this thread, 'character versus audience'. The audience will win every time, for the audience chooses whether to read, whether to purchase. The character is passive, hoping to be read about. It's not a competition, nor a fight: there is no 'versus'.

Seduction might be a better metaphor. 'Character woos audience' might be a better paradigm.

Just 2c,
Pat

Posted by The G-Bus Man (Member # 6019) on :

I went ahead and found your fragment and read it. I had other people read it too. We all agree with mfreivald - it's not your characters, its your presentation. It just comes off as ultimately unnatural.

I would reserve the flippancy for later when we get to know your characters better. I'm probably going to be yelled at for this, but I recommend you look at the daily comic strip "Funky Winkerbean" - it deals with the issue of cancer and personal relationships a lot, and I think it does it with a very believable presentation.

Posted by annepin (Member # 5952) on :

Word. What TaleSpinner said.

I'll also add, in response to your question:

"How do you resolve conflicts between the character that you envision and the expectations of the audience?"

I see this not so much a problem of characterization as presentation. Part of the skill of being a writer is in setting up the audience's expectations, and it all goes back to what your story is about.

You bring up M.A.S.H. Granted, it's been a _long_ time since I last saw that show, but if I remember, they weren't necessarily flippant about the war. In fact, sad things would happen--colleagues die, bombs strike, etc. What they found humour in was their everyday existence--this is poignant, because we know they are in a hard place, and they are trying to survive. That, and the theme song sort of sets you up.

In your story, what strikes the readers here is the flippancy, and none of the cultural context/ depth that might make this sort of attitude understandable. Sure, we might get to the cultural context later in the story, but we'd have to get there first. If you present a story that goes to the heart of it sooner, i.e. So it's not characters, it's presentation, and it seems to be the overwhelming advice to you is to rethink how you're presenting this story.

I'm going to finish this post in FF for SS, since it's more specific to your story, and you wanted a more general discussion here.