posted
Rather he creates characters and gives them a lot of "screen time" but they influence the plot little or not at all.
Posts: 2195 | Registered: Aug 2006
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posted
Yes, individually those characters are not very important to the plot, but in the aggregate they establish the scale or justification for the conflict. That's why we call them "spear carriers" or a "cast of thousands". Usually these characters are not individually characterized to any great degree...they're just guys in red shirts killed off to show that the situation is serious.
But there is no reason that has to be the case, it's just because most writers aren't interested in them as individuals. If Paolini doesn't mind putting in the extra time and effort to make them feel like distinct individuals, and the audience likes feeling that the cast of thousands is composed of a bunch of real characters rather than scarecrows or colored toothpicks (this is sometimes done to "force multiply" extras in SF/Fantasy movies), then it isn't unnecessary. They aren't advancing the plot, but they are advancing the story.
I'm not saying that this is the case in Paolini's work, I'm just saying that there is absolutely no reason that minor characters shouldn't be memorable, distinct characters even though they are minor in the story. idz ece important tu spell za short words correctly ax te longer words, after all.
posted
I understand the "Red-shirt effect" fine, but the characters I am talking about aren't even ones who contribute to the plot by dying. They are just random and insignificant citizens of his world. Most specifically the lady and her werecat.
Another criticism is that while his cast has several names it has very few characters. For example Eragon and Roran, in their respective points of view, are as far as I can tell the exact same person. They just have different names and circumstances but they think exactly alike. They perceive events in the same way and they respond exactly alike.
posted
Well, that's a pretty common difficulty. After all, a well drawn POV character has to be modeled extensively on the author. I found it rather interesting that Bean is, fundamentally, just as sentimental and emotionally motivated as any of Card's other characters, but it was hardly surprising. Card simply cannot produce a believable character with a thought process totally different from his own.
This only becomes a problem when the writer tries to produce the POV of a character with motivations and mental characteristics that are totally alien to the author's own personality. That was the main problem with a very disappointing book I recently read. I might as well say that the author was Bujold. Her usual protagonists are people who are believable (at least in terms of base characterization) with mentalities that are thinly disguised variations of her own outlook. The problem with this book was that she tried to write characters fundamentally different from herself, and the result was just ridiculous.
I'm actually working on the skill of simulating an alien perspective, it's quite necessary for me. But it isn't necessary for most writers or for most fiction, as long as authors choose to identify with characters that they naturally understand and find sympathetic.
posted
It's interesting to me that you seem to doubt an author's capability of writing a character who is fundamentally different from the author. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if that's true for me, as an author, to write the perspective of a murderer I must then be a potential murderer myself?
I agree that the ability to characterize viewpoints depends completely on the eperience and insight of the author, but techniques exist and can be employed well enough that I, as a reader, shouldn't have to read as Eragon and then as Roran and immediately realize "this is the same exact person."
posted
First, under the right conditions, everyone is a potential murderer. Second, if you write about a murderer, the character will most likely resemble you in some fashion. After all, the person you know best is you.
Posts: 78 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Well, we would probably all guess that you were joking
I've never met anyone who honestly convinced me that they would never take another person's life. I've met people who convinced me that they wouldn't do it unless they deeply believed it to be morally justifiable, and people who convinced me that they don't accept any moral justification for homocide (and yes, those two groups are necessarily completely distinct). Most people I've met would kill if the risk were sufficiently low relative to the percieved gain and would try to justify it if they were caught or needed help covering it up.
I've never encountered any reliable technique for distinquishing between two point of view characters written by the same author other than keeping the name and character data in the reader's mind. I've read a lot of authors who've written multiple POV characters, and that's what I've learned. The best authors are those who simply accept this fundamental human limitation and just write about characters that they can imagine themselves being.
I may have mentioned before that this often puts me in a bind...but I'm okay with that.
posted
hmm well I suppose it must be true that any character I write will have a thought-process that resembles mine. However I still hold to my belief that I can create characters who operate under philosophies drastically opposite my own simply because I can experience them in others and imagine them without ever adopting them myself.
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posted
I'd have to disagree that an author can only write characters who think like they do. Actors in movies often portray characters other than themselves, and while some don't do it well, many do. Now, I'm sure some people will disagree with me, but I feel that good authors do the same thing with writing by portraying people much different than themselves all the time, and do it believably.
Consider also the differences between how women and men think. A female author, writing from a male POV must make it convincing, and there are many good female authors who pull it off.
Perhaps it's perception or expectation that makes some people read characters as the same, I don't know. I've had critiques on stories that vary greatly on this subject. While the vast majority will say the characters were well developed and well written, others will complain that they sounded the same.
[This message has been edited by luapc (edited January 07, 2007).]
posted
I guess the question boils down to can a person create a completely new thought-process for a certain character or is he/she simply adding new variables to already existing equations? I'm inclined to believe either way.
But about authors trying to write oppositely gendered characters this doesn't prove anything to me. It shows a considerable amount of skill and forethought but I regulkarly get the impression that say Rowling's male characters act like females and Card's females occassional think like men. I can't base these impressions off of anything, I just have them.
posted
The gender thing isn't a valid comparison because there is far more variation in thought process within each gender than there is dividing the genders. In other words, there are men who really do think just like most women and women who really think like stereotypical men. I've read just about everything written by Andre Norton, and I have yet to see any evidence that her more-manly-than-Hemmingway POV characterization was any kind of pose. I think that she wrote about men in manly situations because she was just more comfortable with that kind of mentality.
I simply cannot imagine her writing the kinds of characters that Bujold writes best, and Bujold's attempt to write a Nortonesque character failed rather badly, in my never-to-be-humble opinion. You can compare Card's characters with Bujold's, or with Cherryh's, and see that they are fundamentally different. Even at that, Card's characters, both male and female, are far more feminine than any of Norton's characters. Each of these writers...hmmm, I probably should have included an equal number of males...nevermind that. Each of these writers is unique, their respective outlooks are not defined primarily by their sexual identity.
I can point to a couple of POV characters in Card's books who don't think anything like him. But these characters always come across as irrationally self-destructive egotists. Card shows us very clearly what he thinks of the character, but I don't think that he even slightly succeeds in showing us how those characters would really see themselves. Those characters only work because he doesn't try to get us to see the stories primarily from their perspective. They end up as straw men. If you saw yourself in them, you'd hate the portrayal.
Bujold tried a pair of characters who fundamentally didn't work with her outlook, and the story foundered rather badly. In this case it wasn't because she was trying to make them out to be unsympathetic, it was because she failed to understand that she simply has no clue what motivates such characters. It wasn't because one of them is a man and she happens to be a woman, the female character was even less plausible than the man.
Actors must understand the motivations of a character in order to play the character well. And that understanding can't be superficial, it has to be deeply sympathetic. That's why you always hear actors describing even their most disgusting characters in such positive terms...yes, some of that is the moral relativism of Hollywood, but a lot of it is a simple necessity of the process of getting into character. If you cannot feel that your character is the hero of the story, no matter what everyone else thinks, then you won't do a good job of acting as that character. It's basic theater.
Writers have the luxury of being able to simply write down the lines and overt actions of non-POV characters, they don't have to understand why those characters do what they do, they just have to know what the characters do. But with POV characters, you need to be able to get deeply into the character, to see the character as someone that you could have been if your circumstances had been a bit different. There might be a way round this, but I haven't found it yet.
posted
I went and saw the movie with my brothers, parents, and my wife. I sat between my wife and my brother. My brother was constantly hissing jokes and commentary and my wife was getting mad at me, trying to get me to stop my brother from talking. Everyone but me had read the book. Everyone but me hated the movie.
But I--I, myself--I ENJOYED the movie.
I liked it. It's Star Wars with dragons. Really. Farm boy lives with his uncle, evil empire destroys his home and he's suddenly the bearer of something REALLY IMPORTANT (dragon, droid) and so he has to leave home with the crazy old guy who used to be a warrior and go find the Rebel Alliance. Er, Varden. (sp)
Along the way we meet Darth Vader (creepy shadow dude), who's captured Princess Leia (mysterious warrior woman), and we go rescue her from the Death Star (that creepy building) and let Uncle Brom die fighting Vader. Han Solo shows up a couple of times (although he has really bad anime hair), but he's totally a good guy--you can tell, because he's got such a bad attitude.
Finally, we make it to the Rebel Alliance, but--oh noes!--the Empire has followed us here. Epic battle ensues, orphaned farmboy becomes the hero and defeats the bad guy, and there was much rejoicing. (Yay!)
It wasn't GREAT FILM by any standard, but it was an enjoyable way to spend an hour and a half--way better than MI:3, which is the last movie I went to the theater for.
It was kinda cool seeing a black elf. Nice to see that persons of African descent are being represented in all the appropriate fantasy races. Political correctness allows us to retcon the fantasy archetypes to include all the correct ethnicities. But am I the only person who's waiting for a dwarf to be something OTHER than Scottish? Like, say, Welsh. Llewellyn the dwarf. It could work.
It's true that the characters weren't as developed as those in Star Wars, but perhaps the reason Paolini's "cliches" are so successful is that he draws intentionally upon a widely literate fan base who already know these archetypes and love them. People want to read more about Luke Skywalker, but if Paolini can convince us that Eragon is just as cool, we'll transfer those feelings over. Maybe. It could work.
Now, for the writing style portion of the thread.
I personally find that my writing style changes according to the things which I read. If I'm reading a lot of Terry Pratchett, I tend to be very silly and satiric. If I'm reading Raymond Chandler, I feel like my own characters have to smoke a cigarette, kiss a girl, take a stiff drink, and then break the bottle over somebody's head. If I read Heinlein, then my characters become rugged individualists with sharp wits and heavy survivalist traits. So, either I can write in contrast to my own personality, or my personality is of such remarkable plasticity that anything I read changes WHO I AM, instantly and noticeably.
posted
Another at-right-angles comment, this time not involving "connections" or "influence" in getting published, but suggested by something above...
There were a lot of things I read and loved when I was starting out as a reader, things that dazzled and stunned me.
I'm older now. I'm harder to dazzle and stun than I was then. I might read Eragon someday, or see the movie, but I doubt if it'll have the impact it would have had on me if I had seen or read it when I was fifteen. If I'd read / saw Eragon back then, or was fifteen now and read / saw it, I might've loved it as much as some of you do.
It's not that the stuff I read-and-saw back then was any better. A lot of stuff, when I read / see it now, doesn't hold up well. (Some of it does, some seems even better now than then.)
So...enjoy it while you can. With rare exceptions, you'll only be fifteen once.
[Edited to add an afterthought.]
[This message has been edited by Robert Nowall (edited January 13, 2007).]
posted
Ok. Eragon was amazing. For those of us who (to break an apparent sacred fantasy reader rule) have never read Tokein or any of the other "classic" fantasy novels, Eragon was a pleasant novel filled with the classic mythological creatures, adventure, and of course a dragon or two. I'm not saying that this was the most amazing book in the world or anything, but it was an enjoyable 8 hours of reading. I'm not even a young adult and I liked it.
For the most part, I don't even like fantasy (I'm just not into fake creatures and annoying kings) but if it's an intriguing story (in the least little bit) with out all of the annoyances of normal fantasy (such as authors who simply assume you're familiar with all of Tolkein's writings including the unpublished scribblings on his wall as a 2 year old or something) I quite enjoy it.
I just thought someone should explain why the average population of readers enjoyed the book.
posted
Probably the same reason that Terry Goodkind books sell, even though his characters are flat, his themes overbearing and pretensious, his dialogue juvenile, his relationships corny, and his writing a manual in what-not-to-do. Anything can be popular if two conditions are met: (1) it's a decent yarn; and (2) it's decently marketed.
The Wizard's First Rule--my best example of a popular terrible book--meets both conditions. The marketing was good enough to get the book in a lot of people's hands, and the story has just enough to it to keep you from putting the book down. Of course, the maturity level of the reader has a lot to do with it, too. There is a heavy enough concentration of 12 year olds in the sci-fi/fantasy section that the floor of acceptable quality seems a little lower than other genres, like non-bodice-ripping historical fiction.
quote:I went and saw the movie with my brothers, parents, and my wife. I sat between my wife and my brother. My brother was constantly hissing jokes and commentary and my wife was getting mad at me, trying to get me to stop my brother from talking. Everyone but me had read the book. Everyone but me hated the movie.
Did any of them like the book? Did any of them realize the obvious simlarity between STAR WARS and Eragon? George Lucas ripped it off of Christopher Paolini, not the other way around. We had a class about it at George Wythe College. It's true, at least, I believe so.
quote:I liked it. It's Star Wars with dragons.
I just said that!
quote:It was kinda cool seeing a black elf.
It's all politically incorrect mumbo jumbo. In the book there were no black elves. This is a rip off of RA Salvatore.
quote:I personally find that my writing style changes according to the things which I read.
I hope not. If I just read your comment I'd still better not write like you.
someone else,
quote:Ok. Eragon was amazing. For those of us who (to break an apparent sacred fantasy reader rule) have never read Tokein or any of the other "classic" fantasy novels, Eragon was a pleasant novel filled with the classic mythological creatures, adventure, and of course a dragon or two. I'm not saying that this was the most amazing book in the world or anything, but it was an enjoyable 8 hours of reading. I'm not even a young adult and I liked it.
It's not about what you are but what you act like. Grow up. Ereagon --. Read Tolkein, that's what George Wythe would have done if he was around today.
In other words. We shouldn't support idea theft.George Wythe would have been adament about that.
Seriously its just about a kid who wanders around and stuff. Who Bucking cares?
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited January 14, 2007).]
posted
You know, Lucas basically has admitted...no, he's insisted, at great and nearly pompous length, that his plot for Star Wars is in no way remotely original. If you write the exact same plot, but use a different setting, names and dialogue, you are not stealing his idea. It doesn't belong to anyone, according to Lucas, it's all part of the "universal mythic" or whatever. I was appalled to hear Dagoba described as "the sacred grove", myself, but that doesn't keep me from accepting Lucas' contention that this is, once you strip off the superficial details of setting and nomenclature, a very old story.
If somebody wants to satisfy whatever deeply felt human need this essential myth exists to fulfil, then I see nothing wrong with him becoming a huge success and getting a movie. I personally couldn't write a story like that, at least not very well. I'm more in tune with "the supervillian wins, everybody else ends up dead"...that's kinda my mythic. But that doesn't make me feel that humans can't have stories that they really like. Indications are that Eragon is such a story, and I'm glad that somebody explained why.
Now, if the writing is crappy, that's too bad. I hate crappy writing. I still haven't recovered enough from Rowling's prose enough to try watching the fourth movie, which is a shame becuase I've enjoyed the others...not enough to watch them day in and day out, but few movies pass that test.
quote:It's not about what you are but what you act like.
Isn't that the same thing? You are what you act like? That sounds like a damn contradiction to me.
quote:Grow up. Ereagon --. Read Tolkein, that's what George Wythe would have done if he was around today.
Not everyone is going to act like a stubborn fifty year old you sits on his backside all day ridiculing those that actually enjoy all works of fantasy, whether it's Poalini or Tolkien. I like Eragon the book, I write fantasy, I am 20 years old, so are you going to tell me to grow up as well for liking something that I find appealing?
quote:In other words. We shouldn't support idea theft.
So we should totally think of new and innovative ideas all the time even though there's not a single damn idea that hasn't been done before!? Wow, genius statement right there. Star Wars is a cliche, Eragon is a cliche, EVERYTHING WE WRITE IS A CLICHE!
And Statesman, jleigh_honey is allowed his/her opinion as you are but there is no need as to re-use the whole "Poalini stole Lucas's idea!!!" argument that every single person that dislikes Eragon comes up with, and YES, I have been to several boards, gaming sites and even IMDB.com and read the same damn comments over and over, each time just laughing at the useless fact that Eragon is only ever compared to Star Wars.
And for Tolkiens elves and dwarves, look at Dungeons and Dragons, and a lot of other fantasy works out there. Everyone who write's fantasy uses Tolkien's models of elves and dwarves, even orcs and goblins, so here's a hint, think of something new to bring to the Eragon argument and have a nice day.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited January 14, 2007).]
quote:quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's not about what you are but what you act like. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Isn't that the same thing? You are what you act like? That sounds like a damn contradiction to me.
No. I can be a 45 year old and act like a two year old, that doesn't make me a two year old.
quote:Not everyone is going to act like a stubborn fifty year old
I'm not old, I'm 37.
quote:I write fantasy, I am 20 years old
Nothing wrong with it. Except it sucks. Completely my own opinion: that really really sucks.
quote:so are you going to tell me to grow up as well for liking something that I find appealing?
On a fundamental level that is an interesting philosophical question. Let's imagine you find slapping children and breaking windows appealing. Yes, I would tell you to grow up. So where is the line? Is acting like a an incessant prat and doodling fantasy fiction about sexy elves something that is pulling you from reality, thus making you a detriment to society? I would say yes. So would George Wythe.
quote:So we should totally think of new and innovative ideas all the time even though there's not a single damn idea that hasn't been done before!?
Go to fragments and feedback. Click the topic "one scented mutiny," then tell me how many times THAT's been done before. It's not a matter of what has and hasn't been done before, but rather, what has been done A LOT and what has been done TOO MUCH.
quote:EVERYTHING WE WRITE IS A CLICHE!
"One scented mutiny" is NOT cliche. Neither is a technically fictional biography. Writing about elvish sex and flying on drunken dragons has been done. It's over. When baroque music makes its comeback, well, then you can return to this realm of high fantasy.
quote:there is no need as to re-use the whole "Poalini stole Lucas's idea!!!" argument
No. For the sake of George Wythe can't you read? I don't believe that at all! I believe George Lucas STOLE Pauolini's idea.
quote:And for Tolkiens elves and dwarves, look at Dungeons and Dragons, and a lot of other fantasy works out there.
Dungeons and dragons is for six years olds or old, white, fat virgins who don't leave their basements. This does not accredit your argument.
quote:think of something new to bring to the Eragon argument and have a nice day.
Eragon is a drunken lunatic, how's that? Paolini is deeply conencted to this mythical idea that someday he too can have a relationship with a fairy princess, ride a dragon, save the universe, get attention, and drink legally. He's from Montana he was probably illegally wasted when he started the book. You can connect writers to their fiction. Based on Eragon this writer concludes Paolini has deep social diffculties. He needs to be institutionalized not praised. Don't encourage this sort of behavior. George Wythe power.
[This message has been edited by Statesman (edited January 14, 2007).]
Eragon the Movie was the worst kind of screenwriting/storytelling laziness I've ever seen. The book was tolerable and a quick read, but in seeing the movie I thought to myself "Well, there's two hours of my life I'll never get back." I understand for the sake of time you would need to merge situations or characters from the novel just to keep the story going but even if I hadn't read the book, I would have found the hurried pace and sloppy editing jarring.
Also, I'm surprised no one picked up on how heavily the author borrowed from Anne McCaffrey and her Pern dragons. It was so blatently ovbious, from the dragon's body struture to mental communication between dragon/rider, the intellegence and defined personality of the dragon, to initial Impression, to what happens to dragon/rider when one or the other dies. My best friend and I who are huge McCaffrey fans were rolling our eyes.
[This message has been edited by Whitney (edited January 14, 2007).]
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