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Author Topic: Serious character question
RoJoHen
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Alright, here goes. As far as characters go, do you think that, when beginning a story, you should start with a single character for a little while and expand from there, or should you start with introducing a few characters at one time? Or should you start with the setting, and later put your characters into it?

Do these questions make sense? If so, I'd love to hear what you have to say


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srhowen
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It's best to start A. with action. B. with just a character or two. Why?

A. It keeps the reader reading for more rather than boring them wiht a long strand of setting details.

B. You know all your characters inside out. The reader has just met them--you don't want the reader lost. Give them a bit to get to know the main characters before throwing a bunch more at them.

Shawn


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Kathleen Dalton Woodbury
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How do the stories you like to read start?

If you like stories that start with a description of the setting, then move to a character or a group of characters, try writing that kind of story.

If you like stories that start with a barroom brawl, then try starting your story with some kind of violent action.

Look at how the writers you like to read start their stories.

Get out some colored pens or pencils and use a different color for each character and a different color for the setting. Then go through a story and mark it up according to where the writer talks about the setting and where each character is mentioned.

You will quickly see how it's done in the stories you enjoy reading.

And then you'll know how you will probably want to start in your own stories.


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JP Carney
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Kathleen, that is an excellent suggestion!

As I've mentioned somewhere on here before, I'm reading "The Art of the Tale", an anthology of shorts from around the world. I've dedicated myself to reading the thing cover to cover, to disect the stories, see what I like and don't like, what I think works and doesn't (and why the one's I don't like are included, where their merit still lies). Your colored pencil idea has given me a new way to go about reading the book!

Thanks!

JP

[This message has been edited by JP Carney (edited May 29, 2001).]


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Kathleen Dalton Woodbury
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You're welcome.

Always happy to help.


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WileyKat
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Just a comment, a common problem I've found is to introduce to many characters too quickly. Although all the characters may be complete in the writers head, they need to be communicated to the reader. Worse, the reader needs to remember them. Too many aspiring writers seem to feel that "I'm going to need this character later so better introduce him now."

An excellent example of a book with lots of characters in, that introduces them successfully, is George R.R. Martin's 'A Game of Thrones'. He starts off tight in on one family, and then has them visited by other characters. Then he switches POV to one of the characters that has visited.

GOT has a huge cast, but they are introduced so carefully that the reader (or this reader) gets into the 'too many names!' position.

A related issue is 'fantasy names'. I have (and I believe I'm not unique) a filing system that works well when the characters are called names like 'Steve' and 'John', but tends to file unfamiliar names in vague boxes. So 'Lyrkkka' gets filed as "strange name starts L has k's in". If a character is introduced twenty pages later called 'Likek', I start to struggle.

This also happened when I tried to read 'War and Peace'. By the ened of the second chapter all I knew was there were lots of Russians in the book, as they had all been filed as 'Russian name'.

I guess if your names are complicated and strange you have to introduce them a bit more thoroughly... Umm...not that I'm criticising War and Peace...Just trying to illustrate..oh, I give up!

<end of incoherent post>

WileyKat

[This message has been edited by WileyKat (edited May 30, 2001).]


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srhowen
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I loved "Game of Thrones"--and he did have too many characters to keep track of. I quit trying! But I still liked the book.

In my own writing I have gotten over the introduction of too many charactors at once bug. I used to think you had to intro all of them in the first few chapters. Yikes what a mess.

Have you seen the new books that are compition for the *** for Dummies books? They are called KiSS--keep it simple stupied. I mean no insult to anyone posting here---but I try to keep that in mind whenever my plots and characters want to run away with the story.

Shawn


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Joyce
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WileyKat,

No, you weren't incoherent at all. You made a very good point.

It is an eye opener for me because at this moment I am in need of that reminder. In the 1st, oh, say, 300 words, I've thrown in 3 characters with the main character - briefly. I will go back and read with this in mind to see how I can solidify the introduction of these 3 extras. The do play an important part in the story, but have I flooded the reader with insifficently drawn characters that they will be lost/confusing?

Something to think about.

Joyce


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SiliGurl
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Loved Game of Thrones as well! George RR Martin is truly gifted... but can be VERRRY confusing with so many plot lines, characters, places, etc. Especially if you (gasp!) wait a year to pick up Book 2 after reading Book 1. I now have to sludge through all of Book 1 again just to get who is who in Book 2. At least book 3 is already out. When I finally make it through book 2 I should be good to go on the next!
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JK
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Mmm. I had a similar problem to Joyce's. In my first chapter, I had all my main characters together, and I needed to introduce them without being able to give physical descriptions. It's still giving me trouble! I've tried to be slower after that, splitting the group up and introducing slowly, but it's hard to recover from the frenzied introduction at the beginning.
In terms of the beginning of the story? I always go for action. It's a better hook, I feel. Once the reader wants to know what's happening next, I think they're more likely to learn about the character who's going to implement the next action.
Did that make any sense to anyone?
JK

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Kathleen Dalton Woodbury
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Something to consider about starting a story with action:

Have you ever turned on the tv and it shows the middle of a fight when everyone on screen is slugging away at everyone else? You don't have any idea what this show is, or who the characters are, or what the fight's about, and so on.

Why should you care?

Would straightforward action really hook you all by itself?

Of course, a slug fest isn't the only kind of action a story can start with, but I would like to submit that action that shows the viewer (or reader) stuff about the characters is much more likely to hook the reader (or viewer) than anonymous fists pounding anonymous faces.

Compare such an action scene to the one in TOMBSTONE where Johnny Ringo (played by Michael Biehn) and Doc Holiday (played by Val Kilmer) stand in the saloon and sling insults at each other in Latin.

They are just standing there talking, but the tension level is not only rising, the humor is sharp, and the interest is also high.

Start with characters who are threatening each other, instead of pounding each other, and you will have not only characterization (and reader/viewer interest), but you will have tension increasing instead of just being expressed.

And I think you'll have a better hook.

[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited May 31, 2001).]


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JK
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Obviously you wouldn't start with just 'Bob punched Jim, but not before Jim kicked him. Bob leapt up and smashed Jim's teeth in.' That would just be gratuitous violence. However, if we saw some of Bob's thoughts as he beat the stuffing out of Jim, such as why the pair are fighting in the first place (perhaps they were best friends, but competition at work has been raising tension between them, and Jim thought Bob just made a pass at his wife) makes it more interesting. I'm not saying pure action is the hook, but that action is a hook. Character is, of course, vital, but I find stories that don't start with a source of immediate tension struggle hard to win my attention.
This may be due to my very low attention span, however.
JK

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Writer_Actress
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At the beginning of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone it starts off with a simple description of the Dursleys. The reason it hooks most people is because the description is saying so much about them that you can smell the scent of far too much potpouri(sp). The description is so wonderful explaining how normal they are that your skin feels the humidity of the Febreze floating in the air. The characters are only three, but they are well chosen-- and well hated.
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kwsni
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something OSC suggests in character and veiw point is to have all the character names start with a different letter. of course then you can only have 26 main characters, that's not a lot, is it? *grin*
another thing I do is give them each one special, obvious trait. with both of these ideas, i can keep them apart pretty well.
hope this helped

kwsni


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Doc Brown
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Having all character names start with a different letter is an excellent suggestion. Many readers employ a common mental device of organizing the characters by the first letters of their names. This is natural due to the way that we (in the Western world, anyway) parse and process text.

However, we do not organize characters in alphabetical order. It would be a waste of time to have all good characters start with A-M and all evil characters start with N-Z, for example.

You might experiment with vowels and consonants.

Unfortunately, these tricks break down inconveniently for science fiction writers. For better or worse (I say worse) tevision/movie SF has given us the paradigm of millions characters that fall under a classification all having a name that starts with the same letter. Vulcan women and Star Wars 'droids are classic examples. Science fiction writers who think this a great way to make characters seem more unworldly will trick themselves into confusing their readers.

You can expand the 26 letter capacity by refering to some characters with last names, titles, or nicknames. For example, if you want a character named Peebles and another named Pearson, you can assist your reader by always refering to the latter as "Sgt. Pearson."


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srhowen
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even that can get confusing. There will be times that other characters will want to refer to that SSgt. character by his last name, his first name, or a combination of both. It is best to stay away from names that sound the same or are spelled closely. If you have a SSgt, it is a military story of some sort I am assuming--and those of similar rank do not call each other by rank---they use last name in the Army, and first names in the Air Force.

Try this, make a list of your characters, say something about each one---gender, and the driving character motivation(what makes them what they are) then choose names that reflect that.

Even if you have a race that calls all women Sils`something---you can have Sils`jinp, Silis`Wyma ect. The reader will only see the Silis` as a dialog tag of sorts, ahhh this character is female--and won't confuse them as long as you keep the last parts different. Same with male characters. Or maybe you have two different races living in the same city or on the same world and this is how the names go so that the reader instantly knows which side of the table they are on.

Names should also say something about a character. A male character that is named Willy will not be taken as seriously as a character named Maverick. The reader no matter how aggressive and strong you write Willy will see him as somewhat childish(maybe) Where as Maverick looks strong from the first time the reader sees his name. Names ending in strong consonants come across stronger than those ending in vowels or the s sound.

Just some random thoughts,
Shawn


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dragontouch
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naming and introducing characters...hmm.

sometimes i start out with the feel of the character in mind and write down the entire alphabet in front of me. then i start crossing out letters. you'd think that i would end up with all my characters having names starting with the letters i'm the most partial to, but i'm surprised how often it doesn't work out that way.

sometimes i start out with the name and shape the character around it until it feels like there could be no other possible name for that character.

sometimes i've had to rename characters in the middle of a story. that can get tedious.

as for introducing them...i was going through some of my work from a while ago, when i was ten or eleven. in the first section of those stories, the characters were all introduced like 'Rowena, with fair hair and blue eyes, walked up to Bob, who had red hair and black eyes', that sort of thing. makes me smile now. funny how, when i'm writing something it's always the best i can do at the time...and then when i read it a year later i've learned so much and developed so much that those past stories seem childish. but i suppose there have been one or two that i still stand by, and of course there's always one or two that i keep writing and changing and editing and adding to over lots of years.

introducing characters, for me, is a bit of a balancing act. some of them i never physically describe, but i always have an image/feeling of them in my mind and that often comes through. my sister recently read a short excerpt of mine and commented that the strange names were a little confusing. the problem there was that i'd introduced the characters too fast, something i have to keep checking my work for.


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