posted
As important as it is, it amazes me how little we talk about this. I've got a specific question prompted by a comment in a crit I received recently. The commenter claimed that my characterization was weak. So I started thinking about what that meant. It seems like one of those things that should be obvious, but for the life of me I can't figure what I'm doing wrong. The thing is, it's not the first such comment I've received and I can't find a correlation between the comments and the amount of effort I put into characterization. In fact, many *compliments* I've received on characterization have come when I just wrote the story without a thought to who the people in it were! But sometimes when I do all the history down to their favorite color I get comments about weak characterization.
Anyway, the question therfore comes to...what is characteriation? What do we mean by it and more importantly, how do we make characters come to life with the words we write? It seems obvious to me that while background and profiling can't hurt, there is something else to it that I'm not getting. Something that happens between the reader and the words.
posted
Just like people making comments about sentences being passive that really aren't passive at all, perhaps the weak characterization comment comes from an overall lack of connection with the characters rather than a problem with characterization.
I'm having difficulty phrasing this correctly, so please bear with me.
When you just write your characters, you are introducing them to your readers as you discover new and interesting things about them. You are connecting with the character and it is just flowing out of you. Because you have a driving connection, you readers pick up on it and they have a driving connection to the characters.
When you really plan out the characters, perhaps you are losing some of the spontaneity and excitememt as you write the story. Even though you have a deeper pyschological connection with the character, it is not as full of excitement and the emotional connection is being lost. Thus the reader fails to make the connection that would draw them to the character.
I don't know as that is said well, and that is not based on anything I have personally observed in your writing. However, as you said, characterization is very important but is seldom really talked about unless there is a strong/weak connection being made. Perhaps if we discussed it more often, we would develop the skills to comment on it more effectively.
(Feel free to ignore my ramblings if they are completely incoherant )
posted
I never thought of that! I'm not saying it's the only possible answer, but at least on ocassion it fits the symptoms. I don't think it's nutty or rambling at all, Robyn. Posts: 3567 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
Perhaps we need to take the time and do some character sketches (gosh I hated those in junior high!) or something.
Perhaps even another little character challenge. It could be simillar to the one MikeMunsil came up with a few months ago. Create the most interesting/memorable character possible in 30 words or less. Except we could expand the assignment and make it a requirement to also write a short scene (say, 3 paragraphs max) using the character. We set a deadline then do a post-mortem on them.
This isn't to say I don't recommend formal development of characters. But I do recommend that writers generally make an effort to create the character out of themselves rather than out of a sketchbook.
Often, when you make your characters an object of study, you stop asking "what would I do in this situation?", and replace the "I" with "the character". This doesn't have to happen, as long as you're willing to imagine yourself with the personal history and attributes of the character you've created, you can still ask it as "what would I do" and get an answer that invests something of yourself into the character.
This doesn't always help, people tend to like my "studied" characters better than the ones that are generated from myself, but for most writers it's different.
posted
Don't confuse characterization with character description. They are two entirely different things.
Characterization results in the reader's impression of the character's, well, character. And from this readers derive for themselves a set of physical attributes that they tack onto a character. I read a story for MaryRobinette some months ago (the one about the guy who gets plucked out of an airplane onto an alien ship). Never once do I remember that she actually describe the physical features of her main character, but I could SEE SO CLEARLY in my mind what he looked like. And it doesn't matter in the least that HER picture of him is different than mine. It only matters that I FEEL the right things for and about this guy.
Character description is simply describing the physical features of your character. So we know what your character looks like. Big deal. When you waste time describing what they look like you pass over prime opportunity to show me who that person is, what he/she does, what kind of character that person has. In other words, you forget what it is in his/her heart in favor of what is on the surface. Telling me the color or length of his hair, or what she is wearing, or how short or tall he is--that means nothing, especially if I don't FEEL anything for him/her.
So, when writing a character, get him/her inside your heart rather than inside your head. That's why your characterizations work better when you worry less about the tiny details of what they look like and let yourself write about what they do and why, how they react to their problems.
Of course this is all just my humble opinion.
[This message has been edited by djvdakota (edited December 21, 2004).]
posted
<Telling me the color or length of his hair, or what she is wearing, or how short or tall he is--that means nothing>
I agree, unless its relavant to the plot.
As a reader, I have found some stories in print are so clogged with description, I get hung up trying to picture each detail. Unless there is something that differentiates the character from the norm. A picture of the character automatically forms in my minds eye anyway.
posted
I'm not sure physical description is the problem here. Somehow, it doesn't seem like my weak characterization has anything to do with telling or not telling what they look like. I think it has more to do with not knowing who they are, but I'm not sure how to go about relating who a character is, whether that character is in my heart, mind, pages of profiles, or in a vacuum waiting to be plucked into existence.
Posts: 3567 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
The moment the character becomes more than an imaginary creation in my mind is when I feel I'm getting somewhere. In one of my short stories, I got a comment that my main character didn't have the same connection as a minor character. When creating the minor character, I outlined his life and how he fit into the story. He was real to me, while the main character was a pawn I pushed along to achieve the results. The writing told on me.
My latest story I took the time to figure out my characters. Understand their personalities and their motivations. I've thought through events that I will never write about, but each event has added depth to the character in my mind. I sometimes wonder how an author can create so many characters for a novel when the background work alone can take me weeks.
So, does the character live and breath in your mind? Do they conflict with what you want them to do? That is my personal test for knowing if I, as an author, have reached a point I can write about them.
posted
I gave my novel to my father to read. He likes both of my main characters, the hero and heroine who work together to solve a mystery. I spent the most time on each of them, particularly the woman, and he said that it showed and I perhaps needed to get Derek up to her level.
BUT...he keeps coming back to this minor character I drummed up so that Derek, a cop, would have a sound board to shoot ideas off at the station. All I know about her is that her name is Lacy, she has fire-engine red hair, a boisterous personality, and she's a cop. That's it. I don't even know how old she is! And yet my father loves her character. I don't know, maybe he has a thing for redheads he never told me about, but I certainly didn't do anything intentional to bring her to life. And yet she is alive for *him*. She's not for me, not so much.
posted
I'm interested in the question too. Sometimes people have critiqued flash-in-the-pan characters (they appear once and never again), as if they were main characters. Of course it sometimes has to do a lack of physical desc for them, and not characterization.
Posts: 1275 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Stereotypes. They work for some. If you are reading a book and a minor character has manerisms that are familiar, then the bridge is there. Not all readers will feel the same. If the minor ones don't have the cardboard cutout feel to them...be happy.
Posts: 807 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
During NaNo this year, I acted as a sounding board for one of the participants. She was writing a mystery and one of the secondary charactersintrigued me a bit. He was a bit stereotypical - a crusty, older cop who finds the young guys in the office tedious. She had him taking over a major case, much to the chagrin of the main character, a cop who desperatly wanted to be assigned to the case.
As the reader, I had no idea where she was going with the story, I only had my instincts and my imagination. She asked for my thoughts/expectations and I said, I figured the two men were going to end up working together and end up gaining a respect, if not friendship, for each other and how they tackle their policework. She e-mailed back and told me that until I said that, she had been trying to figure out how to dump the old, crusty cop and get him out of the way because she couldn't seem to keep the story moving. Once she saw what I had assumed, she saw how to get to the next stage of the novel.
So, what does that all mean? Well, readers have nearly as much (or more) imagination as us writers. As they read, they build up ideas and expectations about what will happen next and who will be important (especially in mystery and action/adventure stories). As the writer, you know where your story is going but your reader doesn't and they are trying to figure it out. Characters you dismiss, might strike readers in a completely different way.
In the cop-mystery example, I've watched a ton of cop shows and movies and read dozens of mystery books. There is often a ruff-gruff cop who nobody likes, but he ends up coming to the hero's aid at just the right time. When I read the story, I already had that in the back of my mind. There may be something that your readers are bring to your story and your characters that you may be missing or over-looking.
quote:BUT...he keeps coming back to this minor character I drummed up so that Derek, a cop, would have a sound board to shoot ideas off at the station. All I know about her is [...] And yet my father loves her character. [...]And yet she is alive for *him*. She's not for me, not so much.
Any explanations as to why this is?
It might be because you created her for a role which is very easy for the audience to sympathise with: the one who listens while the hero works things out. In essence, that's the same thing the reader's doing all the way through the story.
posted
So should we post to the challenge folder on this?
I think the addage "show, don't tell" might apply. Saying "her favorite color is green" is nice. Saying "she first noticed his jacket, green like the M&Ms that her big sister used to say were the naughty ones."
There is some danger the reader might put your book down to go score some M&Ms at this point, but when they open the bag and see some green ones they will probably come back.
posted
What if the challenge requires no physical descriptions at all? Then we could see how well we can get across the major physical aspects by letting the reader figure them out on their own.
There are many ways to imply age without mentioning grey hair or wrinkled skin.
posted
I just went through writing something and if I couldn't think of a good name for a character I just left them out of the story. That is to say, I think names are extremely important. Filler names are possible, but dangerous.
Posts: 366 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
Robyn, I think a name has a TON to do with characterization, but it's complicated. The meaning in and of itself won't help. It's got ot do with connocations. Bob is a middle-aged bald man. Frank or Ben are often nerds. Joe is, well, average. Austin is a child. (This one gets annoying when people call and ask me if I'm my husband's mother ) Apparently my name is supposed to suggest an attractive woman. Jasmine is exotic.
I could go on....In fact I was thinking that part of the reason my minor character, Lacy, came alive for my dad is her name!
This is why a lot of made-up fantasy names don't work for me. They are meaningless, and that can be good or bad. If you do it right, I can begin to associate meaning with it, but you have to watch out on pronunciation. In other words, if I caan't visualize a pronunciation I won't sympathize with the associated character.
posted
The one book that taught me the most about effective characterization was "Lost Boys" by OSC. For most of the story, nothing specific is really happening, just stuff in this family's life. Somehow, though, I cared about the story more than most stories I've ever read in my life. Why? It was just a normal family with (seemingly) normal stuff happening to them. Why did it draw me in so much?
Because I loved Step, Deanne, Stevie, Robbie, and Betsy.
Why did I love them so much? The end of the book had the single biggest emotional impact of any book I've read? What made me feel so strongly for these purely fictional characters?
Here's the conclusion I came to, Christine (and everybody else). It couldn't be just that they're good people, although they are, because there are a lot of stories with good people that I don't really care about. It couldn't be just that they're flawed so I can identify with them, although they are, for the same reason.
I think it's because OSC introduces us to his characters ion exactly the same way we make friends in real life. I think that's important. OSC rarely says things like "Step was dedicated to doing the best thing for his wife and children, and put their needs and wants above his own, even when there was something he really wanted." He just lets you see Step in that conflict and which decision he makes.
When you meet people in real life, there is no voice-over saying "this is Jennifer's sister, and she has the following character-traits..." I think, for that reason, when that's how we meet characters in fiction it feels false and we don't connect with them. They come across as fake. When we get to know them the same way we get to know real people, it feels more real.
posted
There is also the fact that "Lost Boys" is the most autobiographical novel that Card has written to my knowledge.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Names have some effect on characterization, but it's so dependent on what the reader bring to the writing, it's not reliable. For many of the names listed earlier in the thread, I have different sorts of characters associated with them, because of different people I've met over the years.
Seems like most characterization comes down to motivations and attitudes, and how these are then reflected within the stories action. For fiction, the physcial is there, but not as important, or might come down to a few key features that alone don't make a picture. Yet the mind fills one in anyway, if it needs to, based on the reader's life experiences.
posted
I think for a character to be taken seriously, they also need to have serious concerns for the reader to care and identify with. For instance:
Carol realized she was having the worst day of her life. Her hair wouldn't behave and her favorite lipstick was missing. Finally she threw herself on her bed and cried. Why did everything have to be so hard.
as opposed to
Jenna's stomach growled again. The hunger pains were becoming more severe. She looked again at the tin trash barrel. Is this what I have come to? She paused one more moment before plunging her hand into the bin. Please God, don't let there be any rats in here.
Both of them are having a hard day, but which one do you really care about?
posted
One problem with characterization is that many times writers try to demonstrate thier abilities, rather than just introducing the character. In other words I feel that the growth of the charcter should be almost invisible to the reader. This is the problem with many new fantasy writers they want to spend paragraphs introducing the character rather than allowing it to just grow.
Though not many would think of him as an example Robert E. Howard actually led us (well those of us who read the series) to identify with a raging, murderous, raping, stealing, lying, barbarous, sometimes cannibilistic, opportunistic grave robber and outlaw as a prime example of a noble hero in his stories about Conan.
I think we have to put something we would like to be into our characters even our villians. How many people actually root for Hannible Lector?
posted
I think a character actually becomes a character when he or she starts doing things in the story that you didn't really plan, but that are true anyway. It's when they start acting like a person and not like your creation.
When the character takes the story away from you, or when he or she acts the way they would instead of the way you want them to...that's when you know the characterization is strong.
posted
I read a book on acting once that had a piece of advice on creating a character that resonated for me as a writer. "Act the differences." Let me elaborate.
When we meet someone we look for the similarities that we have with them, "You like such and such? So do I!" So if you want characters to stand out, you focus on the things that separate them from other people.
On some level, we assume that other people will behave the same way we do, so when they don't we really notice it. Dakota critiqued one of my stories about an art major and commented on one line where my character thought about something with an art term. She suggested that I go back and bump up the art metaphors and language which made a world of difference. Difference being the key word here, it worked because the character saw things differently than I do. I acted the differences between us.
When I think my characters are weak, it's because there just isn't a lot of gripping detail to them. For example, recently I had a character whose job was to deliver bad news: the isolated city is facing starvation. But it wasn't enough. OK. He's an academic. Middle-aged, white. How does he feel? Sad. Why? Because his family is at risk? How about this -- because they AREN'T at risk, they're back where it's safe and he'll never see them again, and he's glad for them, but --
And so I got a bit-part character with an interesting inner conflict.
I go for a walk and make stuff up, and maybe some of it will be useful. I'm still having trouble with a brainy hot babe. I think I need to look at the world from her perspective for a while.
On names: I don't think I'm an expert, but I do try to deliver some subliminal messages. Mr. Franks is honest. Marge is a middle-class married woman (like Marge Simpson?). Kristi is a child, because when I wrote it Kristi had been in vogue a few years back. The black kid's name is Deron. A little goes a long way. I wouldn't call a soccer player Theophilus -- but if he's got a philosophical bent, I might call him Theo.
posted
For me what I do when Im devising a character I tend to initially draw up a character sheet as you would for roleplay and then start adding details, not the stats and stuff just information such as description, height, weight, eye colour and all that sort of stuff, then you go onto the emotional side and see what quirks that they have, do they have a hatred of certain things, what do they like, whats thier motivation. Sounds a little weird to some but Ive found that as I do it other things come out and help flesh the character out a little.
An example of this is that I developed a sea captain/smuggler/pirate, an old man who'd been through the wars. Then when I'd fleshed him out, I asked a question about his smuggling. And what came through was "I'd never smuggle where I stand a chance of getting caught. Look at the problems in Loariath, the excise man thier is one hard bast*rd, he went on Macala's vessel, took his contraband and then gutted him on his ship. I mean gutted him, stuck his pigsticker into the guys guts and opened em up to the sea air, the gulls were interested quick enough. Then calmly he cleaned the blade on Mac's shirt and told the rest thats what you get for telling porkies in his port."
Thats the sort of thing that happens when I create a character, you get left with so many questions and other points that could help flesh out others as well as the world thier in.
[This message has been edited by drosdelnoch (edited January 04, 2005).]
quote:Which is another way of putting yourself in the character's shoes.
I think we're saying the same thing, but I always like a good semantic argument. My point is that you should not put yourself in your character's shoes. The characters that are the same all have different shoes, but the same person is wearing them. Find out who would buy those shoes in the first place. How are they different from you? That's the person who should wear the shoes.
Posts: 2022 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
See, that's what it means to put yourself in another person's shoes, though. It doesn't mean to actually put yourself in the same situation as the other person. It means to imagine what it is like to be that other person.
Though next time I'm being interrogated at gunpoint, I'm certainly going to try and argue that the other guy should literally switch positions with me.
posted
Better yet, next time I write a character who has access to an interstellar vehicle or superweapon or anything like that, I'm going to see if I can literally trade places with the guy.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
If they don't have shoes...mm. That's a tough one.
Survivor, I knew we were saying the same thing. The point that I wanted to hit over the head with a mallet is that many people imagine what they would do in the same situation as their character. The character won't necessarily react the same way.
posted
Ah but if someone is paying you to write their biography, then you can easily switch shoes with them. (well the easiness depends on who it is.) I Imagine that Donald Trump wears really comfortable shoes.
Posts: 1895 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
This is why none of my characters has ever had athlete's foot, because I've always been subconsciously planning to switch shoes with them.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
I'd go with flip-flops, and a wide brimmed hat to keep the sun off you toes. It also helps to keep your drink shaded. Of course I just got back from a vacation in Mexico, so maybe I'm still in that mindframe. Posts: 471 | Registered: Sep 2003
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