So,
recovery is going nicely, for those who care.
My brain’s been working a lot better. I can actually eat food again
(only went seventeen days without). It’s all sorts of fun.
Also, today's the last day to sign up for a free galley copy of Paradox Bound. Head over to the PRH website and do that. Only takes a minute.
Anyway, I
haven’t prattled on about characters in a while, so I figure we’re due...
I may have
mentioned once or twice before that characters are key to a successful
story. Non-stop action with flat
stereotypes can be diverting in a film for a little while, but in a book (and
in a good movie) characters are my bedrock.
If a reader doesn’t have someone they like, someone they can relate to, a story can be dead in the water by page five.
One of the
best ways to deal with this is reality. Let’s be honest, we love characters who
feel real, even when they’re Jedi or Hufflepuffs or Inhumans or Amazons. Their
dialogue, their reactions, their approach to things. The goal is to make our characters—and our
stories—seem as real as possible.
Now, there
are some common ways we all try to do this when they’re starting out. I say “try” because all three are based off a
simple misunderstanding of why certain aspects of characters work. Let’s go over what they are, the problems
with each one, and how you can work around it.
The first method is for me to describe these characters in amazing detail.
I’ll introduce you to Wakko and tell you his hair color, eye color,
height, and weight. Then I’ll give you
descriptions of his hairstyle, body type, the shape of his face, all his
tattoos (even the ones we can’t see).
There’s a list of his measurements and shoe size. In the next few sentences we get the name of
his aftershave, the personal grooming tools he uses, and the make of his watch
(yeah, he still wears a watch). I
describe Wakko in such exacting detail there’s no way you can picture him any
way except how I envisioned him. And once that picture’s firmly in mind,
they’ll seem as real as anyone else you know.
The second way is for me to give pages and
pages of backstory on the character.
I’ll scribble out lengthy flashbacks to Wakko’s first day of
high school, his first job, his first fight, the first time he was dumped. Maybe he’ll randomly start talking to
friends, family, or complete strangers about the last time he went to the gym,
the last time he had sex (that cute woman from the bar, whatshername with the
hair...), the day he finally started working at ConHugeCo International, or the
day he realized all he really wanted was to tell stories through interpretive
dance. Heck, sometimes these revelations
won’t even be a flashback or dialogue--they’ll just be straight text in the narrative.
The third way people try to do this is the
least common. But it happens enough I
feel the need to mention it...
Real people
have quirks. We sometimes speak in odd
ways, do nonsensical things, and go against our best interests. We have blind spots. Sometimes we even up and die in awful, unexpected ways (statistically, most people do at least once in their
life). It’s the way we’re wired. We’ve all seen people do things like
this. We’ve all been the people
doing these things.
The logic
here is if the writer has the characters act illogically, they’re acting more real. If Wakko’s a bundle of
weird and quirky behaviors, then he has to be believable. It’s almost like I’m daring my readers—“Real people do this, so how
can you say Wakko doesn’t seem real when
he’s doing it?”
Heck, if Wakko
randomly gets hit by a car in the last few pages, that’s so much like life it almost
counts as art, doesn’t it...?
Now...
Let’s talk
about why these methods usually don’t work.
The problem with the first method, using
tons of details to describe my character, is that it breaks the flow of my
story. The story and plot come to a screeching
halt while I have this big infodump. I
mean, if you look back up there, I bet you started skimming just while reading the
list of potential descriptions of Wakko,
didn’t you? If a list of general
examples can’t hold people’s attention, what’s going to happen when it’s a list
of specifics two or three times as long?
The other
catch to this method is something I’ve mentioned before. A lot of the time, readers form their own
mental images of what a character looks like.
For example, if you look over the past few paragraphs you’ll see I
haven’t actually described Wakko at all, but—even if you don’t get the
reference—at this point you’ve probably got some mental image of him
when I use his name, don’t you?
If you know
what this character looks like with no
description, then isn’t two pages of description... kinda excessive?
In a
similar vein—when we’re talking about the second method--I can add in a dozen
pages of personal trivia and anecdotes and it’s still not going to make a
character seem real. More likely, the
story’s going to suffer from the same expositional infodump I mentioned above,
and it’s going to come to a crashing halt again. The problem is relevance. While there’s no question these past events
shaped Wakko’s life and the person he is today, my readers are going to wonder
what do they have to do with this story. No matter how good a particular element might
be, if it doesn’t relate to the tale I’m telling it’s just noise.
The problem
with the third method, quirkiness and randomness, is that fiction’s held
to a much higher standard than real life.
People do illogical, unbelievable things all the time in real
life... but life isn’t scripted. When I
pick up a book, I know there’s a writer behind it. There shouldn’t be any real randomness,
because every word on the page was deliberately chosen. And that means any apparent randomness has to
be serving an actual purpose in the story.
Because if it’s not, well... why is it there?
So, with
all that being said... is there any way to make these three methods work? I
mean, yeah, there’s always an exception to everything, but are these methods
overall useless or what?
The big
trick to all of these, as I mentioned above, is relevance. Like adjectives or adverbs, if character elements
aren’t serving a purpose they shouldn’t be there. Strip away all the noise and clutter and just
give the reader what they need.
For
example...
Let me tell
you a quick little story...
Wakko lives
in a one room, roach-infested apartment, always buys groceries at the 99 Cent
store, and almost all of his wardrobe is meticulously chosen from the racks of
the Salvation Army. He always has the
latest iPhone, though, and an immaculate beard.
And I’ve
just told you a lot about him, haven’t I?
More than just the words on the page, too. You’ve got a sense of who Wakko is and where his
priorities are. Maybe even a mental
image of him. All in just three lines.
See, I
don’t need a lot of details, just the right
details. Did I need to tell you about Wakko’s
thigh tattoo or how tall he is for that little character sketch to work? I just need to pick the right details to
create the image and imply the person I wanted you to see.
Even the
randomness issue is easy to deal with when you look at it in this light. It’s okay for seemingly random things to happen in my story. Key word—seemingly. At the end of the day, I’m god in this world,
and these events are happening for a reason which benefits my story.
My new
book, Paradox Bound, recently got a review from Publishers
Weekly (a starred review, he said with glee), and one of the thing they
specifically mentioned was how great it was that so many seemingly early, minor
things I’d added for flavor came around to be important plot points. They all seem like random details and events
at first, but each one ends up driving the plot and character development in a
certain way and in a specific direction.
That’s the
kind of “randomness” we want in our stories—the kind that serves our purpose as
writers. In the same way, we don't want our characters to be "real," but to make them virtually real.
So make
your characters real. But really make
them real
Next
time... well, I’ve chosen something interesting (and a bit frustrating) for
next time
Until then,
go write.
