One of the worst things to believe about writing tragedies is that every scene must be tragic. Filling a serious book with heavy scenes and bleak dialogue will not get you very far. You want to be taken seriously as a writer of Important Things, and so you take yourself and your story seriously, too.
This can be a huge detriment to the quality of your story. When you're working with heavy themes, the most important thing to remember is that to your characters, there is no overarching theme. There are the present circumstances and what they're doing about them, nothing else.
The point is this: sometimes you need humor where humor doesn't seem to belong. You need it in stories about fighting other children to the death on national television. You need it in stories about cancer. And most likely, you need it in your own story, too.
Most people, and therefore most characters, have a go-to type of humor, be it so-unfunny-they're-funny (a la Ross Geller), sarcastic, hyperbolic, or a number of other things. Tragedy, especially tragedy that hasn't happened yet, doesn't change that.
If you have a character who seeks refuge through humor, it doesn't matter whether he's about to lose his eyesight to cancer and the girlfriend he loves just broke up with him and all his other friends are terminal, too. He's going to continue to seek refuge through humor.
Even if your story ends in a way that makes Romeo and Juliet seem happy, just because your book is sad, doesn't mean it has to read like it's sad. Your characters don't know the fate that awaits them. Give them some hope. Let them make inopportune jokes and feel terrible about it afterwards. Let them have a moment of refuge in the midst of their lives falling apart when they have semi-normal banter with a stranger on a bus.
Trust me, your readers will want a break from the heart-wrenching, anyway. There's nothing like the cognitive dissonance of wiping sad tears from your eyes while laughing at something funny that someone just said. You feel terrible for laughing when the situation is so bleak, and yet you can't help it; it's funny. That sort of cognitive dissonance permeates real life, and it will bring that realism into the world of your story.
Showing posts with label character. Show all posts
Showing posts with label character. Show all posts
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Monday, September 15, 2014
The Writer's Bookshelf: Characters & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card
This edition of The Writer's Bookshelf features an essay by Marian Perera.
One of the best books I’ve read on creating characters is
Orson Scott Card’s Characters and Viewpoint – part of the Elements of Fiction Writing
series from Writers Digest Books.
Card deconstructs characterization with plenty of practical, specific details and advice. How can you give a villain a sympathetic side, or hint at insanity in a character? What might happen if a hero or heroine is too attractive? How can character names be distinctive and memorable? It’s all covered, with examples to show how characters can express themselves—and therefore reveal themselves—in different ways.
My favorite of these “compare and contrast” examples is towards the end of the book, when the conflict between two people first occurs on the surface. Their thoughts aren’t given, so their dialogue spells out their problems with speech tags like “soothingly” and “nervously” to let the reader knows how they feel.
Then the scene is rewritten, with what Card refers to as “deep penetration” into the characters’ minds—and it’s so much more powerful. When I first started writing, I wasn’t very subtle about my characters’ emotions, especially in scenes of conflict. But one of the ways to separate tense, simmering drama from melodrama is subtlety, and restraining what the characters show on the surface is a good way to achieve that.
Plus, sometimes readers like being able to read between the lines. It’s much more fun to figure out something the characters aren’t saying, and to catch a glimpse of what’s beneath the surface, rather than the writer spelling it all out.
The section on viewpoint is also excellent. Often on discussion boards, newer writers will ask about the difference between omniscient viewpoint and head-hopping, or how they can know what viewpoint would be effective for their novels. This book examines all those. From the Hemingway-esque cinematic point of view, where the “camera” is like a fly on the wall, to the more common third- or first-person perspective and the omniscient narrator who is almost a character in their own right, this book both discusses and shows the advantages and disadvantages of each. There are even drawings to make the different viewpoints clear.
Another thing I like about the examples is that they come from a variety of sources (that is, not just Card’s own novels), though this book was first published in 1988, so none of those sources will seem new. No references to The Hunger Games here. Also, the sections on Romance vs. Realism and Presentation vs. Representation can get a little complex, and I didn’t recognize any of the comedians whom Card mentioned when discussing humor.
But to balance out the serious stuff which makes me feel as though I’m back in an English Literature class, there’s a fun passage at the start where Card shows how easy it is to come up with ideas for characters, just by transcribing what a fourth-grade class came up with as he prompted them with questions (and threw roadblocks in their path). Each idea of theirs led to the next, and soon they had a story. Not a very complex story, but this was, to me, much more helpful and useful than lists where you can fill in your character’s favorite foods. Showing a character doing something is nearly always going to be more productive than thinking of what the character likes or doesn’t like—or, for that matter, what color her hair and eyes are.
On the whole, I’d recommend this book to any writer.
Bio : Marian Perera enjoys bringing romance, science, sharks
and magic together in her novels – it makes for a volatile combination. And
she’s been into volatile ever since she was sixteen and read Gone with the Wind
for the first time.
She was born in Sri Lanka, grew up in the United Arab Emirates, studied in the United States and now lives in Canada. With three romantic fantasies released by Samhain Publishing and more in the works, her dream is to be a full-time writer some day. She has a blog on writing and publishing – marianperera.blogspot.com – and likes to hear from readers and other writers. Her email address is mdperera@hotmail.com.
Find Marian Pereira at MarianPerera.com and check out Flights of Fantasy
One of the best books I’ve read on creating characters is
Orson Scott Card’s Characters and Viewpoint – part of the Elements of Fiction Writing
series from Writers Digest Books.
Card deconstructs characterization with plenty of practical, specific details and advice. How can you give a villain a sympathetic side, or hint at insanity in a character? What might happen if a hero or heroine is too attractive? How can character names be distinctive and memorable? It’s all covered, with examples to show how characters can express themselves—and therefore reveal themselves—in different ways.
My favorite of these “compare and contrast” examples is towards the end of the book, when the conflict between two people first occurs on the surface. Their thoughts aren’t given, so their dialogue spells out their problems with speech tags like “soothingly” and “nervously” to let the reader knows how they feel.
Then the scene is rewritten, with what Card refers to as “deep penetration” into the characters’ minds—and it’s so much more powerful. When I first started writing, I wasn’t very subtle about my characters’ emotions, especially in scenes of conflict. But one of the ways to separate tense, simmering drama from melodrama is subtlety, and restraining what the characters show on the surface is a good way to achieve that.
Plus, sometimes readers like being able to read between the lines. It’s much more fun to figure out something the characters aren’t saying, and to catch a glimpse of what’s beneath the surface, rather than the writer spelling it all out.
The section on viewpoint is also excellent. Often on discussion boards, newer writers will ask about the difference between omniscient viewpoint and head-hopping, or how they can know what viewpoint would be effective for their novels. This book examines all those. From the Hemingway-esque cinematic point of view, where the “camera” is like a fly on the wall, to the more common third- or first-person perspective and the omniscient narrator who is almost a character in their own right, this book both discusses and shows the advantages and disadvantages of each. There are even drawings to make the different viewpoints clear.
Another thing I like about the examples is that they come from a variety of sources (that is, not just Card’s own novels), though this book was first published in 1988, so none of those sources will seem new. No references to The Hunger Games here. Also, the sections on Romance vs. Realism and Presentation vs. Representation can get a little complex, and I didn’t recognize any of the comedians whom Card mentioned when discussing humor.
But to balance out the serious stuff which makes me feel as though I’m back in an English Literature class, there’s a fun passage at the start where Card shows how easy it is to come up with ideas for characters, just by transcribing what a fourth-grade class came up with as he prompted them with questions (and threw roadblocks in their path). Each idea of theirs led to the next, and soon they had a story. Not a very complex story, but this was, to me, much more helpful and useful than lists where you can fill in your character’s favorite foods. Showing a character doing something is nearly always going to be more productive than thinking of what the character likes or doesn’t like—or, for that matter, what color her hair and eyes are.
On the whole, I’d recommend this book to any writer.
She was born in Sri Lanka, grew up in the United Arab Emirates, studied in the United States and now lives in Canada. With three romantic fantasies released by Samhain Publishing and more in the works, her dream is to be a full-time writer some day. She has a blog on writing and publishing – marianperera.blogspot.com – and likes to hear from readers and other writers. Her email address is mdperera@hotmail.com.
Find Marian Pereira at MarianPerera.com and check out Flights of Fantasy
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
End As You Went On
With every boyfriend, I knew before the end of the first what would be the problem that broke us up. (This works both ways: I also knew before one month that my Patient Husband was The One.) It's party intuition of course but mostly in knowing your dynamics. It never really was a surprise that so-and-so turned out to be a liar or had no sense of humor, and even when it hurt, the breakup had a sense of inevitability. What did you expect? You knew he was {fill-in-the-blank.}
Novels need to have this too, especially in their endings. Not boring or predictable endings, but we need to have a sense during the climactic fight that the parties are fighting over the right thing, and using the right tools to do so.
At the end of Return Of The Jedi, Luke and Vader have an epic lightsaber battle, both of them using The Force to try to win the battle for the other's allegiance.
Now back up a moment. How would you feel if Luke walked into the Emperor's chamber and when the Emperor tries to manipulate him with The Force, Luke pulls out his Ultimate MegaPlasmaCannon and fries him where he stands?
It's not satisfying because it comes out of nowhere. This young Jedi has spent three movies discovering and learning to manipulate The Force, and now at the climax, we have a sense that The Force needs to be involved in the story's resolution.
It's not just a matter of tying up loose ends. That's mandatory. What I'm asking here is that whatever has been the central conflict of the story be reflected in the climax, and in a big way. If your main character has battled against a fear of heights during the book, your climax had better be taking place in a bell tower.
The story question will have returned repeatedly, and the intensity will have ramped up every time it shows itself in the plot. Since the climax is the highest-tension part of the plot, the story question needs to be at its highest pitch there as well.
The advice I normally give is that your main character has to be instrumental in solving the main problem, but I'm taking it one step further. Your main character's chief flaws have to be highlighted and overcome in the climax. Moreover, the thing your main character has desired most from the beginning of the book must be brought to bear on the final resolution.
Without that kind of resolution, your story just fizzles. In the end, we want to know not only that your character won the day, but that he won it fairly and has the dignity of a hard-earned victory.
When you infuse your central story questions into the fabric of the climax, the reader knows why those questions were worth so much effort in the first place. It's more satisfying, and the reader feels the victory along with you.
They say "Begin as you mean to go on." Well, now I'm telling you, "End as you went on." Make sure the ending is perfectly fitted to the story it caps.
---
Jane Lebak is the author of The Wrong Enemy. She has four kids, three cats, two books in print, and one husband. She lives in the Swamp and spends her time either writing books or knitting socks. At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four kids. If you want to make her rich and famous, please contact the riveting Roseanne Wells of the Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency.
Novels need to have this too, especially in their endings. Not boring or predictable endings, but we need to have a sense during the climactic fight that the parties are fighting over the right thing, and using the right tools to do so.
At the end of Return Of The Jedi, Luke and Vader have an epic lightsaber battle, both of them using The Force to try to win the battle for the other's allegiance.
Now back up a moment. How would you feel if Luke walked into the Emperor's chamber and when the Emperor tries to manipulate him with The Force, Luke pulls out his Ultimate MegaPlasmaCannon and fries him where he stands?
It's not satisfying because it comes out of nowhere. This young Jedi has spent three movies discovering and learning to manipulate The Force, and now at the climax, we have a sense that The Force needs to be involved in the story's resolution.
It's not just a matter of tying up loose ends. That's mandatory. What I'm asking here is that whatever has been the central conflict of the story be reflected in the climax, and in a big way. If your main character has battled against a fear of heights during the book, your climax had better be taking place in a bell tower.
The story question will have returned repeatedly, and the intensity will have ramped up every time it shows itself in the plot. Since the climax is the highest-tension part of the plot, the story question needs to be at its highest pitch there as well.
The advice I normally give is that your main character has to be instrumental in solving the main problem, but I'm taking it one step further. Your main character's chief flaws have to be highlighted and overcome in the climax. Moreover, the thing your main character has desired most from the beginning of the book must be brought to bear on the final resolution.
Without that kind of resolution, your story just fizzles. In the end, we want to know not only that your character won the day, but that he won it fairly and has the dignity of a hard-earned victory.
When you infuse your central story questions into the fabric of the climax, the reader knows why those questions were worth so much effort in the first place. It's more satisfying, and the reader feels the victory along with you.
They say "Begin as you mean to go on." Well, now I'm telling you, "End as you went on." Make sure the ending is perfectly fitted to the story it caps.
---
Monday, June 10, 2013
Setting, Reaction, Interaction
It was a dark and stormy night, or so the author told you. There were clouds, puddles, trees torn by the wind, and at the end of a long road, the character saw a castle.
---
Jane Lebak is the author of The Wrong Enemy. She has four kids, three cats, two books in print, and one husband. She lives in the Swamp and spends her time either writing books or knitting socks. At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four kids. If you want to make her rich and famous, please contact the riveting Roseanne Wells of the Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency.
Are you bored yet? Good. Let's try that again.
On the second take, a character hunches as the wind gusts against him, shivering because he's not wearing a jacket. He squints because the rain has made his glasses next to useless. While he's walking, he splashes into a puddle he didn't see, soaking through his beaten-up sneakers. The only light he sees is at the end of the road, at a building so huge that at first he stops in his tracks, sure they'll never take him in. But as the rain intensifies, he heads straight for that light.
What's different? Character.
We need setting because our stories have to take place somewhere, and somewhere usually has things like objects in it and some kind of ambiance. It's important, and we know it. But do we always leverage it to its best effect?
Setting matters, but you can make it matter double if it gives a boost to character.
In the above, we get the same setting details in both the first and second examples, but in the second, they're filtered through the experiences of a character. Is it cold? Yes, because he shivers. Is it raining? Yes, because it's messing up his glasses and it's soaked through his sneakers. Wait, the sneakers are all beat-up, so that tells us something about this character being either poor or just unprepared for this trip. We get a sense of distance instead of just location, since the castle is at the end of the road but still feels huge. And then we get the character's response to this situation.
When you're writing, don't stop the story to give us the setting. The setting needs to filter to us through the experiences of the character: the character's perception, but also the character's reaction to what he perceives. I've recently read two stories in which the authors included amazing detail, and yet the details felt superfluous because the main character in no way reacted to those details.
And if reaction is good, interaction is even better.
It's fine to tell us the sidewalk is cracked. It's better to have the character respond to the cracked sidewalks: maybe wistful that his childhood home is going to ruins; maybe glad that his ex-girlfriend lives in this lousy place; maybe angry that his tax money goes for, apparently, no maintenance of the infrastructure.
But best of all is to have the character interact with the setting. Show us how the character stumbled over that crack in the sidewalk, and maybe he swore, or maybe he looked around hoping no one saw him do that. Maybe he jammed his toe and just held his breath until the pain subsided. Maybe the character picked his way over the uneven pavement.
The character's response to his setting is going to tell us more about the character...and in some ways, it's going to tell us more about the setting as well. Two jobs for the price of one. Plus, when the character is interacting with the details, we won't wonder why you included them. It feels more seamless.
Finally, if you can weave the setting into the plot so they're inextricable from one another, then you can see even more how setting would bolster everything. Ask yourself what the setting you choose has to offer the story, the characters, the subtext, the theme. Ask what the season you've chosen will evoke in the characters.
Bring to bear your setting's unique details in order to tell us not only about the character's world, but why it's important to the character. Once they're enmeshed that way, every detail is going to be doing double duty, and the character will fully inhabit the space of your story.
---
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
This is all great, but why am I reading this?
I'm critiquing a manuscript right now that's very good from a technical perspective. The writer knows her stuff, isn't making a lot of mistakes in terms of character or description, could marginally improve on some aspects, and has a firm command of sentence structure and language usage. We've had some exciting passages and characters struggling for their lives. But I have no idea why I'm reading this story.
Authors sometimes develop tunnel vision. To take a shot at an easy target (sigh) one of my critique partners asked me straight up, "What's the relationship between the main character and her mother supposed to be?" What kind of question is that? To me it was beyond obvious how the mother felt about the daughter and how the daughter felt about the mother. To me. It's not properly evoked in the manuscript, and so to everyone else, it was an unsettling bit of vagueness, and my critique partner is correct. It needs to be remedied (do you love my use of the passive voice there? Can you tell I'm reluctant to go back and edit?)
I couldn't see it myself because I knew what I meant. I suspect it's the same for the writer I'm critiquing now, and in case it's the same for you, here are some questions to ask yourself.
Is the main conflict of the story reflected in the first thirty pages? I'm not talking about jumping right in with all the juicy stuff you're rightly holding back until the proper time to reveal, but your actual story question. Let's go back to Star Wars (the first film) where our introduction to Luke shows us someone who feels oppressed by his circumstances, feels restless, feels he could do better, and is being held back by the constraints of the man serving as his father figure. We've already seen the Empire in action. Even without Lucas stopping the film to say "Wouldn't it be great if this restless, ambitious spirit could be put to use helping the Rebellion?" we feel that's the direction the story has to take.
Imagine if you just started with Luke going to town with his friends and drinking a beer, getting into a bar fight, tossing a quarter to an intergallactic beggar, repairing a broken droid he finds by the side of the road, chatting with a space trader... All the while he could be dropping hints that he's restless and his uncle is holding him back, and maybe we'd know there are Stormtroopers around. It could be exciting and well-written, but without the larger context of why any of this matters, we won't have a sense of where Luke is headed, and therefore where the story is headed.
You may think it's obvious what shape the story is going to take, or that your characters are pawns of the oppressive Evil Empire, or that your main character needs to develop self-confidence, but make sure it actually is. Go back into the text and actually highlight for yourself that the clues are there.
You have to telegraph the main conflict of the story in your opening. Keep it understated, but include it. Your young magician is going to need to overcome his past? Fine. In the opening chapters, show a way in which that unspecified past is holding him back.
Let's say you're reading a novel that opens with a mom and her seven-year-old child over dinner. There's no father or husband at dinner, and this appears to be their norm. Okay. Well, you can look at the cover or the category and figure out it's a romance, so probably the woman is going to meet someone and fall in love. But you're a bit directionless unless something happens during the dinner to tell us what is the obstacle to meeting someone and falling in love.
Child: "Oh, I forgot. We had a substitute for the afternoon. Mr. Miller got called out all of a sudden."
Mom: "Yeah. Probably fooling around with the school secretary."
Child: "What?"
Mom: "Nothing. Did you like the sub?"
Gee, she's bitter. Is that her past speaking? Was it the child's father who cheated, maybe her own father? Also, she doesn't mind talking right over her child's level of understanding -- was she treated with lack of respect as a child? Or is she just starved for adult conversation?
These are the tidbits we need in order to form a coherent world view within the story. We're also going to need to know how this woman fits into her society, how her situation compares to those around her, how being single impacts her life and her child's life. Maybe it's beneficial to her to remain single because she's getting a barrel of money every month in alimony -- but show all this. Let us know what's holding her back and what's propelling her forward.
In Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need
, Blake Snyder goes one further, and suggests you state the story's theme in the opening scene. We need a signpost so we know where we're headed. And yes, this works with my general aversion to opening a story with an explosion of action. We need to care, and before we can care, we need to know why we care.
If you're on the road and you pass a sign that says Boston - 60 you have your direction, your time, your expectations. It does the same to telegraph the protagonist's hidden need and give a hint at the general problems of the world he's in. Once we know where your story is taking us, we're happy to come along for the ride.
---
Jane Lebak is the author of The Wrong Enemy. She has four kids, three cats, two books in print, and one husband. She lives in the Swamp and spends her time either writing books or knitting socks. At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four kids. If you want to make her rich and famous, please contact the riveting Roseanne Wells of the Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency.
Authors sometimes develop tunnel vision. To take a shot at an easy target (sigh) one of my critique partners asked me straight up, "What's the relationship between the main character and her mother supposed to be?" What kind of question is that? To me it was beyond obvious how the mother felt about the daughter and how the daughter felt about the mother. To me. It's not properly evoked in the manuscript, and so to everyone else, it was an unsettling bit of vagueness, and my critique partner is correct. It needs to be remedied (do you love my use of the passive voice there? Can you tell I'm reluctant to go back and edit?)
I couldn't see it myself because I knew what I meant. I suspect it's the same for the writer I'm critiquing now, and in case it's the same for you, here are some questions to ask yourself.
Is the main conflict of the story reflected in the first thirty pages? I'm not talking about jumping right in with all the juicy stuff you're rightly holding back until the proper time to reveal, but your actual story question. Let's go back to Star Wars (the first film) where our introduction to Luke shows us someone who feels oppressed by his circumstances, feels restless, feels he could do better, and is being held back by the constraints of the man serving as his father figure. We've already seen the Empire in action. Even without Lucas stopping the film to say "Wouldn't it be great if this restless, ambitious spirit could be put to use helping the Rebellion?" we feel that's the direction the story has to take.
Imagine if you just started with Luke going to town with his friends and drinking a beer, getting into a bar fight, tossing a quarter to an intergallactic beggar, repairing a broken droid he finds by the side of the road, chatting with a space trader... All the while he could be dropping hints that he's restless and his uncle is holding him back, and maybe we'd know there are Stormtroopers around. It could be exciting and well-written, but without the larger context of why any of this matters, we won't have a sense of where Luke is headed, and therefore where the story is headed.
You may think it's obvious what shape the story is going to take, or that your characters are pawns of the oppressive Evil Empire, or that your main character needs to develop self-confidence, but make sure it actually is. Go back into the text and actually highlight for yourself that the clues are there.
You have to telegraph the main conflict of the story in your opening. Keep it understated, but include it. Your young magician is going to need to overcome his past? Fine. In the opening chapters, show a way in which that unspecified past is holding him back.
Let's say you're reading a novel that opens with a mom and her seven-year-old child over dinner. There's no father or husband at dinner, and this appears to be their norm. Okay. Well, you can look at the cover or the category and figure out it's a romance, so probably the woman is going to meet someone and fall in love. But you're a bit directionless unless something happens during the dinner to tell us what is the obstacle to meeting someone and falling in love.
Child: "Oh, I forgot. We had a substitute for the afternoon. Mr. Miller got called out all of a sudden."
Mom: "Yeah. Probably fooling around with the school secretary."
Child: "What?"
Mom: "Nothing. Did you like the sub?"
Gee, she's bitter. Is that her past speaking? Was it the child's father who cheated, maybe her own father? Also, she doesn't mind talking right over her child's level of understanding -- was she treated with lack of respect as a child? Or is she just starved for adult conversation?
These are the tidbits we need in order to form a coherent world view within the story. We're also going to need to know how this woman fits into her society, how her situation compares to those around her, how being single impacts her life and her child's life. Maybe it's beneficial to her to remain single because she's getting a barrel of money every month in alimony -- but show all this. Let us know what's holding her back and what's propelling her forward.
In Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need
, Blake Snyder goes one further, and suggests you state the story's theme in the opening scene. We need a signpost so we know where we're headed. And yes, this works with my general aversion to opening a story with an explosion of action. We need to care, and before we can care, we need to know why we care. If you're on the road and you pass a sign that says Boston - 60 you have your direction, your time, your expectations. It does the same to telegraph the protagonist's hidden need and give a hint at the general problems of the world he's in. Once we know where your story is taking us, we're happy to come along for the ride.
---
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