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writers_loft2009-07-03 07:35 pm
e-moon60.livejournal.com) wrote in writers_loft2009-07-03 07:35 pm
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Characters--the binary approach
As with anything else in writing, there are multiple ways to look at characterization, and all of them work for some people. Here's one that's worked for me, and for some of the classes I've taught.
Real people have both innate and acquired characteristics. We're born with genetically determined eye color, hair color, skin color, bone structure (shape of face, probable adult height, wide or narrow pelvis and shoulders, etc.) We're born with a gender (even if it's unusual); we're born with a certain ratio of fast-twitch to slow-twitch muscle fibers that determine what, if anything, our athletic talent will be (sprinter vs. distance runner, weight lifter vs. pole vaulter.) We're born with an existing set of personality traits (explorer/avoidant/slow-to-warm, etc.)
But then things start happening to us. Our culture may say we're too tall or too short or have the wrong color skin or hair or aren't pretty enough or strong enough. Or it may say we exactly fit the cultural ideal: we're admired for our birthright of size, color, shape. Either way, how our family, our community, our culture sees us interacts with our innate personality to change us. Some of us withdraw; some become rebellious, some conform. By the time we're grown, we are each a unique mix born of the interaction of our innate traits with our acquired traits. We also have--as a result of all that--layers of emotion that push us toward or away from the choices we all face.
Characters in stories, to be like real people, can be thought of as having the same kinds of innate and acquired traits. And although the external innate traits are the easiest to "see", the most useful ones for writing compelling characters are those on the inside, because motivation comes from the inside--from the layers of emotions that form a complex stew pushing us (or the characters) back and forth through the story's possibilities. Competing motivations create the kind of internal conflict that enriches characterization and plot both. Real people have competing motivations; most of us have more to do, at any given moment, than we can do--we make choices, we "prioritize" (icky business word) between competing demands.
Which creates, in a book, plot. Motivation is, as the name suggests, the plot-mover. Everything a character does needs to be motivated by something other than the writer's desire to have the character do it. How do we find that motivation? How do we understand our characters when they do something unexpected? Back to the innate and acquired traits.
Example. In one series of books, I set up a pair of young women, a few years apart in age, first cousins. One was genetically, innately, extremely, show-stopping beautiful. There was a girl like that in my college class, and from observing her, I learned that that kind of beauty exacts a price--it is SO out there that all people see is the outside. In the book, this played out in a family where she became "the beauty" (an older sister was "the smart one," one brother was "the techie one" and one was "the strong one." Families often assign roles like that. Being seen as the beauty taught her that beauty was what mattered--and as a result, as a teenager, she was taken advantage of and made a stupid mistake and was then seen as "that idiot Stella--beautiful but dumb." Meanwhile, her younger cousin, who had nothing like that beauty and was kind of messy and tomboyish (like me) was forever being told (before Stella's disgrace) "Why can't you be more like Stella? Why don't you get Stella to show you how to dress/use makeup/be charming?" After the disgrace, Stella got the reverse message: "Why can't you be sensible like your cousin Ky?" All this is in deep background, and comes out through their interactions in the story as written.
In the course of the books, the two cousins, now both adults in their twenties, need to work together in very difficult circumstances. They're very different--they want to cooperate, but their innate and acquired traits keep clashing. The old family messages, the old resentments, come out at times of extreme stress, but in addition to that, they aren't at all the same person--they can't, even at the best of times, completely 'get' the other's point of view, though as the books go along, they understand each other much better. The last conflict they have in the books has its roots in family affection--but still causes trouble. Stella, determined to protect her cousin from a man she herself once had a fling with, shares with him why she thinks he's wrong for Ky. Ky was treated very badly by her first love; Stella found out the details partly by accident (Ky's hurried departure left something behind) and partly because Stella read the letter Ky had been sent (snooping by elders isn't that uncommon in families and fits Stella's character.) The man (who is seriously in love with Ky), eventually finds the man who hurt Ky and chews him out in public (a major reception honoring Ky for her acomplishments), using details Stella told him. Ky overhears part of it, feels humiliated that the man knows any of this, and of course blames Stella.
What this does for plotting is reduce the need to ratchet up tension with surface action and outside problems (having yet another enemy drop yet another grenade through the roof kind of thing) and gives the writer more ways to vary not only the amount, but the source of the forward movement of the plot. This was a series with a lot of outward action, from assassination attempts on space stations to full-bore space battles between fleets--it could have been a very surface-level plot, with characters who were all hard-shelled shiny types with no humanity. Having a familial conflict front and center not only provided a way to enliven the quieter stretches, but added depth to the characters and (by extension) to the conflict: the people are people, they have families (there were other family issues in other families), they don't just fall neatly into "soldier/civilian" categories. Characters who are motivated sometimes by immediate outside events (the roof falls in, someone's shooting at them, there's a riot in the street) are also motivated by innate personality traits, traits culturally instilled (attitudes to strangers, to "differentness," to the opposite sex, to authority), traits instilled by the family (family role playing), traits instilled by specific experiences (which need not be wildly dramatic, to influence a life.) Whenever the writer needs an internal conflict, or an interpersonal conflict, there's a motivation somewhere inside, waiting to be plucked like a harpstring. Trace it back, find its root in that character...and then the motivation will connect to the plot without any obvious manipulation.
Real people have both innate and acquired characteristics. We're born with genetically determined eye color, hair color, skin color, bone structure (shape of face, probable adult height, wide or narrow pelvis and shoulders, etc.) We're born with a gender (even if it's unusual); we're born with a certain ratio of fast-twitch to slow-twitch muscle fibers that determine what, if anything, our athletic talent will be (sprinter vs. distance runner, weight lifter vs. pole vaulter.) We're born with an existing set of personality traits (explorer/avoidant/slow-to-warm, etc.)
But then things start happening to us. Our culture may say we're too tall or too short or have the wrong color skin or hair or aren't pretty enough or strong enough. Or it may say we exactly fit the cultural ideal: we're admired for our birthright of size, color, shape. Either way, how our family, our community, our culture sees us interacts with our innate personality to change us. Some of us withdraw; some become rebellious, some conform. By the time we're grown, we are each a unique mix born of the interaction of our innate traits with our acquired traits. We also have--as a result of all that--layers of emotion that push us toward or away from the choices we all face.
Characters in stories, to be like real people, can be thought of as having the same kinds of innate and acquired traits. And although the external innate traits are the easiest to "see", the most useful ones for writing compelling characters are those on the inside, because motivation comes from the inside--from the layers of emotions that form a complex stew pushing us (or the characters) back and forth through the story's possibilities. Competing motivations create the kind of internal conflict that enriches characterization and plot both. Real people have competing motivations; most of us have more to do, at any given moment, than we can do--we make choices, we "prioritize" (icky business word) between competing demands.
Which creates, in a book, plot. Motivation is, as the name suggests, the plot-mover. Everything a character does needs to be motivated by something other than the writer's desire to have the character do it. How do we find that motivation? How do we understand our characters when they do something unexpected? Back to the innate and acquired traits.
Example. In one series of books, I set up a pair of young women, a few years apart in age, first cousins. One was genetically, innately, extremely, show-stopping beautiful. There was a girl like that in my college class, and from observing her, I learned that that kind of beauty exacts a price--it is SO out there that all people see is the outside. In the book, this played out in a family where she became "the beauty" (an older sister was "the smart one," one brother was "the techie one" and one was "the strong one." Families often assign roles like that. Being seen as the beauty taught her that beauty was what mattered--and as a result, as a teenager, she was taken advantage of and made a stupid mistake and was then seen as "that idiot Stella--beautiful but dumb." Meanwhile, her younger cousin, who had nothing like that beauty and was kind of messy and tomboyish (like me) was forever being told (before Stella's disgrace) "Why can't you be more like Stella? Why don't you get Stella to show you how to dress/use makeup/be charming?" After the disgrace, Stella got the reverse message: "Why can't you be sensible like your cousin Ky?" All this is in deep background, and comes out through their interactions in the story as written.
In the course of the books, the two cousins, now both adults in their twenties, need to work together in very difficult circumstances. They're very different--they want to cooperate, but their innate and acquired traits keep clashing. The old family messages, the old resentments, come out at times of extreme stress, but in addition to that, they aren't at all the same person--they can't, even at the best of times, completely 'get' the other's point of view, though as the books go along, they understand each other much better. The last conflict they have in the books has its roots in family affection--but still causes trouble. Stella, determined to protect her cousin from a man she herself once had a fling with, shares with him why she thinks he's wrong for Ky. Ky was treated very badly by her first love; Stella found out the details partly by accident (Ky's hurried departure left something behind) and partly because Stella read the letter Ky had been sent (snooping by elders isn't that uncommon in families and fits Stella's character.) The man (who is seriously in love with Ky), eventually finds the man who hurt Ky and chews him out in public (a major reception honoring Ky for her acomplishments), using details Stella told him. Ky overhears part of it, feels humiliated that the man knows any of this, and of course blames Stella.
What this does for plotting is reduce the need to ratchet up tension with surface action and outside problems (having yet another enemy drop yet another grenade through the roof kind of thing) and gives the writer more ways to vary not only the amount, but the source of the forward movement of the plot. This was a series with a lot of outward action, from assassination attempts on space stations to full-bore space battles between fleets--it could have been a very surface-level plot, with characters who were all hard-shelled shiny types with no humanity. Having a familial conflict front and center not only provided a way to enliven the quieter stretches, but added depth to the characters and (by extension) to the conflict: the people are people, they have families (there were other family issues in other families), they don't just fall neatly into "soldier/civilian" categories. Characters who are motivated sometimes by immediate outside events (the roof falls in, someone's shooting at them, there's a riot in the street) are also motivated by innate personality traits, traits culturally instilled (attitudes to strangers, to "differentness," to the opposite sex, to authority), traits instilled by the family (family role playing), traits instilled by specific experiences (which need not be wildly dramatic, to influence a life.) Whenever the writer needs an internal conflict, or an interpersonal conflict, there's a motivation somewhere inside, waiting to be plucked like a harpstring. Trace it back, find its root in that character...and then the motivation will connect to the plot without any obvious manipulation.