Building Your Writing Toolkit: Part 6.2 – Bits and Characters, the Tool for the Job

Last weekend I was talking to my friend Gene when he made an interesting observation. “By and large,” he said, “Stephen King movies suck – they shouldn’t suck, because they’ve usually got a great story, but I think the problem is that he writes people so well; actors in a two hour movie just can’t live up to the people he makes in a seven hundred page book.”

I agree with Gene’s assessment of the situation (it should be clear by now that my appreciation of Stephen King novels borders on obsessive) for two reasons: one, because King is the king of characterization, and two, because people who decide to make King novels into movies generally wouldn’t know what characterization was if it bit them in the face.

Characterization is, as the word should imply, turning something into a character or adding character to something. This is important because if you don’t work at characterizing your characters nobody gives a shit about them.

There are four categories typically used to define characters: flat, round, static, and dynamic. A flat character is one who is two-dimensional, has little to distinguish him, and who has little depth. A round character is one who is interesting and complicated, who has strengths and weaknesses; she isn’t “just” anything – she’s bright but antisocial, friendly but with an evil streak, cruel but loves her family – she has depth. A static character is one who doesn’t change or develop; she is the same character at the end of the story as she was at the beginning, with no highs or lows and very little learned from her experience. A dynamic character is one who changes (for good or bad) and who learns from the experiences he has in the course of the story.

Characters may be flat and static (the dullest and most remedial part of this spectrum – think Bella Swan from Twilight), round and static (interesting but infrequent, Daniel Day Louis character from There Will be Blood is an example of this, as is John McClain from Die Hard), flat and dynamic (most representations of Tarzan and Superman fit this – the generic action hero/cowboy character who is essentially faceless but who makes an important change at some point), or round and dynamic (generally these are the most fun characters to read or watch – Huckleberry Finn is round and dynamic, as are Dexter from the TV series Dexter, Darth Vader, Elizabeth Bennet, and Bilbo Baggins).

The Harry Potter series has good examples in almost every one of these groupings. Harry himself is round and dynamic: he’s not just a perfect, flat little hero – he can be a whiny little bitch, he lies an awful lot, gets into loads of trouble and makes a few huge mistakes – and he’s dynamic in that he learns from his mistakes, is capable of seeing the bad in himself as well as the good, and is capable of changing roles (to the point that he accepts that he may be more of a sacrifice than he is a hero). Draco is round but static: he’s deliciously nasty and lets everybody know it, he struggles with the task of killing Dumbledore, he loves his family even though he is a spoiled brat, and is scared of Voldemort even though he’s supposed to be a death eater – but for all of that he doesn’t really change or grow in the novels; in the end (even in the epilogue) he’s just a sneering aristocrat who doesn’t like Harry – the same thing he’s been all along. Sirius is a pretty good example but not perfect fit for flat and dynamic: we’re told that he used to be a Marauder and that he was really cool when he was a student, but that’s about all that there is to his character except that we see the transformation he takes from ravening criminal to warm (but childish) guardian. Voldemort is, sadly, both flat and static, which makes him a substantially less interesting villain than he could be; he is and always has been evil (even the childhood scenes Rowling tosses in suggest that he tormented other children simply because he could), there’s no depth to him, he never experiences internal conflict, and he fails to interact meaningfully with any character around him – he’s just a monolithic Bad Guy who you never have a chance to identify with as you read the books.

This is not to say that all of the characters in everything you write need to be round and dynamic – you shouldn’t spend as much time characterizing your main character’s distant cousin who shows up for on scene as you should spend on your character – but it’s good to give some depth to most of the characters who show up on your pages. Dickens was brilliant at this – his characterization was sometimes as simple as coming up with a name that perfectly described a character, for instance the anti-change Barnacle family in Little Dorrit, Stephen Blackpool in Hard Times, who drowns in a well, or Sir Dedlock, a staunch and stupid conservative aristocrat in the legal novel Bleak House.

Where your characters fall in the spectrum of flat/round and static/dynamic is up to you, but you need to be aware of what you’re trying to create – if you’re looking to make a really compelling antagonist you’re going to be better off with a round character than a flat one because that will provide a challenging foil for your protagonist. Do you want to write a goofy, fun story, something along the lines of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? Then static versus dynamic doesn’t matter as much in a main character, but it might be important to have dynamic elements to a supporting character – Ferris doesn’t change in the movie because he’s supposed to be perfect, but Cameron gets to stand up for himself at the end and Jeanne turns into less of a bitch – these supporting character transformations make the main character look better than if Ferris had undergone some profound change because he’s supposed to be a silly, flawless, inspiring hero.

Plotting your story before you start will help you make your decisions about what kinds of characters you want, but we’re not at plotting yet so we’re going to just assume you’ve got something of a story planned already.

Okay, so let’s say you know that you want a round, dynamic female protagonist with a flat, static boyfriend, a round, static female friend, a round, static evil stepfather, and a round, dynamic potential love interest. That’s fantastic. How do you make that happen?

I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again – writers can’t be cloistered. You have to go out into the world. Think about the characteristics of people you like and admire. Your mom is stubborn but gentle, your brother is loyal, your father is kind, your friends are funny, your professors are intelligent, your TAs are zealous – no matter who you’re thinking of you can find something admirable about that person. Now describe it. How would you explain to your friends that your brother is loyal? What things has he done in the past that express his loyalty. Did he protect you from a bully once? Did he stick with a friend through an addiction? Does he get angry when someone makes fun of his friends? What makes it obvious that your brother is loyal? Now think of another admirable person – your zealous TA for this example. Your TA shows up early every damn day. She’s talked about the courseload she’s taking in addition to teaching your class. You heard her talk about the job she works on the side, and about the really long commute she has to get to school then back to work every day. But in spite of that you can tell she really loves teaching biology. A professor wandered in during your lab and while everyone was working she was talking to the professor about her thesis – you didn’t even realize that there was a whole community of people dedicated to studying the movement of water in plants, but this woman is one of them and she talks about stalks like they’re holy fire.

When you really think about the people you know and what you like about them (or what you hate about them) you begin to understand how characterization works. How would you describe your roomate’s sense of humor to your cousin from out of state? You’d tell a story, and you’d start that story with a little background: “you have to understand,” you’d say “Jim grew up on a farm fifty miles east of the middle of nowhere. He had more siblings than their family had cows, and…” and from there you’d tell your cousin something exceptionally funny that Jim had done, adding in some of his more common mannerisms for color, and by the time Jim came home your cousin would be itching to meet this funny guy from the farm who keeps her cousin laughing. The way you describe the people you like (or hate) to the people you want to like (or hate) them is the exact same way you need to write your characters, only more so.

The details that you don’t share person-to-person when you’re describing a friend or nemesis are the kinds of things you do need to include in your story. What does your protagonist walk like? How do they take their coffee? Where were they born? What do they think of hairstylists? (That one may sound stupid, but if you’re writing an independent female lead then telling your audience that “her hair is a usually neglected shoulder-length curtain, combed more often by fingers than a brush and mottled by several dyeings of the do-it-yourself variety to an odd, varied brown” does a lot more to characterize her than just telling them that “her hair is brown and wavy, curling softly to her shoulders.”)

So work on details, write down details, but most of all go out into the world and think about the people around you. When you see someone make an interesting gesture, try to figure out why. If the guy in class next to you has green hair then you should make up a story for how it got that way – what the first color he dyed his hair was and the progression he went through. If the teller at the bank keeps her nails short, question it in your head – does she bite them because of an anxiety disorder, or did she once scratch her eye as a little girl and learn a lesson from the pain? Look at the people around you and see what they say about themselves without saying anything – what comes off as practical in clothing versus what comes off as douchey? What do the colors that someone’s wearing suggest to you about their personality? Once you’ve thought about these things in the real world it will be much easier for you to write your characters with some character.

That’s all for this week because I’ve run long once again. I’ll be back next week with some things NOT to do to your characters, as well as some tips about making your characters speak in their own voice.

Until then, Cheers. Go write something.

- Alli

Their Rightful Place in the Literary World

I was having a discussion with Rainamoinen about Harry Potter and Twilight the other day. I think the conclusion we came to was not very popular, but I'm going to share it with you anyway. Harry Potter is better than Twilight, but not by much. Now bear with me, and please don't crucify me -- as is tradition, usually -- but Harry Potter is not literary canon. It, in my opinion, falls into the same category as the Chronicles of Narnia (Leena Fitzgerald said this to me the other day, and I found that statement to be adroit as fuck). It's beautiful children's literature, but it should not stand against big boy literature like Tolkien.

I'm not here to talk about whether or not these two texts are fantastic or not, though. I am, however, here to talk about what both are not.

Twilight has taken a lot of flak since its release. My Senior Symposium class kind of hijacked Twilight and used it to talk about how shitty literature has become. I think this is fucking retarded. First of all, I would be really fucking surprised if 90% of the people who bash Twlight have actually read Twilight. I've only read snipits of chapters -- most of which were orated from my troll friend, David. So, I think people need to calm down and stop ripping on Twilight. Secondly, I die a little inside whenever someone suggests that Twilight is one of the worst books written, and that it is a sad showcase of the literary world. This, too, is a stupid claim. Twilight is popular not because it of literary merit, but because it is a simple, pop-lit read aimed for YA audiences. I know, it sucks that there is a Paranormal Teen Romance section at most Barnes & Noble, but that's just the market. Twilight stories simply sell.

Further speaking to the whole "Twilight is the cornhole of the literary world" issue, it's not. Harlequin Romance and Clive Cussler-esque novels are much worse; in fact, they might as well be written by machines. These types of novels are released everyday, and each and every one of them could basically be the same. These are simply written, mindless adventures that, perhaps, provide some sort of catharsis for people in their forties, but not much else. I would be hard pressed to find someone who would say this is untrue. So please, quit talking about Twilight -- it's bad, but it's not that bad.

On to Harry Potter. Harry Potter is not as great as you think. Sure, there's a class for it, but seriously, calm down, fan boy/girl. I can actually talk about this because I've read most of them. Granted, after the fifth one, I lost interest. These books are great for a couple of reasons, especially for my generation. I remember when these books first came out. I was in about sixth grade or so, and I knew a lot of people who had never read a book. When HP came out, people flocked to the bookstores and read it. This is great for obvious reasons. Kids need to read -- it doesn't really matter what it is, in my opinion. However, just because these books hold a special place in the hearts of many people my age, it does not mean these are works of literary merit.

One could say that J.K. plays a lot with language. I suppose this happens at parts, but the whole spell system is basically pig-latin. J.K. knows how to spin a narrative most of the time, but, overall, the HP series is just an adventure novel. These books are fantastic, and they serve a purpose; however, lumping them in with greater books seems unfair. Calling everything art or canon takes away from the achievements people have made in the past.

I've noticed, though, that many people today just want to call everything art. Many people think because something is beautiful, it must be art. This is silly, and that sort of thinking is dangerous. Total equality and inclusion of everything under the umbrella of art justifies anything becoming coined as such, when in reality, this is simply not the case. If literature with limited literary merit is regarded as equal to something like the Great Gatsby, then artists such as Fitzgerald will no longer be necessary.

That's it, I guess. HP is not the top, nor is Twilight the bottom. So please, let's move on from these two series of books. They're exhausting.

JF

Fantasy, Literature, Fairies

So I had a conversation with my mother-in-law the other day that made me really sad. Somehow we got onto the topic of allegory and she said something like this: “I never really liked C.S. Lewis or any of that allegorical stuff. I don’t like Harry Potter and I don’t understand Lord of the Rings; writing has to be realistic in order to mean anything – fantasy is just kid’s stuff and it’s not important.”

I nodded politely along then headed out to the garage so I could sit by myself with my LOTR tattoo and Neal Gaiman short story collection and wonder what’s wrong with this crazy family I married into.

My husband doesn’t read fiction, which was a hard hurdle for us to get over but which I eventually understood was related to his ADD so I see it more as a minor disability than as a personal flaw – he doesn’t read history or nonfiction either, only books about mechanics and chemical formulas, or as he puts it “Books I can use.”

My father-, brother-, and mother-in-laws don’t read fiction either, though, so I’m coming to see this as a nurture-more-than-nature issue.

When I was a kid my parents and grandparents read to and with me all the time. My grandmother would sit down and draw mermaids with my sister and I and we would make up stories about how they lived; my father read The Hobbit to me when I was only five years old and it made me look forward to bedtime every night because I wanted to see what Bilbo was up to next; my mother started a reading circle with my sister and I when I was 12, in which we would sit down and read whole novels to one another; I will admit that I can’t remember my grandfather reading me any books, but he was a magician (literally – check out http://kirkkirkham.blogspot.com/ - my dad’s blog about his dad) and so the fantastic was part of everyday life when he was around. I was raised to adore fantasy, to believe in the power of the imagination and the possibility of magic, of the strength of hope and wonder.

What happens when you take that kind of magic away? I’m not sure that it ruins people. But I don’t think that it does them any good. I get frustrated with my husband sometimes because of it; he enjoys Science Fiction occasionally, but thinks that LOTR is boring and Harry Potter is dumb, he has no patience for fairy tales and no time for whimsy. I love him, but that’s just a little sad.

I’m fairly convinced that most English majors are raised in an environment conducive to crushed dreams and heartbreaking revelations; we probably believed in Santa long after all the other kids in our class did, and played with Barbies when we were much too old for them, and still think that maybe we might someday see a fairy or a dragon. Fantasy doesn’t lead to the most realistic adults, but in this world who wants to be a realist? I’ll take the idealism, hope, magic and whimsy of fantasy with me forever and I’ll try to someday pass it on to my kids too – and no matter that he missed out on it as a child, you better believe that my husband will participate in fostering magic in the lives of his children.

So where do you stand? Fantasy or Facts? Do you still believe in Santa Claus or do you think it’s cruel to lie to children about tooth fairies and Easter bunnies? Let me know in the comments.