Stoic and Quiet Characters

[Alex97]

Do you as a reader find a stoic and quiet character to be boring as a protagonist? I'm asking mainly because my MC in my current WIP is a man of few words. He tends not to speak all that much, only offering his opinion after thought. The MC is by no means shy, I want to portray the character as quietly confident and he is an experienced and respected soldier. If done well I personally like this type of character, although I know some people would complain due to a lack of depth seen in some of these character types. There's also the potential risk that this type of MC has been overdone - Aragorn being the classic example.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Limited, omniscient, or first-person? This type's hard to pull off in omniscient, but a lot easier if you can demonstrate their thoughts through the narrative. (My current story's about a character who hardly ever talks, but she feels old and worn-out, so I can get that across with a worn-out-sounding narrative voice.)

 

[Nihilium 7th]

As long as its done well I have no problem with it. A mc like that could be used to highlight the environment and the other mc characters. You could also use his actions or his relationship with other characters to do the talking for you.

 

[OGone]

If your MC is your primary POV then I see no issue because you can explore his thoughts regardless. Provide interior monologue or bring the character to life through your language - if he's confident but reserved then he probably thinks a lot! If you're writing omniscient it might prove a little more difficult but is still more than possible.

And in my opinion Aragorn isn't a man of few words! He's humble, sure, but he rambles a lot sometimes in the books. The respected military male MC can be overdone but if you can flesh him out well enough it doesn't matter.

PS: stoic is a cool word.

Edit: I'm reading Mistborn right now and Vin, the female protag, has barely spoken so far but is still an interesting character. Although Sanderson repeats a lot of actions, she's easy to sympathize with despite having barely any dialogue due to her movements and his description of her thoughts. It's easily achieved through first person.

 

[ThinkerX]

I have a second tier character like this in 'Empire': Kyle is a peasant turned soldier turned magician turned servant whose adopted a 'keep your head down and mouth shut' attitude in the interests of his continued existence. The other characters tend to under rate him because he doesn't speak very much - but he frequently has a better idea as to whats going on than the other characters do, or anticipates certain types of problems more readily.

 

[Saigonnus]

I have that problem a bit too... I have a female protagonist for a post-apocalyptic concept story and she is a very "serious" person due to the fact that lots of bad stuff happened to her before the time of the story. Much of this is revealed in the story, but she doesn't really have a sense of humor and is very stoic and quiet, only associating with a small handful of people. I have tried to portray her as a "action speaks louder than words" type, but haven't really got the handle on it yet. That is the main reason it's still only in the planning phase.

 

[D4RKM4K3R]

if the story per say was told in a first person perspective i feel it would be lousy cause the protagonist would be dull during interactions with other characters... i found this to be a problem with a book i read in middleschool called "Speak" the main progtagonist did not speak often and her interactions with others were awkward and rather less emotional cause its all told through her thoughts on the situation lol but this is my opinion idk.

 

[Jamber]

I reckon you could visit some detective fiction, Chandler especially, Hammett too. They're masterful at the reveal-little hero. There's absolutely no need to wax lyrical to make a riveting close-mouthed and action-based main character. I would argue you withhold extraneous thought processes too -- allow readers to learn who he is by his actions, the questions he poses (often to himself -- that's probably as far as his interiority need go) and of course a revealing denouement where he gets to surprise everyone, including the reader.

Well... That's a detectivey way of looking at it, I suppose. But I'm just trying to say you can tell a lot by action and by what's withheld.

Jennie, no expert.

 

[Anders Ämting]

The challenge, I'd say, is to still convey an actual personality. In that sense, quiet characters are probably more challenging to write than talkative ones - you have to make the things they do say matter more. Granted, you can convey personality through actions as well, but that applies to talkative characters as well so the stoics are still at a disadvantage.

In general I'd try to keep giving glimpses that the character has specific opinions, maybe a sense of humour, and a kind of personal attitude towards things. It bears keeping in mind that "stoic" doesn't mean "unfeeling", but rather having a lot of control over your feelings.

 

[wordwalker]

Try defining what kind of courage or insight the character has the most of, and keep looking for situations where people realize it gives him the right answer, even if it isn't the loudest one. Let other people keep squabbling, so he's the one who sits down and gets to work; let them brag and emote about why they each have to save the world, and he gives his own quiet, cool answer. --In fact, it's too easy rig the universe around "quiet= right= cool" if you don't balance it with scenes he doesn't steal or show his flaws.

Or create a plot thread that draws out his strengths and weaknesses. Let him get slowly poisoned and wave off their concern-- for better or worse.

Recent example: Dr. Banner in The Avengers. Joss gave everyone good lines, but he made a point of giving Bruce some better ones.

 

[BWFoster78]

A cautionary tale that seems appropriate: a guy in my writing group wants his protagonist to be calm and confident. In every situation the group encounters, this guy, whose POV we're mainly in, always feels like he can handle it. This trait absolutely sucks the tension out of every scene.

I don't think that being quiet is an issue since you're in the guy's head. Just make sure that he's not so "stoic" that you rob tension.

Hope that helps!

Brian

 

[Ireth]

A cautionary tale that seems appropriate: a guy in my writing group wants his protagonist to be calm and confident. In every situation the group encounters, this guy, whose POV we're mainly in, always feels like he can handle it. This trait absolutely sucks the tension out of every scene.

I don't think that being quiet is an issue since you're in the guy's head. Just make sure that he's not so "stoic" that you rob tension.

Hope that helps!

Brian

To me, it's not about the character's confidence that he can handle anything -- it's about his actual ability to handle things. Sure, you can have a confident character, but then hand him something he absolutely cannot defeat on his own and let him get curb-stomped at least once in a while.

 

[BWFoster78]

To me, it's not about the character's confidence that he can handle anything -- it's about his actual ability to handle things. Sure, you can have a confident character, but then hand him something he absolutely cannot defeat on his own and let him get curb-stomped at least once in a while.

Confidence can be worked around, but it tends to kill tension.

Here's the way I look at it:

The way you create tension is to give a character a goal and create opposition to that goal. Tension is the result of the reader doubting the character's ability to reach the goal.

Since the reader is inside the protagonist's head, the reader is going to pick up on his confidence, thus deflating their doubt.

Again, this can be managed.

For example, you can give the reader information that the protagonist doesn't know. This, I think, can even increase tension. Kind of like scary music when the character in the horror movie walks into the dark basement. The character doesn't know to be scared, but the person watching knows to be scared for them.

Confidence is something that has to be handled, however. If you choose to create such a character, you need to understand the potential pitfalls and work to mitigate them.

 

[Ankari]

To the OP, I would suggest you tell your story from another character's POV. I've read stories where the author created such confident, quiet characters. When you place a degree of separation, you also ad the mysterious element. A good example is Anomander Rake. Every time Steven Erikson wrote him into a chapter, I wanted to pound on my keyboard an email to the author and ask him to write more of him!

Then I started thinking about the effect of separating the character from the reader. Steven Erikson confirmed it himself when he gave an interview to Lightspeed Magazine for the prequel to his successful series. The excerpt:

This book has a large number of POV characters. How’d you decide which characters to make POV characters?

Well, primarily I wanted to avoid most of the main players in the Malazan series. I wanted voices that were witness to these characters as opposed to the characters themselves. I suspect a lot of people wanted points of view of Anomander Rake and various others, but if I revealed too much about these characters that are viewed quite heroically in the Malazan series, it sort of removes the magic out of them, and I didn’t want to do that.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

You should always take time when selecting your story telling POV. Often, the best choice is not clear from the start. Play around with it. Write some from this character's perspective & see if you can capture the feel you want. Usually, I try to pick the character with the greatest emotional reaction.

In my opinion, these types of stoic characters can work but they need flaws to remain interesting. Heck, even this POV's ever-calm & confident demeanor can be a flaw and not a strength. A supremely confident character may take foolhardy actions, understate dangers, etc. The internal reasons and motivations for projecting calm could be very interesting. As with many things in writing, it's all about how the author brings those bits to life.

 

[Addison]

There are three ways to display your character; dialogue, thoughts, actions. The character is a man of few words, that takes care of one of the two ways. You can display the rest of him through his thoughts on situations and characters and how they comply or contrast with what other characters do or say. Actions are just like that. A side character who thinks he's charming comes in, swipes a bottle of wine and charms your character's guest out of his house to some place else. He doesn't speak, doesn't think, but he punches a hole in the wall. That says something.

 

[Alex97]

Unfortunately I haven't had the chance to get back to this topic since making it due to work.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for the input. Haven't considered the advice I'm going to stick with the POV (bear in mind there ar multiple POV's in the story). I think my description of the character as confident was perhaps misleading, I just wanted to show that he is quiet because he's a thoughtful character and tends to analyse all the information before going onto speak. The character is well aware of both his abilities and disabilities so I would say he's confident but sensible.

I'm writing in a way that the protagonist doesn't show his emotions outwardly, but has a number of internal conflicts going on. He's having to deal with a great amount of anger, guilt and worry and this is beginning to take it's toll which I'm planning to show through some dream sequences as well as more obvious methods.

I recognize there is a tendency to make these characters way overpowered. I've read novels where this isn't necessarily bad because the character wasn't a POV and was instead viewed this way by other characters. In terms of flaws and problems my main character has quite a lot. At one point his desire for revenge is hampering his ability to act sensibly, he has a high sense of honor but is framed as a traitor and he is immensely guilty about a number of very costly failures. So overall, if I write well enough I've got a well balanced character that I should be able to pull off. He should hopefully contrast well with the other POV's.