Colorful "normal" characters?

[Jackarandajam]

I am not sure I understand the obsession with finding so-called ‘truth’. It seems to be something a lot of people search for, whilst I spend I lot of my time circling around it to find more interesting things…

How do I explain this? I leave a lot of room for unexplained things, unresolved end points and have my characters living rather than always ‘searching’. Whether that’s right or not I don’t know, but the concept of ‘truth’ has never really appealed to me.

I don't mean the characters are doing it on purpose.

Let's say I'm writing a romance.
I go a favorite Sparks route and my theme is "love is patient." So:

1. Something I want to say (theme)
Love is patient.

2. How I want to prove it is true (plot)
A POW dreams about his fiance while going through the hardships of a POW camp for a decade, his upper crust fiance pressured from all sides to forget about her poor, presumably KIA Soldier boy.

3. Who i want to learn it (protag)
A high school player who doesn't deserve it and a hard-to-please rich girl scared of commitment because of her parents toxic relationship.

4. Who I want to explain it (side characters)
A colorful cast of fellow prisoners with a variety of love stories ranging from "she won't wait, better to say goodbye now" to "my grandparents were married for 97 years and she still carries his ashes in her purse."
On the woman's side, from "knowing him, he probably went awol and has nine kids with nine different local women by now" to "stay strong, you're an inspiration."

5. Who I want to show doing it wrong (antag)
A prison guard, embittered by the death of his wife by a bomb, takes a personal interest in shattering the hope of the soldier.
A "perfect suitor" shows up for the girl, so in love that he forges a letter that says the girls fiancee is dead.

So I don't mean anyone is actually talking about pursuing truth, but everyone in the story is there to underscore what you're trying to say with the book.

 

[LittleOwlbear]

This is good to hear, because all three of my main characters exhibit this, within the context of the world they are in. They are more or less normal people with some talent that have to rise to a new challenge in their world. FWIW - I have little experience with anime or Marvel, etc.

That sounds good. Not only in power, but I love to have some emotional truth to them.

There are lot of different types of anime and it ranges from very realstic characters to ... whatever the mains of Demon Slayer are. Their traits are very over the top.

 

[Finchbearer]

I don't mean the characters are doing it on purpose.

Let's say I'm writing a romance.
I go a favorite Sparks route and my theme is "love is patient." So:

1. Something I want to say (theme)
Love is patient.

2. How I want to prove it is true (plot)
A POW dreams about his fiance while going through the hardships of a POW camp for a decade, his upper crust fiance pressured from all sides to forget about her poor, presumably KIA Soldier boy.

3. Who i want to learn it (protag)
A high school player who doesn't deserve it and a hard-to-please rich girl scared of commitment because of her parents toxic relationship.

4. Who I want to explain it (side characters)
A colorful cast of fellow prisoners with a variety of love stories ranging from "she won't wait, better to say goodbye now" to "my grandparents were married for 97 years and she still carries his ashes in her purse."
On the woman's side, from "knowing him, he probably went awol and has nine kids with nine different local women by now" to "stay strong, you're an inspiration."

5. Who I want to show doing it wrong (antag)
A prison guard, embittered by the death of his wife by a bomb, takes a personal interest in shattering the hope of the soldier.
A "perfect suitor" shows up for the girl, so in love that he forges a letter that says the girls fiancee is dead.

So I don't mean anyone is actually talking about pursuing truth, but everyone in the story is there to underscore what you're trying to say with the book.

I don’t think this is ever the approach I take, because for example the ‘love is patient’ theory is highly subjective. I still have it so that my characters are exploring the themes I’m playing with by detaching my own opinions from the narrative. I’d like to think that my characters react to the world around them in their own way because I’ve developed their character profile enough to do that.

 

[Jackarandajam]

I don’t think this is ever the approach I take, because for example the ‘love is patient’ theory is highly subjective. I still have it so that my characters are exploring the themes I’m playing with by detaching my own opinions from the narrative. I’d like to think that my characters react to the world around them in their own way because I’ve developed their character profile enough to do that.

In your opinion, what would you say is the definition of "a story"?

 

[Finchbearer]

In your opinion, what would you say is the definition of "a story"?

Im not sure there’s one single definition beyond a group of words put together to make something that is told or read.

 

[Jackarandajam]

Im not sure there’s one single definition beyond a group of words put together to make something that is told or read.

So instead of "to make something that is told" I could say "to get a point across."

If I tell you that "I had cheese and crackers today", the point of that story is that I had cheese and crackers. That isn't a very interesting point or story.

All it takes to give that story a theme is to say "I have had a severe dairy intolerance for my whole life, but I had delicious cheese and crackers today."
If I told that story, I could look at it afterwards and say
"ah! A theme! The theme is 'sometimes something you love is worth discomfort.'"

Now that isn't true for everyone all the time, but it was true for the character (me) when the story happened.

Now that I know my theme, I could string the story out into a short story pretty easily, because I know the point of the story. I could show myself eyeballing the cheese section of the grocery store, weighing the consequences. I could show myself going through the aftermath of my decision.
But is cheese a good enough subject to hold a readers attention?
Maybe I take me out of the story now and make an mc who is going through a divorce, has an opportunity to get full custody of the child, but is trying to decide if that's the right thing to do. The child loves the other parent, but the mc hates them for what they did.
Now my little story about doing things out of love despite future discomfort is swinging a little more weight around. I leave the cheese bit as a subplot to underline my new main thread.
EDIT: This is actually a great opportunity for a colorful side character who, despite a crippling dairy intolerance, is constantly unavailable because they're constantly consuming their beloved dairy anyway.

Am I preaching absolutism? I don't think so. I'm just telling a story about an mc making a decision based on a line of reasoning that people will generally relate to, and that I personally believe: "sometimes discomfort is worth it for something (someone) you love."

 

[Finchbearer]

I meant ‘told’ as in orally spoken, like an audio recording or like in days of old, spoken word.

I don’t think that storytelling is always about getting a point across. You have a narrative structure, often with at least one characters or more commonly multiple characters and you have a narrative, which in turn makes it a ‘story’.

You have different types of storytelling such as fables, fairytales, sagas, eddas, long-form poetry, novellas, short stories and novels.

Within that basic structure you can really do anything you want. If you want to get a point across then that’s your choice as the storyteller.

 

[Jackarandajam]

I meant ‘told’ as in orally spoken, like an audio recording or like in days of old, spoken word.

I don’t think that storytelling is always about getting a point across. You have a narrative structure, often with at least one characters or more commonly multiple characters and you have a narrative, which in turn makes it a ‘story’.

You have different types of storytelling such as fables, fairytales, sagas, eddas, long-form poetry, novellas, short stories and novels.

Within that basic structure you can really do anything you want. If you want to get a point across then that’s your choice as the storyteller.

I disagree, I think elephants are big and gray.

EDIT: Sarcasm aside, what you're talking about is absurdism. I'm going to bow out here before I get too defensive of the craft. Even a haiku without a theme is a bad haiku.

 

[Finchbearer]

I don’t mean to touch on any nerves here, I just have a different approach to you when it comes to storytelling.

I’ve read Albert Camus’ The Stranger, and that felt like it had a point or two, though.

 

[pmmg]

I am not sure I understand the obsession with finding so-called ‘truth’. It seems to be something a lot of people search for, whilst I spend I lot of my time circling around it to find more interesting things…

How do I explain this? I leave a lot of room for unexplained things, unresolved end points and have my characters living rather than always ‘searching’. Whether that’s right or not I don’t know, but the concept of ‘truth’ has never really appealed to me.

That's a pretty loaded way to present it: 'so-called truth' and 'I just find more interesting things'. You even called it an obsession... I am not sure that anyone is showing they are obsessed....

You are free, of course, to pursue things that are of greater interest to you, and if pursuing the things that circle around is what you enjoy most, by all means....


But, don't discount those who don't go that way. Truth is not a quest for here's the light, and now from some unassailable place, all this flows...(I mean, it may be that, but I've not discovered it). Truth is instead a cautionary warning, that travel too far away from, and enter world full of bullshit and lies. You put that in your writing, you're gonna have an uphill battle with a reader going forward. Ignore it, or pretend that something else is true instead, and truth will come in like a bear with a club and wallop you.

(And this all applies to life as well)

I wish to write things that have high credibility, and represent my best effort to get things right. So, I have to work with some effort to consider what is true. Its not a bad thing, its just a starting place.

For me, there might be some value is looking at things outside what I would consider true, perhaps to challenge a notion, or discover if something else might be true instead. But once I know something is untrue, I wont stay there long.

 

[Finchbearer]

That's a pretty loaded way to present it: 'so-called truth' and 'I just find more interesting things'. You even called it an obsession... I am not sure that anyone is showing they are obsessed....

You are free, of course, to pursue things that are of greater interest to you, and if pursuing the things that circle around is what you enjoy most, by all means....


But, don't discount those who don't go that way. Truth is not a quest for here's the light, and now from some unassailable place, all this flows...I mean, it may be that, but I've not discovered it. Truth is instead a cautionary warning, that travel too far away from, and we enter world full of bullshit and lies. You put that in your writing, you're gonna have an uphill battle with a reader going forward. Ignore it, or pretend that something else is true instead, and truth will come in like a bear with a club and wallop you.

(And this all applies to life as well)

I wish to write things that have high credibility, and represent my best effort to get things right. So, I have to work with some effort to consider what is true. Its not a bad thing, its just a starting place.

For me, there might be some value is looking at things outside the what I would consider true, perhaps to challenge a notion, or discover if something else might be true instead. But once I know something is untrue, I wont stay there long.

I’m not discounting ways others like to approach things at all.

 

[Finchbearer]

There are some aspects of truth within my storytelling, if this is what it could be described as, and that would be within character arcs, so many of my characters think they want one thing and the conflict I’ve created diverts their attention to the actual thing they didn’t even know they wanted in the first place. But these aspects aren’t ever really an overarching theme that I work with as subtext or to make a point of anything.

 

[pmmg]

There are some aspects of truth within my storytelling, if this is what it could be described as, and that would be within character arcs, so many of my characters think they want one thing and the conflict I’ve created diverts their attention to the actual thing they didn’t even know they wanted in the first place. But these aspects aren’t ever really an overarching theme that I work with as subtext or to make a point of anything.

I don't think its really possible to have a story that avoids all truth. It would seem quite absurd at the least if there was. Nothing I have ever read from you has been absurd.

You may end up surprising yourself and finding there are themes when its done, and that you like them and want them to be stronger.

 

[Finchbearer]

I don't think its really possible to have a story that avoids all truth. It would seem quite absurd at the least if there was. Nothing I have ever read from you has been absurd.

You may end up surprising yourself and finding there are themes when its done, and that you like them and want them to be stronger.

I’m not dealing with ‘universal truths’ within my work. It’s inside of each character arc that each individual character deals with their own journey through their life and might find something turn out different to how they thought. I’m not sure you could describe that as ‘truth’ in the same way as I think you are describing it.

Sure, I deal with multiple themes, and there are some overall themes, but I’m not trying to prove any particular point with them.