Quick n' dirty characterization

[Feo Takahari]

This is another dissection, focused on the old computer game Alpha Centauri. Since it didn't have a single plotline, it didn't have the luxury of showing characters grow and change through their interactions with each other. Instead, it tied character-building to world-building, such that the descriptions accompanying new technologies were sufficient to build the personalities of its protagonists. Each of the below quotes comes from a different character--can you tell what sort of person each is?

The managers always talked about having the view from 30,000 feet. The only problem with having the view from 30,000 feet is that at that height, everyone looks like ants.

Richard Baxton piloted his Recon Rover into a fungal vortex and held off four waves of mind worms, saving an entire colony. We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character with a multi-tiered media campaign . . . They don't need to know how he died, clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy. The real story would just hurt sales and dampen the spirits of our customers.

Already we have turned all of our critical industries, all of our material resources, over to these...things...these lumps of silver and paste we call nanorobots. And now we propose to teach them intelligence? What, pray tell, will we do when these little homunculi awaken one day and announce that they have no further need for us?

Different goals. Different ideas. Different word choices. Even different sentence structures! Everything about their speech shows something about what makes them unique.

How dense is your character development? Do you think all your scenes develop your characters, or are some specifically set aside to do that? Do you develop them in detail, or are broad strokes enough to support your plots or your worlds?

 

[Svrtnsse]

I'm working on characterization for one of the characters (Amanda) in my WIP at the moment, so this is interesting. I'm doing it differently than this, but I think I might take something away from this as well. Maybe I could have series of comments about Amanda made by people who know her.

Something like:

"Well, she botched that one, she didn't have time to find a date for the event herself so she asked her mom to do it and the guy was a complete disaster. He made a complete fool of himself and made her look bad - she was furious. But, well, what can I say, it was her own fault. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all the work she does for the company, but she really needs to get out more."

There, that took me a few minutes to come up with. This sums up one view of the events of a short story about Amanda I'm currently working on - the outline itself is already over seven pages.
This here does tell me a fair bit about the character and I guess that with a couple of other comments from other people I could give a fairly good impression of Amanda - especially if I'm doing it to help myself outline the character.

What I'm doing at the moment is I'm writing short stories about Amanda:
http://mythicscribes.com/forums/showcase/10548-characterisation-feedback-amanda-[532-words].html
http://mythicscribes.com/forums/showcase/10572-character-feedback-amanda-pt-2-[359-words].html
http://mythicscribes.com/forums/showcase/10608-amanda-goes-dancing-flash-fiction-series.html

The first two are focused only on character development and only on a specific part of the character. They're fairly short and should give a fairly good image of the part of Amanda that's relevant to them.
The last story is longer (about four times as long) and it's a lot less focused. It's not meant to give any great insight into one specific aspect of her personality. Rather, it's meant to give something of a feel for the character - spend some time with them and build a connection with the reader. There are little tidbits of detailed information here and there, but overall it's just showing Amanda goofing around at a rave in the forest.

In a way, I imagine the last piece is the one most similar to the way character development is handled in games (I never actually played Alpha Centauri). In a game you spend time with a character by playing them and this builds a connection between the player and the character. Here and there you come across new information about who your character is, but for long periods of time you just run around and shoot things (yes, crude simplification).
I'm thinking that the little tidbits of information works well enough here as you're already actively creating a relation between yourself and the character you're playing - so the game's story doesn't need to do as much work to do that, it just needs to drop you some facts now and then.

I think that in writing it's okay to let there be periods where you don't actively develop the character, as long as you let the reader spend some time with them. If you get the reader to connect with the character through the story, the pieces you add to develop the character will resonate stronger with the reader.

[[ NOTE: It's 4 am. I'm an inexperienced aspiring writer theorizing about something that's new and interesting to me. I don't actually know what I'm talking about. - Feel free to disagree and point out where/what I'm getting it wrong. ]]

 

[skip.knox]

Unfair question. There's what I *hope* to do, and there's what is actually accomplished by my words.

That said, I do try to develop my characters over time. The early chapters are especially difficult, as I'm also trying to describe setting as well as have some actual plot development. So characterization comes in little chunks, where I can.

For example, my WIP has four kids as lead. One is the son of a nobleman, just at the edge of official manhood. When we first meet him it's through the eyes of his friend. This lets me do some physical description. It's also the first day on which the character is allowed to wear full livery with sword, so there's a plot excuse for a full paragraph of description as he comes walking down the road.

By contrast, my two female leads get described in bits and pieces. For example, Hille hear's her friend's voice and looks up, squinting into the sun, which makes her freckles scrunch together. That's the only physical description until a little later, when in narrative I say Hille has a reputation for trouble but the townspeople figure that's to be expected because Hille is low-born and a red-head.

A full-on description, halting the narrative, can work. My favorite example is in the opening of Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad. That image just sears itself and even more in retrospect when his youthful confidence is contrasted with what happens to him later. The physical description actually bears on the story.

 

[Nobby]

Alpha Centauri was a great game, but was all the flavour text written by one person? (If it was, they were Good )

And yes, I should be ashamed that I don't know that.

Although my money is on Sid Meier for your first quote...and I have a strange feeling he was paraphrasing someone.

 

[Caged Maiden]

I think in a character's particular journey through a novel, there are multiple theories. For example, when I wrote Dragon's Blood I hd a character named Aethan, who during the first half, is sort of a mystery to Alayna, who falls for him. I keep him rather quiet, but funny when he speaks, and always blunt and honest. Most of the scenes are used to show Alayna's struggles and how she relies on her companion and guard. But as the story unfolds and Alayna's world gets less complicated, I switch over to Aethan and begin to explore who he really is. So, while each scene IS building him us, little by little, it isn't necessarily going at the same rate as we're getting to know Alayna. Then, in the second half of the book, I split off entirely from Alayna and jump fully into Aethan's head for a long segment, showing us the world from his eyes after really only getting a few glimpses earlier.

Now.... that's not my most successful novel, but it's one example of delaying character development and favoring one character over another.

My current WIP, Written in Red is altogether different. I'm introducing a large cast, four separate POV characters, Rafe, Vincenzo, Yvette, and Daniela, and I'm developing them all at the same time. I decided to split the chapters into days, to give the reader a view of what those people are doing on any given day. So, for example, we might begin the day with Daniela, having an argument with her brother, and cut right over to Vincenzo, about to be hung in the town square. It's all linear and I find that short scenes are better with that sort of jumping POV. Each scene allows me to set up one small, intimate encounter with the POV character and allow the reader to see only what's important to that character on that day. I tried to cut anything that wasn't necessary, thereby giving a deeper knowledge of the character. So for example, I have two slow chapters in Daniela's POV, one where she's being fitted for dresses, and another where she attends a rural, earthy, party. Upon first glance, they seem not to fit with the faster pace set earlier when intrigue rocked her world. But I intentionally slowed those chapters down, because i believed both those experiences, for that particular character, spoke loudly about who she is. Watching her in those places is a much clearer picture than if she just said, "I've never worn a pretty dress before and I see myself as one of these simple, rural people." Same thing for the other characters.

I mean... one of the reasons we bore easily when three or four characters are having a long chat over a bottle of wine... is because everyone pretty much acts the same in that situation. It took me a while to realize what my crit partner meant about "My favorite scene was when they were talking in the orchard." I didn't get it right away, that dinner or a drink is something so common it almost doesn't offer an opportunity to get to know the character in a meaningful way. Of course... they could always do something unusual. But the orchard was a unique setting, a place where the characters could interact with the surroundings in a way that brought the reader into the world, and presented an opportunity to develop them more as characters.

I think situations and settings are really critical parts of making a character real and interesting. They need people and props to interact with. They need things going on to react to. Not every scene needs to spell it all out, but i always ask myself: "Does this scene help to progress the plot? Does this scene help to connect with the character in a meaningful way? Does this scene help to learn more about the world or the situation?" If the answer is no on any of those... I consider how to make the scene stronger. If it's no on all three... I usually cut it out in edits.

So... I always strive to make each scene meaningful for the important characters, either portraying their dynamics, or alluding to their secrets, or revealing their goals or fears. It's always gotta be something that makes the reader want to turn the page. Wine-drinking, pleasant conversations have no place in my books any longer. I either turn it into an opportunity for a character to make a blunder, socially, or I use the situation to reveal true colors. So, at breakfast, I might have characters eating eggs, a rather boring morning... but at the table, I put in awkward conversation, a character who's embarrassed and just trying to eat, hoping no one will take notice. Two other characters squabbling about something redundant, and maybe a touch of rudeness from someone else. In short... turn a boring scene into humor, character development, and entertainment!