Who needs friends?

[At Dusk I Reign]

Open a fantasy novel and before too many chapters you'll be presented with a host of individuals you're expected to get to know and quite possibly like. In many cases they'll suffer from a version of seven dwarves syndrome: you'll have the dopey one, the smart one, the sarcastic one, etc. On and on it goes, seemingly without end.

I've recently had time to think about such things, and to ponder the drivel I write. It occurred to me that I've avoided 'grey companies' in anything I've ever committed to paper. My current magnum opus introduces a female character and throughout numerous chapters she remains alone. Companions show up, but except in a few cases they're peripheral, exiting the stage as the story dictates.

It made me wonder, straining several braincells in the process. I'm a solitary individual by nature. I'm not antisocial, but I'm content in my own company. Does this automatically dictate what I write? I'm beginning to think it's a distinct possibility.

My heroine fights her battles alone. This isn't too common in fantasy fiction, however. It seems in many cases that a coterie of sympathetic souls is required for the protagonist to prevail.

So what do you write? Do you assemble a wide cast to help your characters on their way to greater glory, or are you happy for your hero/heroine to slog it out by themselves?

 

[Amanita]

Strangely enough, even though I'm a solitary person as well, my current heroine is a very open and social person. She's part of a community at the beginning of the story, has to leave this community but makes friends and finds allies in her new place relatively quickly.
Different people with different perspectives having to work together is an approach I really like, cliched as it may be.
Does this have to be that way? As always, the answer is: It depends on the story. If the story is about saving the world from an evil overlord, fighting a war, staging a revolution and so on, I'd find it rather unbelievable if everything solely depended on a single person.
If the story focuses on some sort of personal story of the hero/ine he or she can go it on their own. Many of those "haunted house" stories actually only work because the protagonist is there alone and doesn't know if he or she can trust anyone around them.
There are many more examples of course, sometimes one works better, sometimes the other and in other cases both can work well to tell the story.

Personally, I actually used to think that "realistic" characters had to feel the same way I do about situations but I've given up on that for quite a while now. I highly doubt that anyone would want to read a book with a main character who has much in common with me and I don't really want to write it.
Of course, this doesn't mean that my heroine doesn't have anything in common with me at all, but it's only a few things that are actually useful to the story.

 

[Ophiucha]

I'm pretty solitary; I only have a handful of close friends (maybe two? three or four if you stretch to include some long distance friends) and my fiance. But I think true friendship is lacking severely in fantasy fiction. Really, the only examples I can pull up right now are Samwise and Frodo and Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Most of the time, the friends they have are caricatures of the comic relief, the distant one, the love interest, etc. Maybe quirky enough to stand on their own, but not enough for me to feel like they have any history. And nearly ALL stories I've read have all of the companions being people they met on their journey and become BFFs with after a chapter. I hate that. I want stories where two to four people who've been friends for a decade or two go out on a journey together and you really get a sense of their friendship. Inside jokes, a familiarity of one another, and no room for the same tired, stupid misunderstandings we suffer through in every other book in the world.

I think it is safer to have a decent cast of characters, anyway. I rarely like the main character of a novel. Very, very rarely. Harry? Yawn. Frodo? Seriously, he should have jumped in the fire with Gollum. But there are dozens of other characters and I love many of them, so it doesn't matter that I don't really like the main one. I would still read a character with only one major protagonist, of course, but it's a risky move.

 

[Chilari]

Perhaps I create stories in a different way to other writers, but I don't tend to have Seven Dwarves syndrome with peripheral characters. Perhaps it's because I only add characters when they are required by the plot, rather than whenever I feel like it (and that's in part because I don't like thinking of names for them because it interrupts the flow of my writing). But in general, I don't tend to include many friends of the main character. They might have one close friend, maybe two, and a few others around them in a more professional capacity who they know fairly well but don't confide in. And I think that reflects me a lot too: I've always been the sort of person to only hang out with one or two other people. I prefer to socialise in small groups. I know a lot of people, and I'm on good terms with most of them, but I socialise with them in the setting I know them from - chatting in the postgrad room in my department, for example - while I make a regular effort to spend time with maybe four people outside my immeidate family.

Come to think of it, last time I wrote an outgoing, friendly, popular-crowd sort of character, I found her annoying; and so did my main charatcer. I think I'm going to have to work on this.

I'll stick with this attitude with the main character of what I'm writing now, though, as it suits her: she's a bit snobbish, and she's very secretive, so letting people get close isn't really an option. But I guess I'll try a bit harder to have characters who have a wider network of friends and a more outgoing personality.

 

[Kelise]

I worry about this a bit. I'm a loner by choice, and I'm careful to keep it that way. A lot of my novels tend to end up with the MC not needing people around him/her... In fact, they doesn't really want them around - it's usually one of their traits. Which makes it a lot easier to write well - novels flow so much better when there's conversation and someone else around.

So mine generally slog it out by themselves, but I think I'd find it a lot easier to write if I could have a merry cast of characters.
A lot of my favourite novels has the MC as pretty much alone, but I just can't seem to write it overly well.

 

[Donny Bruso]

I'm seeing a trend here. So far we're all loners with only a few close friends. Myself included, so don't think I'm throwing stones. My characters tend to be written in such a way that they are at lest semi-isolated from other people. I don't mean physically, there are other people around, but they all seem to have one quality built into them that keeps people from getting terribly close. On the occasions I've tried to create more social characters, it hasn't turned out well. Clearly I'm not equipped to write such a character at this point.

As far as them needing friends, well they don't, really. My characters are usually forced to deal with people whether they want to or not. My WIP isn't the stereotypical 'lets take the ring to the firey mountain with just the few of us so we won't be found' type of story. Hell with that. We're freaking invading, man! We're storming the beaches with fifty thousand soldiers looking for trouble, and anything that gets in our way is going to wind up with a bad case of dead. So my main character who is ostensibly leading the army (for a couple chapters anyway) must deal with others, no matter how bad he is at it. But I wouldn't say he has any friends. He's not terribly nice, after all...

 

[Derin]

I've written large parties, small parties and loners, but I normally have small hosts of main characters because I hate keeping track of a million names. Trios tend to work well for me.

 

[Fnord]

I think being a writer (and maybe especially a fantasy writer) sort of entails some degree of loner spirit. After all, if we were all social butterflies, we'd had been star players in team sports or cheerleaders and who has time to create and write in those conditions?

So I don't think our sample is exactly indicative of the population.

 

[James Chandler]

Even when you have a single MC, you still really need extensive interactions with other characters. Without that dynamic, and the complications they entail, a story is little more than a list of events.

I want stories where two to four people who've been friends for a decade or two go out on a journey together and you really get a sense of their friendship. Inside jokes, a familiarity of one another, and no room for the same tired, stupid misunderstandings we suffer through in every other book in the world.

I am actually working on such a story, and I'm finding it creates a whole new set of story-telling problems. The better or more efficient your characters are at solving problems, the better the bad guys have to be to provide a challenge.

 

[Derin]

I think being a writer (and maybe especially a fantasy writer) sort of entails some degree of loner spirit. After all, if we were all social butterflies, we'd had been star players in team sports or cheerleaders and who has time to create and write in those conditions?

So I don't think our sample is exactly indicative of the population.

It might be indicative of the target audience, though. Most of us write fantasy because we like to read it.

 

[Kelise]

I think being a writer (and maybe especially a fantasy writer) sort of entails some degree of loner spirit. After all, if we were all social butterflies, we'd had been star players in team sports or cheerleaders and who has time to create and write in those conditions?

So I don't think our sample is exactly indicative of the population.

Also, we're the type of writers who come to a writing forum, rather than a social writing group So we're loner loners!

 

[Chilari]

I belong to a social writing group. It consists of about 8 people and I haven't been in months, but this isn't the only place I get my fix of writing discussion.

 

[At Dusk I Reign]

Even when you have a single MC, you still really need extensive interactions with other characters. Without that dynamic, and the complications they entail, a story is little more than a list of events.

That's always a danger, but I find that the older I get the more I'm concerned with exploring inner landscapes, not external ones. Having an elf, a dwarf and a wizard tagging along with the main character doesn't excite me very much. Social interaction plays a part in my story, but I think the genre has become overloaded with a band of brothers mentality, to the point where once new writers have finished creating their map they automatically start assembling a team. Where the author's a talented soul this is a useful tool; in many cases, though, it seems people do it because they think it's expected of them.

 

[Woodroam]

My first novel featured two companions who met others along the way. This made it easy to express the protagonist's thoughts and emotions through dialogue.

My current project features two groups of four to six characters. Since I am starting my two main characters as very weak induviduals, having the others enables them to learn and grow through those companions. This also enables the examination of differing personalities, their strengths and weaknesses, when placed in various situations.