Things to make a lit major go "Gnarg"

[kippurbird]

So, I belong to this writing group. And one of our members mentioned, last meeting, a list of seven things to make a good character. She posted it to the list last night. The list being:

Now the 7 ways to make a character more likable/relatable...
#1 - Very good at what they do
#2 - Funny
#3 - Treats others well
#4 - Others people like the character
#5 - Kind to pets/kids/elderly
#6 - Character has undeserved misfortune
#7 - Has physcial/mental/education handicap or just the underdog

And I just went, "gnargh". All of these traits are for creating false sympathy/empathy for a character. You have to like the person, because how can you not like someone who is funny? Likes animals? Etc. It's creating an automatic response, forcing you to like the person as oppose to getting to know them. And why does your character have to be likable in the first place? Or relateable? And even still, how do these things make you relate to those characters. It just makes me feel like I have to like them. It's very Sueish, to use a term.

I posted up a response to this and she answered back:



Were the Greeks formulaic? Was Shakespeare?
Yes!
The concept of act structure is a formula by its very nature. Saying a story has a beginning, middle, and end is formulaic. Hauge (which he has really just updated Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey) refines our understanding of stories and then distills them down to specific tools to be used as part of our craft.

I think sometimes as writers we confused art and craft. The craft is putting the story and character together, plank by plank. The art is making us forget there was ever a craftsman there. That doesn't mean a carpenter didn't build the foundation though.
Those gorgeous murals lining the walls that every one is cooing over as 'art' wouldn't be there without the dry wall underneath.

I would challenge you to list three (American) movies/characters/novels whose plots/characters you felt were genuine and authentically conflicted. Underneath all of that I would bet you will find the plot/character structure that Michael (and nearly every creative writing teacher) outlines.

The writer's tool box is a well established metaphor and these lists were meant only to act as more tools to put in that box and pull out when needed. We all have areas of our story/character that we are not happy with. We can then pull out these lists and review our work and see if any would apply and help us relate better to our reader.

To illustrate...
Just because someone is kind to animals doesn't mean they don't have serious issues with their mother or don't struggle with heroin addiction. But what their liking of animals does do is create a sympathy for the character to help us cheer for them during their struggles.

Is that artificial? Of course it is. As is all fiction writing.
People, we are making stuff up!
Unless you are writing non-fiction or a factual biography, we are creating an artificial world with artificial people. In order to make them believable and relatable we have to imbue them with real people characteristics. Hence the list that has the most effective/universal ones. How you use those traits in your particular character is up to you and for you to make them feel genuine.

Can these tools be used to create cardboard/cookie-cutter characters and plots? Of course they can. Just as an ice pick can be used to horribly mar a smooth block of ice. Can they be used to create something universal and touching? Of course they can. Just as an ice pick in the hands of an artisan can create a beautiful ice sculpture.

All the posting was meant to do was give you a couple new ice picks. Its up to you to use them for good or evil.



Now, she does make some points, but over all, I don't agree with her. Things like Universal and touching irk me. And those things that she mentions don't make a character feel genuine. Her approach to writing seems to be very formulaic. In fact it is as she's currently writing a horror/romance and using Anita Blake as an example of what to do as it sells. Personally, I would favor originality over formulaic.

Edit, my reply to her

\
Forgive me, but the literature major in me just went, "Nargh" and wanted its say.


Were the Greeks formulaic? Was Shakespeare?

Yes!

The concept of act structure is a formula by its very nature. Saying a story has a beginning, middle, and end is formulaic. Hauge (which he has really just updated Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey) refines our understanding of stories and then distills them down to specific tools to be used as part of our craft.

First off, I think that there's a difference between formulaic and structure. Structure is the bones of something that you build off of. Formula is a sort of cheat sheet recipe that you use to create something that'll be just like everything else. There are certain tropes and characteristics that are found within a genre but if they were all formulaic, then in for example, fantasy literature, every story would be a clone of the Lord of the Rings, or something like that. You need structure to hang your story on. But you don't need formula to create it.

The writer's tool box is a well established metaphor and these lists were meant only to act as more tools to put in that box and pull out when needed. We all have areas of our story/character that we are not happy with. We can then pull out these lists and review our work and see if any would apply and help us relate better to our reader.

While the first list I don't find fault with, it is the second list that I have problems with. It seems like a list of things that you can arbitrarily stick onto a character to make us like them. Why should we force the reader to like someone? We should be able to craft a character that may be worth paying attention to and hold our interest. If the character is compelling enough then I won't care if he kicks puppies or hates children or isn't good at what he does. It should be more of an internal thing than an external, "hey look at this" sort of thing.

To illustrate...

Just because someone is kind to animals doesn't mean they don't have serious issues with their mother or don't struggle with heroin addiction. But what their liking of animals does do is create a sympathy for the character to help us cheer for them during their struggles.

Again, these sort of things don't make a character compelling. They have to be believable. We don't need to sympathize with the character; we just need to believe them. I have a main character, Lorac, who is good at what he does, but not very good. He's not all that funny, in fact he's sort of serious, he's a bit of a snot and not very well liked because he's a bit of a snot. Isn't particularly kind to pets/kids/elderly, hasn't had an undeserved misfortune, in fact he's rather well off and he's not the underdog or has any sort of handicap. But he's an interesting and compelling and believable character, because he has an internal conflict going on dealing with his duty to his class and his love for another character and the fact that he's not certain as to what's going on with his life and what he wants to do with it. He's struggling to be his own person and not what his parents want him to be. Which, is far more interesting, I think, and entirely relatable.


Is that artificial? Of course it is. As is all fiction writing.

People, we are making stuff up!

Unless you are writing non-fiction or a factual biography, we are creating an artificial world with artificial people. In order to make them believable and relatable we have to imbue them with real people characteristics. Hence the list that has the most effective/universal ones. How you use those traits in your particular character is up to you and for you to make them feel genuine.

Personally, I don't think it's artificial creating characters. They may not be real but they're not artificial. They have their own motives and wants and desires and sometimes they're just down right rotten like real people. If they were all happy, happy or something like that, then they would be artificial.

This list seems doesn't seem to be very helpful in creating a good character, just a likeable one. Where do villains fall into this list? They certainly should be believable and good characters too, if not necessarily "good" as in the good and evil axis. If they don't have any of the things on this list are they bad characters? Personally, as I said before, I'd rather create a believable and compelling character than a likeable one.

Comments

[prototypical]

Originality always wins. But using Anita Blake as an inspiration scares me because everyone knows she's a Sue trying to hide as a decent character. And at first, she was. Things went downhill when the sex became a big part of things, though.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Yes, but Anita Blake sells. Which is what she's after.

[prototypical]

If I ever want to want something strictly because such an idea sells, shoot me. I mean, call me an idealist, but I'd rather my ideas be accepted and published because they're new twists on things and have the potential to make people think or flat out piss them off.

I don't contribute to Laurell K. Hamilton's royalties anymore - I just go to a bookstore, take the book, and read it while sitting somewhere comfortable.

[veetvoojagig.livejournal.com]

*Snort* That's not how to make a good character. That's how to make a character that doesn't piss anyone off. A good character has to have FLAWS, and still be interesting. Hell, are villians then bad characters because they DON'T treat others well? Fuck no. There are some really great characters out there that are utter bastards.

And... handicapped? Jesus Christ.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, handicap, because we can't hate the handicap, it's un PC. Bah I say. I'm not going to relate to a character just because they're handicap.

And yeah. Those are just things to tack onto a character to say like me please. Or don't hate me. Think of the puppies. Urgh. If you need to rely on such things to make your character likable then I don't want to read your work.

[veetvoojagig.livejournal.com]

I actually prefer characters who are really, really interesting, and yet horrible people. My favorite character of the moment is a serial killer from Tad Williams's Otherland novels. He's a bastard. Seriously.

Screw PC. If a handicapped person is a bitch, I'll hate him or her. *laughs*

[spoofmaster]

I don't think it hurts for a character to have happy traits like those...in moderation. The way those seven are listed, though, it's implied that you're supposed to use all seven, which would be horrendously suish. The list also fails to mention any sort of flipside, like actual flaws you can include, and that's really almost more important than the characters' virtues.

And really, the list just describes a really bland character. No mention of "remember to give them a personality!" even.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you're supposed to use all of them or some of them, but even still, it seems to imply that I'm going to create a character and then look at him and say... wait, he doesn't got one of these things from this list, I must tack this onto him. Which just seems like it's trying to garner false sympathy. If the character isn't interesting enough on his own, he could could have all of these traits and I'm still not going to care about him.

[custardpringle.livejournal.com]

Believable and relatable.

SO NOT THE SAME THING.

Hannibal Lecter is believable, but for the vast majority of us he's not at all relatable. And yet he's one of the most classic and memorable characters ever written.

I never thought I would be actually applying something from my Hum class to the real world, but we talked last quarter about how people identify with fictional characters. Sometimes you project yourself onto the character, yes-- you look for things you recognize in them, and that lets you put yourself in their place to some extent. But sometimes, like with Hannibal Lecter, you're given a character who's just utterly unlike you-- and then the reader or viewer has to try to do the opposite and internalize that character, forcing themselves to try out this entirely alien point of view. And those are frequently the most intense and memorable characters for the reader to deal with.

And I'm going to second veetvoojagig: villains are frequently the most interesting characters. Like, once again, Hannibal. Or Tyler Durden. Or Jareth in Labyrinth. Or, okay, fine, Dilandau Albatou-- you remember him.

I can go on like this for a while, but I won't, because I'm tired and you probably get my drift. I won't even bring up the Cylons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylon_%28re-imagining%29), because I could write pages just about them.

[dragonwhishes.livejournal.com]

I agree with my adoptive big sister. Even if the character is just a dickhead and such for the hell of it- the villians are usually the ones that I like to read about. If they're a complex villian, or one that didn't *start out* evil, but just *is*, those are cool, too. Even the ones that were always evil.

I will not go into writing a novel on Acheron Hades or some of the villains I RP with. Because then it'll just end up biased fangirl ramblings.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Would that be Archeron Hades from the Thursday Next novels?

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree with you entirely and I am stealing some of what you said for my reply to her.

[prototypical]

Villians are great, but I have to cast my vote for the enigmas - the Snapes, the Gollums, and the rest of the characters that can constantly throw us for a loop because we can't figure out what's going on inside their head, nor do we want to. Because if we knew, we wouldn't be surprised.

And surprise is half the fun.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Hah. I doubt Snape could hit any of those on that list. Except maybe number one. But still...

[huinesoron.livejournal.com]

You know what I love? 'You can't list three characters who're properly made! Uh, but stick to Americans kthnx'. There's just... something terribly amusing in that.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Well, everyone knows that American movies now a days are all stock characters and rehashing.

[wingedrivers.livejournal.com]

O__________________O

Oh god, not another Anita Blake. The fandom for the slut!Sue would never die then! Women all across the globe will begin to accept Anita Blake Sues as real people, and model their lives after them. *headdesk*

It's up to you, now. Stop this nonsense of Anita Blake-ism...

[prototypical]

Laurell K. Hamilton is deluded. Her website says she doesn't write gratuitous sex or violence, that it all has a point in the plot.

And people actually believe her? Granted, I'm still reading just because I want to see what happens when the mother of all vampires wakes up and hoping it's brutal and bloody and epic and...ends in Anita's death.

To quote an earlier comment of mine - if I ever want to write something simply because it sells, kill me. And then send me corpse to the Body Farm so it'll decompose in the name of science.

[wingedrivers.livejournal.com]

*headdesk* My sister and I picked up a book, flipped to it, found horribly done sex. My one friend has "sexdar"- she can open any romance type book and find sex scenes. XD So, of course with LKH...

Yeah, I hear half of the fandom just keeps reading for WTF-factor. But yeah, writing for money is really, really moraless...

[jacedraccus.livejournal.com]

I vaguely recall having seen her quoted as responding to a comment about Anita's possible choice of a particular character to screw, with "We don't think of him that way".

Not "Anita doesn't".
Not "I don't think it'd work", meaning her viewpoint as the writer and, presumably, the one most in touch with what would be 'in character'.

"We".

That kinda scares me.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

I'll try. I don't know how successful I'll be. She's very um... "snooty" because a friend of hers is a best selling author and reads all her work. And helps her out. The little bit I read of hers was very... um... I don't really care about what's going on here. She says that sometimes it takes her halfway through the book before she discovers who her character is. Which ... I dunno. Is weird to me.

[ghostgecko.livejournal.com]

There are few things I hate more than an author trying to ram a character down my throat - "You MUST like this person!". It happened with the Agent Pendergast novels a few books back, when he met his twu wuv, Viola.

They literally looked into each other's eyes and instantly fell in love. And this is a guy who canonically doesn't even like being touched! Viola is a titled Lady, so rich she owns an island in Italy, beautiful (looks younger than she is, color-changing hair), talented (plays violin so well that Stradivarius ones are loaned to her to tune), is a world-reknowned Egyptologist and yet the authors are also trying to convince us she's down to earth because she shows up to a part in boots and eats like a slob. And of course she has the sexy main character by the balls, and every canon character she meets gushes over how great she is.

Pardon me while I throw up a little.

It's really kind of sad because at least one of the authors has proven a deft hand with characterization in other books. But here, the character is so aggressively perfect the only reaction to her is total hatred.

This person seems to have confused "good" character as "good as opposed to evil" with "good" as in well-written. She may as well have the characters wearing white and black hats.

One of my favorite ff characters to write was very good at what he did (of course, he was an assassin) and had a handicap (mute), but he also killed small animals for fun. was a bastard even to his own brother and father and the one character who treated him nicely, was just generally hateful to everyone, and his idea of a good joke was watching someone slip in a bathtub and crack their head open. And yet he ended up being interesting enough to keep people reading thru 65,000 turgid words.

>>Were the Greeks formulaic? Was Shakespeare? Yes!
Are you Shakespeare? No!
That always kills me . . . as if writing has not progressed in the last couple hundred years. When I see an author using this excuse and also living without electricity or plumbing, writing with a quill, and dying at age 25 of Black Plague, it'll sway me.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

*offers bucket*

This person is using Anita Blake as a model for what to write like. I really think that says it all.

That Shakespeare argument made very little sense to me. I mean just because Shakespeare did it, doesn't mean that I have to do it. And the Greeks practically invented the formula. Of course they were formulaic.

*sighs*

Show them Limyaael's Livejournal, plz.

[dove-cg.livejournal.com]

Were the Greeks formulaic? Was Shakespeare?

Yes!

And Edgar Allen Poe? Someone had to create that 'formula' to begin with, and reap the benefits, in order for anyone else to consider it worthy of being used in their own work. And others don't understand what made the original great, creating cheap knock-offs.

Let me examine the list itself. ;P

Now the 7 ways to make a character more likable/relatable...

I have an ugly inkling that this list assumes I will want to BE them.

#1 - Very good at what they do

That is a reason to admire them, that's for sure. But no one is going to admire or relate to the cops, who are good at their jobs, when they just got busted for driving with a broken tail-light. They wonder how much longer it's going to take.

#2 - Funny

...Funny in what way? That's very vague. Does she think people need to laugh with or at the character?

#3 - Treats others well

I read fantasy to escape reality. I don't want to have to deal with treating other people well. This is why I play MMORPGS where I can slaughter mass amounts of opponents for my own gain. I have nothing against politeness but you can be polite and still be a horrible dick to someone. XD

#4 - Others people like the character

Well what the hell is an antagonist to this person? Obviously not everyone will like them. The law of averages says some people will like them. This is fucking common sense. Why include it?

#5 - Kind to pets/kids/elderly

... I am only kind to them if I have to be or if they're in my family and I love them. I'm not cruel to the ones I don't know, because I like socializing to some extent, but I'm essentially neutral unless I become friends with them. Here is what should be said, if you combine #4 and #5: the character needs relationships because otherwise they will be in a vacuum.

#6 - Character has undeserved misfortune

What? I don't mind throwing this at my characters, I confess. But they don't have to have it. Was that meant to be 'give them a bad day now and then'? I mean, angst is okay but I do try limiting it.

#7 - Has physcial/mental/education handicap or just the underdog

Umm. Most of my characters don't have a handicap. Some do and that's fine. But not all of them can be handicapped or the underdog because someone has to be on top. Was this meant to be a simple mention of flaws?

Here's my rewrite of that list.

1) Skills of some sort, to give interests and something to do when they aren't directly stirring up the plot (or to aid in plot stirring.)
2) Some light-hearted, possibly humorous, scenes, just to make sure everything isn't constantly dark and dreary. Stress-relief and a breather or two, for them and/or the reader.
3) Some amount of socialization, so they can interact with others.
4) People to interact with.
5) Character has some flaws and limits. Also, not everything goes the way they had hoped it would. All three create conflict.

There. Doesn't that sound better? Much more "universal and touching", which I assume means "able for anyone to understand and moving because it was built with the intent of making someone think about the author's ideas and views." :I

[emily-goddess.livejournal.com]

Ever notice how people will invoke the Hero's Journey as an excuse for having a totally unoriginal plot/characters? Somehow I don't think that's what Campbell was trying to say.

As for the "seven things" list: it bears an uncanny resemblance to those Mary Sue litmus tests. Notice how s/he mentions misfortune and handicaps - things that happen to the character and make us sorry for her - instead of suggesting that the character have any personality flaws that people might not like? Classic Mary Sue formula.