Musings on Characters

[kippurbird]

"The bad novelist constructs his characters; he directs them and makes them speak. The true novelist listens to them and watches them act; he hears their voices even before he knows them." ~*~André Gide

I rather like that quote.

It reminds me of Lorac.

Several years before I knew his name, he showed up in my head. All I knew about him was that he was insane and he was obsessed with Alec. Sometimes he was old, sometimes younger. He always had long white blond hair though. And he was always powerful. He sought out Alec always trying to get to him, always trying to be with him. But he wouldn't tell me why.

When I started to finally sketch out Alec's world he gave me his name, and insisted that he was apart of it. In creating the mythology and the background of Alec's people, he informed me that he had a significant part and that Alec was the reason for his madness. He told me that he did not live in the same time as Alec but before him in a different city. Thus Pentarch was discovered.

My first attempts at figuring out how Alec drove Lorac insane were feeble attempts. I knew, from what Lorac told me, that Alec was a student of his. So, I tried to build their relationship as student and teacher. Alec originally staying in a dormitory. But these stories never worked. Alec's mere existence and being an annoying prat was not enough to drive a man insane.

So, I started writing several smaller pieces involving the two of them. One piece that appeared to be recurring was a scene of Lorac tending to Alec in his sick bed. Lorac was always very tender and gentle with the sick Alec, never leaving his side. He would touch Alec, brushing his hair back and worry about him. I don't know how many times I wrote that scene out in different variations, but finally I came to the realization: Lorac was in love with Alec.

After that everything just clicked. Everything made sense. Lorac went insane from his love of Alec. I remember that moment when it clicked. I said to myself out loud, "Oh my God, he's in love with Alec."

Ever since that point Lorac has been more than forth coming and helping me with the series of novels I'm writing.

Contrasting this, another thought that popped into my mind when I read that quote, was Paolini's quote of "Characters are born out of necessity". Which puts into mind the idea that he's just filling in the blanks. He needs someone to do something so he creates a doll, sticks a name on it and puts it the story, pushing it along like a puppet. The character has no life or free will. It has no voice.

Some of the characters seem to try and free themselves from Paolini's writing. Angela, when coming to the Varden removes her self from the action. There's no reason for her to be there, except because Paolini wants her to be there. So she hides. Murtagh allows himself to be written out of the book entirely. Saphira, even, struggles as we see her personality swerve all over the place as she tries to find a voice.

But they are mere puppets with no lives of their own. No concerns or desires. They are stationary until Paolini needs them to move.

Comments

[anarchicq.livejournal.com]

Ahh, that happened with me before. Specifically with NecroRaver.

I needed a bit part for a little side plot, I fell asleep thinking about said side plot, then I woke up, and the first thing that popped into my head were the words "Necro" and "Raver". I knew I had the name for the bit part character. It took me more then a day to try to visualize him, and when I tried to draw him, I could never draw his left arm.

Days passed.

I tried again, until I realized "Holy shit, Necro...You don't have a left arm, do you?! It's mechanical! You're an amputee!"

More days passed and I realized he also had a mechanical heart, but that's neither here nor there. The point is, yes...You have to listen to your characters. They're not robots, they reveal things as there digressions.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Sometimes you don't have a choice in listening to what your characters say, once they start talking, sometimes they won't shut up.

But yes, they're not robots. If they were they would be easier to control.

[gjohnsonkoehn.livejournal.com]

Hey, speak for yourselves. Some of our characters are, in fact, robots. And we love them very much.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Okay... point. But they aren't robots under your control.

[ambientfiligree.livejournal.com]

LMAO It's intriguing you say this today, I had a revelation about one of my characters last night. Similar revelation, actually. Obsession and love. Basically, a character (a tree) I'd continually thought of as female, had trouble fitting in my head. She was off, just a little. I couldn't place her desires and intentions. Then I asked, "What if you were a male?" Poof. Instantly everything makes much more sense. Amazing how picky characters can be.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

You would think that gender would be easy to place, but I guess not.

But that moment of revelation is... amazing, isn't it?

[dergerm.livejournal.com]

Very, very insightful.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I hope it helped some.

[indescane.livejournal.com]

Interesting, that...

I used to have a character who was nothing more than a plot device and antagonist. All he was to start with was a name. Until one day he stepped out of the back of my head, personality fully formed and waiting. Since then I've found him to be one of the most complicated characters; he's changed a fair bit appearance-wise, but his personality has remained just the same. And since then, he's been sitting in the back of my head, advising and occasionally inspiring me.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Lorac is also one of my more complicated characters. I still don't know what half his motivations are and what he did for a thousand years.

But yes, I understand you perfectly.

[reverie-shadow.livejournal.com]

That quote also makes me think of a Ray Bradbury one, too: "The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies." I believe applies here as well.

I also had similar experiences with my characters as well. Ravine had pretty much started out as a self-insert during my angsty teenage years. That was when she pretty much up and told me: "Know what? Fuck you. Stop using me to vent out your depression and deal with your own damn problems."
To which Gabriel had also agreed. Saying somewhere along the lines of: "Stop being such a victim." As in, stop being such a pity-monger.
Ravine's been a lot like her own person since. I have a hard time controlling her. Gee, thanks a lot, Gabe.

The same goes for Alexander. I can't keep that man still for an instant. Not even during my failed attempts to kill him off. Sneaky bastard. After fleshing out and learning more about where he came from, he became a much easier person to understand.

Angelo...pretty much the same. I started out with him thinking: "Hm, it'd be interesting to write a character in a literary novel that's mute." People asked me how one can accomplish this. I did it. Thus, Angelo was born. I don't know why, the name Angelo just...fit him.
Much like Q I had a hard time drawing him with a right arm and eye. Then I came to realize he didn't have them. While sketching him out for the first time a classmate walked up to me while I was doing stitches on his eye, and asked "What happened to his eye? Was it taken out by an eaglehawk?"
"Eaglehawk?"
"Yeah! An eaglehawk."
"...no."
That one was...interesting to work out. But "eaglehawks" had nothing to do with it.

But you see, that's the thing: In order to create realistic characters, you have to give a shit about them first. Otherwise, how are you going to expect your audience to care what'll happen to them? If you can't apply some of them to real life at times (as in, this is how a real person would act), then what's the point?

Characters are not born out of necessity; they can get along fine without a story. I can't say this enough. A story doesn't even have to be born for the characters to exist. I usually start out with a cast and then work them into a story, but when you take a step back and actually think about it, characters can get along just fine without one.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

That's a good quote too. I like it. It certainly describes Paolini's way of writing. And mine. I do try do create life in my writing.

Characters are not born out of necessity; they can get along fine without a story. I can't say this enough. A story doesn't even have to be born for the characters to exist.

How I usually end up writing a story is that a character shows up and then I try to figure out what story they want to tell. I fee,l a lot of times, like I'm just playing biographer. In fact I've once in a while said that I'm just Alec's biographer.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

It could be that they just have different views of what the truth is.

[frodo-harry.livejournal.com]

I agree. It is interesting. I know this is of OT. However history is always written from how people perceive certain events. Different countries have different perspectives about World War One for example. That's why I study history to see the different perspective and see how they fit together and were they vary from each other.

[frodo-harry.livejournal.com]

Here is the corrected version of my post, that has not been written at four in the morning.

That's what Tolkien did too. He had all these characters in his head, and he just told their story and let them speak. He was just the historian writing everything down. Remember in the appendixes he makes it look like it is a real history. That is why his character seam so alive, even if Luthien is a gigantic sue and Beren a big old Stu. I love them. Because I can identify with them. You can see that they were not Tolkien's robots, but living people who wanted their story told. Well kind of. I have soo many people in my head. Everyone is telling me write this no write this, no he is wrong that it how it happened. i get confused by my own characters sometimes.

[prototypical]

I'm going through that with the Darcy-verse. One of the characters I originally tried writing as her romantic interest in the first NaNo incarnation of her world was super-girly, kinda weak, and even stranger than the average strange Mage or Senser. So now I'm thinking that, if Darcy has to end up Bonding with someone to take down Scion, it'll be a female just as strong as she is. Darcy has no tolerance for weakness, no matter what kind.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Well that makes perfect sense to me.

[lccorp2.livejournal.com]

It's just best to think of them as people. Not Designated Love Interests, Self-Inserts, as the king, the protagonist, the antagonist, but...people.

People are far more interesting than protagonists, random characters and antagonists, if you know what I mean.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

I always think of them as people and not designated love interest and what not.

People are always more interesting than random characters.

[jacedraccus.livejournal.com]

Well, personally, I think some characters come to be out of necessity. Or at least there roles do. It's what they do and where they go after that which makes the difference. Paolini never lets them BE anyone, that's the problem.

But to me, necessity is in "I need someone to be the antagonist" or "someone to deliver this message" or "to be part of the paty". Sometimes that leads to "what or who should that be", and you know, sometimes I get an idea that becomes a character. If I focus on them long enough, they start to open up. Of course, sometimes a character from something else I'd worked on, or who had occurred to me and never found a place to fit, will step forward to be part of the story.

The other night I had a dream that told a story. That happens to me occasionally, and most of the time I don't remember enough to write the story (which bugs hell out of me. Seriously. "Ok, so they're an elite squad trying to save the princess... on rollerblades?" or "So there's a book used to summon an ancient evil... why am I remembering a giant rubber duck at this point?"). This time, however, I actually remembered enough that I'm trying to write it, expand on it... His name, Althen, came at random from mangling 'Arthur', but so far it fits well enough, but what I'm finding amazing is that the more I consider his background, the more he talks to me. This hasn't really happened to me before.. usually, it's along the lines of "I'd be able to do THIS, but no, I didn't know about THAT at the time..." Usually he wants me to write him more innocent and naive, oddly enough.

Then there's one of his friends... that one's growing in leaps and bounds. See, the world I'm putting the story in, I'm playing with a few fantasy archetypes and tropes. Screwing up stuff. One of the things that came to me was usually, the good guy thief is good natured and wacky and a smart alec. Like Silk from the Belgariad. So I figure, ok, I'll have the lesser known, grim kind of thief. So then it comes to me, they meet in jail. After Althen kills a man, kind of an accident, his first kill... and the thief is kind of sympathetic, kind of blunt about it. And he won't step out of the shadows in the corner of the cell. It's not until I'm wandering through the shopping mall that it occurs to me "What if he's a vampire, but not the pale dead kind".. and just like that, the thief agrees with me, and starts filling in the details about his people.

I got a new race and a character at the same time.

This stuff scares me. Never used to happen.