a matter of taste
Everybody has genres and styles of fiction that do and don't interest them. I'll tell you what kind of novel makes me yawn just hearing about the plot - the one about middle-aged women who meet some guy and after slowly, painfully working through their baggage and personal issues, fall in love. And I started thinking to myself, "Why is that?" Surely the best stories in any genre flow out of relationships between vivid characters. Why should a novel where that is the focus bore me to tears? "Hang on there," I said to myself, "Go back to that last sentence."
relationships between vivid characters.
Aye, there's the crux. If your entire story revolves around two characters and their developing relationship, I had better enjoy hearing about those characters. They should be interesting, no, fascinating people, people who I want to get to know. If they're not, why should I even begin to care about whether or not they're going to find true love with The Man With The Mysterious Past? I don't know you, I don't want to know you, your personal issues are a big yawn to me. The tricky thing is, that characters who are like you are automatically somewhat interesting. So, a middle-aged woman is by default somewhat interesting to other middle-aged women (and dogs butts are interesting to other dogs). But who doesn't want their writing to have broader appeal? Characters should be intrinsically interesting, without having to rely on bare self-identification.
Okay, so this seems fairly obvious. Make the characters interesting. But it seems that too many would-be writers think that "interesting" means "make a character just like me, but better looking, and with more intense personal baggage." But this is flat out wrong. A character is not just a name with a list of personal tragedies attached. Real people have personalities. The interesting thing about them is not the things that happen to them, but how they deal with those things in their own unique way. A good character is much the same.
If I am interested in the characters, if they feel as though they are living and breathing and I have an emotional investment in them, I'll gladly read about them arguing over their shopping list. By the same token, if the characters are flat, lifeless or cliched they can get in car wrecks, watch their house burn down, or get abducted by aliens and I'd just yawn.
It's a cliche to say it, but it's true: go read Jane Austen. Pay close attention to what makes her characters tick. She writes all kinds: feisty, bashful, arrogant, mouse-quiet, talkative, withdrawn, interfering, self-deluded, lovesick, home-sick, innocent, mature and more. They're all vividly drawn and engaging so that we'll gladly read an entire chapter about a conversation they had at dinner.
The acid test of a character: do I care enough about them that I'd enjoy sitting their and watching them chew?
relationships between vivid characters.
Aye, there's the crux. If your entire story revolves around two characters and their developing relationship, I had better enjoy hearing about those characters. They should be interesting, no, fascinating people, people who I want to get to know. If they're not, why should I even begin to care about whether or not they're going to find true love with The Man With The Mysterious Past? I don't know you, I don't want to know you, your personal issues are a big yawn to me. The tricky thing is, that characters who are like you are automatically somewhat interesting. So, a middle-aged woman is by default somewhat interesting to other middle-aged women (and dogs butts are interesting to other dogs). But who doesn't want their writing to have broader appeal? Characters should be intrinsically interesting, without having to rely on bare self-identification.
Okay, so this seems fairly obvious. Make the characters interesting. But it seems that too many would-be writers think that "interesting" means "make a character just like me, but better looking, and with more intense personal baggage." But this is flat out wrong. A character is not just a name with a list of personal tragedies attached. Real people have personalities. The interesting thing about them is not the things that happen to them, but how they deal with those things in their own unique way. A good character is much the same.
If I am interested in the characters, if they feel as though they are living and breathing and I have an emotional investment in them, I'll gladly read about them arguing over their shopping list. By the same token, if the characters are flat, lifeless or cliched they can get in car wrecks, watch their house burn down, or get abducted by aliens and I'd just yawn.
It's a cliche to say it, but it's true: go read Jane Austen. Pay close attention to what makes her characters tick. She writes all kinds: feisty, bashful, arrogant, mouse-quiet, talkative, withdrawn, interfering, self-deluded, lovesick, home-sick, innocent, mature and more. They're all vividly drawn and engaging so that we'll gladly read an entire chapter about a conversation they had at dinner.
The acid test of a character: do I care enough about them that I'd enjoy sitting their and watching them chew?
posted by braun at 7:47 AM
8 Comments:
Welcome to the blogosphere. I am also new to the world of blogging.
Nice essay! You make good points here.
Thank you. Thank you especially for reading! Not sure if anyone else does.
I'm thinking of doing some "Other Writers" (or maybe "Other Wannabes") links on the sidebar. Mind if I link to you?
The longer we are here, the more commentary.
PS If you try the Literary Machine, download the tuturials at the yahoo group for LM and check them out. It explains the thing, otherwise you will be confused.
Oh, and your idea of a boring book is my life! I don't want to read about my dull and boring life, either! So I write about evil fairies, space ships and vampires.
Hey, I have nothing against middle age or womanhood! I expect to be one, if not the other, at some point in my life. I'm just saying if you're gonna write about it you gotta make it interesting.
Recently I've set myself a challenge to write some non-fantastic fiction set in present times that is still engaging. Without resorting to, say, crime drama.
Ah, you are going Literary? Heh. I admit, I can't write what I do not like. I have an English degree and it was like getting slowly tortured reading "classic" literature for the most part.
BTW, the vivid characters comment was Dead On.
Oh, to answer your question, please feel free to link to me if you like. I didn't think it required permission, but thanks for asking.
I guess you could say that I'm going in a more 'literary' direction... but I don't ever want what I write to be uninteresting or work to read.
I'm working on a short story about two young people who are meeting for the first time. Eventually they will fall in love, get married, have dozens of babies, but this story isn't about that, it's just about the first day that they meet and what draws them together in spite of obvious differences.
They are both really interesting characters (well, to me) with neat back-stories and I'm having a lot of fun watching them fight, which is what they tend to do.
I like characters that take charge. Makes it hard to get them to cooperate with me, though...
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