Novel Workshop #3

Mare Kuntz · 2007-09-29T13:56:27

As usual, this workshop is open to anyone including people who didn't participate in the previous 2 workshops. THEORY: WHAT KINDS OF CHARACTERS ARE THERE AND HOW DO THEY WORK? There are several directions we could have gone from last week's plot brainstorming. We could have continued to work on developing a detailed plot outline, we could have talked about point of view and voice and tried to pick an approach for our project, we could have talked about genre, we could have started brainstorming worldbuilding, or we could go the direction I actually chose, which is characters. Why did I pick characters? Well, probably all of you have heard some discussion about plot-driven fiction vs. character-driven fiction. Since I put the plot workshop first I must be a proponent of plot-driven fiction, right? Actually, no. My opinion is that the best novels are both character driven and plot driven. If you look into it deeply enough plot and character are really the same thing: plot is built out of the actions, reactions, epiphanies, transformations, and deaths of characters, while characters only come to exist for the reader by being portrayed and developed through plot. In terms of developing a novel, I prefer to work on character and plot in alternation letting them inform each other: vague plot, vague characters, detailed plot, detailed characters, write the actual story which will cause evolution and revision of both plot and characters. (I will however stand behind the idea that history or backstory is the least important part of any story and should exist only to support the plot and characters. I can't count the number of times I have wanted to bonk my head into a wall when I saw someone trying to start designing an epic story by making a historical timeline.) Some people are not particularly interested in plot, and some are not particularly interested in characters, and some genres are more focused on one than the other. Thrillers and adventures are mainly plot-focused, while romances and dramas are mainly character-focused. You probably already know whether you want to write a novel focused on plot, character, or balanced between the two because it's a largely instinctive choice. If you don't know, I would aim for balanced between the two because it creates the most well-rounded audience experience. I've still said nothing about characters... Well, we can look at characters from a thematic angle (archetypes), a plot angle (roles), or a psychological angle (personality type theory). I believe the archetypes approach is the simplest and the easiest to study in examples of fiction and emulate if desired. Let me clarify that when I talk about archetypes I am not talking about Jung's archetypes, or his archetypes as adapted by Campbell, Vogler, or Frey. I dislike that system because it is akin to astrology and tarot cards: inconsistent, incomplete, and the symbolism tends to get in the way of actually understanding how the archetypes work. So when I talk about an archetype I mean any case in which you can point to several characters in unrelated works of fiction and say "these are all fundamentally the same character". Personally I think of them as the same soul in different incarnations or universes. One of my favorites is the minor villain who has an outward superiority complex and inward inferiority complex, generally someone who was bullied before gaining some power and learning how to defend themselves by isolation. Another I like a lot is the naive perpetually-blushing childlike character who desperately wants everyone to like them and get along with each other, and finds fulfillment in being helpful and obedient to a leader. I have not developed a complete listing of these archetypes, and I'm not sure it's even possible to do so. The important question is, what archetypes are important to you? I would encourage you to make a list of your favorite characters from any stories, combining any where 2 or 3 characters seem to be built on the same archetype, and write a few sentences describing each one's personality, how they got that way, and what they do and become during the story. One of the things I find interesting about Dramatica theory is that it approaches this problem from the opposite direction. It attempts to exhaustively list the realms of human thought (coming up with 32 of them) and split each into a pair of opposed focuses. For example, knowledge vs. thought, aware of the outside world vs aware of the self, trusting vs. testing, and controlled vs. uncontrolled. Theoretically every one of these 64 options ought to exist in at least one of the 2-8 primary and secondary characters of a novel. You can do this as a character-development exercise either using the Dramatica list of terms or using your own terms. And personally I like to split them into 3 or 4 alternatives rather than pairs, because anywhere there's a nice clear opposition, like between leader and follower, there are probably some other possibilities off at right angles, in this case equal partner and loner. (While these terms might be taken to describe a character's place in a character dynamic, I intended them to describe the character's personality in terms of their natural preference about how to relate to others.) The method is: make a column under each of your characters names, plus a blank column. Under each character describe a personality trait you definitely know they have, then try to identify what the others have instead, and use the blank column to note any alternatives which are not already embodied in a character. Please read Chapter 5: Character of this link. It will hopefully give you further tools to describe the archetypes of your favorite characters and identify what kinds of characters are missing from your current cast. It should also cover the concept of character roles. My previous partial book about game design This one's also about character traits: Motivating disjunctions and emotional metabolism Don't get too hung up on roles though, they are oversimplifications that apply to most but not all novels. Some works of fiction present 2 or more equal characters who are each a protagonist from their own point of view and an antagonist from the other(s)' point of view, so there is no absolute villain. Sometimes the villain is technically the protagonist because he, or it if the villain is an abstract force like nature, is the one who proactively makes plans and messes for the main character to react to. Some main characters are merely watching and commenting on the actions of another character who is actually the protagonist; in this case the main character may be a guardian, a skeptic, or a contagonist (in Dramatica role terms). Protagonists, antagonists, major vs. minor characters, plot strands So how does theme fit into all this? Plot as thematic argument, characters as thematic vectors Here I talk about how to figure out from your themes what kinds of characters are necessary to illustrate those themes. Generating characters from theme. And finally the psychological/personality type approach. There are lots of theories of personality type. Many of them are a bit mumbo-jumboish: personalities by astrological sign, or Chinese astrological birth year, or birth order, or Japanese blood type, or which tarot card you draw to represent yourself. Enneagrams are kind of halfway between this and a scientific approach. Personally I recommend the Keirsey-Bates system (this is the one with personality types encoded as INTJ, ENFP, and other combinations of those 4 letters). However regardless of whether you think as system is absurd or reasonable, they are all handy collections of descriptions of 4-16 opposing personality types and just reading through them will probably give you inspirations for your own characters. METHOD: WHO ARE YOUR CHARACTERS AND HOW DO THEY WORK IN YOUR PLOT? The basic task here is to brainstorm your main cast of characters. 1. I'd like to see a chart, with each character's name at the head of a column and their different variants of each trait listed across the rows. Feel free to include appearance, cultural background, style of thinking and speaking, and anything else which seems relevant as well as simple personality traits and their role(s) in the plot. 2. I'd also like to see an updated version of your plot outline which describes what your characters are feeling and doing during each major section of the plot. Don't worry, I expect to still see question marks here and there for plot points where you don't know what should happen or other things you haven't figured out yet.

Writing for Games Game Design

Started by sunandshadow August 31, 2007 03:01 PM

59 comments, last by LeapYear 16 years, 11 months ago

LeapYear

122

September 29, 2007 01:56 PM

Sunandshadow,

Thanks for your answer.

The fact that you stopped reading after book 4 and I "almost" stopped at the same point tells me something.

I appreciate your help.

LY

Novel Workshop #3

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Novel Workshop #3

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