And Why You Aren’t Crazy If You Listen
There are some of the opinion that authors create characters and stories. As such, authors exert complete control over every action their characters take, every thought their characters think, every emotion their characters feel. Characters are merely puppets, and the author, their puppeteer.
Others are of the opinion that characters, although created by the author, are capable of developing without conscious input from the author. This manifests in characters acting in unplanned ways that, while completely in-character, change the direction and nature of the entire scene, if not also the rest of the story. Characters are, in this case, more like sketches, with the author as the artist filling in details, pen stroke by painstaking pen stroke, and taking advantage of slips of the hand or unintentional patterns in the lines of ink to elaborate upon the image.
Yet others are of the opinion that characters take a life of their own, with the author merely a point of genesis or a vehicle to convey the characters’ story. These characters, though restricted in influence to the author’s mind, are no less alive than you or I, and as such, these characters have thoughts, feelings, wants, and needs of their own and are capable of taking independent action within the story. Characters, in this case, are more like active forces of the imagination — Muses, if you will — than passive creations of the author.
Of these schools of opinion, there is much disparaging of the third by the first, with the most common argument being “Authors create characters; characters are not real; therefore, characters cannot act independently of the author.” Members of the first school can often be found commenting that members of the third school “need help”, are “seriously mental”, and are “in dire need of a reality check”.
As a member of the third school of opinion, I resent those comments.
Now, I wasn’t always a member of the third school. As a young little Kyll just discovering the joys of wordsmithing, I fell firmly into the fold of the second school. As I learned more about the craft of writing, delved deeper into the inner workings of the art itself, and began discovering and cementing my own voice, I found myself drifting farther and farther from the idea that characters were simply conscious creations. Characters became less a vehicle for plot and themes, and more a vehicle for exploration — of the conscious and subconscious, the physical and metaphysical, the objective and subjective. I learned of archetypes and shadows, of the history of storytelling, and as I began incorporating these things into my own stories, into forming the characters, my characters began to come alive in ways that past characters never did.
There was an essence to these characters that their predecessors lacked, and it was this essence that gave them life, made them stick in a readers’ mind for a long time after, even if their only mention in the story was a single sentence of description, like a passing image of an old man birdwatching from his usual window.
In an effort to identify this essence, to harness it deliberately rather than accidentally, I delved further and further into the study of archetypes and shadows, of the relationship between the conscious and sub-, of the mystical and the rational, until one day, Melaris was born.
Mel: You make it sound as if I simply pranced fully-formed into your mind one day.
Kyll: Well, no. I did set out to create a character that was my polar opposite in practically everything personality-wise. I never expected to get you, though.
Mel: No one expects an alchemist-turned-diplomat.
Kyll: I suppose not. But it was a happy surprise.
Thirry: As happy a surprise as me?
Mel: Whose story is the pet project?
Thirry: Mine.
Mel: There lies your answer.
Thirry: Now, Mel, do I detect some bitterness there? Oh, but I forgot! You’re always bitter.
Kyll: You two realize you’ve both completely derailed the seriousness of this article.
Mel: You are the one allowing us.
Thirry: He has a point. Besides, the Editorial section exists for a reason.
Kyll: Yes, but now I’ve completely lost track of where I was going with this.
Mel: You were informing the audience about the first characters to come alive for you.
Kyll: Right. As I was saying, Melaris was born. He was bitter, pessimistic, vindictive, and callous.
Thirry: Are we really talking polar opposites here?
Kyll: When he first came to me, yes. I was a very cheerful, optimistic, forgiving, bleeding-hearted individual before life decided to get messy, you know.
Thirry: …really. I still think there’s no real difference between you and Melaris.
Mel: Hardly. I am not sadistic.
Kyll: And I am a realist. Difference.
Mel: I have every right to be a pessimist! The backstory you created for me sucks.
Thirry: So does mine! What is it with you and tragic pasts?
Kyll: Emotional conflict is good for the soul!
Mel: Of whom? The readers?
Thirry: I’m pretty sure tragic backstories are a cheap trick to garner reader sympathy.
Kyll: Only when they are treated lightly and their ramifications glossed over.
Mel: Well, neither of us can claim either. We both tend to dwell on them to death.
Thirry: Literally. At least you have a more tolerable future to look forward to.
Mel: Really? I fail to see how having my entire estate, research, and assets burned, my ability to practice my trade destroyed, and being kidnapped by anti-imperialist rebels, forever ruining my position in the King’s court, all within the first non-journal chapter of my story leaves much to look forward to.
Thirry: At least you didn’t have your eventually-lethal stabbing written as a comedy.
Mel: In all fairness, your reaction to the whole stabbing affair was quite humorous.
Thirry: Coming from a man who thinks leaving a full and fetid chamberpot out in the open for scavengers is hilarious.
Kyll: Boys! Play nice. We are off-topic yet again.
Mel: And whose fault is that?
Thirry: Yours, obviously.
Mel: How is it m—!
Thirry: Not yours, unless you’re going to start claiming that you can influence the physical world at will now.
Mel: . . .
Thirry: . . .
Kyll: There is a point in here… if I could just find it.
Right. Well. While those two are busy having a staring contest with one another, I suppose I should explain how the two of them came to be.
Melaris (whose last name I have misplaced), as briefly mentioned before, started out as an experiment to see if I could successfully create a character who was my polar opposite in personality. The experiment was a resounding success, though his story never got past Chapter 9 due to various things, like gaping plotholes and overly-simplistic religious and political systems, hindering the story’s progression. Of the rather large planned cast of characters, there were only two that really came alive: Melaris, and his mentor, Vinn. I plan on eventually completing Mel’s story one day, after Thirry’s story is completed.
Speaking of Thirry, I started working on his story roughly a year after I put Mel’s aside. His story started out as a drabble parodying the excessive descriptions attributed to the heroes by the villains they slew. Although Thirry died at the end of the original drabble, he refused to stay dead, and honestly, he was too fun a character to just kill off in 300ish words. Six years and a massive tone shift later, despite my long history of story commitment issues, I’m still working on Thirry’s story. Where Mel’s story only had two characters with a spark of life, practically all the viewpoint characters (of which there are ~15) in Thirry’s story possess that elusive spark of life, in addition to various supporting and side characters.
Thirry’s full name is Thirilight Ardyer, though this is subject to change due to the name no longer fitting within the revised naming scheme.
Thirry: You keep saying that, and yet my name has yet to change.
Kyll: Yes, well, I’m rather attached. Your name was the original inspiration for the drabble and, by extension, the novel.
Thirry: But it’s inconsistent.
Kyll: I know.
Mel: My name is not inconsistent.
Thirry: We’re not talking about your name, O Melancholy Iris.
Mel: You say that as if having a flower-based name is embarrassing.
Thirry: It’s girly.
Mel: Not in my world. In any case, I happen to quite like my name.
Thirry: Whatever you say, O Florid One.
Mel: Thank you for acquiescing to my verbal superiority, O Shiny One.
Thirry: Alas, your skills at paying heed to conversation are sorely lacking.
Kyll: And here we go again… I’ll spare you all the overly-polite insults.
In any case, in both cases, writing their respective stories became more of a conversation between myself and the characters. Rather than ask myself what a plausible course of action for a character of such background would be, I found myself more and more asking the characters directly and getting some rather unexpected, yet internally-consistent, responses. There were even times when my characters, without any prompting, would tell me details of their lives, such as likes and dislikes, past relationships, and long-held dreams. My stories shifted more firmly into the realm of being character-, rather than plot- or theme-, driven, and it became much easier and quicker to establish a distinct character within the first few lines of dialogue. The more autonomous my characters became, the stronger they became as characters on the page.
I’ve often been asked how it is I create such realistic and distinct characters with so few words, and how other writers can create such as well. Honestly, my only advice is to let the characters in your head be themselves; they’ll do most of the work for you. Ask them questions, ferret out their motivations, and above all, listen to what the characters themselves want to say, rather than what you want them to say.
I can’t say for sure where my characters come from, but I know they are real to me in the sense that I can interact with them at will. I also know that, if I can capture their essences on the page well enough, my characters can become real to each of my readers. Perhaps they won’t be the exact same in my readers’ minds as in my own, but they will exist to my readers, if only for a brief time.
And that effect is something the first two schools of opinion would be hard pressed to easily create.
Just as the different types of story each have their respective strengths, weaknesses, and uses, so too do the different schools of characterization. What works works, and there’s no merit in demeriting any of the views, as crazy as they may seem.
After all, aren’t all writers of fiction a little bit crazy to begin with?
Inkblot on 24 May 2012, 20:03 said:
EXACTLY. exactly.
I’m 64,000 words into a project with eight main characters, and the way I’ve always viewed it is that I’m just telling their story. I get to control outside events, and then I just watch how they react. And everyone tells me how good my characterization is (which to me means I’m doing a good job capturing their previously existing personalities). :P
It’s so much fun. People flip out, refuse to get along, argue, complain, bear up, come through, and in all ways reveal surprising depth the farther in you get. Everything is barely predictable, and often spirals out of my control in surprising ways. I love it.
Inkblot on 24 May 2012, 20:07 said:
EDIT: And forgot to say this:
Part, I think, of what gives such characters the memorable spark and force that railroaded ones lack is the author’s surprise at their actions. This is all new ground to everyone involved, and it shows.
When you think about it, it’s no less believable than the maxim “If you’re having fun, so will your audience”. Hard to credit how well it works, but it does.
G0a on 24 May 2012, 20:21 said:
Ugh.
Yay, more of my fictional creations and I talk omglolz!!! I’m talking about the format btw (not disagreeing with the topic itself). Nobody knows who these characters are and frankly nobody is interested in more banal snark.
Why do people do this, anyway? It’s not cute, or edgy, or whatever. It’s just annoying and self-serving. Please, cut it out./endrant
This isn’t really an attack against you, because I agree that some characters do become really vivid and special.
swenson on 24 May 2012, 20:54 said:
Well, I’m certainly glad to know I’m not the only one! My muse of sorts is Alyn, a secondary character from a horrible Lord of the Rings ripoff I started in sixth grade (if you must know, she was essentially a female Legolas). The ripoff died (or at least was transformed so many times nothing remains of the original) but somehow Alyn didn’t. I kept working her into stories (still do) and thinking about her, to the point that she feels like a full person.
Is she imaginary? Of course. I’m not crazy, I know Alyn is made up. She is essentially a very vivid daydream, or maybe just a part of me that’s taller and grumpier. But she’s been around so much that she’s taken on a bit of a life of her own. I know and understand her to the point that in any situation, I know precisely what she’d do, as well as I’d know what I’d do. There have been other characters I’ve loved in the past, but once I stop writing about them, I stop thinking about them. Alyn’s the only one who has consistently endured (possibly because I’ve never actually written her story in full).
Alyn is more than just a character. She’s The Character. Call her an imaginary friend, a daydream, a delusion, whatever you like, but she sticks around. It certainly wasn’t deliberate, but we get along.
(good grief, I sound like I’m crazy! :))
Kyllorac on 24 May 2012, 21:17 said:
@G0a
It’s called a lampshade. They’re fun to play with. You should try it, sometime.
Danielle on 24 May 2012, 22:39 said:
What Kyllorac said. I thought it added to the article; it showed him interacting with his characters, getting their input, the way he would while writing. From your reaction, I can assume that does not happen to you very often. An author who tells another author to stop talking to his characters probably doesn’t listen to her own very often, IMO.
I, for one, wanted to learn more about these characters. An alchemist-turned-diplomat named for a flower? Who happens to be rather proud of his name? He sounds like a fascinating person to read about.
More on topic, I loved the article. I used to be firmly in the first school, because I thought that the only way a writer could create characters was with much deliberation and thought. I read books on creating characters, wrote long, tiresome character profiles on their names, ages, favorite colors and other superficial details like that, and then charted out the story based on what I wanted them to do. Every single one of them came out flat and contrived.
Then, I began waiting for stories. And with the stories came characters. They came slowly, shyly, but soon they began to speak to me. One of them became the main character in my current WIP.
And in case my comment wasn’t proof of my agreement, I agree that most good writers of fiction are crazy. Stark raving mad, in the best cases.
OrganicLead on 24 May 2012, 23:09 said:
I used to agree with the sentiment of this article. Then you realize the bad implications of such a view.
What if your character is racist, sexist or ableist? With the third school of thought, you automatically defend them with, “Oh, that’s just how character X is”. There’s less will to change what needs to be changed. They become one of your babies, even if the depiction of the character is hurtful.
Also, this view really creeps me out anymore after being a RPer for a long time. You run into people who think their characters actually exist. While this isn’t something that happens often, I can’t help but feel it’s the school of thought in question taken to an extreme. When someone criticizing a character is as hurtful as someone criticizing you, this is bad. When someone lets their character’s actions influence their daily lives, this is bad. I’ve met people who’ve claimed they can’t see movie Y because character X told them not to. And then there’s soulbonding, another can of worms entirely.
As romantic the notion of characters being their own people is, I can’t help but think it can be a bad thing at times.
Kyllorac on 24 May 2012, 23:34 said:
Not necessarily. You don’t go around automatically defending racist, sexist or ableist people in real life, even if they are family. In my case, I have one character who is extremely racist and sexist without even realizing it, and I hate him with a fiery burning passion that makes writing the chapters where he’s the viewpoint character literally painful. Unfortunately, he is necessary to the story, and as much as I would love to kill him off horribly, he’s one of the plot-armored survivors.
There's also the matter of how, being the writer, I have final say in what goes into the finished product and so can alter things to a point where the particularly distasteful/offensive/etc. stuff is never shown or topics broached.
When someone criticizing an acquaintance is as hurtful as someone criticizing you, it is bad. When someone allows another person’s actions to influence their daily lives without good reason, it is also bad. Anything taken to an extreme is bad and unhealthy.
So long as you can keep the reality in your head and the reality you physically live in separate, there’s nothing wrong with perceiving your characters as real people all their own. It’s a valuable tool for a writer, but as with all things, even pure literalness, it can be abused.
I’m also a long-time RPer, and I know about (and have run into) those people you mentioned. The thing is, they’re not representative of all members of the third school, just as they’re not representative of all RPers, and it’s rather unfair to view the entire school in a negative light because of those reality-confused few.
swenson on 24 May 2012, 23:54 said:
Oh dear goodness, why did I look up soulbonding… that’s kinda creepy. On the surface, it sounds a little similar (a very vivid fictional character, so vivid they almost feel real), but… yeah. I don’t have multiple personalities, I don’t believe Alyn is a real person at all, she’s never “spoken” to me (I think about her story and things to write about her, but it’s not like I typically talk to her, except on occasion when I’m trying to work something out, a common technique), nothing like that.
ThePrimordialSuck on 25 May 2012, 00:46 said:
Take it one step further and you get a tulpa. I’ve always wondered, what would writing be like with a fully grown tulpa by one’s side?
TheArmada on 25 May 2012, 01:31 said:
I am in the first group right now. I believe that the third group is the highest form of writing out there, but I lack the skills (or imagination) to reach it.
TakuGifian on 25 May 2012, 10:35 said:
This is brilliant. I have been firmly in the third camp for years, in fact for most of my writing/storytelling life. Some of the things that come out of my characters are completely new to me. Once, I had my primary antagonist actively refuse to play his role; I eventually had to change the story to suit his personality because he would not be written as the villain. I don’t think it’s ‘insane’ or ‘mentally unbalanced’ at all, it’s just the nature of creating a psychologically rich character with depth and history and a personality informed by his experiences.
I don’t think fully-realised characters are automatically equal to author-darlings, unless as Kyll said it’s taken to an extreme. One can have such a character and still recognise their faults. In my first-ish story, the entire plot hinged on several characters’ collective flaws, especially my fully-realised primary, who was (and is) a brash, short-tempered, impatient and energetic young man who has a bad habit of not listening to others, and not thinking things through. Giving the characters room to breathe as themselves does not mean not recognising or criticising their faults.
G0a on 25 May 2012, 10:38 said:
“It’s called a lampshade. They’re fun to play with. You should try it, sometime.”
My point is that this shtick is done to death, and usually it’s just back and forth bitching, kinda like a really lame schizophrenic trying to be cool. It usually also ends up being just a thinly veiled attempt at bragging about your character (which was done here btw).
“What Kyllorac said. I thought it added to the article; it showed him interacting with his characters, getting their input, the way he would while writing. From your reaction, I can assume that does not happen to you very often. An author who tells another author to stop talking to his characters probably doesn’t listen to her own very often, IMO.”
Reading comprehension is your friend. I clearly said that I don’t disagree with his argument, just that I don’t like the format he used.
It showed nothing particularily interesting that hasn’t been done to death before-two characters are snarking, wow never seen that before.
Also, thanks for the passive-aggressive insult, clearly you know everything about me and what I think/do when I write.
“I, for one, wanted to learn more about these characters. An alchemist-turned-diplomat named for a flower? Who happens to be rather proud of his name? He sounds like a fascinating person to read about.”
Okay, I get that, to each their own. See, to me it isn’t really interesting because it’s just a basic description. I don’t really know anyhting about the plot/character to really say if he’s an interesting person.
I can just as easily mad-lib a description;
A chamber maid-turned-pirate named for a species of bird? Who happens to be rather proud of her bird related name? She sounds like a facinating person to read about!
Is it any more interesting than the original? Idk, but both tell me nothing about whether I’d like the character.
Danielle on 25 May 2012, 11:15 said:
G0a, I’m sorry for the passive aggressive insult. While I respect your opinion and your right to share it, please defer to the tag at the top of the screen, the one that says “Don’t be mean.” Saying you disagree with the chosen format is fine. Saying the author is like a “schizophrenic trying to sound cool” is not. Please do your part to keep this discussion civil.
Bloo on 25 May 2012, 14:54 said:
I haven’t been on in ages, but I had to comment on this one becaus even though I’m usually in the second camp, there are a few of my characters who fall straight into third, the most notable of whom is Theo. I asked for help on a story involving him a while ago, but before that he turned up in several more, plus a few RPs, just because I love him to death and wanted to see what he would do here or there. He’s one of those who just came to life for me.
I don’t disagree with the first camp, but it seems like author who hold that viewpoint tend to get rather bland characters for the sake of the all-important plot. And then those in the third would come up with Mary Sues more (of the black hole variety) because they just love their babies so much. But that’s just my thinking.
Fireshark on 25 May 2012, 16:22 said:
Thanks for posting this! In the story I’m writing now, I was planning to add an epilogue where the characters address me, just for fun, so this sort of thing was on my mind right now.
I often notice that as a story develops, the original plot might not seem right anymore, as the characters developed in an unexpected way. Trying to shoehorn your characters into your original plan can seem pretty odd (The ending of Inheritance probably suffered from this).
NinjaCat on 25 May 2012, 18:10 said:
Most of my characters have remained unchanged over the past 9 years. They’ve just become so ingrained with their names, I can’t bring myself to change them anymore. Characters becoming ‘real’ is the exact reason why I haven’t written anything that would fit into the plan of the actual story is because I’m experimenting, finding their real place. I’ve been writing a dark, Star Wars type back story thing, originally based on Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, because it was a relationship that seemed like it’d be fun to write. So I re did it with my own characters, and now I’ve spent 4 years working it so that it’s no longer anything resembling Star Wars. It’s gone somewhere, sort of, but now I can’t stop writing it, because they’re in my head and they won’t leave me alone. Plus, neither one of them wants to die, since they are both supposed to be dead by the start of the main storyline.
It’s fun to take characters, especially those who seem real, and put them into new situations, like fanfiction crossovers. I’ve put my guys into Left 4 Dead, Half-Life, Hyrule, Star Trek-Voyager, and many other places. Sometimes they like it and they want to stay- other times they hate it and demand to leave. It really just depends on where they are and which ones I pair up. I also try to do dialogue like that, and keep it civil. For some reason, it always boils down to me arguing with them. Every. Single. Time. No idea why.
So, nice article. Third view for the win!
anon on 27 May 2012, 22:30 said:
If I’m cynical, it’s because the large majority of this sort of internal dialogue seems just like standard grade snarky banter and most of the characters don’t really have a voice. I could cover up the names in this internal dialogue and I wouldn’t know who’s who because they’re all just snarking back and forth. And it seems to me that this more about wanting to write a really cool character who gets lots of really cool one liners. And you end up so in love with their coolness that you turn them into the main character and everything goes their way and whoops you accidentally wrote a Mary Sue character. I’m pretty sure that 90% of Mary Sue characters are written this way, out of a writer falling in love with their fictional baby and making them into everything they wish they were themselves.
“It usually also ends up being just a thinly veiled attempt at bragging about your character (which was done here btw). “
I got that too.
Fireshark on 27 May 2012, 23:02 said:
I didn’t really get that vibe here, but I do agree that snarky characters can seem like an overdone effort to be cool.
Kyllorac on 28 May 2012, 14:37 said:
Unless the writer is snarky by nature, in which case, it’s really difficult to create characters that are not snarky.
Fireshark on 28 May 2012, 16:28 said:
Maybe that varies person-to-person, because I find snarky characters hardest to write, even though I am very much snarky in real life.
Tim on 3 June 2012, 15:41 said:
The problem with this is that the example dialog you provide more illustrates the problem with your approach than showing why it’s good. The key weakness you have, and most people I’ve seen with this approach to writing characters have, is that your characters lack their own voices. You try to compensate for it by having the characters exposit random elements of their backstory, but I should know they’re different people without this information, and, for that matter, without you even assigning different names to them. As anon above pointed out, the classic acid test for character voice is if you can cover up their names and still mostly tell there are different people talking. Let’s grab two similar characters saying similar things:
Now, I’m fairly sure you can tell just from how this threat is spoken and what the speaker chooses to emphasise that these are different characters with different personalities, even though I haven’t had to tell you who each one is or her backstory.
You say Mel is “bitter, pessimistic, vindictive, and callous” but if you hadn’t I would have no way of knowing any of that, or even knowing he isn’t Thirry. A pessimist has certain verbal quirks which will tip you off over time; they might conduct a conversation as if they can’t possibly get the result they want so it doesn’t really matter what’s said, as if they won’t be believed and so constantly attempt to explain themselves in needless detail, or constantly qualify their phrases to allow for the possibility that they’re wrong even about things they should be confident they’re right about. To grab a good example of Mel not matching his own description:
Being pessimistic, bitter and vindictive, one would imagine he would assume Thirry intended to offend him and reply on that basis. The traits of the character suggest he’d go for counter-insulting rather than “you say that as if” which is more what I’d expect of good-humoured banter.
Put simply, the “muse” approach to characters is harmful to your ability to write them convincingly. Locking yourself out of a character’s head and treating them as a whole other person with their own internal thoughts and feelings that you have no more access to than any real other person means you’re refusing to tear them down to the level of personality and motives and discover how their ideas about themself, other people and the world around them would make them talk.
Writing characters with consistency is hard work and involves a lot of checking and thinking carefully about who they are and what they’d choose to say. If you find it easy, look really carefully at what you’re writing to make sure you’re not making the common fanfic mistake of having an eight-year-old girl, her nineteen-year-old sister and their forty-five-year-old mom all talk in exactly the same way over breakfast, with only self-descriptive dialog showing it’s not just the little sister having breakfast with her dolls.
Danielle on 3 June 2012, 16:05 said:
Thank you for elaborating on your original points, Tim. It’s funny though: sometimes I can’t tell whether you’re attacking Kyllorac or his writing.
Tim on 3 June 2012, 16:15 said:
I see what the above anon meant about passive-aggressive insults.
Tim on 3 June 2012, 16:17 said:
Above poster, even.
Danielle on 3 June 2012, 16:27 said:
I’m just getting sick of hearing you say, again and again, why you don’t like something someone posted on this site. There’s nothing wrong wth not liking something, but when you continually hammer on WHY you don’t like it—even after everyone else has stopped discussing it—it becomes annoying. Say waht you mean and mean what you say….and then let it go.
Tim on 3 June 2012, 16:37 said:
Ok, so I post once in a topic I’ve never posted in before and you tell me you’re sick of it, then say “sometimes” you can’t tell if I’m attacking Kyl or his writing, even though I’ve never criticised Kyllorac’s writing before.
Your endless content-free white knighting is extremely tiresome and you’re now resorting to simply lying about what I’ve posted in order to find fault.
Danielle on 3 June 2012, 16:42 said:
Whoops! I thought you had posted here before. My bad.
Not lying. Just made a mistake, and I’m sorry.
Kyllorac on 3 June 2012, 19:24 said:
@Tim – While I do agree with some of what you said, there are other things you assume about my writing that I believe are rather unfair and mistaken.
For instance, nowhere in the article did I ever claim that writing distinct and consistent characters this way was easy. It’s actually more difficult in some ways than the other methods as a character can (and often does) change in ways that renders actions and dialogue in earlier sections of the draft obsolete.
You also make rather sweeping assumptions about my ability to characterize based on this one very small sample. While dialogue is a major part of characterization, and in hindsight, this format and these particular two characters weren’t the best choices to showcase the main point of the article, there is more to characterization than just the words said. Tone, inflection, and gestures also play important roles in characterization, though the format I chose unfortunately excluded them. I haven’t done any serious writing in a while (as writing is something I do purely for fun in my free time), but if you’d like, I’d be willing to send you some old short stories so you can get a better idea of how I typically characterize in my writing.
Lastly, I never mentioned not having access to their internal thoughts and feelings. Rather, I do have intimate access to such, though I try not to consciously dictate them. It’s more a way of intuiting what naturally arises from a set of traits and how a person would realistically rationalize their self and views rather than actively deciding that X trait results from Y event interacting with Z perception.
Now, with that all said, this article accomplished what I intended it to accomplish: appeal to members of the third school while also sparking some discussion. I do wish it was more agreeable to those outside the intended audience, but I’m not going to spend time making it so. Play nice, everyone. ;P
Tim on 4 June 2012, 13:13 said:
I would have certain reservations about the idea that any approach but #2 actually results in anything of merit. Everything I’ve ever read on good writing technique and every experience I have of actual writing says you have to start with a rough idea of what you’re trying to do, figure out characters who best give you the ability to do it, and slowly sketch both the characters and the plotline that surrounds them in tandem, with each one helping to invent and elaborate on the other.
The thing is, a world, a place, an assembly of people from an office to a country, a structure (from “Bob’s bedroom” to a skyscraper)… they all follow approximately the same rules as a living character, yet I never see anyone talking about how their fictional city seems so real to them it’s like they actually live there rather than it just being a place in their heads. This even applies to the plot itself, it’s not seperate, it’s just another thing which happens for reasons and because of people’s goals, ideas and so on. A character is who they are because of their past, the beliefs that they live by, their means (money, intellect, beauty, strength, etc) and so on. A city is what it is because of its history and the beliefs of the people who inhabit it, the technology they have to build it, the terrain, the availability of materials, and so on. Look at, say, Ankh-Morpork in the Discworld universe and you’ll see Pratchett builds it exactly as you would a character, giving it a distinct “personality” built from its backstory and the motives of the groups within it.
The point is the interactions between these things render each one authentic. Ankh-Morpork works because everyone’s personality mirrors their life there. No decent author sets up the plot without the characters or the characters without the plot, because they need to grow together to belong together. The most important character in Dune might be Arrakis, but Herbert didn’t write Arrakis and then start trying to shoehorn the Fremen in without changing anything about it in the process.
Approach #1 reminds me of authors like Paolini who should never have been published, taking a bunch of pre-formed components and bashing them together trying to get a spark of life, only to get the proverbial heap of broken images. A good character does become a series of rules and principles with an internal logic which dictates their actions, and once written sufficiently well the elements that form them are so interconnected that nothing short of scrapping them and starting over is going to be able to make them do something it wouldn’t currently make sense for them to do. But this is no more autonomy than it’s my bed’s will not to fit through my bedroom door fully assembled; it’s not defying me, it’s just that I built it from a bunch of flat-packed boards into a state where each single part forms a greater whole. The spaces it can fit through are much more limited, but I could not remove any part of it and still have a bed afterwards*.
#3 tends to result in characters who overwhelm the story with infodumps of completely trivial details which add to their background but have no relevance to the ongoing plot. If you replace “characters” with “weapons” the result is any one of the interchangeable doorstop books aimed at men in their thirties with titles like Black Sun or Able Sword or Swift Arrow or whatever. These authors write books because they want to talk about something cool and have a story purely to justify 200 pages of weapon specifications.
*This is because stripped threads and busted screws mean it only comes apart into four large assembles, meaning either my bed is particularly well written or this analogy is getting silly.
Yeah, all of those are part of a character’s voice (even body language), but obviously in a dialog-only exchange you’re just stuck with word choices and how they express themselves. Regardless, if you don’t get the spoken parts nailed down you get into telling people what’s going on in the conversation (“completely ordinary thing,” he said in his sly voice as he rolled a cigarette; “completely ordinary thing,” she replied, aghast) which is like hanging really nice lights on a dead christmas tree.
One of the best character writing exercises you can do is to put two completely normal people in a coffee shop and just have them talk, and try to make ordinary dialog and reaction show them as different people. Anyone can make the sentient AI of a flying time-travelling aircraft carrier seem different to a ninja with a sword that can cut through dimensions who is trying to avenge the death of his clan, it’s rather harder to do it with Bob the photocopier repair man taking his old schoolfriend Alice for a meal to make her feel better because her first day as a temp at a catering firm didn’t go so well.
Well, just picking out a few good exchanges as examples for this article would probably do it the power of good in terms of showing what this approach can do. If this doesn’t represent your actual talent, you should definately put fixing up the example conversation on your to-do list since it gives a completely false idea of your ability as a writer.
The argument you make later that this is only designed to convince people who are already of the third school or consider themselves so doesn’t really wash; having the characters very distinct rather than interchangeable infodumps will only strengthen your argument to both sides. Even working the infodumps into real speech rather than flat exposition (“Backstories like mine are common as æther.” “Must you always talk like an alchemist?”) would make it better; focusing more on the character’s fears, hopes and dreams also tends to be better for convincing readers about a character than just something in his past that he dwells on endlessly but can’t change. As you’ve seen from myself, G0a and anon, what someone viewing this with a critical eye sees is interchangeable talking heads, and since this is the only sample of your writing I’ve seen it makes it look like your ideas result in indistinct characters without their own voices.
Of course ideally you shouldn’t use your own work as an example for other writers unless you’ve been published somewhere, since it tends, however unwarrantedly, to be seen as blowing your own trumpet.
Again, I’m going with the common attitude I’ve seen with such things and if you’re an exception I apologise, but I’ve seen a lot of people doing this who, on closer inspection, have no deep understanding of their characters at all and use this sort of reasoning to justify it to themselves. “I’m just the middleman, my character tells me what to do” is essentially what your first reply to the article is saying.
Now, what you’re talking about there, understanding that the character’s decisions arise from deeper aspects of their character and that all dialog needs to be informed by who they are rather than just what they’d choose to show to others, that’s actually what you call the second school of thought. Saying it’s the result of the characters having a mind of their own is no more accurate than saying my bed refuses to go through the door; it’s an excuse to get me out of having to either dismantle it to make it fit, widen the door, figure out another way to get it out of the room or accept that I can’t be bothered to move it.
What you just wrote there, well…
Just needs a few spelling errors and random caps and you’d believe it’s one of her quotes. That’s where that kind of attitude leads you; there’s no point writing anything if you’re not prepared to do your best.
Fell Blade on 4 June 2012, 14:41 said:
Tim, I think you may be taking this a little too seriously. As far as I can tell, Kyllorac was merely posting an article explaining one method of writing which tends to come under fire. It wasn’t intended to persuade anyone to use that method, and it didn’t attack the other methods as unusable. In fact at the end of the article it says:
If the second school of thought works for you, go for it! But there are other methods out there that can and do work for different authors, and it’s ok for those people to use them. As to the Gloria Tesch thing, there’s a difference between refusing to accept the fact that one’s writing is bad, and acknowledging that not everyone is going to agree with or like what one has written.
Including the characters Melaris and Thirry in the article was meant to be humorous, not a definitive example. It’s an article, not a “Writing Characters 101” text book. Kyllorac was just having fun talking about some experiences using the third method of character creation.
Kyllorac on 4 June 2012, 22:51 said:
And this does not conflict with the third method at all. Of the three methods of characterization, the third is most naturally suited to character-driven stories, where the plot is not necessarily the main focus of the story.
That isn’t to say that it’s untrue for some people. I happen to be a lucid dreamer, and often I’ll dream up scenarios and settings to help hash out plot points and character interactions, and in those dreams, the setting is as real as the characters. It’s just a bit more difficult to talk about how real a fictional location is to you compared to a character. After all, imaginary friends are one thing; imaginary locales that are so real you feel like you live in them? Have you ingested any hallucinogenics recently? No? When was your last psych evaluation?
All the methods for characterization work. Some work better for some writers than others. Ideally, all the methods result in the same product — realistic, relatable characters — and the failure of a particular method to achieve that result is not a fault of the method, but of the writers’ lack of skill with that method, something only practice and experience can remedy.
As Fell Blade noted, the exchange really wasn’t intended to be an example, and if I were to go through the effort of incorporating examples, I may as well write an entirely new article from scratch. That said, I generally do use others’ works to provide examples, unless I’m trying to write something deliberately bad to get a point across, both cases of which you can find in this article.
I also have, for the record, been published elsewhere, albeit in small, unpaid markets (mainly poetry).
Not necessarily. The second school consciously makes the effort to understand such. The third school, however, lets the unconscious do most of the work, which leads to a more intuitive feel for the characters. To extend your bed analogy, the third school calls in the movers and has them do the majority of the figuring. There’s still conscious input and effort, but not to the same extent as the second school.
As for your Tesch comparison, that was completely uncalled for. This is, and was always intended to be, an opinion piece — and nothing more. It accomplished what I intended it to accomplish, which is more than Tesch can claim, the fact that we wrote in completely different mediums aside. If I were to revise it to address all your criticisms, this would cease to be a pure opinion piece; I may as well just write a completely new informative article from scratch.
Not all mediums of writing are equivalent, nor do they share the same purpose, and so they cannot always be judged by the same criteria. From your comments on this piece and others, it seems you do not realize that.
Tim on 12 June 2012, 11:12 said:
When he says that
he’s telling everyone who doesn’t use this method that they suck. Them’s fighting words, and are naturally going to make people more eager to see if he can back them up than if he hadn’t put such a ridiculous boast in the article.
Regardless, to put it bluntly this “method” comes under fire because it doesn’t work. The only people I’ve ever seen use it are the ones who talk endlessly about their characters and their world but are nursing stalled stories they’re never going to finish because they’re waiting for divine inspiration rather than getting down to it and writing. This all comes of the idea that you’re supposed to write and then stop writing, rather than outlining, sketching out and then editing and revising. It’s a rare talent to write quality first drafts and most writers will tell you not to worry if your first revision is a piece of shit because you’re not going to publish it anyway (one of the big problems with self-publishing and vanity presses is they skip over this process of revision and throw out a first draft; Eragon might have been passable if Paolini had been forced to learn to edit).
The attitude that characters are real people in your head (who are real) screws with your ability to edit. Once you’re done with the outline you need to go back through and cut out the needless fat; that can include relationships, side stories and entire characters. This requires a degree of discipline which this approach totally refuses to have, which is why it’s bad for your development as a writer to hang on to the notion of characters as muses. They’re not, and raising their importance above any other part of the story is a mistake.
Even Kyllorac, who’s trying to champion this cause, states outright that one of these stories crashed and burned because of plot issues and the other’s not finished after six years. The natural conclusion from this is that maybe there’s something wrong with the approach that’s causing this.
It’s the refusal to improve when you know that you can which makes it like Tesch. It’s why hugboxes like Deviantart and TVTropes ruin people; by shutting out criticism and telling yourself, as Kyllorac did, that you can do better but it’s ok not to, you’re saying you don’t care about improving your craft as a writer and ensuring that everything you write reflects the talent you’ve worked hard to cultivate. Opinion pieces are about expressing your thoughts in a clear, concise and persuasive way, explaining why you think something so other people can see why too. What his response says is that he did it for asspats and huggles from like-minded people, which is exactly why Tesch writes so badly, because she gets unconditional approval from her parents. It’s a toxic attitude that leaves genuinely talented people wallowing in mediocrity for their entire lives. They get the same praise no matter how well they do, so why bother? Only the haters want you to improve, and why do anything for them?
The problem is the above quote requires that he show himself capable of writing excellent characters, since he’s said that’s what this approach results in. He literally tells me near the end of the article that I would struggle to write characters as well as he does. With a line like that, if I don’t see evidence then damn right I’m going to call shenanigans.
The plot is the story. If it’s all about how characters interact with one another, that’s still the plot. The only character-driven stories that don’t go anywhere or try to tell the reader something about the characters are those awful slice-of-life web series where absolutely nothing ever happens and eventually everyone stops reading because they’re tedious.
I’m not buying that all these methods even exist. Nobody writes decent characters without trying to get inside their heads, and nobody writes a decent story without considering whether the characters and their actions are compatible. Approach 1 would only work if you were writing fiction about a colony of ants, approach 3 I’ve only seen used among people who, as Pratchett said, don’t want to write but to have written.
That would only work as an extension of the analogy if the movers were themselves beds.
Ok, let me go through what I get from this article re: your writing skills. This is what you intended to accomplish showing me:
*You think you’re better at writing characters than anyone who disagrees with you.
*You can’t show the traits your characters are supposed to have, so you just tell us what they are.
*You can’t do character voices and all of your characters sound the same.
*Your dialog sounds stiff and unnatural and what’s supposed to be an informal exchange comes out more like a chat log in a channel where everyone’s trying to look cool.
*You use fantasy bullshit to make your characters different from one another instead of making them different as people.
*You don’t understand that characters who endlessly dwell on their backstory come across as drab and angsty.
*You throw in forced monkey cheese random humour like the “fetid chamber pot” (without enough context for it to tell us anything about the character) and a constant “snarky” tone which is supposed to make them seem witty but just makes them look like assholes.
*You state outright that this approach has resulted in one story that went off the rails to the point where you wouldn’t or couldn’t fix it and another which you’ve spent six years on without finishing or even finalising the protagonist’s name.
Bear in mind this is what the article tells me. I don’t know you, but your article tells me you’re either an amateur who wants to lecture people anyway or a lazy writer who wrote an article he didn’t edit properly. If neither is true, you should be disgusted that your article can reflect on you so badly.
Opinion pieces aren’t supposed to make your opinion look worse. They’re not supposed to, on closer study, reveal you’re struggling to find anything good to say (the Eragon article, the author of which later stated that was exactly what was happening since they don’t like the series anyway) or champion an approach to writing characters in a way that suggests you can’t actually write characters at all (this). They are not supposed to simply “create discussion” regardless of the content of the discussion (even if it’s entirely related to the article’s lack of quality). They are supposed to present points persuasively in a way that makes the thinking behind them clear even to someone who doesn’t necessarily agree with them; the best opinion pieces might not convert everyone who reads them, but they at least make you say “well, I may not believe that, but I can see why you do.” There is no point whatsoever in an opinion piece just written to appeal to people who already agree with it, that’s simply offering to trade asspats with people who aren’t discerning enough to ask that you actually make their case well for them.
At present, if someone claimed this was a good idea I could link to your article with the above bullets to show why it is not a good idea, and why the people who argue for it are deluding themselves. Is that something you want to be possible?
Danielle on 12 June 2012, 12:22 said:
Tim, if you hated Kyllorac’s article so much, why don’t you just write your own and prove you can do it better?
Tim on 12 June 2012, 13:14 said:
Because he can do better too and he’s already said he knows that. And that’s really just a paraphrasing of the old “where’s your published novel / blockbuster movie / acclaimed work of art / bestselling videogame / etc?” defence thrown at every critic of anything ever.
Danielle on 12 June 2012, 14:12 said:
I was actually suggesting you write an article refuting what Kyllorac said and posting it to the site, which is easy enough. It would probably get you more views than just posting your very detailed criticism to his article, and I’m sure it would generate more of the kind of discussion you want.
Pryotra on 12 June 2012, 15:37 said:
It’s funny, I belong to the first school of thought, but I’m not overly offended by the article. It is an opinion, but it should be respected as such. Then again, I kind of think that if someone works for someone, power to them. Still, Tim, if you don’t attempt to write an article, I might. Though it would probably be pretty short. There’s not a whole lot I can say that hasn’t been said before.
I do think that little random conversations in a novel are probably the best way to establish character though.
Fell Blade on 12 June 2012, 15:45 said:
Then why are you still arguing with him about it? You seem like you are beating a dead horse with no good reason for doing so.
Tim on 12 June 2012, 15:58 said:
Considering I wasn’t even replying to him, I don’t know how you made that conclusion.
Danielle on 12 June 2012, 16:04 said:
What we’re TRYING to say, Tim, is this: If you’re unhappy with an article on this site, you’re more than welcome to say so. But if you want more articles that say the opposite of articles you don’t like, then write them. If you want a particular perspective represented, then step up and represent it instead of complaining that it’s not represented.
Fell Blade on 12 June 2012, 16:18 said:
Perhaps the use of the word “you” throughout your reply, such as:
Pryotra on 12 June 2012, 16:34 said:
Tim, I suggest you drop it. Write an article, start a debate, but you’re not going to make any progress like this.
Minoan Ferret on 12 June 2012, 16:36 said:
The main thing I’ve managed to take away from this conversation is that, as someone who rather likes using the second and third schools, I must be a bad writer (which I knew anyway; I make Paolini look like Tolkien at his finest, but I have fun).
Still, I enjoyed Kyllorac’s article on one writer’s opinion and what works for them, their writing processes, etc. If Tim could write an article of his or her own way of doing things, which we’ve learnt is different from Kyllorac’s, it could provide a nice balance.
Tim on 12 June 2012, 17:29 said:
Ah, I assumed you were actually replying to the post you quoted. Silly me?
You debate by replying to people who reply to you. You’re telling me to stop a debate. If Kyllorac says he doesn’t want to talk anymore, that’s fine, but it’s not fine to reply to me and then shout at me to shut up when I reply back, without addressing anything I actually said (especially when you’re not the person I was actually talking to). Some might consider that rude.
Danielle on 12 June 2012, 17:32 said:
Yes, well, some people consider constant complaining to be rude. You’re not going to convert anyone by doing that, Tim.
Tim on 12 June 2012, 20:06 said:
Yeah, criticism has no place on a site about criticism.
OrganicLead on 12 June 2012, 20:09 said:
I’d just like to say I’d love to read a counter-article if you have the time and passion to write one, Tim. You bring up some wonderful counterpoints to a writing style that bothers me (or at least the way people describe it bothers it) but I’ve never been able to articulate why it bothers me.
Danielle on 12 June 2012, 20:18 said:
Then write. A. Freaking. Article. Stop complaining and write something if you want to get the word out there so badly. Nobody’s stopping you. I’d read it. We’d all read it. And no, I’m NOT making that a prerequisite for critiquing someone else’s work. I’m just telling you to consolidate it into something that contributes to wider discussion.
Pryotra on 12 June 2012, 20:54 said:
Incorrect, you debate by completing two prerequisites. The first is that two or more parties must agree to debate and the second is that all parties involved must acknowledge that they could be wrong. What you have done is not a debate, it’s stating your opinion, which insulted someone else’s opinion. And misinterpret what people have said to you.
No, I’m telling you to start a debate. Write an article that instead of simply being angry actually serves a purpose.
I don’t have to reply to anything you said, because it’s not what you said that annoys me. Technically, speaking, I am of the first school of thought. I have never had a conversation with a character and I don’t intend to. That isn’t the problem.
It’s how you said it and how you react to people who tell you that your comments are uncalled for. (seriously, comparing it to Tesch?) Also, when have I yelled? I see no exclamation marks or even overly passionate statements. Actually, I’m enjoying myself. I love things like this.
I was more or less warning you that nothing more was going to come from this conversation other than insults and complaints, and if you actually wanted to get your point across it would be better to write an article.
Welcome to the Internet. People will waltz into the thread and reply to a post meant for another person. Then the other person will reply and you get twice the fun.
What does criticism have to do with this? If you want to criticize, go ahead. Write an article. Post something in the Discussion. We’ll all be glad to come and comment. As Danielle said, no that doesn’t qualify as telling you that ‘if you’re so smart, write a bestseller!!1!one!’ or anything of the kind. It means that there is a better (and just as easy) way to do it.
Not that you’ll listen, but you know, go ahead.
swenson on 12 June 2012, 23:09 said:
Seriously, man, write an article. It wouldn’t be the first rebuttal article that’s been posted here before. All you gotta do is send it to the II submission e-mail. I’m sure so long as it’s civil and coherent, there wouldn’t be a problem with posting it, and then you could get out your opinions on the matter publicly.
Fireshark on 12 June 2012, 23:17 said:
I think we do value criticism here. But on the other hand…
Tim, while you’ve certainly raised some good points, you often seem unable to tell the difference between critique and just being insulting. That’s why we’d like to see an actual article from you on character writing—you could share your knowledge and opinions without it all being nasty and aimed at someone.
Tim on 13 June 2012, 02:22 said:
If you actually read what I wrote, accepting the possibility that I’m wrong means accepting possibility that Kyllorac really is as bad at writing characters as this article makes him appear to be. Call me an optimist, but I think he can do better. He’s told me he can do better but doesn’t want to, and if there’s a single thing more fatal to any artist than complacency I don’t know what it is.
And maybe I did misinterpret what people said, but that would only be because the suggestion that I have to write a completely different article to reply to someone is as ridiculous as finding my soup is cold and being told I need to make a warm bowl of soup to show to the chef. For all you know I have written an article and am just waiting for it to be posted, that has nothing to do with addressing the issues with this article that cause it to make a very weak (indeed, negative) case for what it’s supposed to be defending.
Interesting that you object to the comparison but don’t say what’s wrong with it. The attitude that you only need to convince the people who are already convinced and can ignore the haters telling you to do better is the same thing that made her, the main difference being that in Tesch’s case the people telling her she’s great mostly also exist only in her head.
Your lack of faith in Kyllorac’s ability to accept criticism is duly noted. I must say I’ve never ended up in a position where the people defending someone have a far lower opinion of them than I do.
Which is great when the people replying just dogpile anything resembling criticism without even bothering to read it properly and tell you to post an article in order to reply to someone.
Ah, “if you reply I win.” That doesn’t actually work once you stop being able to count your age without taking off your socks, you know.
The point is this is the picture the article paints of the author. I’m not trying to say this is what I think of the author* just that he shouldn’t be happy with it making him look like that. Yes, I’d be happy to write an article on character voices (I’ve already started), but that doesn’t change that this is a weak article and could really use a serious rewrite if it’s going to be anything but self-defeating. If Kyllorac can write better than this then he’s short-changing both himself and his characters.
Regarding “struggling to find anything good to say,” go look at this:
http://impishidea.com/criticism/in-defense-of-eragon#c014543
Hanceek admits that he / she does not like Eragon and really was struggling to find anything positive to say about it, which is why the article came out sounding that way. Not to be smug, but it’s also exactly what I said it sounded like the author was doing.
*save the first comment, which is what you are doing if you only write for people who already agree with you.
Kyllorac on 13 June 2012, 05:01 said:
…twenty-one comments of argument in the span of 24 hours? Really guys?
Well, here comes number twenty-two.
No. If I’d meant to say that, I would’ve just said “the people who use the other two methods suck”. I meant the statement in the sense that the other two methods require more conscious work than the third.
If other people agree with your interpretation, I’ll revise it.
…what? How does the third method preclude any of that? People who don’t revise and edit are just stupid; they’re also not limited to just people who use the third method.
Again, not true. People who write characters using the third method may tend to be more reluctant to cut out the excesses, but that does not mean they lack the discipline to do so.
And for some people, the characters are the most important element of a story, just as for some people, the plot is, or the world, or the themes. Different people have different tastes in stories, and I fail to see what’s wrong with writing or preferring character-centric stories over whatever-centric stories.
Or, maybe, I just write really slowly because I have this bad habit of editing while I go along, thoroughly researching anything and everything I encounter in the course of writing (and then some), getting carried away with worldbuiding, write non-linearly, and am extremely anal when editing. On the one hand, I get really great first drafts that require minimal editing. On the other hand, it takes me about a week to complete a 1K word story. Nothing to do with characterization issues. Everything to do with being a perfectionist when it comes to storytelling.
I do finish all my projects eventually, keyword being eventually.
It seems we are working with different ideas of what an opinion piece is. Persuasion really wasn’t something I had in mind while writing this; only the expression of my opinion. One can make their opinion known without intending to persuade people.
And for the record, I wrote this as a “Hey people who write this way, you’re not alone! I’m one of you too, and I don’t think there’s something wrong with how we come up with characters.” more than anything else.
Point. Finally. I’ve been waiting for you to state it concisely. If you had stated it as concisely earlier, a lot of grief could have been avoided on all sides.
I never said it wasn’t. Which drives which, though? Do the characters drive the plot, or does the plot drive the characters?
I thought the character was the bed. You can consciously move the bed, or you can have the bed moved without any conscious input aside from where to move the bed to.
The how isn’t as important as the bed actually getting moved.
Never said that, and never intended to. I think this is a case of you reading too much into things, to be quite honest.
There was endless dwelling on backstory? Where?
But they are assholes. At least I now know I got that bit down pat.
Both completely unrelated to characterization, and the whole planning on completing the first story I would think implies both that it is fixable and that I am willing to fix it. Additionally, conlangs and naming conventions tend to develop the more you poke them, and a lot of poking has happened since the first draft of the second story so many years ago.
Or maybe point out that you’ve read too much into things some things, been completely mistaken about other things, made rather rude (and incorrect) assumptions about the entirety of my writing based on a very small sample (and refused to take me up on my offer), and have generally done a fabulous job of making an ass of yourself.
Credibility? I’m not inclined to accept yours at the moment, and last I checked, it was considered perfectly acceptable to discount the comments of people lacking credibility.
Except that I’m rather amused by this entire affair.
All I will say is that this isn’t a story, and this isn’t art. And I shall reiterate once more that it accomplished what I intended it to accomplish. I fail to see how something accomplishing its intended purpose requires me to be dissatisfied with it?
If you have, it’s not showing up in the submissions email.
See prior comments on persuasion not being a considered factor and credibility.
That said, I fail to see how writing for a target audience is a bad thing. It really helps when you’re trying to get something published because you already know which markets will be the most receptive to your queries.
With all that said, I won’t be rewriting the character conversation segment because, at this point, there have been so many comments on it that revising it would lead to fifty-odd orphaned comments, which would forever annoy me.
I’ll probably just write a completely new article proper, after I finish my alternative character analysis of Edward from Twilight.
TakuGifian on 13 June 2012, 08:51 said:
Wow, guys.
Who ever said that? Regardless, if may throw myself into the ring, if anything I have found that ‘third method’ writers never stop writing or thinking about writing. Yes, if you’re writing for profit things like word limits and minimum output per day and all of that are important factors. But for people who write purely for pleasure, who revel in their imagined worlds and characters and all the little details that make up their characters’ lives, one never stops thinking about that world, revising their ideas and worldviews and opinions, adding new elements and removing irrelevant elements, and that is how a world, or a character, grows organically and naturally to be a fully fleshed-out individual with their own motivations and hopes and dreams and a natural psychological and social development over time that draws from their backstory and develops on previously-learned lessons and worldviews.
Point being, ‘third method’ writers do not have the view that one should ‘write and them stop writing’. If anything, ‘third method’ writers revise and edit far more than other-methodists, because there is always something new or some small revision or tweak, or sometimes a development that renders the rest of the story obsolete. I once had a villain character who refused to be slotted into the bad-guy routine, and showed his true colours as a sympathetic antagonist with contrary goals to the central character. Unfortunately that rendered the artificially-constructed p[lot unusable, because no matter how compelling a character, discerning readers will know if a character is being forced into a particular role (see: Murtagh) against their will, and that will affect the quality and ultimately destroy the suspension of disbelief.
As someone who is a linguist/conlanger first and writer second, I completely agree with this. My first ‘language’ was in development for maybe five years, but throughout the entire time, naming conventions, spelling patterns, and syntax were constantly being shifted and tweaked and altered. That’s what happens with natural-based, organically-growing ideas, be they languages or characters or civilisations or as literally organic thing like a child. They are constantly growing and changing in little ways, and that affects what characters are named, how they speak, how they think according to some theories, and therefore who they are as a character.
Burn. Quite. Speaking of which:
But you’re just automatically gainsaying what the other person says! That isn’t an argument!
Pryotra on 13 June 2012, 09:28 said:
For someone who constantly points out how other people are making cliche arguments, you make the ‘you haven’t actually read it’ argument throw it around a lot. Even if I hadn’t read the posts, it doesn’t really matter. As I said, I’m not as interested in what you said as I am in how you said it. That’s one of the reasons why this isn’t a debate. The topic isn’t agreeing or disagreeing with your posts. And you’re right, if this was a debate, I would have to accept that there is a possibility that you’re right about the topic, but this isn’t a debate, so I don’t.
And once again you misinterpret. No, we’re saying that if you get a cold bowl of soup at home, warm it up yourself, instead of complaining to everyone else about how you got a cold bowl and not do anything. This isn’t a first class restaurant, and you’re not a paying costumer. If it was…you’d still have to submit a formal complaint.
Why do I need to say what’s wrong with it? I’m not interested in attacking your points. I’m interested in the fact that you’re being insulting. It’s insulting because Tesch couldn’t even keep a coherent plot let alone continuity in her characterization. Therefore, it is uncalled for giving the tone of the article vs the tone of your posts.
Kyllorac can defend their writing prefectly well without my help (as seen above). And once again you willfully misinterpret to make yourself look better. Alright, I’ll explain again. This conversation is going to go nowhere. The only thing that will happen is that you and I and you and everyone else are going to trade insults. As we are basically doing right now. You will convince no one of your point, and we will not convince you of ours.
Another ‘you didn’t read it so you don’t count’ argument. I say again, I read it. I’m not interested in criticizing your content. And yes, people will nick pick about how you said something and not really care about what you said.
Consider it this way, you get into a discussion with a group of people, and a portion of them think that Twilight is awesome. You have three choices: A) Insult the book say how it’s stupid and anyone who likes it is an idiot. B) Come up with a counter argument that, while respectful enough, is definitely not in favor of the books. C) Ignore them.
We’re saying that you’ve basically done A and even the people who don’t like to use the third method will criticize you. Rather like Antis will criticize people who go ‘Twilight is gay’. It’s not criticism.
No, it’s more of a ‘go ahead, I’ve got the time to waste’ statement. You will reply to this, and you will insult me, and I will reply to you, and I will insult you. This will continue until I get bored, allow you to have the final word and go do something else. This is not something you ‘win’ because there is nothing to ‘win’. That would imply that this is a debate, which it is not.
You and me both.
Fell Blade on 13 June 2012, 10:21 said:
Tim, I don’t think anyone is against you critiquing this article, or any of the others on this site. I’m not a long time member, but from what I’ve seen every one of the authors on here is willing to have their writing critiqued and discussed. In fact, they encourage it. It is your attacks on an author’s person and skill after reading a single article that is so distasteful.
For instance, you critiqued the dialogue between the characters in this article. But you then hold that one piece of dialogue, written for an online article as a humorous lampshade, and attack Kyllorac’s writing skill in a very condescending and, frankly, personally insulting manner. Kyllorac has already said that this was not a perfect example and offered to give you proper examples from his/her own writing, and yet you continue to harp on how terrible you think the dialogue in this article was, and from that what an awful writer Kyllorac must be.
If this article was meant to persuade people from the second or first school of thought to change to the third school, then it was a bad article. But Kyllorac already said that that wasn’t the intent of the article. If it were, this line at the end would not have been included:
If the article was meant to persuade others to use this method instead of the first or second, why place this at the conclusion? Because this wasn’t meant to persuade, it was meant to express a personal experience and opinion. From that stand point, yes there are things about it that could have been better, but it was not a “Bad” article. I actually found it both interesting and humorous.
I’ll go back to my original post; you are taking this way too seriously and wanting the article to be something that it isn’t.
Inkblot on 13 June 2012, 16:57 said:
I’m going to forever regret jumping into this, but I have to rebut Fell Blade’s middle point there for the sake of fair argument.
Tim, as I understand him, is of the same school of criticism as the one I belong to: optimistic and helpful sarcasm. It’s considered fair play in editing and critique to joke around a bit, especially if it makes the point clearer.
Sansafro, another member of this site with better manners than mine, has left his rebuttal in private. For the sake of our external reputation for fairness I’ll rephrase one of the best points he brought up: Part of the formative process of becoming an artist is learning to accept criticism, and learning to understand that this is not criticism of your plumbing or of your car repairing ability. It’s criticism of you ripping out your guts and arranging them to the best of your skill, and it will hurt because the original process was so deeply personal. But it has to be accepted to improve.
Tim offered, in a fairly sharp and witty way, his opinion on the original writing sample given. In my book it was well within the boundaries of normal, acceptable critical tone, and I’m not sure where all the fluster is coming from.
What he also said, and said very clearly and multiple times, was that he wanted to see Kyllorac at her best, as a point of artistic pride. To forget that is simply poor sport.
Come on, guys. We’re better than this.
Fireshark on 13 June 2012, 17:12 said:
I think Tim did personally attack Kyllorac several times. I did not see any “optimistic and helpful sarcasm” in the parts I found to be insulting in my earlier post. That doesn’t make his actual points less valid, but it certainly makes them harder to listen to.
sansafro187 on 13 June 2012, 17:47 said:
oh shit posting on the main site errbody look out
I suspect the fact he’s even spending his time criticizing Kyllorac’s piece is evidence that Tim thinks the things he thinks are bad about it can be fixed if she wants to fix them, which could be considered motivated by optimism and made with the intent to help. His tone’s more inflammatory than it probably needs to be(You kinda strike me as a CC guy Tim, which is cool if true, but it’ll go down smoother if you keep the tone on II a little closer to the house style just so you don’t give people the excuse to dismiss your thoughts based on tone), and his rhetoric gets kinda overheated WRT hugboxing, but if he’s been exposed to the things I expect he’s been exposed to, I can see where he’s coming from with this and he’s not totally off base. Kyllorac isn’t Tesch or that ilk, but the HATERS GO HOME !!! attitude is what produces people like that.
So yeah, I’m in favor of letting Kyllorac and Tim slug it out, and I don’t think the peanut gallery is helping anybody by strapping up in their white knight gear and calling Tim a big meaniepants who should go away. Telling him to shut up and write a response article just seems chickenshit(huh, Firefox spellchecker recognizes chickenshit as a real word) because it’ll really only split the argument at hand so you white knights tell yourselves you slew the big mean dragon. That said, I’d love it if Tim did submit some articles, because based on his posts I think he knows more about writing than his detractors here.
Since I’m here, I guess I might as well post a token reaction to the article itself: I didn’t like it. I’ve never liked the idea of “having conversations with your characters” because you’re just talking to yourself and pretending writing has more in common with being a spiritual medium than an intellectual craft, and the only people I’ve ever seen tout it on the internets outside of present company are dumbasses who wax endlessly about how cool and zany their characters are but never actually write anything because writing is hard and they’d rather play pretend. Now, this isn’t to say that what I think is a flawed premise prevents Kyllorac from constructing a good article arguing in favor of it, but the posted article isn’t it.
Tim on 14 June 2012, 05:40 said:
Kyllorac:
Still, placing yourself as a representative for a cause gives some requirement to make that cause look worthwhile.
This:
You said it yourself.
The point is the sample is all the writing of yours I know while reading the article; sure, you could give me some other writing which might convince me otherwise, but that isn’t going to help this article. Every article is some reader’s first sample of that author’s work, and colours their entire opinion of the writer whether they want it to or not. This is what damages it as an argument in favour, the fact that I can point to the article itself and say “but these aren’t good characters.”
Like I said, it’s not that I believe that you can’t write (I’m an optimist, as I said), it’s that it reflects badly on your talents. If you have other writing that’s better that you want to show me as an example, it should be here to show everyone an example of what great characters this approach I’ve never seen work at all can create.
Well, actually no.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
It’s never ok to discount the comments of someone on the basis of some aspect of their character. Credibility reflects the weight given to someone’s testimony or their opinion if they don’t explain the reasoning behind it, because you literally only have their word for it. When considering arguments or critique they stand or fall on their own merits without regard to the speaker, because the speaker has given you enough information that you can evaluate not just the opinion but the reasoning that led to it being formed in the first place.
Writing is an art. That includes writing articles (and writing criticism, for that matter), not just literature. A writer is an artist even if he’s just writing an article, but you could change it to “craftsman” if you prefer. Same thing.
The point was that he has no way of knowing if I have or have not written an article already, or any grounds to claim that doing one is stopping me from doing the other.
There’s a difference between writing for a target audience and writing so only that audience could ever possibly agree with what you’re saying, though. Young Adult fiction doesn’t cause OAPs and preteens to spontaneously combust.
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TakuGifian:
The problem is a lot of people of the third school do this but never write, so you end up with a kind of cargo cult mentality where they’re trying to assemble the details in the hope that they’ll eventually get it to the point where A Story Happens. Look around the TVTropes “writer’s block” forum and you’ll see what I mean in practically every thread.
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Pryotra:
Because you’ve yet to give me a single solid reason to think you did.
How you say something has no impact on how true or untrue it is. “The sky is blue, you handsome stallion” and “the sky is blue, you pus-soaked mutant” are both equally true. Fixating on style over substance is a nice way to not bother to address the meat of a post, but it doesn’t fool anyone who’s been in a debate before.
But hey, you say later that trying to reason with you is pointless, so never mind.
Ah right, because Kyllorac is actually me, since that’s the only way that analogy would work.
The soup is the article. Kyllorac is the chef, the person who created the article. You are telling me that rather than talk to the chef about the quality of the soup, I should make another bowl of soup.
This is not difficult.
In order for it to be a conversation it would have to consist of more than you lecturing me on how much you don’t want to have a conversation and how mature you are for not descending to my level.
Let me just point out; you have stated you don’t think you can convince me of anything, can’t see the point of addressing anything I say, and think the best you can do is trade insults (and your portfolio’s looking a little light on that front, too). I thought you had a low opinion of Kyllorac, but I’d have to drill a well to find your opinion of yourself. I feel sorry for you, dude.
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Fell Blade:
No, read what I said again. What he said was that the article does everything he thought it should. What I was replying with was everything I could take away from the article based on the examples given, if I wanted to, with the question “is that really what you wanted people to be able to think?”
I’ve said already that I don’t think it represents Kyllorac’s actual talents. If I thought it did I wouldn’t be saying he should rewrite it becuase I wouldn’t think he could rewrite it.
The problem is the article should be trying to present the third school as something that actually works rather than providing more ammunition for anyone wanting to show it doesn’t. That doesn’t mean anyone’s going to switch from one to another, but it should mean I can’t say ‘look, these third school people have it all wrong, they think interchangable characters talk to them.’
TakuGifian on 14 June 2012, 08:51 said:
That is a good point, but I fail to see why you seem to be so offended by this. Is it because they besmirch the title ‘writer’ by calling themselves writers without actually producing any marketable work? Does the existence of these ‘cargo cults’ somehow diminish your own writing work, or creative construction? I do not think so, so in this case the phrase ‘live and let live’ might be appropriate. If I were a Beatles fan with a terrible sense of humour, I might even say ‘live and let write’.
Besides, discipline is the keyword no matter what writing style one prefers. Just think of all those Next Great American Novelists sitting in coffee shops talking about how they’re just waiting for ‘their big break’. It’s not just in fantasy/sci-fi/spec-fic, and not just among ‘third method’ writers. And it’s not even just a problem of writers. Musicians, poets, actors, directors, graphic artists, puppeteers, sculptors… any creative enterprise you can name has its share of one-dayers and if-onlyists and self-congratulatory false starters. Using that as a critique against one particular method of one particular form of artistic expression out of the myriad forms and myriad-myriad methods and theories being practised is a fallacy.
Kyllorac on 14 June 2012, 14:01 said:
@Tim
First off, I’ll say thank you for all the time you’ve spent discussing this piece.
With that said, there are a couple of things I’d like to point out:
It does, when establishing subjective credibility. Two people may claim the same thing, and that thing may be objectively credible, but how they present what is said affects how much credibility their statement is given overall. A hobo saying the end of the world is nigh is ignored, but if a scientist were to say the end is coming, most people would take the scientist’s word for it.
The moment you started with the crazy extrapolations and the Tesch comparisons, you went from “guy with valid criticisms” to “guy who has a chip on his shoulder and is taking it out on me”. The latter has no subjective credibility, and so the discounting. Hardly an ad hominem.
Concerning the backstory, the dwelling wasn’t on the backstory itself, but the ramifications. Ah, ambiguous pronouns.
While I don’t necessarily disagree with this, there are differences in level between the types of product. To use a visual arts metaphor, you have doodles, sketches, studies, drawings, paintings, and masterpieces. They’re all produced by an artist, but they are not all the same level and do not require the same effort, and so they cannot be judged by the same criteria.
This entire time, you’ve been critiquing a sketch as a drawing.
Pryotra on 14 June 2012, 16:03 said:
[/trollmode]
Not really. The problem with this statement is that if you said that, it doesn’t make much sense for you to be surprised that the person who you called a pus-soaked mutant’ is irritated as well as pretty much everyone else. Just because a statement happens to be true or have a good point, doesn’t mean that a person can say it the way they want. You seem to think that as long as the statement is true, it doesn’t matter how it’s said, but that only goes so far.
Now, you might call this hypocritical of me, as I’m part of a site that takes glee in insulting people, and you might have a point. My only defense would be that it is entertainment, and half of the ideas I spout while sporking or something are something of an exaggeration.
At anyrate, as Kyll basically said, the statement might be true and well thought out, but it doesn’t change that the way it was said made the people around you want to annoy you because they could, and as such, your arguments weren’t going to work because everyone is too busy being angry.
GASP! You figured me out! All this time I’ve merely been trying to fill in my own lack of self-esteem, which is something that really has no baring on anything whatsoever in this…whatever it is.
It would be simpler if you just said I was trolling and be done with itI shall read some emo poetry now.
Woe.
Moving on, I really don’t have more anything to say, since Kyll basically said it, and there’s no need to reiterate. This is probably going to be the last from me until there’s another article posted up, as I basically got involved to annoy you, and my actual criticism is already being said.
Tim on 15 June 2012, 03:42 said:
Yes, but that only applies to opinions or testimony because in those cases the only thing you can evaluate is the speaker’s credibility, because you don’t have anything else. Even then, it affects the weight you give to someone’s words, it’s not a licence to discard them.
When it comes to actual arguments, if a hobo gives you a detailled document claiming to show that the world won’t end and a scientist gives you a document claiming it will, you don’t discard the hobo’s arguments simply on the basis he is a hobo. If you do, what if it turns out the scientist and hobo swapped their proofs before giving them to you? Is the hobo’s proof still right purely because it was given to you by the scientist?
The reason critique is more valuable than opinion is because an opinion is a conclusion without the reasoning which led to it being made. This makes it subjective, ie it does not exist independently of the person who has it. By explaining the reason the opinion exists you make it objective; the whole thought that led to the opinion is available for you to evaluate without reference to who had the thought. This allows you to judge for yourself whether the opinion is a sensible conclusion of the evidence and arguments which led to that person having that opinion.
As an example, the score of a review is an opinion, and if you don’t have the rest of the review you can’t tell where that score came from, so you can only look at whether the reviewer has good credentials. If, on the other hand, you have the entire review, the reviewer’s credentials don’t matter because you can examine how good the arguments that led to the score are.
Well, firstly (as I’ve said) the point of that comparison was what someone could get from the article. Like I said in my previous post, if I actually thought that I wouldn’t bother telling you to rewrite the article because I wouldn’t think you could do it.
Regardless, being a jerk has nothing to do with whether you’re right or wrong; if you actually think that you’d also have to think Newton isn’t worth listening to about physics (because he was a complete asshole) and you couldn’t learn anything worthwhile from Alfred Hitchcock about filmmaking (he was infamous for his incredibly cruel practical jokes). The only relevant thing that would have to do with my credibility would be if you had some evidence that other people who have taken my advice in the past have become markedly worse writers.
Rejecting arguments based on the tone of the speaker is never valid. Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement:
Now, someone having a bad attitude might mean you don’t want to actually talk to them, but it certainly doesn’t mean they’re wrong about anything they say.
——————————————————————————
The phrase is “speak for yourself.” You might have posted with the sole goal of annoying me (in which case that didn’t really work since I just feel sorry for you) but don’t drag everyone else down with you. The only people you’ve managed to insult are the people you’re claiming you’re on the same side as.
To give you some useful advice: trolling works better if you actually insult and annoy the person you’re talking to rather than just telling them you’re doing it. Show don’t tell, and all. If you fuck like you troll I guess you sit on the other side of the room saying “you just had your tenth orgasm and I am fantastic” and wondering why she’s looking for the crossword rather than going along with it.
Minoan Ferret on 15 June 2012, 20:09 said:
I think this conversation has now gotten a tad too silly and rude. Perhaps we can all agree to disagree? Things have been said; some intelligent, some not so much. I’m sure we’ve all learnt a lot about arguments, opinions, human behaviour, and writing techniques, at the very least.
Anon on 19 May 2017, 06:15 said:
This Tim guy seems like a real prick. Every comment of his I see on this site, you’d think he’d just walked in on two hairy mexicans going to town on his wife. Jeez.