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Written by Paul
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Friday, 24 May 2013 01:53 |
When I first saw this article, I thought for a moment it was talking about "lickable" characters, which is right up my alley, but then I saw it was "likeable" and I was like "Oh...." Still, I read it, as I'm always interested in whatever wacky trends are going on in the decaying structure of mainstream publishing.
This one, however, is not new. It's been going on, in one form or another, for as long as people have written books. Despite that this article is supposed to be about likeable versus unlikeable characters, it's really about the same old artificial divide between "popular" fiction and "real literature", which is an argument almost always started and kept going with scintillating venom by those who deem themselves on the "real literature" side of the line.
For the first part, let's just boil down the fact that no - you are under no obligation to make a character "likeable", whatever that means to you. I mean, call me crazy, but I think many people will have different standards for what likeable even means. I've had people complain that such and such a story contains no "likeable" characters, and act as if that is a grounds to dismiss what the story is trying to say, but I don't agree with that.
The real issue here is interesting, not likeable. We put up with all kinds of characters who have no "redeeming" qualities because they are still compelling, still keep our attention and, in some measure, our sympathy. A character doesn't have to be conventionally likeable to be interesting. Far from it.
That said, the argument that a likeable character means your story is shallow, facile, or otherwise not "real literature" is a feeble and self-serving idea that is only ever espoused by mean-spirited and unpleasant people who feel said unpleasantness is the mark of real Art. These are people who sneer at genre fiction, laugh at action, and dismiss plot and character as bourgeois distractions from the real purpose of Art: the laying bare of the Ugliness of Existence (TM).
Not that ugliness is unfit fodder for art - that is obviously not the case - but the tiresome repetition that sheer ugliness and vitriol equal Deep Meaning is a relic of our Calvinist past - the idea that art and entertainment must be "morally upright" - by which is meant condemnatory. Evils must be laid bare, guilt assigned, and the darkness of the soul wallowed in to an embarrassing degree. This is what William Goldman termed "The RX Factor" - the impulse to see art as more important when it is teaching Important Lessons (TM) and Serves a Purpose.
Character is like any other part of a story - it has a part to play, a purpose within the narrative, and it must be chosen and delineated and managed in light of what it is intended to accomplish. Character serves the story, and the story's purpose, and not the other or any other way around. If you want to tell ugly stories, then you will need ugly characters, but don't think it makes you better than the rest of us, it just makes you a pretentious person who's probably no fun at parties.
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Written by Paul
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Wednesday, 22 May 2013 02:20 |
The opening part of a story, even a sequel, is a period of adding things. You start with the basic characters and their wants and intentions, and then you add in secondary characters, conflicts, and complications as you go along. It is a heady, expansive time in the creative process. You feel free and open and like anything can be possible. It is the time when the book you want to produce shines most brightly before your eyes like a golden idol, and you reach for it.
But then you reach a point later in the story, which you'd expect around the halfway point but for reasons of pacing and tension is more often found around the final 25-30% of the book, when you have to start bringing things together or you are never going to get to an ending. You have to start paying off subplots, eliminating characters one way or another, and otherwise finding ways to pare down the narrative. You have to stop adding things, stop bringing in subplots or side characters, and that is when the battlefield, as it were, becomes fixed. This is what you have done, so this is what you have to work with. If you didn't get something in, then it is too late to add it now.
This is why the end of a novel presents its own challenges. In the beginning you are trying to get things going - set a world in motion with a few chapters. You have to lay out the main characters and their conflict quickly to get things moving. The end, on the other hand, is where you have to untangle everything and hope you haven't painted yourself into any corners or forgotten anything important. More than once I (and other novelists I'm sure) have reached the end of a draft to realize I've forgotten some minor but important detail, or even a character. Sometimes you set things up that don't end up working like you intended, and sometimes plot elements or characters turn out to be unnecessary, but you can't just drop them, you have to find a way to pay off what you built. Here as we head into the final 20% of this book, I have a lot of threads to untangle.
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Written by Paul
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Sunday, 19 May 2013 23:50 |
As a writer of adventure fiction of a rather pulpy variety, I have written a lot of villains, and one of the things every villain needs is an Evil Plan. Evil Plans are quite common in all sorts of fiction, but if you pay attention, they often don't really make much sense. Sometimes this can be handwaved by the fact that most villains are irrational, broken people who are not thinking logically, but sometimes they are thinking very logically. Sometimes their supposed brilliance is how they are sold to us as a great threat, and so their evil plan kind of has to make some kind of sense.
I take it as a point of pride that the villains in my stories have plans that actually make sense, and would - this is important - work just fine if the heroes would stop fucking them up. Too often, Evil Plans seem tailor made not to accomplish anything for the villain, but rather to present the hero with a steadily escalating series of obstacles to overcome, providing tests of his or her qualities and allowing for them to self-actualize in the most dramatic way possible. Nobody stops to think about what this plan is really intended to do.
Worst offenders are the plans like the one in Skyfall or - forgive me - The Avengers that depend on the heroes interfering. This is meant to give us a scare as we follow the good guys along and then the villain stops to laugh. "Ha ha, you fool! You played right into my hands!" Whoa right?
Except these plans could not possibly work, as they contain too many variables, too many ways the heroes could have totally screwed things up by doing something just sliiiightly different than what they ended up doing. Sillier is how detailed these plans are, and how they often depend on the hero ignoring common sense and even the orders of superiors to follow up on some incredibly obscure clue which then turns out to be the key to the whole thing - only later it is revealed this was part of the plan all along! I can only picture the villain sitting around bored waiting for the hero to figure out the secret code, decipher the puzzle, or match that tiny swatch of cloth. What would happen if they didn't get it?
This is why it helps to sit down and think out the plan from your villain's POV. What is he trying to accomplish? What would she achieve if there was no one to stop her? Your villain should be a person who wants something besides just to serve as a foil for the Designated Protagonist - ideally, they won't want to have to deal with some stupid hero at all. Remember your villain is a character, not a waypoint along the Hero's Journey.
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