What a character!
Feb. 26th, 2008 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonOr: why characters must seem like real people but not be like real people.
People are messy, composed of conflicting bits, composites of everything they've heard, seen, and experienced—plus the miasma of DNA. That's why you'll have a conservative minister strong on family values preaching on the defense of marriage one day, then turning around and hiring a male prostitute the next. Or, in less inflammatory terms, why you'll have a writer who's cynical about the world but at her core a diehard romantic. People can be mean and kind-hearted in the same package. There are no pure people with purely one side to their personal equation.
More than one reviewer has told me that my main character in the current novel is inconsistent. This goes back beyond the current reviews from my betas, back into workshopland. I wanted to make Carsten contradictory, did it intentionally, but I do think my execution must be off if more than one person is saying it. I haven't conveyed that particular aspect of her character with sufficient clarity, so much so that some people thought she was unlikable. I don't necessarily have a problem with an MC being unlikable, but in this case I think it's a matter of miscommunication and it works against the story.
Other things are easier to deal with: some critters want me to be more romantic, others want all romance removed from the novel. That's an individual taste thing and tells me that I have to go with my own heart where that's concerned. One tells me that I should get rid of some characters, merge two into one. I think that assessment is correct overall and I've been eliminating superfluous named characters. I'm also combining two significant secondary characters into one later in the book.
But there's a core triumvirate of secondary characters that I'm resisting melding into one or two. In my mind, they are distinct people, but, again, I think my execution is off. They're not coming off the page as distinct, at least not to this critter, and since she's echoing a concern of my own, I'm thinking hard about it. I've been putting in "distinction" clues: reemphasizing physical differences, changing speech patterns to make them stand out from each other, playing up their quirks (really, it feels like I'm sledgehammering it at this point, but whatevs).
Still, a niggling worm inside tells me I need to let go. Maybe Albatross and Orpheus should be merged, even if Loreo still stands on his own. As it is, Albatross has already lost his name. He's Shackle now. I realized after all this time that I had no birds in my alternate Earth. Duh.
Maybe on the next pass I'll realize that Resistance Is Futile and my two friends will have their separate existences ripped from them and be forced into one body in some horrible literary transporter malfunction. Right now I'm too close to know if that would be a good thing, or some heartbreaking monster.
People are messy, composed of conflicting bits, composites of everything they've heard, seen, and experienced—plus the miasma of DNA. That's why you'll have a conservative minister strong on family values preaching on the defense of marriage one day, then turning around and hiring a male prostitute the next. Or, in less inflammatory terms, why you'll have a writer who's cynical about the world but at her core a diehard romantic. People can be mean and kind-hearted in the same package. There are no pure people with purely one side to their personal equation.
More than one reviewer has told me that my main character in the current novel is inconsistent. This goes back beyond the current reviews from my betas, back into workshopland. I wanted to make Carsten contradictory, did it intentionally, but I do think my execution must be off if more than one person is saying it. I haven't conveyed that particular aspect of her character with sufficient clarity, so much so that some people thought she was unlikable. I don't necessarily have a problem with an MC being unlikable, but in this case I think it's a matter of miscommunication and it works against the story.
Other things are easier to deal with: some critters want me to be more romantic, others want all romance removed from the novel. That's an individual taste thing and tells me that I have to go with my own heart where that's concerned. One tells me that I should get rid of some characters, merge two into one. I think that assessment is correct overall and I've been eliminating superfluous named characters. I'm also combining two significant secondary characters into one later in the book.
But there's a core triumvirate of secondary characters that I'm resisting melding into one or two. In my mind, they are distinct people, but, again, I think my execution is off. They're not coming off the page as distinct, at least not to this critter, and since she's echoing a concern of my own, I'm thinking hard about it. I've been putting in "distinction" clues: reemphasizing physical differences, changing speech patterns to make them stand out from each other, playing up their quirks (really, it feels like I'm sledgehammering it at this point, but whatevs).
Still, a niggling worm inside tells me I need to let go. Maybe Albatross and Orpheus should be merged, even if Loreo still stands on his own. As it is, Albatross has already lost his name. He's Shackle now. I realized after all this time that I had no birds in my alternate Earth. Duh.
Maybe on the next pass I'll realize that Resistance Is Futile and my two friends will have their separate existences ripped from them and be forced into one body in some horrible literary transporter malfunction. Right now I'm too close to know if that would be a good thing, or some heartbreaking monster.
Betas who Don't Understand
Date: 2008-02-27 12:34 am (UTC)Sometimes I'd win those arguments, but if more than two people whom I really trust say the same thing, I'll look very carefully at that part of the story again.
That part of writing drives me nuts.
Re: Betas who Don't Understand
Date: 2008-02-27 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 01:12 am (UTC)And I liked Carsten. She had a great sense of human and I had no trouble believing in her as a person. I cared what happened to her.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 06:27 pm (UTC)And I'm glad that people have spoken up for the three amigos. It makes me realize they were probably more distinctive than I thought.
I do believe I'm going to have Shameus take the Cherub north rather than Malthus, though. Doesn't mean Malthus ceases to exist (he's still Shameus's snuggum wuggums), but it makes the story less cluttered.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 01:19 am (UTC)They need a thrashin'.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 03:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 05:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 05:06 am (UTC)Note to PJ - see? If people are arguing about it, the story's good. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 01:52 pm (UTC)It's definitely something that depends on the reader's viewpoint... I never really thought of her as abandoning comrades, but as gong to help someone else (who, though capable, did have a tendency to overestimate his own mortality at times). I think it's a matter of whether the head or the heart was in charge, and in that moment, Carsten's heart wrestled control from her head.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 06:18 pm (UTC)1. I never said you or anyone else didn't like Carsten, just that some said her character wasn't consistent.
2. More than one person said that, going back to the chapters workshopped on OWW! So I really wasn't pointing fingers.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 06:39 pm (UTC)See what I said about inconsistency?
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 06:23 pm (UTC)And she wasn't at a meeting (though, admittedly, there were too damned many of those) she was actually in the wagon taking troops out to battle, so her departure was even more precipitous.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 01:36 am (UTC)Go with your instinct! (Though sharpening up characters is usually a good idea. Sometimes what's so clear in our head isn't all getting down onto the page.)
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 06:33 pm (UTC)And that's the crazymaking part. That's where I start questioning everything and wondering if I haven't put it on the page as well as I should have. Making these fellows more distinctive can only help, I guess.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 03:42 am (UTC)As for the romance shit, you know I don't like that and never will. But you write good, so I likes you.
As for Carsten, I disliked her when she was being all emo. I think that's part of my whole "I Hate Romance" package. I will get up and leave the room if freaking Sleepless in Seattle comes on and I don't have control of the remote.
I like movies where everyone dies in the end. Hence the default icon.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 06:30 pm (UTC)As for the romance shit, you know I don't like that and never will. But you write good, so I likes you.
Dude, I likes you just the way you are because you give me your honest opinion and that's extremely valuable. Don't change a hair. I'll remember to bring An Affair to Remember if we ever have a movie night. >;-)
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 09:39 pm (UTC)::retches quietly into a trash can::
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 10:17 pm (UTC)