McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Overused Types of Characters
comprex:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on August 02, 2011, 03:25:45 AM ---I am finding it hard to think of an arc that pure; have you any specific examples in mind ?
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To my mind Dickens' Pip comes astonishingly close.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: comprex on August 02, 2011, 02:37:13 PM ---To my mind Dickens' Pip comes astonishingly close.
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I am not sure I could overcome my antipathy to Dickens enough to reread with that in mind, alas.
comprex:
I confess to being a fan of Michael Shermer's work.
I confess I consider characters who act according to principles* instead of according to readily justified emotion to be Mary Sues.
*should really read "ab initio principles" but the sentence was getting klunky.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: comprex on August 03, 2011, 01:36:33 AM ---I confess I consider characters who act according to principles* instead of according to readily justified emotion to be Mary Sues.
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I don't know. There seems to me something fundamentally immature about characters whose emotions are overwhelmingly their principal justifications for what they do; we do generally try to teach two-year-olds to share their toys and don't regard their tantrums as a good thing, and I don't find a supposed adult who acts with the unmediated impulses of a two-year-old particularly sympathetic, nor credible except as a very rare case.
comprex:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on August 03, 2011, 03:44:14 AM ---I don't know. There seems to me something fundamentally immature about characters whose emotions are overwhelmingly their principal justifications for what they do; we do generally try to teach two-year-olds to share their toys and don't regard their tantrums as a good thing, and I don't find a supposed adult who acts with the unmediated impulses of a two-year-old particularly sympathetic, nor credible except as a very rare case.
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I am saying that all those teaching efforts can easily get lumped into Category1: 'environmental acclimatization of emotional, subjective and psychological factors' instead of Category2: 'setting up a sound platform of non-conflicting rational principles to be consciously used by the two-year old as it grows up'.
I am saying that characters who act on starting principles instead of trained subjective reasons and trained emotional responses are, in fact, overused.
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