Or the one-dimensional villain - so bad they have absolutely NO redeeming features. They become boring.
I really don't like characters with too much power. There's a point in a story where things become too much, and the "scale" of power is obliterated.
I also get tired of characters that are good/evil for no other reason other than because the author said so. Orcs are often portrayed like this, being evil scum simply because they are orcs and all orcs are scum with little to no exception.
Vampires and werewolves are predators by their very nature and should be written as such.
@ Nickeris: What is a deisex character? ???
That's a relative issue. I mean, it's the bedevilling problem of many Superman comics, but there are still good stories about Superman, and Mike Carey's Lucifer got a mostly totally awesome 75-issue story arc out of a central character who is the second most powerful in all of Creation and has both the ability and the temperament to set the world on fire if he wants to light a cigarette. Partly by giving him a great supporting cast and partly by giving him pride enough to insist on playing your game by your rules and winning anyway.
Tolkien was doing something specific with orcs that seems to me to be worth doing, in that direction; his orcs are Fallen elves, and his elves are very much like Miltonic angels, with what that entails in terms of free will.
I didn't think I was stating absolute fact Zur-En-Aargh, just my own personal opinions. There are some superman story lines that are passable but for the most part I'm unimpressed. I have found that it is a lot more difficult to take the premise of absolute power in the main character and turn that into a compelling story.
- Bullheadedness as a virtue, in general. Characters we are supposed to admire because they stick to their principles when the world presents them with evidence that those principles might not be the best way to proceed, rather than reconsidering whether their principles are actually for the best.
Do purely emotional arcs without a proven ability to form, change or follow personal principles fall in this category?
I am finding it hard to think of an arc that pure; have you any specific examples in mind ?
To my mind Dickens' Pip comes astonishingly close.
I confess I consider characters who act according to principles* instead of according to readily justified emotion to be Mary Sues.
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.
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.
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.
However characters that rely on their logic over their emotional responses come across cold and are harder to relate to as a person. take the show Bones for example the main character is incredibly logical and relies more on her mind than on emotion, its fun to watch because it creates conflict between her and the rest of the cast who are emotional beings as well as scientific especially her partner.
I'll agree that it's a lot more difficult.
That's precisely why I think people should attempt it. There's precious little point in only taking on easy answers and solved problems. I admire a writer who can make me sympathise with and understand someone I would not normally like much more than I admire a book that is working for me because it's hitting my emotional comfort-buttons.
However characters that rely on their logic over their emotional responses come across cold and are harder to relate to as a person.
However if that was all there was to her character she would be very boring after a while, its the times when that logical mask cracks and the warm sticky emotions come flooding out do we really get to see what kind of person she is.
even Spock would let his emotions show from time to time especially when his comrades were in danger.
What you're saying is the equivalent of: If you find writing science-fiction hard, you should write science fiction. Look, Dr. Manhattan is a great character but not every story needs a Dr. Manhattan and Watchmen is good because of the abundance of characters with a list of flaws and strengths a mile long. Good writing is good writing. I don't like Harry Potter but from what little I've read I realize she has her own unique style that is entertaining even if I don't care for the subject matter.
I know what you mean when you talk about not taking easy answers but to each his own. Just because something is difficult doesn't mean that it is intrinsically better.
I think that if you're serious about writing as well as you can, you keep trying new challenges and not settling for easy options. In the same way that one can't really train up to being an Olympic runner by setting the target of one's training at outrunning half a dozen random passers-by.
Also, you have to remember target audience. If you go overboard on emphasizing a certain intellectual aspect of your writing, you're gonna be limiting yourself to the 0.2% of readers who will notice and appreciate that. The others will get bored or find your writing tedious. That's just fine, but it's a good fact to keep in mind, particularly as a fledgeling fiction writer.
It's not possible to write a bestseller by setting out to write a by-the-numbers bestseller. That much is solid.
You stand much more chance of taking off if you write the stories that work for you than defining the stories you tell solely by what's marketable.
Intrinsically better for a reader, no, of course not.
Intrinsically better for a writer... I do actually believe so. I think that if you're serious about writing as well as you can, you keep trying new challenges and not settling for easy options. In the same way that one can't really train up to being an Olympic runner by setting the target of one's training at outrunning half a dozen random passers-by.
Some time ago we were talking of Jack Chalker's work and you used the term YKIOK. At the time I understood you to mean 'kink' in the sense of story twist.
Did you instead mean 'kink' as in perceptual kink, the kink in our, the readers', personal context as the artist proceeds to expand said context? The same kink Proust tries to explain when he talks of Renoir?
Er, minor correction there 1EJ - serious writers usually have a serious, solid goal in mind.
Noodling maybe not but if you've got to turn out an article or term paper or some such thing yes.
It's not possible to write a bestseller by setting out to write a by-the-numbers bestseller. That much is solid.
You stand much more chance of taking off if you write the stories that work for you than defining the stories you tell solely by what's marketable.
Sure there's the goal of churning something out but what that is and how you do it are things you can control. I wasn't entirely clear on that point, you are correct. In my mind it is the difference between Olympic racing and parkour. You can be good at it but there are a lot of right ways to do it.
As for journalism and papers and the like I honestly hadn't been considering those. I completely concede to that point, just making that clear.