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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: Spectacular Sameth on July 17, 2007, 11:54:03 PM
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Do you guys get attached to characters so much that you have a hard time hurting them or killing them? I was writing a novella based on the comic in my signature and in the novella, this character named Erin breathes fire. Even though she's a dragon, her people haven't breathed fire in millions of years. The fire rendered her mute and burned out her mouth and throat and after I wrote that part, I'm having a hard time going back to the much lighter comic version of her. I feel like I've wronged her.
Anyone know what I'm talking about?
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i do. i've done...horrible, horrible things to a beloved character. i've even decided his history is wretched as well. i don't think of it in terms that 'i have done this to my character.' i think more like 'this happened to them and i am simply reporting it.
the sentient spirit is a resilient thing and my character is moving forward and finally finding happiness. he's able to laugh at some things and enjoy his new friends. he's even found someone to love, who loves him in return.
and in spite of what my 12yr old calls him, he is NOT my torture dummy. :P
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Well, I just remember making the conscious decision to do this to her. It wasn't something I came upon lightly, but it didn't feel like it just happened. Most of the does feel like it just happened, but I can feel the distinction and I feel retched for it.
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Yes. My original plan called for the death of a character. Then I felt like crap because not only did I just write out a character I liked, but also he was a dear friend of my main character. So I deleted the enitre section and rewrote it.
*sigh* I didn't have the heart.
~She-Wolf
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I found a way to fix mine. It may be cheap, but I allowed my dragons to have a regenerative ability. Took 6 months, but I still thought it was cheap. I'd feel much worse if it was permanent.
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I've always felt that if you aren't getting attatched to your characters then you're doing something wrong. It should be a painful thing when they are hurt. It should be a scary thing when they are endangered. This proves -- at least to the writer -- that he/she is doing the job. This is a good indication that the reader may feel the same way.
The problem comes when the attatchment precludes the writer from ever messing with the character in any significant way. Even children's picture books need conflict. :)
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I agree completely with that statement. Also, if you're not upset about what's happening to your character, you might want to consider the conflict.
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Yeah I've pretty much felt bad for every character I've ever written. They go through hell and back..well, sometimes not back.
One I have been working on story for a while, I get to the point where it's out of my hands. I don't consider myself to be creating anything, but rather watching and reporting. I think someone said that earlier, too. So I feel bad for the characters, but I can't do anything to stop what's happening to them. It's up to them to get themselves out.
And most of the time they do. I've lost a few gems, though. It's sad, but that's the way it goes.
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i've tried directing what happens and it just doesn't work for me. i'll sketch up some notes or i'll talk about it...then what actually happens is something completely different. i even had a bad dream that my beloved character stopped talking to me. i realized that i was trying too hard to control the story, so i backed off. after a couple of days, i couldn't get him to be quiet.
growth does not happen without overcoming one crappy thing or another. this holds true for everyone - real or imagined. if you never present your 'people' with obstacles, they won't grow and develop. they'll be stagnant...and we don't want that for anyone.
bottom line is that it's ay-okay to (1) stick a figurative sword in your character's gut and (2) feel awful about it even as you continue to twist that sword and gaze with morbid fascination as the blood falls to the ground.
*chuckle* you know...i almost ranted in mcnally's about this very topic and realized something. i won't kill one of my people. i'll get them close (just did, actually), but i refuse to drop the curtain on them. they are a part of me. it would be like cutting off my arm or something.
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In a related note, this is why it's generally a BAD idea to base characters off of people you know. Do half of the stuff in your writing that is expected and you can't look them in the eye next time you see them or you can't do these things to them.
Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind is a cruller being, but better dressed and looking how I want to look that isn't satisfied with creating messed up dreams, so he (I'm hoping it's a he...) is creating characters within my mind to use with stories he's also creating. My subconscious is a bastard.
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I just realized part of my disgust with myself. Part of what made it hard for me to hurt my character was that I wrote about her hatching in the first chapter. In a sense I feel like I gave birth to her. I watched through the eyes of her parents as she hatched, squeaking innocently inside her egg. I also watched her grow up, oblivious to the fact that she was going to do great harm to her throat to save a loved one.
Maaan...I feel like even more of a bastard since I remembered the hatching scene.
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are you a parent in the real world, sameth?
be at peace.
part of the process...the joy...and the pain...is letting go and allowing them to choose their path. she made the decision that lead to the damage to her throat. that she made the decision based on the idea it would benefit someone else shows that you have been a good parent and raised her to know compassion.
ultimately, everything will work out. perhaps not as you expect...but it will work out just the same.
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Yeah, I guess you're right. I mean, it DID work out right in the end, so I shouldn't feel too bad. (Though her comic version...who has broken the fourth wall by now...isn't too happy with me about what happens to her book counterpart.)
But no, I'm not a parent in real life. My characters are my only creations.
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...I love putting my characters through hell. Although I do like to give them appropriate triumphs to balance it, that's my consolidation for the hell they go through. But as was mentioned earlier, characters won't grow and become interesting unless you put them through the wringer sometimes, and you wouldn't have a story.
For example, take my character Dominick. He starts out as an insecure, although mouthy, teenaged geek. He ends up as a highly dangerous demon lord. The path wasn't all sunshine and roses--there were a lot of severe bumps and setbacks along the way. If I did any less, he would simply be unbelievable (or a psychopath). The harm that was done to him was necessary to make the correct changes in his personality for the story to work.
I guess it helps that I'm a surviver-type myself; I'm patient enough to know that "all things must pass" with time. So my characters stick it out with me, knowing I plan some pretty awesome things for them in the future.
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Readers HATE it when a good character is killed. Read a mystery series by a Brit & was about a male detective and the author killed him off & had his wife take over. Since then I read the end of a book. >:(
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I don't think you can really write well about a character you're not attached to. Whether people want to admit it or not, character is what draws us to stories. Reflections of ourselves or what we would like to be. And if you are distant from your characters as you write, your reader will be too. The more removed you are from your character, the easier it is for the reader to put down your book and walk away from it.
I get pretty attached to my characters, but not so much that I can't put them in tough situations or walk away when the book is finished. I do tend to have crushes on my male characters, but hey, they're much more fun to write that way.
--Sarah
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Yeah, some of my female characters have quirks or appearances or whatever that I find attractive. There are a lot of red heads in my stories.
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I don't think you can really write well about a character you're not attached to. Whether people want to admit it or not, character is what draws us to stories. Reflections of ourselves or what we would like to be. And if you are distant from your characters as you write, your reader will be too. The more removed you are from your character, the easier it is for the reader to put down your book and walk away from it.
I'm not at all convinced that for a character to be interesting and keep the reader's attention requires emotional attachment, and particularly not the forms of emotional attachment that make them sympathetic or likable.
Do you ever do stories from the POV of the villain ?
I get pretty attached to my characters, but not so much that I can't put them in tough situations or walk away when the book is finished.
I have to care about them and what they want to be able to write about them in the first place, but the logic of the story comes first, and they have to bear with the consequences of what happens around them and what they do.
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I'm not at all convinced that for a character to be interesting and keep the reader's attention requires emotional attachment, and particularly not the forms of emotional attachment that make them sympathetic or likable.
Assuming we're talking about main characters, I think one has to be somewhat likeable to keep the reader's attention. (Unless you're going the opposite direction and creating an antihero.) And for me, personally, I have to have a main character that I somewhat like, or it's just one more thing that makes the story harder to write. On one occasion, I had to chuck 125 pages because my main character was flat, irritating, and completely boring, and I had written myself into a corner. So I changed the main character, instead focusing on a formerly minor character who was much more dynamic.
And no, I haven't really written from the point of view of the villain. I mostly write murder mysteries, and when I read other murder mysteries, it drives me crazy when the writers tries to get inside the villain's head because most of the time they don't get it right. Murder mystery villains tend not to have a lot of dimension, which is pretty unfortunate. For myself, I would rather not do it than do it badly, especially when it's not vital to the story.
--Sarah
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Assuming we're talking about main characters, I think one has to be somewhat likeable to keep the reader's attention. (Unless you're going the opposite direction and creating an antihero.)
To my mind, that just makes it a more interesting challenge. Protagonist of my current primary WiP is going to be a fun sell on that account, because he is a highly trained, highly motivated person, committed to making the world a genuinely better place, and vehemently anti-democratic; he reckons a feudal system just needs people to keep their word in order to work, whereas a democracy needs them to be wise as well, which seems less plausible to him.
On one occasion, I had to chuck 125 pages because my main character was flat, irritating, and completely boring,
But do flat and completely boring have to go along with not likable ?
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I mostly write murder mysteries, and when I read other murder mysteries, it drives me crazy when the writers tries to get inside the villain's head because most of the time they don't get it right.
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In what sort of ways do you feel they get it wrong, then ?
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To my mind, that just makes it a more interesting challenge. Protagonist of my current primary WiP is going to be a fun sell on that account, because he is a highly trained, highly motivated person, committed to making the world a genuinely better place, and vehemently anti-democratic; he reckons a feudal system just needs people to keep their word in order to work, whereas a democracy needs them to be wise as well, which seems less plausible to him.
But do flat and completely boring have to go along with not likable ?
No, that's just how it happened for me. It was just this whiny girl who never did anything except react. The fact that I didn't like her either certainly didn't help. I have another main character who is extremely abrasive, just grouchy and sarcastic and not very nice. I wouldn't want to spend a lot of time with her in real life, but she is oh so fun to write about.
[quote[
I mostly write murder mysteries, and when I read other murder mysteries, it drives me crazy when the writers tries to get inside the villain's head because most of the time they don't get it right.
In what sort of ways do you feel they get it wrong, then ?
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Well, if a villain is a flat character, it's just not going to work to try getting inside their head. I think that's the case in Mary Higgins Clark mysteries (which I mostly like--don't get me wrong). She has this bad guy who is a very minor character and has little dimension or backstory, and then when she writes from that person's point of view, it's just cliche after cliche. I think if someone's going to spend the time writing the villain's point of view too, they should spend a little more time making that character three-dimensional enough to warrant his own point of view.
I've been trying to think of books written strictly from the villain's point of view, and I'm not coming up with much. The ones I do think of, the villain could arguably be seen as the hero, such as Elphaba in Wicked, or Dexter in Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Yeah, it's the Wicked Witch of the West, but she's kind of the hero of her story. Same with Dexter.
I'd love to know if anyone has any examples of stories written from the villain's point of view. Undoubtedly someone will mention something totally obvious and I will feel stupid, but I can take it.
--Sarah
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I've been trying to think of books written strictly from the villain's point of view, and I'm not coming up with much. The ones I do think of, the villain could arguably be seen as the hero, such as Elphaba in Wicked, or Dexter in Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Yeah, it's the Wicked Witch of the West, but she's kind of the hero of her story. Same with Dexter.
I'd love to know if anyone has any examples of stories written from the villain's point of view. Undoubtedly someone will mention something totally obvious and I will feel stupid, but I can take it.
I really don't know how many people see themselves as the villains from their own POV, though. Have met a couple in reality, and they are worth staying well away from, but I'm not sure they have the protagonist nature.
I also have the feeling there are obvious examples I am missing. Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory is really as far as I can remember reading of an anti-hero being pushed into villain ground; both Dexter, and Bradley Denton's Blackburn in the novel of the same name, are a) applying some sort of stringent moral standard such that their victims are even less sympathetic than they are and b) lightening the impact of the brutality with humour.
I suppose there's the demonically possessed Max the Assassin in Gerard Hourner's The Beast that was Max and Road to Hell, but those are not overly deep nor unmitigatedly successful at what they are doing. The Wasp Factory is brilliant, though. In first person, too.
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Oh gosh, my own characters are my children, metaphorically speaking. I kind of see myself as their God [no, not in a conceited way]. I create them with a basic image in my head and they take their own shape and shape their own personalities as I write. One of my characters, who I described as an all around good guy in the beginning...well, by the end he had the most unstable, secretive, possessive, power-hungry personality of the bunch.
And then there's my Incubus Prince, Salen. He went in an entirely new direction. I tried to keep to the fact that he is a Daimon [an alternate spelling for daemon; Greek origin meaning more of a demi-god than an evil entity] in mind as I wrote him. Daimons, as it were, care little about lasting emotional attachments and whatnot. Sure he's not one for any type of romantic relationship [aside from bedding someone once and feeding off of their lust-energy], but he is a loyal friend to the main cast. Which ended up surprising me in my third draft.
I also like to sit down and discuss my ideas with my characters. And if they do not like the direction of the story, they usually either change it or change something else along the way. It's fun.
But, anyway, that's my input on the matter.
~N.W.
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As a roleplayer, and writer, there are characters that I am intensely attatched to. Often these are the ones with the histories of terrible things that happened to them.
and, as many have said, it is much easier/ often better to write/play a character you are attatched to.