Bradel Bookwork – Creative Writing with Brandon Sanderson (Characters) · 5:06am Apr 30th, 2013
Apologies for the late post on this one, all. Between a mire of work and pre-reading an upcoming story for PoweredByTea (which I think you're all going to really like), time has been fleeting. In any case, I'm here now and if you'll follow me over the break, we can dig into Brandon's lecture on characterization – arguably my single favorite area of writing.
As always, if you haven't watched this week's lesson, you can catch it at the link below.
Speaking as an author of fiction, this is a nice, cohesive lecture. Speaking as an author of fanfiction, it really splits out into two parts: (1) how to write characters so that they're interesting and (2) how to build characters so that they're interesting. The first part is applicable across the board, but the second part is – in the fanfiction context – largely a discussion about how to make OCs and ascended background characters compelling. So let's break this discussion down as specified.
How to Write Interesting Characters
When we read about a character, we want to get wrapped up in their story. In fanfiction, we have a huge advantage in that a lot of the heavy lifting in making characters sympathetic, engaging, and enjoyable has already been laid down for us.
Let me say that again. This is a huge advantage.
We don't need to win over reader sympathy, we just need to keep it. And in my mind, that boils down to two key factors: staying consistent, and writing proactivity.
Staying consistent is something Brandon doesn't spend a whole lot of time on, and it's probably less of an issue when a writer is building her/his own characters. When you've developed a mess of headcanon for your characters (or, y'know, canon if they're actually your characters), keeping them well-behaved isn't so hard. On the other hand, using existing characters means that you get the aforementioned free sympathy, but at the same time you have to make sure you don't break too far from the readership's ideas about those characters. This is an area where I tend to be hypersensitive as a fanfiction reader, since it's one of the best proxy indicators for author skill. A good writer won't necessarily make her/his characters act like canon automatons, following an heuristic approach to every situation they face, but she/he will make the characters' choices feel like natural outgrowths of established personality elements.
This is one of the real joys of working with well-realized characters. It's easy to make character choices seem consistent with existing characterization when your characters have a lot of depth, because it gives you more places to look for justifications for those choices. Does Rarity close down her boutique because she's pursuing new opportunities in Canterlot, or because she needs to go take care of her sick parents, or because she means to sell the land to help Applejack pay off the delinquent mortgage on Sweet Apple Acres?
(Shut up, Ghost. Yes, I know Sweet Apple Acres was given to the Apple family in perpetuity via Celestia's original land grant, and they don't actually owe any money. I'm trying to construct an example here. Maybe they had to take out a mortgage to pay for the medical bills when Big Mac came down with the dreaded hay fever as a colt, okay?)
Where was I? Oh, yes, moving on to proactivity.
We get a little bit of a pass on this one too, as fanfiction authors. One of the other great joys of fanfiction, as I've seen Bad Horse mention on occasion, is that we have the opportunity to tell stories that would never, ever, ever be published. Look at "The Wrong Fork" or "Martial Bliss". These are both in Fimfiction's top 50 stories, and both of them are basically small-scale character studies – the written equivalent of episode outtakes.
How does this relate to proactivity? Well, again, we have established characters so we don't have to do a whole lot to make them proactive. It's usually enough to just let them act according to the plot of the story, and that's proactive enough to keep the reader engaged. But in cases where (1) the plot doesn't give them much to do or (2) the story is over 10,000 words, the need for proactivity starts to reassert. If the character isn't doing something active, plot-related or not, we're going to get tired of reading about them. As much as I love "Eternal", this is one of my biggest problems with its first few chapters. Celestia doesn't really do much. She just wanders over to Ponyville and talks to the Mane Six, and eventually freaks out and flies home. Other characters are proactive, but Celestia – our perspective character at the time – is mostly a passive observer. The story's a lot of fun once you dig into it, but those first few chapters are slow and kind of dull, and I think one of the biggest reasons for this is that Celestia just isn't written proactively.
Characters need something to do.
(Aside: Skywriter has five stories in Fimfiction's top 50. Five. 10% of Fimfiction's top stories were all written by one guy. And "Contraptionology" isn't even among them. The man is a monster, and he must be stopped.)
How to Build Interesting Characters
There's a reason why OC stories don't get much love in the fanfiction community – and why, when they do, it's often something of a sea-change in popularity. Compare the two OC stories I feature on my user page – "The View from the Window" and "True Colors" – and GhostOfHeraclitus' opus "Whom the Princesses Would Destroy". All three are excellent stories, but only one has more than 50 upvotes. A lot more than 50 upvotes. I love Ghost, and I think his story is wonderful. But I don't think it's 20x better than Window or 60x better than Colors, not by a long shot.
The problem with OC stories (and background character stories as well, to a great extent) is that you don't enjoy the benefit of canon. You have to make the characters interesting yourself. No one is going to give you the benefit of the doubt here. Creating new characters in fanfiction is like turning your story difficulty up to eleven. Most writers just aren't up to the task, which is why OCs have such a bad reputation in general. For many of us, though, they're also one of the most engaging challenges a fanfiction writer can take on – and one we'll need to tackle sooner or later if we ever hope to write more than fanfiction.
A lot of Brandon's lecture on characterization is zeroing in on this stuff, on the character building side of things. Balancing everyman and superman qualities, and creating a growth arc in the story. Throwing problems at your characters, so we can root for them to overcome adversity. Adding depth to characters by creating passions, quirks, and backstory.
But I've already written a pretty good wall of text here, and to be honest, Brandon's going to do a better job talking about those things than I will. Most of his discussion falls in the first two video segments, which are only eight minutes apiece. If you haven't taken the time to watch them, I strongly suggest you do. It's very good stuff.
A brief programming note – the lectures start to move away from our essential tools of writing now, and stray into dealing with the publishing side some. Because of this, I may start to skip around to lectures that are a bit more germane to fanfiction, though obviously it's worth going through all of this for anyone interested in the professional side of writing.
That said, next week we'll still be looking at Lecture 5. It's not Brandon Sanderson this time around, but a writer named Eric James Stone whose work focuses more on short stories (and who has won a Nebula award for his work). Since a lot of what I write is in the short format, I'm really looking forward to this one.
Previous Lesson: Description
I've been really appreciating reading these. Good stuff. Of course, I'm already aware of Brandon Sanderson's literary chops, having been a listener of the Writing Excuses podcast a while back.
I'm curious. Do you know Brandon in some way or are you just ponifying the series for its merit?
I wish.
No, but I saw this series online a couple months back and started checking it out and... well, to be perfectly honest, I felt like his ideas about writing lined up pretty well with my own. And since he's been successful at it, and has probably spent more time learning about these things than I have, I thought his ideas would probably be good ones for me, personally, to learn from.
The idea of blogging them here and sharing them? Well, I follow both Bad Horse and bookplayer, who blog fairly frequently on the subject of writing, and I can tell that a lot of people here take the craft seriously, so I figured these'd probably be fairly welcome here. Seemed like a good idea to me, and I'm glad you're enjoying them!
I'll second what Horizon said . . . 94 weeks ago. It's been interesting reading these and seeing you condense an hour of lecture material into its key points. I'll have to go through the lectures myself -- hopefully before Uni starts up again -- and try absorb some storytelling knowledge.
Actually, seeing as it has been 94 weeks since this blog series finished, I'd be interested to hear about how you found applying these tools to your own writing. Has it modified how you write in any significant way? Are there any points that you have found especially important? Also, have you discovered any other sources of writing wisdom that you think are worth visiting?
Sorry for the question barrage. Thinking about writing raises so many of them!