Bradel Brainstorming – Character, Motivation and Conflict (1 of 3) · 9:24pm Jun 1st, 2013
I've had this subject simmering in my head for a while now, since reading Skywriter's truly excellent long-form story, "Contraptionology!"[1] Character is probably my favorite part of writing, whether it be for the MLP fandom or for my own original stories. I've been wanting to do a blog post on characters in MLP:FiM, their motivations, and how we get stories out of them, and now that I've gotten a bit of time to mess around with pony words, I've taken a crack at writing up my ideas. But it's coming out really long, and so I've decided to split this into three blog posts. The first one here is just me laying out my ideas on the subject. The second will cover what I see as the main motivations for the Mane Six and Spike. And the third will cover the Cutie Mark Crusaders and a few of our favorite secondary character staples. But after writing a couple three-paragraph motivation summaries, I've realized that throwing this all down at once is a recipe for rampant tl;dr'ing.
In any case, I left a couple comments on Skywriter's aforementioned story talking about character and motivation, one particularly about their bearing on the CMC, and it seemed like the sort of thing other people might be interested in. If you want to get a preview of where I'll be going, feel free to go check out that comment.
So: Character, Motivation and Conflict—or as I like to abbreviate them, CM... Waitaminnit...
Back in my post on Brandon Sanderson's CW plot lesson, I made mention of what I thought was a pretty cool story-writing framework of his. He likes to think of forming conflicts in areas where character, setting, and plot (meaning overall narrative goal) intersect. Here, why don't I just give you a picture I whipped up in Photoshop to explain.
Well, to my way of thinking, character basically breaks up into two not-quite-distinct lumps: behavior and motivation. Behavior is the stuff that's easy to write. The verbal tics of Zecora, Applejack, and Rarity. Pinkie Pie's not-very-ponylike style of movement. Those are all very surface level, but hopefully you get the idea. Behavior is how characters act. And you can build pretty solid characters, focusing only on behavior. A lot of the characterization in my own stories works more with behavior and less with motivation. The onnagata in kabuki theater is basically someone who's devoted their life to perfecting behavioral mimicry.
But while I think it's fair to say that behavior is more important to a performance (whether on stage, screen, or in print), motivation is much more important to a story. Conflict can arise out of the intersection of behavior and setting or behavior and plot, but in general it's rarer and less compelling than conflict stemming from clashes between character motivation and plot or motivation and setting.
What's more interesting? A story about Apple Bloom getting teased about her accent at school, or a story about Apple Bloom getting teased about working on a farm.
You can pick apart those two prompts a number of ways, but to me, the second idea sounds much more interesting because Apple Bloom's primary character motivation is to become an adult—more on this later—and while her accent is an important part of her behavior, her initiative to work is more important in terms of motivation and makes for a better source of conflict. And incidentally, if you look at episodes like "Family Appreciation Day", you can see this sort of decision-making pretty clearly in the show.
This is my thesis: that the key to creating good conflicts with your characters is to dig into their motivations and how those interact with (a) the setting of MLP (including the actions and motivations of other characters), (b) the larger plot of a story you want to tell, or (c) other motivations within the same character. I find this to be a bit more useful framework for thinking about conflicts than the more-concrete-but-less-thoughtful pony vs. pony, pony vs. nature, and pony vs. self trifecta.
>> Part Two – Examining the Mane Six + Spike
>> Part Three – Examining the CMC, the Princesses, and Discord (and Shining, but he's part of Cadance)
[1] Incidentally, if you haven't already read it, I highly recommend it. It's one of the best books on Fimfiction, and book it is, clocking in at about the length of a 500-page mass market paperback. And I'm positive it's better than at least one book I actually own (I never took the words "Oh John Ringo, no" to heart), perhaps more.
That's actually a really good distinction to draw. I've been powering through Sanderson's lectures during my free-and-exhausted time, but this distinction illuminates things even more.
I wonder if it might be generalisable to setting. At root, this distinction - behavior versus motivation - is between static and (potentially) dynamic. For example,
Static setting: Mieville's New Crobuzon is a grimy, smoky, industrial city.
Dynamic setting: New Crobuzon's government is authoritarian and brutal and will come down heavily on anyone who threatens its integrity.
These two fulfill different roles in a story. Dynamic aspects are those that are meant to rub against each other (as Sanderson says) to create a story. Static aspects are there for ambience. They serve what you call engagement necessity in your description lecture.
Looking forward to the next installment here.
Also: I love the graphic here.
Even more also: Pinkie Pie's pronking has added alliterative appeal.
1118864
Dear Princess Celestia,
I learned a new word today. And it is awesome.
Also, I think you're making a good call about the ability to separate setting similarly, though it has my mind wandering off on tracks about how one ought to motivate the ambiance of a setting. Sure, you can have a grimy, smoky, industrial city—but why is that city grimy, smoky, and industrial? When I see cool setting elements, I want them to conform to some sort of underlying logic. When I think about characters, I'm not quite as sticky about this. I'm a little more content for characters to have interesting behaviors without those behaviors being outgrowths of deep motivations. To run far afield, I think this is like the psychology / sociology dichotomy. Individual actors can be pretty weird and don't necessarily conform to patterns well, but if you throw a bunch of them together, you start getting some predictable, logical behavior.
But at the core, I think you're absolutely right about extending the split into how conflict forms relative to setting. A story about a band of misfit heroes trying to clean up the streets of New Crobuzon, that could work. A story about a band of misfit janitors trying to clean up those streets? Not quite as engaging a conflict.
1118898
As always, you are too kind.
Because I favor Everyman heroes, I personally think that a group of ragtag janitors would be an awesome hero group, but I suppose this presupposes that they will at some time save the world in the process, so perhaps the key is "rising above one's station".
Character is the bedrock of writing, in my opinion, and should be treated as such. Everything else can contribute to a great story, but without a character, first and foremost, there can be no real story of note in the first place.
1118920 Yes, I was specifically referring to the epic tale of our misfit band of janitors going about their daily lives, sweeping streets and battling the eternal menace of litter. If you let them save the world, it goes from 0 to Awesome pretty fast. But that means—at least I think—a very different sort of conflict.
That, or you're writing Captain Planet fanfiction.
And I couldn't agree more about characters. Though I often feel like I need to put a lot more of my focus on the other elements of storytelling for practice, just because my natural inclination is to worry so much more about character.
Googled "Oh John Ringo, no". Found TV tropes page. Linked to a summary/review. Read a few paragraphs of the review. Immediately sent link to "I read terrible things".
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I think you make a good point distinguishing between behaviour and motivation. Behaviour is like adding accents and highlights to a picture, done well, it complements what is already there. But if you forget the underlying motivation part of the character and just focus on the behavioural ticks, you only get a cardboard cut out.
Take Twilight. If she manages to make a checklist of checklists, go "crazy", think about books in ways usually reserved for romantic liaisons, etc. all in the first thousand words after she appears, I consider that a warning sign. Interestingly, the Twilight in Contraptionology! actually fails this test. She does feel a bit like a cardboard cutout, but it turns out to be deliberate! Contraptionology! is a book written by Applejack (or at least, it was going to be during those early chapters before Skywriter abandoned that idea).
Pronking! Pronking is the best word there is!
Sorry. I'm in my 'found a new word' state. Very difficult to think straight.
1118920>>1119007
To toot my own horn a bit (when have I ever done otherwise) part of the point of the Civil Service stories was always to make heroic janitors. Civil Service: We're Not Trying to Save The World -- Just Make This Little Bit of It Liveable.
As for the importance of character -- spot on. I think the dividing line between good writing and competent writing rests on having your characters move the plot, rather than the other way 'round. I heavily favor the 'character' and 'setting' parts of the writing trinity, personally. Too heavily, in fact. Getting things to actually happen, now, that's tricky.
I think that the most quintessential GhostOfHeraclitus story would be two complex characters having a genteel argument about political philosophy over some fifty thousand words. Obviously, they'd be drinking tea.
Luckily, I have pre-readers who will apply corrective violence should I try.
Oh and I can not only name but also reach from where I'm sitting at the very least three books I own that are inferior to Contraptionology. Presumably, unlike Skywriter, the authors of these three weren't wizards.
1119065 I'd never heard of "I Read Terrible Things". I've now had the page open in my Chrome window for close to 12 hours straight. It's pretty awesome. Thank you!
I'd never actually thought about oversaturation of behavioral characterization as a warning flag for fanfics, but it makes good sense. It's a bit like trying to bake a cake from a list of ingredients, but without an actual recipe[1], isn't it?
Also, I never knew that about Contraptionology! Then again, I'm late enough to the party that I can only really imagine it in its final, finished form.
[1] I actually did this as a child, and it's one of my favorite childhood stories. My mother was a home economics professional—by which I don't mean a housewife; she had two degrees in home ec. She made wonderful cakes, and when I was about four or five years old, I wanted to try to make a cake myself. So she told me what I had to do, and I tried my best to do it, and (in what I consider a mark of very good mothering) she let me fail at it. She supervised, but she really let me do it for myself. Anyway, we finished up the batter, threw it in the oven, and baked it. And it came out looking pretty good! So she cut me a piece, and I tried it. And it tasted absolutely terrible, maybe a bit like ashes.
And I distinctly remember that after we'd taken it out of the oven and I'd had a bite, the whole thing turned grey. Maybe my memories are unreliable, because this seems to suggest some deeper chemistry process, but this is an image that has stuck with me for decades.
You and 1118864 have me wondering if the same static--dynamic duality could exist for plot. I wasn't sure how the heck that could work, but then 1119955 happened along and provided the perfect example.
The 'static' part of plot in Whom the Princesses: Twilight is making a surprise visit to Canterlot. Chaos is everywhere.
The 'dynamic' part of plot: Pretty much everything else.
I dunno. Plausible?
1119955
Oh, dictionaries must be hell.
1118898
But what if those janitors are trying to clean up the streets in both senses? No, I guess that just combines the two ideas.
>This is my thesis: that the key to creating good conflicts with your characters is to dig into their motivations and how those interact with (a) the setting of MLP (including the actions and motivations of other characters), (b) the larger plot of a story you want to tell, or (c) other motivations within the same character.
That's what makes My Little Pony special. It's one of the only TV shows I can think of where every character has their own life, goals, and problems happening off stage. In what other animated show or Scooby gang does each character have their own independent career aspirations?
>I find this to be a bit more useful framework for thinking about conflicts than the more-concrete-but-less-thoughtful pony vs. pony, pony vs. nature, and pony vs. self trifecta.
I think that trifecta doesn't help you come up with ideas; it just helps you verify that a story does in fact have a conflict. It doesn't always work, e.g. with some science fiction stories, existentialist fiction, Jorge Luis Borges, or even a straightforward goal-oriented story like The Great Gatsby.
1124660 Lots of agreement about why character makes MLP:FiM such a great show, but the thing I really wanted to respond to was:
That's a very good point. I have an inordinate tendency to look at almost every tool of literary analysis and criticism through an authorial lens (cf. "Death of the Author"). But as a framing for analysis rather than creation, yes, I think it has a lot more merit.
Well... hmm. That may be an overstatement, "a lot more". But it certainly works in more generality and is less tied to character deconstruction, and so it's a lot easier to use in general. Though unfortunately I don't think I really read enough odd work to have a very good feel for when it breaks down. The only thing that comes immediately to mind for me is John Steinbeck's retelling of the Arthurian legend, which while very enjoyable came off as almost a style exercise rather than an actual story.