Writing: Making a character more than just words on a page. · 7:25pm Jun 4th, 2014
It's been a long time since I've done one of these, but stuck at home, hopped up on hours after taking Sudafed and barely conscious a little drowsy seems like the perfect time to start one that I've been meaning to do. This is going to be out of order from my original intent, but that's fine. These core concepts are core for a reason. I'm going to start with Character first because it's what I've been working more on lately than anything else.
Character is more than just what your character does, says, and thinks. It's why they do, say and think the things that they do. Obviously you're not going to have to justify every single bit of dialog or action with an equal bit of character. A well done character should suggest things that they would do through their past actions and experiences and, if you know your character well enough, then the actions that they take should be fairly obvious and easy to see. I'm going to use some examples in this blog that I have already crafted. Yes, gonna be slightly lazy. I'm sick. And medicated. And there will be Spoilers. I'm not gonna use spoiler tags. Just this button.
Please keep in mind that this is my interpretation of Trixie as a character, it's not contingent upon any lore except that which I've dreamt up.
First up, Trixie's introduction. We all know the show's version of Trixie: vain, likes to show off her skills, and show up other ponies. I look at that and I see pure stage persona, a mask that she wears. Not even a first dimension trait, but one that she's worn for so long that it's become her default modus and its hard for her to break out that without a push.
What is a first dimension trait? It's what we see on the surface of a character, the public face that they show, day to day, up to daily travails of life. This is normal Trixie.
1st Dimension: Surface actions/reactions
Trixie is vain. Painfully so. She wears her vanity like a badge of honor. She looks down on other ponies because she needs to in order to fuel that vanity. And yet, she's a performer. A literal stage magician, whose art is nothing but illusion and trickery. Her very name, Trixie, is an allusion to this, I think. She needs to be vain for that persona.
This is the surface actions and reactions of a character when they're not under stress, not being made to make a difficult choice, and generally just living life. Many people will go through life showing only their surface traits. Remember this. But, surface traits are there for a reason. That will be explored later, in back story.
So what happens when we do put a character in a stressful situation? One where they have to make a decision, right then, or one where life and death are on the line. Or even just an embarrassing position to be in? It's important to note that this response can sometimes only last seconds, but it can also last a lifetime. Some people never escape their inner demons. And that's the second dimension:
2nd Dimension: Inner Demons
What haunts Trixie? This is much more open to debate and discussion as we've seen very little of that. But, if we take the Alicorn Amulet, which would work best feeding off those inner demons, we can deconstruct some of what might lie at the heart of Trixie. First off, the first thing she does is show up Twilight, who bested her indirectly by taking care of the Ursa Minor. This suggests a fear of failure. She failed, therefore she lost some of her spirit for the art of performing, lost some of the verve which let her don the persona and give it so much life.
Trixie's fear of failure drives her. It makes her push a first dimension trait, her bravado, into a situation where real heroism, or realism, is needed instead. Granted, realism does come out when the bear is about to squash her, but not until after she's provoked it, trying to hide her failure behind bravado.
We saw a hint of her real character after she failed, when she was forced into a corner, unable to back away from her failure without failing more.
That leads us to the third dimension:
3rd Dimension: Real Character
Trixie, when the cards are down, is honest. She drops the stage persona and becomes a far humbler and kinder pony. She steps up to the Ursa Minor and she fails, yes, because she was acting on a false bravado, trying to push her surface traits into an area where she needed to act heroically, not like her surface personality. With her false bravado shown up and the stakes now set - that she can't possibly take down the Ursa Minor - she has to admit the truth. This is her true character shining through, however briefly. It's the character that she has deep down, the pony she wants to be. Then she gets shown up by Twilight. That's her inner demon personified. Twilight comes and throws back her failed attempt right in her face. It's not intentional on Twilight's side, definitely not, but it's still something that sets up Trixie for her next appearance when she lets that inner demon take over.
Until she has her heroic moment, she'll be in the shadow of her inner demons and unable to let go of the vainglorious front. She needs to succeed, and she needs to do so while acting like the true self she keeps locked away under a false front. A heroic moment doesn't have to be standing up to an Ursa Minor. It has to be acting on behalf of another.
Here we come down to it. This is how I see Trixie at her core. Trixie is honest. She covers it with bravado, flees from it because she's afraid of admitting to herself even that she has failed. But when she can't fall any lower, or can't be pushed any harder, she is honest with herself and with others.
But these are just the traits themselves. They had to come from somewhere. They have to have some source in order to give them context. Why is she so vain? Why is she afraid of failure? Why is she, deep down at her core, honest? These traits come from someplace. Second dimension traits often come from childhood. Freud may be a little cooky, but I think he had a decent idea here. First dimension traits stem from trying to cover up those fears, to keep them at bay, and the third dimension is a little more nebulous and more subject to artistic license for the sake of telling a good story. A heroic real character trait, even one so seemingly simple as honesty, makes a character more interesting to read about.
That said, a real character trait of "Running away." Can be made interesting... but also boring. It's not really heroic.
But all of these traits come from the history of a character, the back story or *sigh* biography of a character.
First off, the parents. A foal's parents are the most powerful force in their young lives. They provide the formative background for their future, cement some character traits, such as the basic inner demons. That's not to say that later ones can't be introduced. War, bad relationships, and other things have a habit of damaging a character's inner self, or at least haunt them in new and terrifying ways.
I see her parents as being very judgmental of her, but for the best reasons. They want her to succeed and they think, wrongly it turns out, that pushing her harder when she fails is the right way to get her to succeed. They love her, but they can't see the harm they're doing to her. Every disapproving frown, every early bedtime, every toy taken away because of a failure of some sort is damaging her, setting her up to be the way she is. She strives harder, harder to please her parents. Eventually, they see what they're looking for and begin to praise her. By this time, Trixie isn't even sure what her parents want from her. The successes they praise her for are no different than the failures they denigrated her for in the past. At least in her eyes.
From her parents, we move on past them. After leaving her parent's home, why does she become the way she is? What shaped Trixie Lulamoon into the vain, proud pony we see her as in the show?
So why does she become a performer? Perhaps she saw a stage performer once as a filly and saw how the crowd praised him/her for their simple tricks. That's the kind of adoration she wants. Adoration that she doesn't have to break herself getting. Idea cemented, she leaves when she is able to become a traveling performer, throwing one final failure in her parent's face. They wanted her to become more than just a traveling charlatan. This is her revenge.
To her surprise, she does enjoy the life. She becomes happy, of a sorts. Her inner demons still haunt her every time she opens the curtain, but from the first cheer, she's living the life she wants to. It's only when she starts to ask for volunteers to try and best her that she starts to get shown up. But, not until she gets to Ponyville does she get that thrown back in her face.
So. Where does Trixie the Great and Powerful come from? It's her stage persona, carefully crafted with the help of her her fears to cover her weaknesses. Trixie the Great and Powerful doesn't cower before failure. Trixie the Great and Powerful never fails. And, for the most part, while she's on stage, controlling the action, she doesn't.
But along the roads of life, nopony is an island, and Trixie even less so. She wouldn't get very far as an entertainer if she didn't learn from somepony who tried to curb her first dimension tendencies and allay her second dimension fears with kindness. She's not a monster. Nor is she really misunderstood, except perhaps by herself. She is flawed, but not without the chance of redemption.
She would need to learn the ropes first. Being a stage performer isn't as easy as getting up on stage and doing some tricks. She needs to learn how to play to a crowd, how to build her persona so that it's not overbearing or frustrating for other ponies to watch. It needs to be entertaining. She needs a teacher.
So Trixie gets her start at about sixteen, leaves home, and tries to find the performer she saw as a filly. When she finds him, he's getting ready to retire and turn in his wizard cape and hat. Her earnest need to be like him, her desire to be a performer, for the adoration, makes him see something of his past self in her. All of his mistakes, all of his past regrets personified in the young mare who comes to his trailer. Though he is retiring, he takes her under his tutelage and begins to teach her how to work the crowd, how to read the crowd. He also tries to teach her the joy of performing for its own sake. Not for adoration or applause, but because it brings a smile to somepony's face. He thinks he's getting to her when he has a stroke that paralyzes his left side and leaves him only able to slur.
This is not quite a tragic event. Nopony leaves her alone, nopony just lets her sit there. Nor does she just lay there and let it happen. She's genuinely afraid, and this is pushing on her second dimension. But she has little time to dwell and is pushed into action. She is honest with herself. She can't help him. She needs to get him to somepony who can.
The night it happens, Trixie is terrified. She doesn't know what's going on, but she takes the the cart and rushes him to the nearest hospital, in Baltimare, and gets him the help he needs. She still visits him in the rest home he currently resides in, her real father in her eyes. She still visits her real parents, but she's distant from them, and they feel badly for the way they brought her up. She has a younger sister now, too, whom she lavishes praise on, throwing the lack of praise she'd been given back into her parent's faces. But that, too, is a surface reaction. She loves her parents deep down and knows they tried their best. She loves her little sister too, who thinks Trixie is just the most amazing thing since sliced bread.
It's important for a believable character to have more than just herself to rely on. But nor should everything be happy and perfect. Nor should everything be absolutely tragic and horrible. For a character to have life, for them to have life breathed into them by you, the author, it's important for her arc to seem believable. Let's take a look at what happens in the latter part of her arc.
Now she travels from town to town in her cart, inherited from her mentor, wearing her cape and hat, also inherited, and reaping praise and adoration in many of the smaller towns she visits.
When her cart gets destroyed by the Ursa Minor, she lacks the money to repair it right away, but she can't abandon it. She pays what little she can afford to have the pieces stored in a safe, secure place until she can pay a unicorn with a talent for repair to fit the pieces back together again. She goes to work on a rock farm, trying to hoard bits for the job. But, along the way she just gets angrier and angrier at her failure and the loss of her cart. She can't go back to her mentor and admit her failure. Not until she can fix it. Perhaps not even then. Word reaches her parents of her loss and they send her an anonymous donation to cover what they think it will cost to repair the cart.
And here we end with the aftermath of Boast Busters. Trixie's very livelihood is destroyed. She can't have made much money as a performer, not when she also has to buy food and pay for regular repairs to what is not only her home, but also her main source of income. She is homeless, destitute and desperate. She cannot sink much lower in spirit.
She thinks it came from her mentor. Shame fills her and sinks her lower. She repairs the cart and has enough bits left over to live comfortably for a long time, even without performing. She wallows in her shame and failure for a time before she hears rumor at a salt bar about how there's supposedly an amulet that will grant the wishes of the wearer. Desperate, beaten, wanting to regain the feeling and adoration she'd enjoyed until the Ursa destroyed her home, she tracks it down, buys it, and becomes corrupted by its influence. She leaves behind her cart, her cape and hat, and goes back to Ponyville at the behest of the Alicorn Amulet to force her inner demons back by wringing praise and adoration from her 'subjects.'
Even as the amulet is corrupting her, she can't bring herself to wear the cape and hat her mentor gave to her. It means too much to her, deep down, to sully it with what she knows is wrong.
She spends the next several months after Magic Duel rebuilding her confidence. She visits her mentor, her parents and sister, reconnecting with the past as a way to see a way into the future. Her fear of failure is still there, but she knows that she has to face it, not appease it. But facing a fear is hard to do alone.
And thus ends the arc of Trixie, up to the point where she will be reintroduced in the re-imagined The Mare in the Moon and Silver Spoon, as a co-protagonist with Silver Spoon as the two of them travel along both of their character arcs. Trixie is closer to her culmination than Silver Spoon, but Silver Spoon has less baggage behind her to carry along.
To the point of honesty as her real character, we also see her humility at the end of the alicorn amulet episode. Not just by leaving behind her mentor's hat and cape, but she goes out of her way to make some fireworks during Twilight's exhibition. That took a lot humility and guts to show herself in front of Princess Celestia and the entire town she took over.
Also, this is remarkably lucid for being hopped up on Sudafed.
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I admit to having written most of it after the main effect had worn off. Ugh... was when I took the Sudafed. It's now almost 6... 7 hours later? Still a bit drowsy, but... maybe 'hopped up' is a little bit dramatic.
2174819
Dramaticalness corrected.
History builds personality and vice versa. I also really like your look at the different levels of personality that get seen, because it's true. Any good dynamic character has layers.
Your Sigmund Freud comment reminded me of this.
Backstory which is relevant: Back in the 1980's secret government employees dug up famous guys and ladies and made genetic copies. Now they're teens and in high school. The video's from a show called Clone High. Joan of Ark has a crush on Abe Lincoln. Its super obvious, but he can't see it, because he's enamored with Cleopatra. Joan decides to try, with the help of Attila the Hun, to use the school's film festival to confess her love for Abe. (Opening scene is ending scene of Abe's film.) All of the video after 3:20 is irrelevant. Also, the part with their principal, the government guys, and his butler is irrelevant...but short.
You know, I might use this as a guide for my characters. I think I have done well in defining them, but with this as a guide, I can be assured of it.
Thanks for writing this NT.
Here's to you getting better, cheers!
It's interesting how you came to some fairly similar conclusions about Trixie -- surface vanity, a superiority-inferiority complex, a sound moral core; an older beloved mentor who was also a father-figure, and a combination of emotional damage from her defeat in "Boast Busters" and near-corruption by the Alicorn Amulet. The main difference with my Trixie is the source of her very real powers, the identity and actual fate of her mentor, and the addition of a (nearly only friend and only-ever lover) who acted as a secondary mentor a little later in her career.
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I think, honestly, that her character lends itself to this kind of interpretation. At least, those willing to look past the surface traits she gave us on first impression in Boast Busters. I suppose where I differ is that I like to see the world of MLP as a not terribly dramatic place most of the time. I like to find the drama in the small moments between characters. I do like the large, world changing events, and the divergences of character into other realms, but I don't think I'd be up for crafting as rich a world as you have with Shadow Wars.
I say, as I write the Alternate Universe character examination for Celestia as the mother of Luna instead of sister. I wonder how this will go over... Ah well. Different territory.
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I hope I get better soon too. Already starting to feel better. Combination of taking something and sleeping another several hours more than I normally do on a Wednesday.
I'm glad this helped you! The real framework is in the four parts - the three dimensions, and the backstory. The example is mainly there to provide an example of where the bits and pieces come from. I thought I did fairly well with characterization too, but then I started writing for background ponies, side characters, and others with little canon characterization and realized that my characters were less solid than I wanted them to be.
This helps me solidify what they are so that I know who they are, and not just what I want them to be.
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Added to watch list! It's... a bit like my read later list... It keeps growing, but the temptation of Youtube is very great. And I have much writing to do.
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True! To be honest, the characters in MLP have a great deal of depth already. Sometimes it's not consistent depth, though.
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That did, didn't it. I don't doubt that Twilight reported the actions to Celestia as soon as she got back. That she wasn't jailed probably speaks something about the Equestrian judicial system and how mind control magic and corruption by mystical artifacts plays into that.
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The main characters and most of the supporting cast, definitely. As for consistency, I think part of that is just having different writers and regulated pacing, but the other part is that I think a lot of people over-react to certain ideas. Most of the variety that we see can be pieced together in a way that makes sense or can be explained with some thought. Not all of it, because there's always going to be something inexplicable with this kind of storytelling format, but enough that I rarely see any reason to fuss beyond immediate surprise. Even in instances where I was amazed, after some serious thought and sometimes watching the episode again, it fell into place or it just wasn't a big deal.
Edit: Then again, I just kind of ignore anything I can't make sense of, or see if anyone else has some theories that work.
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Man, that makes me want to watch all of Clone High again. Good series!
2175202 Lol. Alright.
2175263 I know, right? Lol. It's hilarious. Have you seen the Pony High vids?
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I have not. What is this magical thing?
2175317 Allow me to play for you the songs of my people.
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Celestia thanks you. She's been spending the better part of the last millennium trying to keep her little Ponies from living in "interesting times."
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I wish that show had been renewed. It was great!
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Trixie's life would be more dramatic than most, even in the canon version of her where she isn't the Alicorn Illusion, because she seeks out drama and excitement. Most Ponies don't choose to become traveling showponies, after all.
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Would you mind, terribly, if I ran a couple of ideas past you for Alternate Universe Celestia's rise to power? Later, of course. I'm still working on characterizing Celestia at the moment, and then I'll craft a more detailed idea for the rise from that and further refine her character.
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This is true. Trixie does seem to be the sort. Perhaps that says something about Cheese Sandwich too.
2175420 I know! I loved Ghandi and their principal.
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Sure, wouldn't mind at all ...
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Excellent! Not sure on some casting choices, like Flash as Lincoln, but all the rest are great. Not to mention, Flim flipping the cider squeezy and Dash drinking from it. Big Mac flipping the pool, which dumped out Pinkie Mirror Clones. Star Swirl saying fuck the books. Fluttershy and Dash doing the Say What bit when Gandhi was trying to make a buddy cop film, if I'm not mistaken... Celestia as Scudworth is perfect, especially with Luna on the board. I don't even recall who Discord was, but the gag worked.
Ahh. Your peoples have the best songs!
Even if it is just different animation (also the animation was simple but delightful.)
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Yeah, it's seriously a pity it got cancelled. Ah well, what they made was amazingly funny.
2176700 Discord was their half-sheep teacher.
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Excellent.
This isn't a way I'd ever thought about characterization, but it's far simpler and more intuitive than my approach. Thank you; I think this is going to make my life a bit easier (and possibly my characters a bit better).
That said; because it's easier, I'm afraid I'll end up analyzing all my side characters. Again. Exactly what I need.
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I have more examples if you'd like to see them. Silver Spoon, Celestia (AU Celestia, but still our beloved Celestia's personality,) Fluttershy, and Applejack.
Both of those last two are kinda unfinished and include have a companion piece examining how eight years of marriage will have changed both of them in the three dimensions.
2187404 Flutterjack? That's a new one to me, though I kinda see how it could work.
I appreciate the offer, but I unfortunately couldn't use them very well myself. I'm also working with an AU: Fluttershy in particular would probably just completely fail to line up, and Applejack's character arc involves a whole mess of religious conflict and a proletariat revolution.
That all said, I'd love to see those analyses anyway, if you've got them written up. This was fascinating, and I'd bet those are fascinating as well.
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Hum. There's actually been a good deal of interest in this idea... I'm going to put up an additional blog post for just these further examples.