Writer's Workshop: Quirks and Quandaries

In my review of "Look Before You Sleep," I claimed that most of the episode felt pretty same-y. Most of it boils down to a single idea: Applejack is brash and dirty, while Rarity is refined and clean. It just keeps banging on that same idea over and over again. To punctuate the idea, I coined "the dialogue game," where you simply replace whatever a character is saying with a statement of their character trait; in "Look Before You Sleep," that'd be "I'm messy!" and "I'm snooty!" over and over again.

But wait, you might say, isn't this just doing what I said in The Neverending (Back)story? If Applejack's Aspect is Messy and Rarity's is Snooty, then they're just following those archetypes, right? True, but this only gives you a good start. If we want the story to be more interesting, we need to come up with some twists to the formula that will make each scene feel fresh and novel. Let's break this down into two separate methods: change the character, or change the situation.

***

First, we can change the way the character acts. This means adding extra details or quirks to their central archetypes that complicate the situation they're in. This could be something as easy as, "I'm good with all animals except dragons," but if this hasn't been mentioned before, it can feel kinda cheap. ("I could totally solve this problem normally, but my powers aren't working right now because reasons.") On that token, you could take two character traits you've already set up, then show how they interact. So, "Normally, I love my family, but I'm also incredibly stubborn, so sometimes I struggle to keep civil with them." If we've seen episodes that show Applejack loves her family, and episodes where she's stubborn, then this new episode that combines the two will show us all the weird gradients in the middle.

But I think the most critical method to create these more nuanced characters is to show how their approach changes over the course of a story. Look at how Twilight changes her ability to handle problems throughout "Games Ponies Play." She starts by panicking and micromanaging, but when Cadance teaches her the breath-control technique, she begins using that instead. Each time she does so, the effect of it changes, and so does Twilight. Or, for another example, think about how Rainbow Dash has changed over the course of the show. In many ways, she's still very similar to who she was in episode 1, yet at the same time, she's grown up quite a bit: more observant about her friends and their needs, more grounded, more capable and self-assured. Yet a character can never slow down and stop. They need to keep growing and changing in every episode in which they appear. Yes, even when they only have one line, you can still get a little forward motion there. By showing the way the character morphs slowly over time, we can see that they're more than just a scarecrow with their most prominent traits doodled on their front.

***

The other choice would be to change the situation. If a character is, say, friendly to everyone who visits Ponyville, what do they do when someone who visits makes that extraordinarily difficult? Et voila, you have most of Pinkie's episodes. Whether this new character is grouchy or a spotlight-stealer or both, Pinkie is forced to adapt her normal characteristics for this new challenge. Like I've mentioned before, throw challenges at the characters that they don't have the answers for, and see what they do then. This was kind of the idea of the Map episodes: give one character the solution that seems obvious to them, then force them to see the problem through the eyes of the other character along with them. Here's one trick I feel can help you: try putting one character in a problem that another character would be able to fix easily. If you've seen that one picture of Link and Mario swapping bosses, you know what I'm talking about. Put Rarity in charge of something Pinkie would do normally, or make Rainbow work on something that needs a logical mind like Twilight's.

You must also make sure that the situation changes as the story moves on, just like the characters do. Remember when I talked about running out of Time or Choices? Show how the declining amount of that is changing the playing field. For example, Rarity may like to make dresses, but what does she do when she has to make the same dress one hundred times? Twilight normally likes to think slowly and logically, but what does she do when next Tuesday morning is just around the corner, and there's no time left to think? You might also be able to show how a problem requires different strategies over time. For example, in the season 5 finale, there's a pretty solid pattern of "follow Starlight, try to change things, understand the new alternate reality, escape back to the sonic rainboom." The only way to break this loop is to use a new strategy from these strategies, which is to bring Starlight along for the ride. Only then can they force her to understand the new alternate reality as well, thereby helping them to understand Starlight as well.

***

Variety, as they say, is the spice of life. To make your stories more interesting, show your characters change with new situations, new problems, new characters to bounce off of. Show how they themselves start to think differently after new events. Perhaps most of all, show how they're more than just a bundle of stereotypes and convenient character traits. I'm not saying this means we need to know what their favorite breakfast cereal is or how much they know about frogs, but if you can show some reaction that means more than just what any normal pony would do in that situation, you've got a semblance of a unique character here. Now, getting your readers to like that unique character? Whole 'nother story. But for now, let's just say that a character who's honestly trying to do their best, even when it seems impossible, can hardly go wrong in our books. So give us your characters, then show us why they're worth reading about.

Comments

[Georg]

One of the advantages of strong stereotyped characters is that whenever they interact with each other, the points of conflict are both obvious and able to be twisted into interesting interactions.
Example:
Twilight and Rarity go with Fluttershy to the National Shh Competition.
The room was silent for a moment. Rarity looked around in confusion.
“Have… have we started ye—"
*BZZZZZZT*
Twilight jumped at the unexpected sound of the buzzer. Even Fluttershy seemed shocked by how quickly the round ended.