Classic Being a Better Writer: Character Odds and Ends · 6:57pm Nov 17th, 2017
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Classic posts dig into a four-year archive of weekly BaBW articles to dig up a couple that are relevant to one another, forming a quick and easy to browse sampling of some of the site's various writing articles.
Today? A few odds and ends, from character versus plot (and what that means) to language!
No beating around the bush here. Let's get going!
Character Versus Plot—
We’ll start with the underlying concept behind these two options: All stories are driven by something. Now, when I say that a story is driven by something, I don’t mean the antagonist, or the inciting incident, or even the growth of the character. What I’m referring to by driven is the events or actions by which the story is pulled forward.
Bilbo leaving Frodo the ring, for example, is something that pulls the story forward. Harry receiving a letter from Hogwarts. Vin being noticed by Kelsier. A story is, in it’s purest, simplified form, a collection of events. But something inside the story must happen in order for these events to occur. Cause and effect.
What I’m discussing today is the method by which the story moves forward. Is it character-derived, or plot-derived?
Common Problems with Character Emotion—
More specifically, we’re going to look how writers handle giving their characters emotions, and where a lot of the common pitfalls occur.
So right from the start, I’m going to assume we’re all on the same page here. We wantour characters to have emotion. We want them to be well-rounded, well developed … real, in other words. We want characters who are complex, with multiple facets to their character who remind us of real people. We want a character who seems real. We do not want a flat character.
But the challenge is that writing such a character is quite difficult, and many authors fall into pitfalls along the way. And I’m not speaking of just novice writers out there either, plenty of long-term authors can still be guilty of making any number of these mistakes, falling into traps by either cutting corners or not realizing what they’ve done. And for it, their work suffers. Characters become “props” in a story, interchangeable parts that simply drop into scenes or events to fulfill a purpose.
Language—
If you’ve never considered how the language of different characters and scenes can affect your writing, well, it’s definitely worth thinking about.
But today, I’m going to talk about a different kind of language.
Foul language.
Some of you might not recognize the term (as it isn’t as widely used anymore), so I’ll get a little more specific. Swearing. Cursing. Derogatory words. Words and phrases that are generally considered impolite. The “F” word. D**n. Stuff like that. And yes, I’m censoring them for this blog. Family friendly.
You got that? All right. Are you ready for one of the biggest shocks of your life?
You shouldn’t be using them. At least, not nearly as often as you do.
Out of the three listed, this is the one I like the most. Some of the best stories I’ve ever read have either no swearing, or it’s limited to one-to-two characters that infrequently do.
That said, foul language incoming!
Luna’s beard, Hagrid’s buttcrack, unicorn turds, oh sweet Celestia!