The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: character

  • Whispers and Running Starts

    For me, the hardest part of any story is figuring out where to begin.

    I think everything you write, whether it be a short story or a novel or even a chapter of a novel, has multiple points of entry. The challenge is finding that introductory sweet spot that both grabs the reader and gives you a running start into the rest of the tale.

    It’s hard. And in my experience, it takes a bit of time to get there.

    Even if I know what a story is about, I have to let it cook on some back burner in my brain before I can write it down. I’m usually not thinking about some plot point or trying to figure out the twist. I’m waiting on one of the characters to say something that piques my interest.

    (more…)

  • Failed Conversion

    (Broadcast transcript provided by Station URHI, Holy Roller Radio. Creators of the forthcoming documentary Glock and Awe: God’s plan for you and your guns.)

    HOST:    Happy Monday, people! And thank you for tuning in to this week’s edition of The Wooly Pulpit, America’s premier destination for hairy men of God and the nation who loves them. 

    As always, I am your host, Cubby Carlson, and boy, do we have a great show for you tonight.

    Joining us in studio, New Argo’s newest Bible Bear, the reverend Mike Mackey. He’ll talk about becoming ordained, forming his own church, and if there’s anyone special in his life, aside from the Big Guy, I mean.

    (Laughs) 

    But before we get to the good stuff, and let me tell you people, from where I’m sitting, it is Very. Good. Stuff. Here’s a quick word from our sponsors. (more…)

  • Subplots: Sexy Enough to Deserve Your Time

    Here’s the thing about subplots. They don’t have to be your best friend, but you should treat them like your best friend’s hot sister. Nobody’s asking you to spend a lot of time getting to know her.  (But let’s be honest. Would they have to ask?) Just make sure the time you do invest is quality.  It’ll totally pay dividends in the end.

    Be good to your subplots. Show them you understand their complexities and you know their worth. Make them believe that their development is as important to you as the other plots that occupy the majority of your day. You wish that you had more time to devote, but it wasn’t meant to be.

    You and your subplots are star-crossed lovers. Victims of circumstance, meeting in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps in another life you’ll have more time for each other. Maybe the universe will do you a solid the next time around.

    But rather than bemoan what the fates have given you, it’s better to seize this moment, this day, no matter how brief. Cherish the time you have together and make it something special. If time is the enemy, then ally yourself with memory. Write a story worth remembering. One that outlives its own fleeting arc.

    (more…)

  • A Comfortable Blend (Except When It’s Not)

    I think that when we first conceive a story we all probably start with one or the other: a plot or a character. It doesn’t really matter so much as blending the two by the time you hit your final draft. I usually have a character, and sometimes a vague concept. Almost never a detailed plot. My examples:

    When I wrote my first novel, I wanted to write about a punk stuck with a blind kid while trying to find the kid’s foster mother. The plot from there just happened as I interconnected the other characters. That novel is awful.

    When I started my second novel I had a concept: a cyberpunk retelling of Sleeping Beauty, as told from the perspective of a character who wasn’t the Prince Charming analog. I followed that pretty strictly even when my characters started to deviate. By the second draft I had to pull back on that concept as the characters took the forefront. The undertones are still there, but it’s a lot less overt.

    From this I gather that for me, crafting a novel has to be a balance of the character and plot or it just sort of falls apart.

    What I find interesting is that not all stories and writers need that balance to rock an amazing story. There are stories where the characters are just a means for exploring the world and moving the plot, and stories where the plot is just a means of moving the characters together and solving their nonsense. The difference seems to be largely a matter a genre.

    (more…)

  • Characters occupy plot

    Last fall, when thousands of protesters descended on town squares and public spaces, was it the zeitgeist? Were we all zombies, drawn into this massive, not-well-publicized-enough plot? Or did each character individually have her own motives for participating?  Did the arc towards justice  articulate each of us within the plot of the year, or did we each sit down and say, hey, today is the day that I’m going to participate in an international movement for economic equality?  What’s more interesting–the fact that a big movement happened and is happening, or each individual’s motivations for participating in it, each person’s story, each soul’s hope for results?

    A relative focus on character or plot leads not only to quite different fictional stories, but also vastly different reporting and non-fiction writing.  As I move my writing more in the direction of non-fiction, I realize that the concerns are not so very different.  Will a vicious new law outrage people in its very existence, or is it better to vocalize the law’s effects through a sympathetic person of interest in the case?  Which is more accurate, more moral?  When it comes to something like Occupy Wall Street, does a focus on the individual add to or detract from the overall plot?  What about something more sinister, like horrific shootings–better to parse the reasons for a violent society, or consider the motives and mental imbalances of the individual with the gun?

    As a writer I emphasize plot.  After all, each character is just one of many affected characters, and appropriating another’s life feels exploitative, taking someone else’ story and using it to communicate my ends.  It’s also an appeal to pathos instead of logos, which is not my nature.  Worse, I do see a focus on character as upholding a more individualistic view of society as opposed to the collective, solidarity-building approaches towards which I work.

    And yet…

    Nobody ever made me cry more than Tess Durbeyfield.  And not so much because of the plot surrounding her, but because of her bravery, her fidelity, her perseverance in hopeless circumstances, all without having a conniving bone in her body. I remember characters; she has become part of me, in a way that Neal Stephenson’s gloriously plot-driven fellows have not.  Plot convinces, plot recollects experience and provides a new experience to the reader, but finely etched characters stick in the mind and the bones.

  • Character vs. Plot: The Chicken or the Egg?

    The simple answer to whether plot or character is more important is that it depends on what genre you’re talking about. If you write literary fiction, character is king. The plot is secondary.

    But I don’t write literary fiction. In genre fiction, specifically urban fantasy for me, both are of equal importance. A great plot with lousy characters is just as bad as great characters walking around with nothing to do.

    Characters drive the story. And the story herds the characters into becoming richer and more fully formed.

    So, the question becomes, which comes first?

    Usually, a “what if” strikes me first. A premise hits out of nowhere, asking a question or giving me a weird scenario. Looking at it that way, you might say plot comes first.

    You’d be mistaken.

    For Monster in My Closet, it began as a vision of a closet monster sitting at someone’s kitchen table, reading the newspaper. From there, I knew that monsters came to the kitchen owner’s house for help. Hijinks and danger would ensue.

    That’s not a plot. That’s a premise. The plot came later. Much later.

    The most important thing for me from that point on was to find out who these things would happen to. I didn’t care about the what until the characters were in place. I could see the monster at the table. Who was standing there in shock, looking at him with me?

    I knew all about Zoey and her back story long before I’d mapped out what was going to happen to her. Her personality and her reactions informed the plot. If I don’t know who my main characters are before I write the actual story, it’s going to veer off in the wrong direction and dead end.

    I know this because it happened last year.

    I’m working on a second series about a djinn. Kam is completely different from Zoey, but I started writing her story before I’d really nailed down who Kam is. The first 3000 words or so went really well. The next 20,000 words went so off course, I have to start from scratch. That first scene can stay, but the rest is complete nonsense. She was too nice. She was too helpful.

    She was too Zoey.

    So, which is more important, plot or character? I guess I’ll have to change my original answer and say character. In genre fiction, if the character isn’t good, the plot’s going to suck. But if the character shines, she’ll take the plot right where it needs to go.

  • Character and Plot: A Healthy Codependence

    Hypothetical: Someone walks up to you on the street and says, “Character or plot driven?”

    Let’s go ahead and assume they’re not wearing their favorite shade of inmate orange.  Oh, and they don’t have on one of those snazzy jackets with the sleeves that latch together at the back.  Aside from slowly backing away while using your peripheral vision to scan for cops, what do you do?

    For my money, the only correct way to answer that question is “yes.”

    Like most things in life, the discussion of plot versus character driven fiction is a slippery one.  It’s not black and white, and anyone who says otherwise is either too inexperienced or too myopic to realize that all the fun debates are taking place in the gray areas.

    (more…)

  • Surprise!

    In character development, as in a lot of other aspects of writing, having a good reader is an essential part of the writing process.  A response helps clarify if you have communicated what you intended to, or if you have written down quite another world than the one inside your head.

    Classic writing class instruction includes the axioms “Show, don’t tell,” and “specific is terrific.”  These have good ideals at their heart, especially concerning character development. Only Republican presidential debate transcripts are more agonizing to read than paragraphs of development through description.  “Mary Sue was a brave girl, intelligent, but understated.  She enjoyed eccentric clothing and pop music of the indie persuasion, and her kindness was obvious.  But she had a dark side, too.  Mary Sue was a passionate mix of the good and evil that lies in all of us.”

    However, if an author eschews explicit narration altogether, s/he may find that the audience takes away some surprising notions about a character.  This is where a good reader comes into the mix.  My brother is probably my best reader (as my husband has to be more supportive than critical), and after he read one of my novels, he asked me, “Was the judge supposed to sympathize with the government or the protestors?”  I launched into a tirade of explanation–how could this have even been in question?  Alas, if I wanted the audience to understand the judge’s motivations, I would have had to tell them what they were.

    When I’m writing, I always know if my character is inscrutable or creepy.  Sometimes I don’t let my audience know, though.   I know who I meant to introduce; only my audience can tell me who they met.

  • Show Me Yours, and I’ll Show You Mine

    For a couple semesters in college, I tried my hand at being a photographer.  I was average at best, but enthusiasm carried me through the classes.  Of all the things that I learned from both a technical and aesthetic standpoint, the critique sessions are what stick with me.

    I have very clear memories of my professor standing in front of the far wall of the classroom where all the students’ assignments had been mounted.  He’d walk up to each photograph, hunch over to examine it, and scowl.  Then he’d invariably say the following, “You shouldn’t need a caption to tell me what it’s about.”

    I think about that phrase all the time.

    Maybe it’s because our defeats cut sharper memories than our victories.  Perhaps that’s why they motivate us so well, because they don’t easily fade.  I prefer to think that this particular memory endures because it was really great advice.  In essence, the professor was saying to any of us who were listening: show me, don’t tell me.

    (more…)

  • Commercial Breaks and Soundtracks

    It’s all music and television for me. Though not together. That’s just silly.

    I’m really into television as a medium. I will marathon a television show just so I can watch a whole story unfold at once; it’s the closest we get to novels in a visual format, if novels had filler episodes. (It’s not a perfect metaphor.) And while I have no interest in ever writing for television, I certainly I think that episodic format influences how I craft and manage scenes within a story.

    First there’s the matter of formatting. I will structure a story in scenes, sometimes on the short side, to set up for one relatively long climactic scene. I will set scenes that end in abrupt points, and jump into another scene as necessary to make sure the story is told as I want to reader to experience it — I can’t imagine telling a story without the best characters on the keyboard: ***. This scene’s over? Eff it — put in a commercial break and get on to the next one. I assume that’s normal, but honestly? I’ve never really paid attention to the way scenes are structured while reading. If I did, something is probably going wrong within the story.

    (more…)