The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: characters

  • The Indeterminate Genre

    To answer a question about why I write my genre, I first would need to pick a genre as “mine.” And I can’t really do that. Sci-fi, fantasy, horror, romance, all these (and more!) appeal to me at different times. I can’t lock down on one genre as my favorite, or even having a preference. I’m much more likely to figure out the genre once I get a decent story idea in place, rather then say, “I’m going to write a fantasy story.” When I set about to writing something genre, I find it full of stereotypes and cliches. Deciding from the beginning to write a genre story is too constricting for me. When I make a plot, and a real character or two, and work the genre around them, I find myself with a much more interesting story.

    Looking over the past year of writing though, there’s one thing that most of my stories have in common: they’re almost always set in a contemporary setting with at least one foot in normalcy. Where that other foot steps is always the question. One story might be a monster-hunting horror story, another might be an alien invasion, and another might look into the heart and soul of loneliness, but in order for me to have relatable, sympathetic protagonists, I want that anchor in the real world. These stories always start out with a basic plot and character and go from there. The genre writes itself. Is it a comedy? Horror? Does it take place in the past or future? These are questions that don’t have answers until I have a story, and every story goes on a different path.

    Not to say a pure genre story is terribly hard to write or read, but I will usually find the story more enjoyable if I can look out the window and see some of the same things my protagonist would see. I guess you might call my favorite genre “urban”. Instead of a fantasy story in a mystical land, I’d much rather put the elves and magic in the modern, contemporary world and see what kind of trouble happens. It can even be set in the past or future, as long as it’s about real people doing real things. A Sci-Fi story about space battles doesn’t interest me; I’m much more likely to write about the people down at the planets surface and the effects of said space battle on their lives.

  • Hidden Hangout (Episode 3.8)

    MAURICE:   Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Hidden Hangout. As always, I’m your host, Maurice the Closet Monster.

    (Theme music accompanied by awkward dancing around the set)

    We’ve got a fantastic show lined up for you. In our cooking segment, we’ll be showing you some great tips for saving money on your grocery bill by shopping from your neighbors’ garden when they’re not home.

    We’ll be talking with treasure expert, Bruce the Pygmy Dragon. He’ll be sharing his favorite brass polishing tips, as well as some advice on how to shop for the best deals on antiques at flea markets.

    And , yes, you’ve probably already heard about it. We have Yanni in the house today! (more…)

  • Too Many D*cks on the Dance Floor: Doing More with Less

    In my own writing, I don’t usually work with a large cast of characters. I like simple stories that are more or less stripped down to their bare essentials. Whenever I write a scene that has more than two characters, I tend to get worried about whether or not everyone is getting equal billing.

    Has the third wheel gotten enough lines? Do they even have anything to add at this point? Will the reader wonder where they’ve gone if I don’t mention them soon? It’s a point of stress for me that I try to avoid whenever I can.

    That being said, I see absolutely no reason I can’t offer you advice on the topic. Just think about it like someone with agoraphobia giving you tips on how to enjoy the great outdoors. At the very least, it could be entertaining. And, really, what else do you have to do for the next five minutes?

    (Most likely the answer is a lot of other things, but for now let’s pretend your schedule’s wide open.) So buckle up. Here we go.

    (more…)

  • Getting It Out In View

    What you see is not necessarily what you get. The well-dressed man’s brain is filled with realistic though bizarre characters who will get under your skin. Image borrowed from here.

    I recently finished a book by the crime writer Jim Thompson. If his name is unfamiliar to you, you may have seen one of the films of one of his books: The Getaway, The Grifters or The Killer Inside Me. Or maybe you saw his scripts filmed by Stanley Kubrick: The Killing or Paths of Glory. Or maybe this is the first time you’re hearing about him.

    His stories are peopled with characters who are so twisted, so damaged that one cannot turn away from the story. It’s like each person he’s writing is such a train wreck that to not look is impossible. Pop. 1280 is the most twisted thing I’ve read since The Killer Inside Me. In Killer, you’re as involved as the main character in every depraved act that’s committed, complicit in the crimes. The same is true in 1280, but he adds a layer of racism that’s beyond uncomfortable and it’s even uncomfortable in the mind of the narrator.

    Each book, written in first person, puts the reader deep inside a main character’s insidious brain squirming with creeping tendrils of evil and malice disguised as rational thought. It’s unnerving, to say the least. I couldn’t stop reading. I had to know what was going to happen next.

    Dropping compelling characters into bizarre circumstances is certainly one way to keep me engaged in a story and Pop. 1280 is a master class in how to do it. Each chapter ends not just on a cliffhanger, but with the expectation that while that may be a nice place to stop you’d better not. If you do — well, let’s just say that no matter what you think might happen next it won’t hold a candle to what does happen. It’s not the shock value that kept me reading, it was that the darker the places his characters went the more it made sense. He drew me deeply into those parts of my psyche that I don’t often go. (more…)

  • Who’s Your Favorite Fictional Character?

    The Cafe is full of creatures and people of all sorts, populated by the Confabulators’ imaginations. We do our level best to bring each of them in, fully formed, to enjoy the ambiance of the Cafe.

    This week, after asking several questions about vampires and fantasy novels and such, we’re going to pin our contributors down and ask them, specifically: who is your favorite fictional character? The answers, given our penchant for wild invention, may surprise some us.

     Jack Campbell, Jr.

    I love Grendel, from John Gardner’s Grendel. He is such a complex, unnerving character. As a reader you bounce back and forth between sympathy and hate. He is utterly human in his lack of humanity. Gardner was genius in bringing to life Beowulf‘s monster in a way we have never seen before. I laughed. I loathed. I loved. It was spectacular.

    Sara Lundberg

    Characters become friends when I’m reading. Whatever book I’m reading at the time, my favorite character is from that book. There are a few that have stuck with me long after finishing a book, though, and the one that demands my favoritism is Jericho Barrons from Karen Marie Moning’s Fever series. Just the name itself gives me goosebumps. This is a man who is older than dirt, knows everything, goes after what he wants, isn’t ashamed of what he is, and has more honor than any knight. Plus he’s sexy as hell, to boot.

    Jason Arnett

    I’m a comic book guy, you all know that by now. I’ve never been a huge Batman fan because, well, in order to be Batman you have to be extraordinarily wealthy. Yes, he’s a normal guy who trains like a demon and is, in fact, a supreme bastard. Out of the three things I’ve listed, the only one I have going for me is the bastard thing. I’m more a Superman fan because, well, he’s an adopted Kansan and he and I share some important values. I understand him as an outsider just trying to fit in, trying to do good where he can. As Clark Kent, he has a job and friends. I have a job and friends, too, and I fell in love with a co-worker the way he did. My wife doesn’t get into the same jams that Lois Lane does, but it’s similar. Superman is an ideal of goodness. That’s more my speed.

    Ted Boone

    Wow, tough one. I like a mercenary in the Thieves’ World anthology named Tempus Thales. He’s cursed by a wizard to live forever, be scorned by anyone he loves, and anyone who loves him dies horribly. Such a perfect tragic figure.

    Angela Kordahl

    Anne Shirley still qualifies as my all time favorite fictional character.  She’s bold, talks a lot, and doesn’t let her awkwardness prevent her from leading a full, vibrant life.  She is a writer and a teacher and a mom, and despite the fact that she was created over almost a century ago still provides a model for strong, loving women everywhere.  She manages to imbue her fairly ordinary life with meaning, and I love her for it!

    Kevin Wohler

    My favorite fictional character is Superman. I could (and often do) go on at length why he is such a great character. But it comes down to this: Worldwide, Superman is a recognized symbol of hope and humanity. He is a non-religious example of what people should strive to be: always helping others, doing the right thing, and inspiring the best in others.

  • Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

    One of the annoying aspects of writing for a government is that usually there are plots, but no characters, main or otherwise. In fact, there are often no subjects in the sentences. Things happen, events unfold spontaneously. Objects are acted upon by mysterious forces, perhaps deployed by black helicopters. The passive voice is used excessively. Government has agencies, but no apparent agents.

    Passive voice is constructed by literally removing the subject from the sentence. Compare and contrast:

    “I swung my vorpal blade in a powerful snicker-snack, and left the Jabberwock for dead.

    “The vorpal blade was swung in a powerful snicker-snack, and the Jabberwock was left for dead.”

    Who killed the Jabberwock, again? What was his name? What color is his hair? Could you pick him out of a crowd? Can we give him a medal, or cite him for cruelty to Jabberwocks? Who is to take credit? Who is to take blame?

    Passive voice removes the humanity from writing, which is why it should never ever be used, and why it will never be eradicated. It’s the “I didn’t do it,” of literary convention, which is why it probably crept into the government styleguide, there to spread as inexorably as kudzu, and as difficult to eradicate.

    Do yourself a favor. Don’t ever use passive voice. It’s a bad habit, like picking your toes in a good restaurant.

  • Which is more important to you: plot or character?

    I can barely separate and prioritize plot/character when I write, as they are so closely intertwined in fiction. Nevertheless, I consider the prime purpose of writing fiction to be storytelling, so “plot” gets the nod, followed by character and then setting, also vitally important to fiction.

    By definition, a piece of fiction (novel or short story) moves one or more characters through settings. Ideally, the character undergoes conflicts at various points in the plot until s/he must conform to the various pressures – i. e., change – and then move on through life. This process is essentially the same in a novel or short story, although by definition (again) a short story revolves around only one main character who learns one truth about life (at the climax), whereas a novel involves several major characters who may experience a number of “a-HA!” moments when learning various truths about life.

    A character’s personality, therefore, depends up on what happens to him/her and how he reacts as the plot progresses, although a character can certainly influence the progression of the story.

    Nevertheless, without plot a story is not a story; without character it is a description of setting; and in essence character and plot must combine to produce a story which takes place in a setting.

    Complicated, yes – but so is life, and since Poe allegedly invented the short story, the process has worked, and the two fictional forms of novel and short story have entertained readers well.

  • Plot vs. Character: Save the eggs; torch my metaphor

    “If your story was a house on fire, what would you run in and save?”

    Brad Bird ~ Writer/Director

    (Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Mission Impossible – Ghost Patrol)

    Plot vs. Character? No doubt in my mind, I’d save the characters.  Here’s why:  character drives plot.  The “stuff” of story, the desire that drives choices and actions made under the pressure of dilemma, are all expressed through character.  If you don’t have them, you don’t have plot, and ultimately, no story.  Characters are the eggs, if you will; plots are the chickens they hatch. (Which came first is another post, but it’s the egg per my high school zoology teacher, Mr. Highfill, an amazing character in his own right, so I’m going with egg.)

    But I digress.  Yes, I’m giving the edge to the egg, but what about that chicken? Is it just crowing in the morning, pecking at the ground, taking a nap, running around the barnyard, going to sleep, and doing it all over again the next day?   This is not plot, this is not story.  This is activity not action.  The chicken that comes out of that egg has got to be top notch, too, or no one is going to hang out in the barnyard to see what happens.

    To put it all together, your eggs need to have Grade A burning desires, inner and outer conflicts that create dilemmas, through which they make choices to try to reach their goal, and thus, advance the story.  These choices and their results create the chicken, which in turn acts on the characters (eggs) and so on to the last action in the series, the end of the road.  Perhaps just before Sunday dinner when the horse, who, against all odds, has fallen in love with the chicken, kicks the axe out of the farmer’s hands, and, together, horse and chicken ride off into the sunset.

    So, to take this horrible pun to the end: go lay some fresh eggs; the chickens will be tasty.

     

  • Plot > Character (But both matter. A lot.)

    Plot is more important to me than character. Without a plot, there is no story. Without a story, what the heck are we doing? Character sketches are well and good, but I’m more interested in the voyage, not the people traveling with me.

    That said, terrible characters can ruin a good plot, while interesting characters can totally save a horrible plot. You definitely need a good mix of both to have a successful story.

    As a SF guy, I’m probably more tolerant of plot-driven, character-poor stories. If the story uses lots of
    whiz-bang technology that bends (or breaks) the laws of physics, and those plot points are illustrated to me, the reader, via wooden, two-dimensional characters…I’ll still probably dig it. I’m in it for the pseudo-science as much as anything else. Other genres may not allow for the level of forgiveness I sometimes mete out to the books I read.

    That said, the truly memorable, interesting, recommend-to-everyone-you-know stories are the ones
    with whiz-bang technology wielded by kick-ass characters. So, Permutation City by Greg Egan manages to bend my noodle with its technology, but its characters are only “meh.” On the other hand, Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan manages to wed far-future tech with a hard-as-nails detective Takeshi Kovacs, and the combination results in a story I’ve shared with anyone that’ll listen. Likewise, John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War combines neato tech with a fascinating set of characters, and the final product is nearly perfect.

    So, Plot comes first for me. But Character is almost as important, especially when you want to elevate a good story into a great story.

  • Who are you and what do you want?: Developing characters and finishing what I start

    Back when I never finished anything, I used to just give my characters a name and a situation and watch the ‘fun’.

    But it wasn’t enough, I cannot be pantsless (See Confabulator Ted Boone’s Pants are optional. Plans are not. | Confabulator Cafe.) and I never finished anything! And it wasn’t all that fun, either.  Not that it was their fault. Among other things, I found through this process that I needed to know these people extremely well to have a grasp on how they might act, or react, to other characters and the situations I put them in, and, come to think of it, what the situations might be that they’d be in in the first place.  Is this making sense?  Hello?

    Writers need limits, or this one does anyway, to circumscribe the possibilities, to give boundaries to work in, to pressure the work to make it go.  Willy nilly is too chaotic for me, too many choices (like those giant @&#% menus at chain restaurants) made me a worse writer, and I NEVER FINISHED ANYTHING. Did I mention that?

    Now I use character worksheets to help me think about what these people look like, their backgrounds, relationships, desires; I use screenwriting techniques; I brainstorm with people about what might work; I practice with my characters in situations other than the story I think they want to tell.  I think hard about them:  What do they want to say? What do they want more than anything in the world? What’s to stop them? Then what? Go from the inside out. I’ve ‘finished’ some things, but it doesn’t end there–I’m still trying to make them better in revision, and I find getting down to the base motivations of my characters is a big part of that making that process better, too.

    As for the reader, oh yeah, I do not want to insult the reader with boring, cliché, two dimensional characters, the actions need to flow coherently from who these people are and if they don’t, well, I hope you do shut your laptop or throw down the pages in disgust. I’m lucky to have your attention in the first place.  And that’s a pretty good motivator…