A meta for meta-day
And now for something of passing relevance!
One comment I have begun to get on my stories from readers who have been following my work for awhile, is that I seem to be able to use the same characters from story to story, and yet make them markedly different. The Snape from Ghostwritten could not be plugged into the place of the Snape from Can't Take The Sky, for instance, and the Harry from Points can't do service for the Harry from Blood and Fire.
It surprises me when I hear authors claim that they're always writing their characters the same way, because for me, the subtle alterations in what each person can do and be with different stimuli is what writing this stuff is all about! But then again, writing was not my first art -- I came to it from Theatre, my first and greatest love, and so I have found that my approach to constructing, and portraying characters in my fiction is a bit different to a lot of other, more traditional writers. That's why my stories don't usually follow a common theme (unless you look past the smexing, that is,) because once I've sketched a character in a certain light, I don't care to go back and do it again.
I've got that comment enough times now, that I thought I might fill a bit of time today on the subject of how I do it. Clearly, this is a highly subjective process, as is all writing, so please, if you read, don't assume I'm saying that my way is the 'right' way, or that yours, if different, is wrong. This is just how I roll over here, and you're invited to have a look, if you're interested.
When you play a character on a stage, and the direction requires you to exit on stage right, part of the process is for you to ask yourself why. Why are you crossing the stage to exit over there, when there might be a perfectly serviceable door just behind you? Such a question is easy enough to answer -- maybe the door on stage right is your own bedroom, and you're off to have a sulk. Or maybe it's the kitchen, and you're after a sandwich. Not much of a decision, but it's enough to give your exit a feeling of plausibility rather than aimlessness, and even if the audience never finds out what's behind that door, your manner in exiting will 'sell' it to them.
So, rule 1; many of your character's decisions may seem abstract to the reader, but you should really know why your characters are doing what you're having them do. For you, the plot outline is your stage direction; You, the author/director, need them to do thus-and-such, and it's up to you to provide a plausible reason why they should. Not that you need to explain their every reasoning, but you, the author, have to KNOW it.
One of the biggest challenges as a method actor, is when you're cast in the role of a villain. (Please bear in mind, when I say method here, I'm talking about Stanislavsky method, not Strausberg method. Stanislavsky method says that to play a role, you must be able to imagine yourself somehow doing and saying what the script demands. If a villain, you must seek within yourself to find a place where doing that thing makes sense to you, a set of background stimuli that make that horrid thing the right thing to do. It's hard, really hard when faced with a role that involves something you, personally, hate with a white hot passion -- my hardest role to play was a drug pusher, for instance.)
So, rule 2; Nobody ever thinks of themselves as a bad guy. No matter what the bad, selfish, hurtful, horrible things they are doing, it seems right to them. You have to find a way to understand, if not sympathize, with the dark place a person has to be in order for torture or abuse to seem like the right thing to do. This is a stretch of imagination, and no mistake, but the scary thing is that sometimes it just takes a little change, rather than a big one. For instance, Lucius Malfoy makes sense if you realize that to him, muggles are not truly human. It's like if suddenly people's dogs started standing up and demanding to be allowed equal rights, and inclusion into marriage with humans. The thought horrifies him. Keeping dogs as pets is fine, if you like them, and if you want to fuck them, that's your choice, so long as you keep it out of sight, but to marry one, and dress it up in robes and boots, and say it's just the same as a man? To parade it about at family dinners, the theatre, the Wizengamot floor? To let it run amok in good quality schools? Disgusting!
See what I mean? It's an alien thought, until you GO there. Voldemort is the same way. You have to go to a dark place to understand the sociopathic, displaced self-loathing that goes on in his heart. And Draco is yet another sort of darkness -- one born of fear and willful ignorance, as opposed to true avarice and cruelty, but potentially no less damaging for all that.
And the heroic characters are no less complex, because a real hero, in a moment of real heroism, isn't THINKING of being a hero, they're just doing what makes sense to them. They're reduced to a basic level of action and reaction, and usually they can't answer WHY they chose to stay and cover their fallen comrades with their bodies, or to haul the lot of them into cover, or to press a bleeding artery for half an hour rather than run for cover. The action they took was just what seemed right to them at the time. And from that action, you can take their core of humanity, and set the tone for what kind of person they will be.
Abraham Lincoln once said that to get the true measure of a man's quality, you shouldn't judge him by how he handles adversity, but how he handles power. I find that's useful when writing characters, because at some point in the story, someone is going to get power over someone else, and what they do with it often sets the measure and pace of the rest of the story.
So, rule 3; Once you know what sets one character apart from another, it's up to you to find ways in the story to show that difference, rather than just to tell me about what it is, and leave the proving of it down to me. Selling the story is the author's job, after all. If you have a story to tell me, you must make the actions and decisions of every character in it plausible to me through their words and actions. No info-dumps allowed. Essays have their own merit, but NOT in the middle of fiction, thank you! Your characters are there on the stage for the purpose of telling me a story, so LET them!
So; here are a few questions that I find useful in helping to take the sounding of your characters within a story. It can be interesting to try it with a few of your own works, just to see how the answers shift from story to story, whilst keeping the same core elements in place.
1: A basic summary of the character's role in the story, FROM THEIR VIEWPOINT. This should be no longer than a couple of sentences.
2: Motivation. What they think they want to achieve by acting the way they're acting.
3: Goal. The real reason why they're making those choices. Remember, people often lie to themselves very convincingly, but their actions can show it when they're pulling the wool over their own eyes.
4: Conflict external. What's he up against from the outside. Some of these blockages and obstructions, he might not even be aware of, except in their effect, but you as the author should know about them.
5: Conflict internal. People do get in their own way, and they do so pretty consistently. How is your guy going to trip over his own feet? And how much of a problem is it going to be for him? This is a place where you can determine what your character is afraid of, too. What's the worst he thinks can happen here?
6: Epiphany. What changes him in this story? I believe this is really the core question for determining the power of any character-driven tale. What happens in the story should leave the main characters changed in some way. It should have an effect that lasts, or else it kind of doesn't mean anything at all. Again, this needn't be expressly told to me as a reader, but I should be able to see the signs of that change once it's underway.
7: Expanded summary. I only use this for longer stories, where there is a lot of room for change in the character's story arcs, but I find that it really is helpful in keeping the character's path within the arc clean and well paced, even if it's a train wreck.
I had thought I might do a set of answers to my seven questions, by way of demonstrating how they can highlight the elements that make the same character different from story to story, and I believe I still will do that, but I want to throw it open to the floor here. Name a character from one of my stories that YOU would like to see me outline thusly? Snape from Disenchanted? Minerva from Everybody's Fool? Harry from Mortal Flesh? Harry from Points? Hermione from Double Dare? Poppy from Can't Take the Sky? Someone I haven't named yet? Bear in mind that this can be done for secondary and tertiary characters as well, though in general it doesn't prove as useful, since your focus as a writer needs to stay on the main guys. But still, in my world there's no such thing as 'second spearman to the right.'
I'll probably pick about five or so from any replies I might get, but rather than just pick my favorites out of all the characters I've written in the past five fannish years, I'd rather see what you're interested in.
So have at!
One comment I have begun to get on my stories from readers who have been following my work for awhile, is that I seem to be able to use the same characters from story to story, and yet make them markedly different. The Snape from Ghostwritten could not be plugged into the place of the Snape from Can't Take The Sky, for instance, and the Harry from Points can't do service for the Harry from Blood and Fire.
It surprises me when I hear authors claim that they're always writing their characters the same way, because for me, the subtle alterations in what each person can do and be with different stimuli is what writing this stuff is all about! But then again, writing was not my first art -- I came to it from Theatre, my first and greatest love, and so I have found that my approach to constructing, and portraying characters in my fiction is a bit different to a lot of other, more traditional writers. That's why my stories don't usually follow a common theme (unless you look past the smexing, that is,) because once I've sketched a character in a certain light, I don't care to go back and do it again.
I've got that comment enough times now, that I thought I might fill a bit of time today on the subject of how I do it. Clearly, this is a highly subjective process, as is all writing, so please, if you read, don't assume I'm saying that my way is the 'right' way, or that yours, if different, is wrong. This is just how I roll over here, and you're invited to have a look, if you're interested.
When you play a character on a stage, and the direction requires you to exit on stage right, part of the process is for you to ask yourself why. Why are you crossing the stage to exit over there, when there might be a perfectly serviceable door just behind you? Such a question is easy enough to answer -- maybe the door on stage right is your own bedroom, and you're off to have a sulk. Or maybe it's the kitchen, and you're after a sandwich. Not much of a decision, but it's enough to give your exit a feeling of plausibility rather than aimlessness, and even if the audience never finds out what's behind that door, your manner in exiting will 'sell' it to them.
So, rule 1; many of your character's decisions may seem abstract to the reader, but you should really know why your characters are doing what you're having them do. For you, the plot outline is your stage direction; You, the author/director, need them to do thus-and-such, and it's up to you to provide a plausible reason why they should. Not that you need to explain their every reasoning, but you, the author, have to KNOW it.
One of the biggest challenges as a method actor, is when you're cast in the role of a villain. (Please bear in mind, when I say method here, I'm talking about Stanislavsky method, not Strausberg method. Stanislavsky method says that to play a role, you must be able to imagine yourself somehow doing and saying what the script demands. If a villain, you must seek within yourself to find a place where doing that thing makes sense to you, a set of background stimuli that make that horrid thing the right thing to do. It's hard, really hard when faced with a role that involves something you, personally, hate with a white hot passion -- my hardest role to play was a drug pusher, for instance.)
So, rule 2; Nobody ever thinks of themselves as a bad guy. No matter what the bad, selfish, hurtful, horrible things they are doing, it seems right to them. You have to find a way to understand, if not sympathize, with the dark place a person has to be in order for torture or abuse to seem like the right thing to do. This is a stretch of imagination, and no mistake, but the scary thing is that sometimes it just takes a little change, rather than a big one. For instance, Lucius Malfoy makes sense if you realize that to him, muggles are not truly human. It's like if suddenly people's dogs started standing up and demanding to be allowed equal rights, and inclusion into marriage with humans. The thought horrifies him. Keeping dogs as pets is fine, if you like them, and if you want to fuck them, that's your choice, so long as you keep it out of sight, but to marry one, and dress it up in robes and boots, and say it's just the same as a man? To parade it about at family dinners, the theatre, the Wizengamot floor? To let it run amok in good quality schools? Disgusting!
See what I mean? It's an alien thought, until you GO there. Voldemort is the same way. You have to go to a dark place to understand the sociopathic, displaced self-loathing that goes on in his heart. And Draco is yet another sort of darkness -- one born of fear and willful ignorance, as opposed to true avarice and cruelty, but potentially no less damaging for all that.
And the heroic characters are no less complex, because a real hero, in a moment of real heroism, isn't THINKING of being a hero, they're just doing what makes sense to them. They're reduced to a basic level of action and reaction, and usually they can't answer WHY they chose to stay and cover their fallen comrades with their bodies, or to haul the lot of them into cover, or to press a bleeding artery for half an hour rather than run for cover. The action they took was just what seemed right to them at the time. And from that action, you can take their core of humanity, and set the tone for what kind of person they will be.
Abraham Lincoln once said that to get the true measure of a man's quality, you shouldn't judge him by how he handles adversity, but how he handles power. I find that's useful when writing characters, because at some point in the story, someone is going to get power over someone else, and what they do with it often sets the measure and pace of the rest of the story.
So, rule 3; Once you know what sets one character apart from another, it's up to you to find ways in the story to show that difference, rather than just to tell me about what it is, and leave the proving of it down to me. Selling the story is the author's job, after all. If you have a story to tell me, you must make the actions and decisions of every character in it plausible to me through their words and actions. No info-dumps allowed. Essays have their own merit, but NOT in the middle of fiction, thank you! Your characters are there on the stage for the purpose of telling me a story, so LET them!
So; here are a few questions that I find useful in helping to take the sounding of your characters within a story. It can be interesting to try it with a few of your own works, just to see how the answers shift from story to story, whilst keeping the same core elements in place.
1: A basic summary of the character's role in the story, FROM THEIR VIEWPOINT. This should be no longer than a couple of sentences.
2: Motivation. What they think they want to achieve by acting the way they're acting.
3: Goal. The real reason why they're making those choices. Remember, people often lie to themselves very convincingly, but their actions can show it when they're pulling the wool over their own eyes.
4: Conflict external. What's he up against from the outside. Some of these blockages and obstructions, he might not even be aware of, except in their effect, but you as the author should know about them.
5: Conflict internal. People do get in their own way, and they do so pretty consistently. How is your guy going to trip over his own feet? And how much of a problem is it going to be for him? This is a place where you can determine what your character is afraid of, too. What's the worst he thinks can happen here?
6: Epiphany. What changes him in this story? I believe this is really the core question for determining the power of any character-driven tale. What happens in the story should leave the main characters changed in some way. It should have an effect that lasts, or else it kind of doesn't mean anything at all. Again, this needn't be expressly told to me as a reader, but I should be able to see the signs of that change once it's underway.
7: Expanded summary. I only use this for longer stories, where there is a lot of room for change in the character's story arcs, but I find that it really is helpful in keeping the character's path within the arc clean and well paced, even if it's a train wreck.
I had thought I might do a set of answers to my seven questions, by way of demonstrating how they can highlight the elements that make the same character different from story to story, and I believe I still will do that, but I want to throw it open to the floor here. Name a character from one of my stories that YOU would like to see me outline thusly? Snape from Disenchanted? Minerva from Everybody's Fool? Harry from Mortal Flesh? Harry from Points? Hermione from Double Dare? Poppy from Can't Take the Sky? Someone I haven't named yet? Bear in mind that this can be done for secondary and tertiary characters as well, though in general it doesn't prove as useful, since your focus as a writer needs to stay on the main guys. But still, in my world there's no such thing as 'second spearman to the right.'
I'll probably pick about five or so from any replies I might get, but rather than just pick my favorites out of all the characters I've written in the past five fannish years, I'd rather see what you're interested in.
So have at!
Dolores Umbridge:
2: Motivation. She wants to bring the unruly elements of both Hogwarts, and of the Wizarding World in general, under control. They must be taught to recognize that the Ministry is wiser than they, and that their resistance not only hurts themselves, but those they care for as well.
3: Goal. She fears that she herself is a weak person, and that if she were cut adrift from the protection of titles and authorities, she would be quickly ground down. Her only strength lies in politics and manipulation, so she uses those to disempower others around her, and to harness their strength for her own. She is the kind of person who destroys something beautiful because it is more beautiful than she, and she fears the comparison.
4: Conflict external. She is up against some terrifically powerful and resourceful people. People who have no interest in, or respect for her political power, and people who have taken worse punishment than she has in her power. She has to be very creative in finding ways to inflict damage on them so that they will at least fear her if not respect her.
5: Conflict internal. She doesn't like that people don't like her. She finds it hurtful that they can't recognize that she's acting in their own best interests, and this is why she presents herself as such a feminine, motherly, delicate creature. She doesn't understand why people keep forcing her to be so harsh with them.
6: Epiphany. Her imprisonment by the Centaurs demonstrated to her that yes, she is completely helpless when confronted by creatures who have no respect for Ministerial authority. While in others, this experience might have taught some humility, in her, it demonstrated just how unruly, dangerous, and horrible non-wizards, including muggles, muggleborns, and halfbloods, are. (Remember, a Halfblood and a Muggleborn were responsible for throwing her into that Centaur herd, after all, and it was a Pureblood, Albus Dumbledore, who rescued her.)
Whew! This was an interesting exercize, indeed! How does it read to you? Seeing as how I haven't made much use of her as a primary character in any of my stories, this is the first time I've had to deconstruct her this way, and it was tough, but interesting for me.
Re: Dolores Umbridge:
Your epiphany insight is really interesting, too, considering what she got up to in DH.
Re: Dolores Umbridge:
Everyone knows that it's whether you want a thing or not that matters, right? Wanting to murder someone is evil, whether or not you actually succeed. If you stop to worry whether you have a soul, you don't need to worry.
Exactly the same justifications used (and used by authors) toward heroes; I've read many a fic where Harry reluctantly learns Dark Magic/cooperates with evil people/uses an artefact of dubious morality because he standing by and letting Voldemort win would be worse; it's a heroic action, to put aside his personal issues and "do what must be done".
Isn't it funny how Harry, Remus, Sirius, Dumbledore, Tonks... the entire Order never calls "defeating the Dark Lord" by the name "murder"? They're asking a seventeen-year-old boy to perform a political assassination, and treating it as if it's a good thing to do, and for the boy to do. Because, of course, it's what they've been driven to do -- it's the only thing to do.
(I won't dare suggest to you who to do this for. I've read entirely too little of your fic.)
I wished JKR had done so.
This was fascinating and insightful. I'll definitely try your seven questions.
And speaking of villains, I'd like to see your answers for Draco from "Everybody's Fool".
May I add you to our Meta Friday masterlist at
I'll take another reply field to deconstruct Draco for you.
Draco from Everybody's Fool
2: Draco is surrounded by hypocrites. They all say they're kind, and good, and nice, and then they turn their backs on him, and act all hurt when he doesn't hide the fact that he knew all along they would betray him, and this just proves it. He acts out, sometimes, just to prove to people what hypocrites they are, and just how fragile their so-called loyalty really is. Harry is particularly difficult, because he plays the victim so well, that people actually begin to believe that Harry's not the one at fault, when Draco can prove conclusively that all his problems and Harry's really lie at Harry's own feet. He was only reacting, after all.
3: Draco is really suffering from Borderline Personality Syndrome. His own sense of identity is so weak, and so fragile, he is obsessed with it. He cannot percieve any relevance to anything unless it directly affects him, for good or ill. Anyone he loves, he will eventually turn on, in a panicked need to establish that he is an individual. Then, when he's driven them away, he sees it as an abandonment, and treats it as a betrayal. This is genuinely because for him, everything IS about him. It has to be, or else it is just too terrifying for him to cope with.
4: Conflict external: People keep on taking away his sources of support, and he's starting to get a bit desperate. This is why he's had to take up with DeCastillo -- he needs the cash since Potter's being missish, and Blaise stabbed him in the back and stole Parkinson.
5: Conflict internal: Draco knows, on some level, that what he is doing is unacceptable, but it is too painful for him to address the fears of inadequacy and abandonment/rejection issues that fuel his disorder. So even though he knows he's biting the hand that feeds him, he can't help biting -- especially when he can see a weakness, or a hot-button. He can't NOT push it, it's a compulsion.
6: Epiphany: That Harry is not coming back, and nothing he does will change that. That he has finally gone too far, and burned a bridge that cannot be rebuilt. He still doesn't understand it, or that his own actions caused it, but he has at last realized that he has no power over Harry anymore. Not even to kill him. Severus' having taken Harry's side, and, as he realizes in that final confrontation in Harry's hut, taken Harry as his lover, was the final nail in the coffin, because Draco has never known where he stood with Snape, and has never doubted that Snape could destroy him. When he's transfigured at the end there, he is terrified beyond belief.
Re: Draco from Everybody's Fool
I love this characterisation. It perfectly makes your point, and it's tragic and funny at the same time. Excellent!
Snape from Blood and Fire
2: Motivation: Freedom, pure and simple. At first, it's the freedom to die that he's after, then it's the freedom of solitude and isolation, and finally, freedom from his own burdens and ghosts that he craves.
3: Goal: To reconcile what he has had to do, and be, with the care and respect that Harry keeps on trying to force on him. To find a way, now that he has no great cause to justify who he is, to carry on, and to live the life he's stuck with. He cannot accept Harry's love, because he cannot resolve his own sins until he feels he is free to make amends on his own.
4: Conflict external: The bond, and the wizarding world's search for a scapegoat keep putting him into situations where his obligation and indebtedness to Potter cannot help but to grow. He feels each successive debt like a huge link of chain added to his burdens. This is one of the reasons why he begins to work with Shacklebolt in profiling the escaped Death Eaters -- to try and offset the burden somehow.
5: Conflict internal: He knows on some level that he could love Harry, or could at least come to love him, but that the bond between them, chaining them together, will never allow him to accept the love as anything other than the love of an owner for a pet. What he wants, NEEDS, is Harry's respect, and that, he can never have until the bond is released, and he has come to terms with his own burdens in his own way.
6: Epiphany: That it is not himself Snape hates, but his life. And because of that, it is not himself that Snape wants and needs to destroy, but his life -- all the symbols of the bad choices and horrible things he has had to do, all the hollow shapes of his sins, all the empty promises that never came true for him. He doesn't need to die, he just needs to re-form, like a phoenix from the ashes of what he once was.
*For what it's worth? I still think Blood and Fire is the best thing I've ever written. I'm so glad to hear it's your favorite too!*
Re: Snape from Blood and Fire
Word! I love approaching the same character in different ways and don't understand why other people find it odd—although I suppose that one is likely to continue characterizing in the same way if one falls in love with a certain portrayal. To each her own.
It was interesting to read about your character-building style; I'm not as structured, but your rules are fabu and I'm saving them against the day I teach another creative writing course because I think they'd make an excellent exercise. :D
I wish more people would follow this set of rules. I can't help but think it would greatly diminish the fics where character bashing takes place; that is something I always find extremely unsatisfying.
Could you tell me about the motivation of either Harry or Snape in "Points"? Whichever seems more interesting to you.
Harry from Points
2: Motivation: To finally be able to stop wondering "what would he do if...?" Curiousity is what's been driving him crazy -- especially since he no longer sees Snape every day, and is no longer constantly put on defensive against the man's nastiness. He's kind of forgotten how bad Snape can make it for him, and has slipped into crushing on the man's power and aura of intensity.
3: Goal: Acceptance. What has always hurt Harry the most, has been not knowing what it is about him that makes people like the Dursleys and Snape and Malfoy hate him without giving him a chance. What he hopes to achieve here, in throwing himself at Snape, is to find a circumstance wherein Snape finds him acceptable -- even if that is an unacceptable action in the eyes of the rest of the world.
4: Conflict external: Snape himself, as well as the basic rules of interaction between student and professor. Harry's out of bounds here, and things really could go quite badly for him if he doesn't play this just right.
5: Conflict internal: He's got to keep his complicity and eagerness to himself, because if Snape realizes that he LIKES this, and it's not onerous to him, he thinks Snape will probably turn it into the humiliation of a lifetime, and he really doesn't want to find out what he would do when faced with a rejection that cruel.
6: Epiphany: That by submitting to Snape, he seems to have oddly gained a modicum of power over him. Certainly in the realm of counting coup, anyway. When he takes off in the end there, he's quite certain that Snape is going to seek him out to even the score, but he's also pretty sure that it's going to only feed his crush, no matter what the man's revenge is. Once you've taken a man's trousers down, it's hard not to feel a little empowered, even if he's intimidating.
At least that's the theory I tell myself when it's hiding under the bed with the security binky time...
As they say in Street Theatre, your costume is more than half of your character!
Best of luck!
When I earned my living as an actor, I used to love playing the nasties and eccentrics for exactly this reason. I had an acting teacher who said that even the craziest person's world looks rational from the inside; it was just a matter of finding the unseen obstacles around which they were swerving.
It's sort of like the way that they discover new planets—they look for the gravitational effect of the planet on the bodies nearby. If you watch carefully enough, you can get a very good idea of what's there... even if it's invisible to the naked eye.
Very useful list.
Thanks.