What's wrong with character development?

There is nothing wrong with character development. You need it. But a scene that does nothing BUT character development is...often flat.

Any scene should do more than one thing. Advance plot, develop character, worldbuild, add tone/atmosphere etc etc. If it only does one of those, it isn't working hard enough.

Why can't you develop character in a scene that also advances the plot? Or at least connects to it, and/or serves some other function too?

Not every scene has to be 'go go go' action, sure. But it shoudl be something more than 'characters being themselves'*. It needs movement.



*To a certain extent this may depend on genre/the sort of book you're writing. But even character led stuff has a plot, and how your character develops should be relevant to that plot.

character development is everywhere.

But direct development needs to be woven in with the story.

I only introduce a character when I feel I can add a paragraph about them and then reinforce them with what they do/say/act through the book.

IdiotsRUs said:

There is nothing wrong with character development. You need it. But a scene that does nothing BUT character development is...often flat.

Any scene should do more than one thing. Advance plot, develop character, worldbuild, add tone/atmosphere etc etc. If it only does one of those, it isn't working hard enough.

Why can't you develop character in a scene that also advances the plot? Or at least connects to it, and/or serves some other function too?

Not every scene has to be 'go go go' action, sure. But it shoudl be something more than 'characters being themselves'*. It needs movement.



*To a certain extent this may depend on genre/the sort of book you're writing. But even character led stuff has a plot, and how your character develops should be relevant to that plot.

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I'm going to paraphrase, but action is character. How does your MC behave when his back is against a wall? A 'slice of life' does not need to be disconnected from the main story. In my WIP, my MC is introduced as he is hunting wolves that have been killing his sheep, when a messenger arrives providing The Call To Adventure. So, in those few scenes I can world build, introduce my MC to the reader and kick-start the plot.

If I were reading a book, that was getting high-octane, and suddenly the MC stops to start smelling the flowers, expect me to get pissed off.

gothicangel said:

I'm going to paraphrase, but action is character. How does your MC behave when his back is against a wall?

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Oh, sure, just say it all more succinctly than me.

That, exactly.

Sometimes character development is plot - the character has a conflict. It's an internal conflict but it is still there and no less significant for all that.

I think sometimes there are issues when people give blanket advice like this - definitive statements like 'all character development is bad' are misleading because it really depends on the situation and how well the scene is written. Is your character development actually relevant to what is going on or is it several pages of a character doing naval gazing internal monologue? This is where a beta reader is invaluable because they can sometimes see the irrelevencies better than you can and advise you to cut them and sometimes they see relevency in passages you would have cut and argue for you to keep them.

Nobody here has responded by saying 'all character development is bad.'

You are arguing with yourself.

I never said anyone had said that, only that such statements were wrong (if I were stating that I beleived someone had said something wrong in this thread I would have quoted them before I said anything). The point was about blanket advice and definitive statements and how there seems to be a trend in posters concerned about things they see as being 'wrong' because someone told them it was wrong (i.e. to use some examples I have seen here - writing in first person is wrong, using multiple PoV is wrong, you have to have X number of hours writing before you can suceed, you have to follow this way of planning and so on). I suppose my mind is obsessing on this at the moment because I am in the process of writing about it but I do see this as another example (which the other posters have made very good points about).

The advice you got was too one-sided. You can have scenes that do just character development, as long as you restrain the amount of time it happens.

It's okay for a scene to be nothing but character development, if it's a good scene. Doesn't have to advance a plot. Sometimes it's satisfying to see a character just being himself.

Manuel Royal said:

It's okay for a scene to be nothing but character development, if it's a good scene. Doesn't have to advance a plot. Sometimes it's satisfying to see a character just being himself.

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What Manuel said.

Sometimes I do this and I'm published only in short fiction, so every page is precious, every paragraph, every word, but once in a while they're just sitting on a porch, playing cribbage, listening to the ball game, shooting the breeze.

Of course there's always menace around the corner, too.

I saw that you got some good advice from the first posters and was going to stand down...then I read some posts that said (more or less) that scenes devoted to just character development are fine; stick to your guns and don't let anyone crush your fine independent spirit.

Bad advice, IMO--the first part, anyway.

There should be character development in every scene; and every scene should advance the plot. Characters are created not in one go or a couple of scenes, but by making sure that everything that character does and says and thinks adds to the layering of his character. Any scene that exists for one purpose only, like character development, is likely to slow the story down and feel like a dead spot. A scene that moves the plot forward but tells us nothing about the characters involved will feel flat. Good fiction is efficient, and good scenes fulfill multiple goals.

As for the crushing of spirit thing: it's important to say now and then that no matter how much advice you get, you really can do anything in fiction...if you do it well enough. "Should" is shorthand for "This usually works." "Shouldn't" means "This usually causes problems." For every "rule" in fiction, you can come up with examples that flout it brilliantly. So there's no iron-clad law that says you can't write a scene that doesn't go anywhere. The question is, will it fly?

I'm also gonna add that I've been reading a lot of prize-winning authors lately, even though the subject matter and type of literature usually bores me to death. (Literary fiction.) I want to know what I'm missing and since I usually read crime/mystery/horror, I wanted to also study their techniques and blah-blah-blah.

Well, some of them never heard of show not tell, and love to mess up the POV at whim. Some storylines I can't follow and others have lengthy scenes where characters sit and talk and sit and talk, ad infinitum. Plot? Okay, sometimes. Character development? Oh, they've got that down pat; in fact, in many cases that's all the dang novel is about.

I suppose if you do something well, you can do just about anything. And if you can sell what you do well, the world is your quahog.

I have never heard of any 'rule' saying that every scene must move the story line -- also called plot -- forward. I suspect you've misinterpreted something. Character development does indeed move the story (as opposed to the plot) forward. There are lots of aspects to 'story' that aren't 'plot'. Some have been mentioned already upstream.

There are some extreme examples of literary fiction where there's no plot at all. Similarly, there are some extreme examples of genre fiction where there's no character development. For most of us, we're best satisfied with stories that have some of both.

jaksen said:

I'm also gonna add that I've been reading a lot of prize-winning authors lately, even though the subject matter and type of literature usually bores me to death. (Literary fiction.) I want to know what I'm missing and since I usually read crime/mystery/horror, I wanted to also study their techniques and blah-blah-blah.

Well, some of them never heard of show not tell, and love to mess up the POV at whim. Some storylines I can't follow and others have lengthy scenes where characters sit and talk and sit and talk, ad infinitum. Plot? Okay, sometimes. Character development? Oh, they've got that down pat; in fact, in many cases that's all the dang novel is about.

I suppose if you do something well, you can do just about anything. And if you can sell what you do well, the world is your quahog.

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Just because a book's classified as literary doesn't make it good. Literary fiction is where writers tend to go to experiment, play with the form and try stuff that maybe wouldn't make sense in a mystery or any very plot-driven story. It doesn't all succeed, and it's never going to please every reader, but someone's got to push the boundaries.

I read a novel a few years ago in which a character has a several page-long discussion with his own turd as it floats in the toilet. I thought it was one of the worst passages I'd ever read in a printed book. But now the author is widely acclaimed as a genius and literary Messiah. Go know.

This idea that the plot must always be advancing, relentlessly, ceaselessly, just sounds exhausting.

The reader needs some downtime to relax with the characters and learn how they are when not being chased by zombies or shot at.

Shadow_Ferret said:

The reader needs some downtime to relax with the characters and learn how they are when not being chased by zombies or shot at.

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It doesn't have to be all go go go, like I said. No one said you can't have down time between high octane scenes (you should)But couldn't the character development happen while they're deciding how to decapitate the zombies? Or maybe your character development happens in a scene which worldbuilds and foreshadows too?

A scene which is only there for the purposes of character development is (IMO yada yada) flat. Same as a scene whose sole purpose is to show how your magic system works. A better scene would integrate those two, and perhaps connect to the overall plot as well (not necessarily in a big way.)

Even in literary (well, the good ones anyway) each scene does more than just navel gaze, or have two characters just yakking about nothing.

If a scene only does one thing it seems one dimensional (because it is). Make it do more things, it becomes more multi-dimensional.

ETA: Think about it - the most reviled scene in LOTR, the one people love to hate. Tom Bombadil. Why? Because nothing happens in it.

Some books are about pretty much nothing except character development. They're character studies front to back.

A story that interests readers is all that matters.

The issue here isn't really whether or not every scene in a book needs to be go go go (they don't), but why people were advising the OP to do away with those scenes in the first place. Sure the OP can insist that the scenes matter and that they are extremely important to the development of the characters, but if readers find them extraneous that means there is something that isn't working. It doesn't mean that character development in general is bad or that one should sacrifice character for plot. No. It simply means that in this particular situation something wasn't working with these scenes of character development.

Still, I'm from the camp of doing more than one thing in a scene. That every reaction a character makes is an example of who she is as a person, that one can develop character through action, not just by sitting around thinking. That being said, I have been known to write sitting around thinking scenes myself. And people so far have not seemed to mind them.

It's about HOW you write what you write, not always WHAT you are writing. If having someone sit around and think suddenly makes the story come to a screeching halt, or maybe if their thinking becomes a bit overt and the reader is all, "Well yes, obviously, we knew that character was already feeling that, can we move on now?", well, that's a problem.

> I have been taught that all the scenes which could be cut
> and the story still go along without them don't belong there;

Right.

> but what's wrong with character development?

Nothing.

I think you need to revise how those scene are constructed and inserted into the storyline. Do they lack tension? Is there some latent conflict character development enhances? Do they resolve some character arcs and/or start new ones? In other words, a character development scene just for the sake of character development is just a scene waiting for readers to skip it.

-cb

Toothpaste said:

It's about HOW you write what you write, not always WHAT you are writing. If having someone sit around and think suddenly makes the story come to a screeching halt, or maybe if their thinking becomes a bit overt and the reader is all, "Well yes, obviously, we knew that character was already feeling that, can we move on now?", well, that's a problem.

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I'm currently reading Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth, and this so happened this morning. He spent ten pages going into the backstory of Prior Philip, and I ended up screaming just get on with the damn story!

I'll just add that the problem with "slice of life" scenes is that they usually don't show any real character development. I don't care if the character hates strawberries in her pancakes. I don't care if she mops the floor before she sweeps it.

Everyday events are boring. I care when the character is shaken out of her daily life and forced to confront something unusual, or scary. When she's growing because she's been thrown out of her comfort zone, that's when the character is being developed.

The rest is just filler.

IdiotsRUs said:

There is nothing wrong with character development. You need it. But a scene that does nothing BUT character development is...often flat.

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This.

Any scene should do more than one thing. Advance plot, develop character, worldbuild, add tone/atmosphere etc etc. If it only does one of those, it isn't working hard enough.

Why can't you develop character in a scene that also advances the plot? Or at least connects to it, and/or serves some other function too?

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Also this.

Scenes that are advancing the plot (and all your scenes should advance the plot, even if in subtle ways) should also show character development. Character cues can be just as subtle as plot advancement can be, but every scene in your book should have a purpose -- to get your reader to keep turning the pages. The majority of readers will not keep turning the pages if a book is nothing but character exploration with no conflict for that character to work against. Even in literary novels, where the main focus of the overall work is character development, there still needs to be a plot and it still needs to move in each scene, even if those movements are subtle and secondary to the character arc.

gothicangel said:

I'm currently reading Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth, and this so happened this morning. He spent ten pages going into the backstory of Prior Philip, and I ended up screaming just get on with the damn story!

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Yes. It is worth pointing out that Follet never could get Pillars published until he'd established a career built on many fast-paced thrillers, and proven that he could write a book that would keep readers reading.

Pillars of the Earth is a great book, but it's one that unfolds slowly, and relies heavily on character development with the plot being secondary. That kind of book isn't the type that most authors can sell early in their careers.

Keep reading...it really is a good one, and Prior Philip is really cool.

jaksen said:

once in a while they're just sitting on a porch, playing cribbage, listening to the ball game, shooting the breeze.

Of course there's always menace around the corner, too.

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Exactly. In that case, the "just being himself" scenes do serve another purpose: to create a contrast between the way this character's life was before the menace and after the menace. This kind of scene can show the reader the degree of change in the character's life, and thus illustrate the severity of the stakes. And all that done without once beating the reader over the head with "telling" narrative.

I once beta-read a novel that was, I kid you not, nothing but character "development" scenes. Although there wasn't much discernible development going on. The book was based on the author's real-life experiences with sex, although it was not meant to be erotica. It was just a recounting of the author's various sexual relationships, along with "deep" analysis of her partners and how and why she kept getting into these relationships. I have no doubt that writing this huge tome was cathartic for the person who wrote it, but reading it was an absolutely miserable experience. The main character did nothing but be pensive about her situation, describe sex that was either fulfilling or not, moan about her partners' shortcomings, leave them, and then hook up with another partner. Over and over and over. That's all it was: one big "slice of life" that never changed in tone, never offered any internal or external conflict to the MC (breakups didn't seem to count as conflict since they felt inevitable from the first one). The MC never changed, never learned anything from her experiences, never had any real insights into her situation that seemed pertinent to anybody else. It was just 400 pages of hopping from one relationship to another, talking about the sex, and on to the next one. Same note held for 120,000 words. Boo. And I was in the very awkward position of telling the author that her real-life drama was interesting to no one other than herself. (Though I did suggest she spice up the sex scenes and try it out as erotica.)

So if you want to write a book that is nothing but a slice of life, BEWARE, and remember my tale of beta woe.

There are two potential issues with scenes that are written solely for characterization. The first is relevance to the main direction of the story, and the second is pacing at the multi-scene level. If the scene in question diverges too far from the direction set by the surrounding chapters, it will raise a question of relevance in the mind of the reader (i.e. why is this scene here?). If the scene breaks the pace of a set of chapters without a story-related reason*, it will make the chapter seem disjointed relative to the other chapters. This means the issue may not be with the written characterization, but how that segment of characterization is blended with the surrounding chapters and the rest of the story.

Also, it is necessary to re-check to see if the characterization-devoted chapters are really necessary. Can some of that characterization be broken up and spread through other scenes and chapters?



*pacing can and should change for some chapters since it can help set the tone, mood, and tension in that chapter.