How Important Is Character

Will Lavender · Oct 4, 2007

Preface to post: I'm an idea guy. Love high concepts, big ideas, weird and strange scenarios. But obviously you have to have a terrific voice and believable characters driving those concepts. 'Tis a given.

But here's something I've been wondering about.

Is character development in the novel as important now as it was, say, twenty years ago?

The obvious answer is an emphatic yes. When asked what makes a good novel a good novel, behind the writing itself most people would answer, "Solid characterization." Read it a thousand times. Everybody loves characters they can root for.

What's funny, though, is that the novels that normally dominate the bestseller lists are often not character studies but riffs on popular (read: Hollywoodesque) ideas. Americans fall in love with reality show characters, who are given about three minutes a week of definition. The most popular character in the world right now is a faceless autobot named Master Chief. At the cinema, people flock to see cartoony, personality-less, masked and digitized shapes that have been lifted from comic books.

So. Is a writer's ability to sketch believable characters as necessary now as it ever was?

Azraelsbane · Oct 4, 2007

Will Lavender said:
So. Is a writer's ability to sketch believable characters as necessary now as it ever was?

I'd like to think so, but I doubt it.

I love books that are character driven as much if not more than plot driven ones. Heck, I've even doomed myself by writing a character driven fantasy novel, which now that I look at all the fantasy stuff I've read, I figure it's pretty much a shot in the dark. No slaying of dragons, rescuing of princesses, or saving of worlds. Oops.

I think people still love a good, well-developed character they can root for, but I agree with you that most of the best sellers are high concept. I think it's all very plot/gimmicky oriented these days. But hey, that's what sells.

scarletpeaches · Oct 4, 2007

I always say, character is plot.

Between character-driven and plot-driven novels, I much prefer the former. In my experience, plot-driven novels are full of deus ex machina, coincidence and other piss-poor plot devices used to move the story along at the expense of the reader's suspension of disbelief.

If the characters are strong, you understand their motivations and actions and that makes for a fantastic read.

Devil Ledbetter · Oct 4, 2007

I sure hope so, having just completed a character-driven novel.

Will Lavender · Oct 4, 2007

Devil Ledbetter said:
I sure hope so, having just completed a character-driven novel.

Well, don't worry. Character-driven novels will never die. They've been around since the beginning of the printed word and will be around until the last roach poofs into a cloud of atomic smoke.

My question is more geared toward the market itself. Is popular culture's tendency to reward action and (okay) gimmickry beginning to encroach into literature in the form of a kind of limitation of character?

In short: in fifteen years, will novels look more like textual manga than the books we see on the shelves now?

Jack Nog · Oct 4, 2007

So. Is a writer's ability to sketch believable characters as necessary now as it ever was?

Well, I'd like to think so. We ain't getting all dressed up for nothing.

I do think some of your examples are partly true. For example, while I've never played a Halo game, after the release of Halo 3 I had the very same thought about what all the hullabaloo was all about. I went onto trusty (isn't that funny) Wikipedia and read all about the games. I think there is a bit of story behind the character, but true, only a bit. Apparently, there is even a novel about the series (read: fanfic).

But I agree that the public in general is obsessed with half-ass characters that are given little if any of the stage when compared to the story. Unless you count the history behind some of the blockbusters (Transformers, Spidey 3, maybe others) and then there is story there as well, if one is inclined to look it up. These examples bank on the general Johnny Q Public to either be aware of this history, or go for the flash and splash of the story and movie makeup. Either way, they win.

This is why books don't make as much as movie. I hate to say readers are more astute or intellectual, but there it is. A reader is willing to spend the time wading into the characters as well as get the story. The general public wants to see shit blow up.

Then again, I like both. I love a good movie, and a popcorn movie at that. But given the choice and the time, I'll read an 800 pager any day. I don't think that's the norm.

I still think your question is valid today. We ain't the only ones reading are we?

rugcat · Oct 4, 2007

Will Lavender said:
So. Is a writer's ability to sketch believable characters as necessary now as it ever was?

Maybe not for the fluke bestseller, but for the working writer, absolutely.

Esp. in series. People read the books for the characters, and will forgive almost any plot problems if the characters are strong enough.

Harry Potter, anyone? Rowling could have written a thousand different plot scenarios and it wouldn't matter one whit to readers as long as Harry, Ron, and Hermione were still charging through the pages.

RG570 · Oct 4, 2007

I don't think what's going on in movies is the same as with literature. Popular movies are usually cardboard.

But I mean, look at a bestseller like Odd Thomas. Great characterization in that, and it's also got the gimmick. I think in a book you can have it all.

And I'm probably very naive, but I would think that an agent or editor would choose a novel with good characterization over a crappy one that relied on a "breakout premise" like . . . midget gypsy hermaphrodite saves the lives of sentient spaghetti noodles during the second world war by disguising them as macaroni pictures which she then sells to wealthy officers and uses the money to buy antibiotics for Hitler's secret and abandoned infant son . . .

Someone on here always says "character is story" and I believe that, for better or worse. I still think this is the norm for novels, but I could be wrong.

maestrowork · Oct 4, 2007

Will Lavender said:
Is character development in the novel as important now as it was, say, twenty years ago?

The grand daddy of replies: It depends.

Some stories, especially the high concept plot-driven ones, could survive stock characters and archetypes. You can just plug in any archetypical characters and give them a quasi-background and the story will be fine. People read those stories for plot and thrills and suspense and what not.

It's not to say you can just plug in an dead-fish characters. You still have to make these "stock" characters believable in terms of their actions and dialogue, but much work has been done for you since these archetypes have been well defined, and many have been written in the past.

Truly character-driven stories, on the other hand, are rather different. Each is different from another exactly because of the characters, and many of these characters are complex, flawed... they don't necessarily fit into any of the archetypes and you have to treat each character as its own entity, and that makes character development and their relationships extremely important because ultimately they drive what eventually happens in the story.

At the end of the day, readers look for great stories. With character-driven ones, they're really looking for great characters. With plot-driven stories, the characters are secondary -- in many case, they're rather interchangeable and as long as they play their parts well in the story, everything is good. So the quirky, annoying fat kid can stay. He has to be there!

PeeDee · Oct 4, 2007

I think that the problem with books like The Da Vinci Whatsit by Dan Whodat is that they change what the landscape of the bestseller, the popular fiction, looks like. Or appears to look like. (And I'm not saying this is the case with you, Will).

The Leonardo Thingummy was very much a Hollywood novel. It was practically a movie proposal in book form. It sure as hell wasn't an interesting book. Character was about absent (er....as was everything else).

But we have recent novels by people like John Updike's with Terrorist, or Harry Potter, as mentioned, or Heart-Shaped Box, or Stephen King's work (which, in the end, are always character based)

...

And really, what is a reality TV show (good or bad alike) except about characters? COPS, properly considered, is just a character study, after all.

MidnightMuse · Oct 4, 2007

I like a happy medium, but I do lean toward character trumping. I write character driven stories, and I prefer to read those, but those interesting characters do need to be doing something equally interesting.

Turn interesting into fascinating and unique, and you've got a winner

Elodie-Caroline · Oct 4, 2007

When I am writing, my characters take centre stage. I like to add good plots, but I add the plots to show the readers how my characters deal with the situations in hand.

I give all of my characters good and bad points, I want them to be seen human and not as superheroes; for instance, three quarters of the way through the novel I'm trying to get published at the moment, my male character has a slight jealousy problem. I never really saw that coming as I wrote the story, but it makes him more understandable in the way in which he is overprotective to the female.

I love my characters as if they were my children and that's how I want my readers to feel about them too.

Elodie

Red-Green · Oct 4, 2007

Readers like me are always going to prefer character over plot--and I'm pretty young still, so I'll be reading for many years to come. OTOH, readers like my sister will always prefer books like DaVinci Code over books like The Kite Runner. The only question is--who will win? Good or evil?

PeeDee · Oct 4, 2007

Redzilla said:
Readers like me are always going to prefer character over plot--and I'm pretty young still, so I'll be reading for many years to come. OTOH, readers like my sister will always prefer books like DaVinci Code over books like The Kite Runner. The only question is--who will win? Good or evil?

I have nothing to add. I'm just happily saying that I dig your username, your signature, your avatar....and your opinions.

And now I'll go be useful somewhere.

JoNightshade · Oct 4, 2007

I think there is a trend towards "gimmicks" and "high concept plots," but just because people think they will sell. And they might, in fact, fly off shelves. But who is buying them? More importantly, who is READING them? The people I know who buy these gimmicky things aren't actually READERS. They're people who might flip through a book now and then, or THINK they want to read something, but don't.

I submit that there will always be a core group of real readers, and these people are the ones the publishers need to please in the long run. Unfortunately business is often very short sighted.

I have become so irritated with little plot gimmicks that try to get me to buy a book that if I sense that is what's happening... I put the book down, regardless of quality. Sorry, I'm not looking for an idea. I'm looking for characters. Ideas are secondary, because I already have my own.

PeeDee · Oct 4, 2007

I adore high-concept plots and plot gimmicks. They are the things that floor me first and foremost, when I discover and read about a book.

BUT....when I read the book itself and read through it, I'm not floored anymore. What I want are characters who bring me through.

For example:

One of the bestest science fiction books of the last long time is Towing Jehovah and the very concept of it, just what's on the back of the book, blew me away in an instant.

But reading it, it was the characters and the people moving around in the book which I stayed for.

(I realize I just repeated my point twice. It was just a cheap excuse to tell you all that YOU MUST READ TOWING JEHOVAH RIGHT NOW. DO IT NOW.)

Scrawler · Oct 4, 2007

If not for the characters, who cares? But if they sit around doing nothing, who cares?

blacbird · Oct 4, 2007

Why were the first three Star Wars movies successful, loved, acclaimed? Why were the second set of three, if not exactly flops, less successful, panned, derided?

The answer is the same: Characters. Great ones in the first three movies, dreadful ones in the second three. Somewhere along the line George Lucas forgot about the necessity of engaging characters, in order to concentrate on plot. And special effects.

caw

PeeDee · Oct 4, 2007

blacbird said:
The answer is the same: Characters. Great ones in the first three movies, dreadful ones in the second three. Somewhere along the line George Lucas forgot about the necessity of engaging characters, in order to concentrate on plot. And special effects.

caw

George Lucas was never that good at any of that. But with the first three movies, he had the sense to work with other writers and directors. *nerd mode*

willietheshakes · Oct 4, 2007

I don't think it's an either/or thing...

And who the hell is Master Chief?

PeeDee · Oct 4, 2007

He's the big black cook on South Park.

Azraelsbane · Oct 4, 2007

willietheshakes said:
I don't think it's an either/or thing...

And who the hell is Master Chief?

The guy from Halo.

willietheshakes · Oct 4, 2007

Ah.

See, I write books, not videogames...

Will Lavender · Oct 4, 2007

I think many are lumping high-concept with bad. Dan Brown isn't the only one out there writing high-concept novels.

There's a wealth of tremendous "idea books" put out by tremendous writers.

And we moved into the Hollywood novel long ago, IMO. But even those books rely on characters (albeit at times spare ones) to drive their plots. But what I think could happen (glancing into the crystal ball again here) is more of a move to a kind of...reality TV novel. A novel where the characters are just placeholders for the drive of the plot.

That's just a hypothesis, obviously.

I agree with everyone (and almost everyone has said this) who's said that basically literature and Hollywood are two different animals. Indeed.

Azraelsbane · Oct 4, 2007

willietheshakes said:
Ah.

See, I write books, not videogames...

I think what Will is asking is if we think they're destined to become the same.

As in, well, he said it pretty well with the manga comment above.

ETA: When I said high concept/gimmicky, it wasn't a jab at anyone in particular. I wasn't even stating that it was bad. If it works, it works.

How Important Is Character

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