Quirky characters

I like it when it's earned. I think it works in Napoleon Dynamite, and I think it works even better in Little Miss Sunshine. The characters really inhabit their quirks.

In novels, I think Ignatius J. Reilly, in A Confederacy of Dunces, is an incredibly vivid quirky character.

Sometimes it's lazy: the writer gives us a bunch of quirks rather than personality traits. "He's a pizza-loving vampire who wants to be an Elvis impersonator! She's an obsessive-compulsive Ukrainian mail-order bride!"

There's something that many of the most bizarre broad comedians say, that I think is useful for writers to remember as well--the quirky person doesn't seem quirky to themselves. As far as they're concerned, their behaviors are all logically motivated. Peter Sellers famously said this about Inspector Clouseau--from Clouseau's perspective, the movies are about a hard-working police officer thwarted at every turn by a confusing and frustrating world. They wouldn't be funny if Clouseau saw himself as a buffoon.

It's a case of whether or not the character - quirky or not - jolts me out of the "suspension of disbelief" mode I get when I read. The more over the top the character is, the less likely I'd be willing to read about them. On the other hand, if it's less in your face about it, then I don't mind as much.

I lean toward idosyncratic rather than quirky. I think this is probably what i call the TV effect. Most comedy shows have characters who can be described as IceCream did. They're going for cheap laughs.

Oh, that's great! I hadn't heard that before and it's true. I take myself as an example. Apparently, people think I'm weird, but at the moment that I'm doing or saying something that will later be described as "weird" by my friends and family, I'm totally sure that it's the normal, rational thing to do. Usually, I still feel that way after the fact.

It's why Napoleon Dynamite works. Napoleon doesn't see himself as a weird nerd. He's totally normal in his mind.

IceCreamEmpress said:

There's something that many of the most bizarre broad comedians say, that I think is useful for writers to remember as well--the quirky person doesn't seem quirky to themselves. As far as they're concerned, their behaviors are all logically motivated. Peter Sellers famously said this about Inspector Clouseau--from Clouseau's perspective, the movies are about a hard-working police officer thwarted at every turn by a confusing and frustrating world. They wouldn't be funny if Clouseau saw himself as a buffoon.

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I don't like illogical, silly quirkiness for the sake of having quirkiness.

I don't like it when I can predict that a joke is coming, only because that character starts appearing in the back round and then you hear him speak silliness or acting strangely.
If it's an interesting, and hopefully unexpected, quirkiness, then I'll very likely appreciate it.
Jack Sparrow comes to mind.
For example, a scene from the 3rd film: the brethren court, it's this whole gathering of pirate lords talking about what they should do about their imminent demise as pirates and at some point there are two of the pirate lords that say to cut out the tongue of a traitor and shoot him.
And Jack comes with "Shoot him, then cut his tongue then shoot his tongue."

It's this unexpectedness that I like.

And I agree with IceCreamEmpress. Their silliness must be the most natural thing for them and their quirkiness must have never been addressed by others. It has to be an innocent quirkyness. A cute lack of discipline somewhere in their minds.
Quirkyness is funny when it's done with utmost seriousness.

I like it when the ambient is serious and then a silly character comes about and just makes it all a bit more interesting because you start to wonder "how will these other serious characters face this unusual guy/girl?"
It has to do with curiosity.
The quirks have to be interesting and we should see how it affects the others, who aren't as quirky.

I personally like to have quirkiness in the story, not necessarily in the characters only.
things can happen that the characters have no control over, but it's just silly...and quirky.

One of my favorite quirky character stories is You Can't Take It With You. Everybody in the family is quirky in some way, but we see the quirkiness through the eyes of so-called "normal" people. Auntie Mame also comes to mind.

Quirkiness for the sake of quirkiness is stupid

But I live with quirkiness. I know quirky people. Quirky is realism to me, but there has to be full consequences of quirkiness, like the odd looks and it's not all zany comedy all the time. Zany comedy annoys me.

Idiosyncrasy:
1. a characteristic, habit, mannerism, or the like, that is peculiar to an individual.

If characters aren't idiosyncratic, then what are they, stereotypes? Archetypes? That's part of what makes them a individual and a unique character, rather than just an archetype.

maestrowork said:

Especially a whole cast of them (a la Napoleon Dynamite). Love them? Hate them? Indifferent?

There seems to be a trend, especially in movies now, to have very quirky characters -- the more bizarre the better. And it's not limited to comedies. Sometimes there's not one "normal" character in the whole story. What do you think about them? Do you like quirky characters? Or do you prefer more "realistic," normal people in the stories you write or read?

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Normal people ARE quirky! It's all about how you present those quirks. For instance most of my family appears pretty normal (I do too, if I make an effort at it) but if I were to point out and emphasize their quirks, such as how my step-sister can't stand the sound of other people chewing food, it becomes humorous and adds a little spice to an otherwise apparant normalcy. Personally I find this sort of thing amusing, and I actually search for books that have characters like that. To me that's more real than someone who appears to be "normal."

It's tricky to do well. Most authors simply give us a quircky character, and then try to make him human by having him surface from the quirks, momentarily, in a crucial scene. Little Miss Sunshine was heinously guilty of this, and it amounts to a poor understanding of human behavior, in my opinion.

But when it's done well, when the quirks are truly based on human logic and emotion, nurtured from the ground up, it can be gold. King Lear's fool? Eyes down, please.

Quirks can set a characters apart and they don't have to be something big or obnoxious. I've one, a publisher/agent character who pops her knuckles and there's more pops than knuckles according to her author/friend. A mage has a conversation with a old friend and always sets up something like changing views out of the window just to be annoying. I do these to give depths to the characters, to make them more than the standard type.

maestrowork said:

Especially a whole cast of them (a la Napoleon Dynamite).

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Tough to pull off a whole cast of quirkies so that you don't get distracted by the characters and lose track of the story, especially if all of the characters are over the top.

Small quirks are what define people, IMO. Giving characters identifiable traits is what makes them more interesting.

As Sassee says, everyone has quirks.

Therefore, to me, all characters should have a quirk or two.

However, I am not terribly interested in a story that is all about the quirk. Generally makes for a shallow story. There should be balance.

A cast of quirky no doubt works better in humor, but that's probably why I don't find 'humorous' stories and movies funny. Like that Napoleon Dynamite referenced above--I haven't seen it because it looks like the sort of movie I'd not see the point of.

Kramer in Seinfeld is the ideal quirk character.

He works though because everyone else around him is relatively normal. A houseful or a complete novel of quirky characters might work in humor.
All of us a quirk or two. But I guess we are considered normal people.
Are We?

Do quirks need to be funny?

I don't think they need to be, but they often are, even in real life when they're tragi-comic. I worked with a guy who suffered some serious mental health issues after Vietnam and he had this completely crazy thing he did. He blinkblinkblinked way too much. Tons more than other people and then abruptly, he pressed his hands to his eyes, and then stared without blinking for a minute or so. He did this dozens of times a day. It was sad and yet, until you got used to it, it was hard not to laugh.

Shweta said:

Do quirks need to be funny?

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HourglassMemory said:

I don't like illogical, silly quirkiness for the sake of having quirkiness.

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Ditto that! I've never met a human who wasn't quirky in some way shape or form; it's just a fact of nature. People are weird. So to me quirkiness in a character is just realism, a layer - provided it's not taking center stage. If I'm going to be reading about or watching a character with a quirk so all-important I can't get through a scene without thinking about it, it had better be in some way connected to the plot.


This reminds me I still haven't seen Napolean Dynamite. Time to head to Blockbuster...

I don't generally write quirky characters. A number of the people in my head are pretty much clinical sociopaths, but I wouldn't describe them as 'quirky' even if they have small, individual, defining quirks (a.k.a. Kite swears in Mandarin and talks like Mal Reynolds). On the whole, I prefer characters who behave in a logical manner based on their background and circumstance... this can mean a whole lot of things.

If their quirks make us look at what is "normal", question it, and laugh at it then, yeah, bring it on. But if their quirks are obviously held up like so many cardboard signs that shriek LOOK AT HOW QUIRKY THIS PERSON IS! OH, LAUGH AT THEIR QUIRKY FOIBLES BECAUSE OF THEIR QUIRKY QUIRKINESS!, then I'll take a pass. There has to be a believable balance in their characters.

TheIT said:

One of my favorite quirky character stories is You Can't Take It With You. Everybody in the family is quirky in some way, but we see the quirkiness through the eyes of so-called "normal" people.

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My parents met in a high-school production of that play in 1939 or so. The quirkiness isn't forced or in-your-face; there's a gentle quality about it, and I like that.

But I can't stand oddities for their own sake, where you sense that the author has said something like, "Why should this character be merely a fortune-teller? I'll make him a mystic circus dwarf who channels Rock Hudson through his monocle." Or, conversely, the character may be more realistic on the outside, but inside s/he's bizarre and does erratic things, well, just because. I stopped reading Anne Tyler for that reason. Her novels drove me crazy, because her characters couldn't do anything straight up. Brilliant writing, skillful observation, but self-conscious and irritating.

I think the example of Little Miss Sunshine is a great example of how a quirky cast really works. The point was that their personality attributed to the whole theme and plot of the story, so it was interesting and refreshing. Giving characters quirks for the sake of quirkiness doesn't really do it for me, because they end up being defined by a list of quirks rather than personality traits. But I do take to a truly quirky character if they're done with pizazz and style. It's best when they're more 'real' with quirks that many people can relate to. I guess that makes them more 'normal' but interesting and differentiated from the rest of the cast.