How much do you care about the characters?

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Edmontonian

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Hello everyone,

How much details do you want to know about the main hero and other characters in a suspense thriller? Do you care why the bad guy is bad or do you just want him eliminated since he is "the bad guy?" Do you want to know why the hero is a CSIS agent or you just applaud his efforts knowing very little about his background?

I am at a stage in my WIP, after setting the objective of a CSIS mission, where I can explore the backgrounds and the minds of the characters - I am just not sure whether this will bore the reader and slow the pace of the action.

What do you think?

Thanks,

ED
 

Alpha Echo

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It depends on how you put in the motivations and backgrounds. If you put it in as part of the story, then it's intriguing. I always love to read about WHY a character is the way he or she is. It gives you an idea of who the author is, and it sparks your own imagination. But if you make it more like info dump, then I'll skim the pages until I find some action.
 

stuckupmyownera

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There's no straightforward answer to this. Add whatever the story needs.

As a general rule, I'd like at least an inkling of what drives a character, but you don't have to go into their whole backstory unless it's relevant. If it is relevant then fine, but you don't want to abandon the main thrust of the story for long, if at all. Ideally it should be part of the story instead.
 

CaroGirl

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For me, characters ARE story. Why am I reading about a bunch of characters if I don't care about who they are or why they do what they do? The skill for a writer is to know when, how and how much background information to give. Flashbacks can be great for getting know characters and they can also stop action dead and be totally boring.

How do the best writers in your genre present character information? Analyze that and go from there.
 

Mr. Anonymous

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I like it when bad guys are well characterized.

In other words, "Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't"

I think this should be especially true for a suspense thriller. Fantasy authors have gotten away with poor characterization of antagonists, but that's mostly due to the black/white good/evil dichotomy prevalent in many traditional high fantasies. The same does not hold true for the real world, and when writing something set in the world, you should do your best to emulate it.

Just my 2 cents.
 

Momento Mori

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Edmontonian:
How much details do you want to know about the main hero and other characters in a suspense thriller?

For me it's not so much the amount of detail as the way in which the characterisation is incorporated into the story. For example, if I'm in the middle of reading an action scene where the hero is shooting his way out of a warehouse, I'm not going to be too happy to suddenly get long paragrapghs of information on his angst at the divorce he's going through/unhappy childhood/dead dog. However, if the divorce/childhood trauma/dead dog shapes his attitude to the world and how he goes about his business, then I definitely want to know about it at some point (just not in the middle of an action scene).

Edmontonian:
Do you care why the bad guy is bad or do you just want him eliminated since he is "the bad guy?" Do you want to know why the hero is a CSIS agent or you just applaud his efforts knowing very little about his background?

Speaking personally, I like to know why the bad guy is doing bad things, I need to believe in him to a certain extent (even if it's because the bad guy is obviously completely off his nut). I don't want to see that as a massive speech made to the tied up good guy at the end of the book ("So, Meester Bond, let me tell you why I want to attain world domination and how I intend to go about getting it after I've killed you in a gratuitously complicated manner"), but I do want to see it incorporated into the text somewhere. Similarly, I like to know that the hero isn't too perfect - I like my thriller heroes to be credible and human.

MM
 

wordmonkey

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It sounds to me like you are at a stage where you have a chance to TELL me what the character is like because of these things that happened way back when.

You can SHOW what a character is like with dialog, mannerisms, the car they drive and the movies they watch.

Here's an example. The movie, WHEN HARRY MET SALLY. They start their initial road-trip to New York. The stop they make at the diner and the way Sally orders. You know EXACTLY what her character is like. Doesn't matter WHY, but just in that one scene where she orders her food you know her. Of course, she is sharing the scene with Harry, and we have seen how he is, so against the negatives in him, her negatives are down-played and we can also see the good in them both. They aren't bad people, but they are both annoying. The way we all leave college, thinking we know how the world works and it will now bend to our will because we have some edge that no-one else ever worked out.

Did Sally have a parent with OCD and this is why she is the way she is? Did she have an abusive stepfather and this is her way of taking control of her life? Were her parents the kind of free-spirited commune living hippies and this is why she needs order? Doesn't matter because we saw her character through her actions, not her past.

And in general, I'll echo above. To me, character is all. I can set a situation, but if I do the character work right, the characters drive the plot and tell me where they go and what they do. If I am reading (or watching something) and I don't care about the characters, I am done. You invest in the piece through the characters.
 

tehuti88

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I like to know why characters are the way they are and why they're doing what they're doing. That includes bad guys. When I know the whys it makes the characters more believable (as opposed to just the stock character bad guy who must be killed or the stock character good guy who must kill him...boring) and means a lot more is at stake. It gives the story more immediacy and makes it more important to the reader. It makes it real.

But as for how much information is given, or how it's done, that depends on so many things it's pointless to guess. Just my opinion.
 

Phaeal

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If the character's intriguing enough in the present, that can be enough. In fact, a mysterious past can be a reader-motivator.

I'm thinking of Child and Preston's character, Agent Pendergast. He's figured in at least eight of their novels so far, and the fascinating details of his past have trickled in very slowly. In the first book, Relic, I think the only personal fact that leaks out is that he had a wife who was one hell of a shot. I'm still waiting to hear more about her. ;)
 
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