CHARACTERS

It's my extremely biased opinion that characters are more important than plot. They are more important than anything in story telling, perhaps bar writing style (see Part III soon, for more extremely biased opinions on that point)
First of all, if you have no plot, but a random character just popped into your head and you've given them five minutes of your time, you already have a plot. You may not know it, but you do.These two elements depend on eachother, but the proportions are relative. Personally, I think a character has more power to create a plot than the other way around. Once you have a basic relationship between these two parts, you've set up a sort of system that will, to some extent, end up telling the story all by itself.

Bad Apples

Another point to consider is that flawed characters are interesting. If you've just created a perfect, flawless-in-all-aspects-of-existence character, you've created the right conditions for having nothing to write about. One of my favorite examples to illustrate this point is Greek mythology: if you take a look at most of the Greek pantheon, you will probably discover they seem unable to find their own backsides with a map. They are power hungry, jealous, lustful, prone to excesses and the source of a few excellent stories.

Alternatively, you could try venturing into Scandinavian mythology a little. I spent my first four years of studies in a Waldorf elementary school, where Scandinavian mythology was an actual subject, taught to a contingent of six year-olds through story telling. After a few months, the god Loki was pretty much the class mascot and everyone's sweetheart: he was clever, mischievous, funny and a prankster. We all knew he was a bit of a meanie, but essentially harmless... until we hit third grade and read about how he sailed forth in a ship made of human bones and pretty much brought about the end of the world. Talk about the element of surprise.

Where do I start?

I think the question of writing a story can be reduced, in a certain sense, to the author asking themselves ’What should I do with/to my characters?’ One of the most interesting and useful books I’ve ever read is Aristotle’s Poetics, which, among other things, covers just that. Being one of the earliest surviving works dealing with dramatic theory, it analyses what Aristotle refers to as poetry – plays and lyrical or epic poetry in general.

Now, Aristotle has a lot of useful things to say on the subject of genres, dialogues, mood and so on, but I’m going to stop at two very specific aspects regarding characters:

- What a character should be like;
- What instruments the author has at their disposal for ’building’ their characters.

The Poetics explain that a character should display several traits. They should be:

- good – this is interesting, albeit a little tricky. Aristotle says that an audience will not like it if, for example, a villain found personal gain in others’ misery at the end of the story. This is a matter of morals and the way people relate to the story in general. ’The bad guy shouldn’t be allowed to win in the end’ isn’t exactly a recipe (it can happen, and it can make things interesting or unexpected), but it will leave your audience feeling uncomfortable. Unless, of course, this is what you want.

- appropriate – briefly put, a character is expected to act according to their conditions and skills. This is especially important to remember if you’re trying to avoid coming up with a Mary-Sue or something to that effect.

A popular clichée in manga, for example, is causing extraordinary and rather traumatizing things to happen to highschool students, in order to awaken some hidden supernatural power that just happened to lie around their psyche as a result of blood heritage/tragic accident/Being Special. The point here, is that the author creates a certain background that makes acquiring these powers plausible. But if you have an average highschool girl/boy who has never studied martial arts, it’s very unlikely that he or she will learn to fight well enough to save the world in the space of two weeks.

Similarly, a character cannot be expected to be very wise or experienced if they are very young. Or, if you are looking for something like this specifically, consider the side-effects. For example, there is a character called Alia in Frank Herbert’s science-fiction novel Dune, who became conscious while she was still in her mother’s womb, due to a substance her mother ingested. Alia inherits all of her mother’s memories and experiences, as well as those of many other women - this makes her appear far more intelligent than many grown-ups, even though she still looks like a baby. However, because of this, she is considered an ’abomination’ and this sort of stigma stays with her for the rest of her life.

- consistent – this relates to the point above. In Aristotle’s example, if a character is an experienced soldier, he is unlikely to become frightened at the sight of blood. If he does, there should be some explanation as to why this happens. A character should also maintain his opinions, on a very general level, lest the audience become confused. ’On a very general level’ is the key term here.

For instance, let’s assume a certain character is very proud of his looks and considers physical beauty to be the best characteristic anyone can have. He despises ugly people and he thinks they are also likely to be stupid, clumsy, bad mannered etc. As the story goes, one day this person gets into some sort of trouble, and an ugly character comes along to help them. During the time they spend together, the first character will become persuaded to consider that the lack of physical beauty does not necessarily imply the lack of any sort of positive characteristics. An ugly person may well be intelligent, compassionate, funny and loyal. By the end of the story, the first character will begin to accept these things and find himself well on the way to changing part of his outlook on life. The lesson here also deals with morals and could be summarized as ’Do not judge a book by its cover’. This sort of shift in opinions is acceptable and, what’s more, expected by the audience.

However, if, let’s say, the main character (the ’hero’ ) begins the story by being convinced that slaughtering innocents is a terrible thing, it is not acceptable for him or her to finish the story by thinking it is a good, moral and responsible thing. Or, again, if this happens, there should be a plausible explanation for it.

Of course, all of these characteristics may appear to come in conflict to the point I mentioned above, about flawed characters being more interesting to write about. But ’good’ doesn’t necessarily mean ’flawless’. A character may be considered ’good’ by the audience if he or she has the potential to become ’good’. Let’s consider the previous example for a bit: if you start reading a story about our beautiful character, in the beginning, you are likely to find something along the lines of ’I am beautiful. I think this is the best trait a human being can have. I enjoy surrounding myself with beautiful things and other beautiful people, and I enjoy being complimented. My life is quite alright as it is, and I have no interest in ugly or common-looking people. If they do not possess the best quality a human can have, that probably makes them bad and stupid as well.’ But you, as a reader with realistic life experience, will start thinking ’Wait, that’s wrong. You can’t assume people are bad just because they aren’t good looking. Of course, there are people who are both ugly and bad, just as there are people who are both beautiful and bad. I hope the rest of the story proves you wrong.’

You will keep reading because you’re curious to see this happening. This means that you already think the character has the potential to change his opinion to something you find acceptable. In other words, you already think the character has the potential to become ’good’.

Here, Have Some Destiny

When it comes to character-building instruments, ’destiny’ (and a small associated toolbox, which I shall discuss below) is a powerful thing.

Aristotle talks about something he calls 'hubris', which is considered the center piece of all Greek tragedies. The context refers to a limit that is set upon humans by a higher power. It's their very nature as humans - they cannot live forever, they cannot return from the dead, they cannot rise to a godly condition, they cannot exhibit certain powers etc. In short, they cannot transcend their human condition by exceeding these limits. (I've sometimes seen 'hubris' interpreted as 'excessive arrogance' - as Wikipedia will certify - but I'm going to stick to the Aristotle version, because it makes a lot more sense. I will explain why in a second)

Now, as you know, Greek tragedies focus on heroes who do exactly that - transcend their nature, by a certain act or condition. This usually has two types of consequences: one is called 'nemesis' (retribution) and is probably the most popular in classical drama (think Achilles, Oedipus etc.) This is in direct relation to the character, and it means that he or she will be forced to pay for their 'hubris' - rule breaking or arrogance - usually with their lives, or with something very precious.

The other is called 'catharsis' and it relates to the audience. Briefly, 'catharsis' refers to a state of purification the audience experiences after witnessing the story. Aristotle says that, in real life, people tend to be interested either too much or too little in things like pain or suffering, or strong emotions in general. The role of a play - or story in our case - is also to induce 'catharsis', which balances that tendency to be either overly emotional or too uncaring. In short, it's a sort of purification of the soul, if you will.

In the example we already discussed, ’catharsis’ is applicable. You, as a reader, will feel satisfied that an arrogant character has been taught something you consider to be common sense. Because we’re talking about a positive lesson and a character who is ’redeemable’, there is no need for nemesis.

But what happens if we turn the story around a bit? Let’s say our beautiful character is the ruler of a large kingdom. One day he decides he doesn’t want any sort of ugly people in his country, so he orders them to be rounded up and slaughtered. Who decides what ’beautiful’ and ’ugly’ means? They are very subjective terms. In this case, both are defined by the character who is powerful enough to impose rules – specifically, the king. At this point, the character is no longer ’redeemable’ in the eyes of the reader. You will not want him to be taught the same lesson he would learn in the first case – that ugly people can be good, compassionate etc. – and then just go on living with this new perspective. At least not when he has already caused the death of thousands on a purely arbitrary basis. You will want him to get punished: maybe killed, or maybe mutilated and forced to live in this new condition for the rest of his life. This would be ’nemesis’.

In any case, these three concepts create an interesting starting point, for both plot and character development.

Conclusion

I’ve mentioned a lot of ’rules’ in this post – a character should be such and such, the audience expects this thing, or that thing. As with many other situations, though, rules can be broken if you do so in a logical, plausible way. An experienced soldier may become frightened at the sight of blood if he has seen something terrible in the past that forced him to swear he would never shed it again, or fight again (at least, until the story begins). A morally ’good’ character can become ’bad’, say, for the sake of revenge (in which case your readers would probably like a sequel). The point remains – as long as you can offer a believable explanation, such twists will probably not affect your story in a negative way.

REFERENCE

Aristotle's Poetics - [link]
Wikipedia article - [link]

INDEX

Part I: The Bare Necessities – Plot - [link]
Part II: The Bare Necessities - Characters
Part III: Writing Style and Lessons Learned
Part IV: Show, Don’t Tell and Other Literary Conundrums
Part V: Recommended Reading/Viewing

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