A common mistake among beginning novelists is to front-load the narrative with the main character's back story. I've been guilty of this rookie error myself.
There's a sort of flawed logic behind a new writer's tendency to deliver the protagonist's full personality profile, family background, and job history up front. These details are foremost in an author's mind when writing about any character (or they should be). Thus, withholding this information takes considerable discipline.
Some writers are adamant about making formal introductions right away. They worry that readers will have difficulty relating to the characters if their back stories are withheld. This fear is largely unfounded because it projects the author's inverted character priorities onto the reader.
Authors grow attached to their characters' personal histories because they spend copious amounts of time intricately constructing those characters' imaginary lives. Readers, on the other hand, engage with characters based on their responses to conflict.
One might object that foreknowledge of a character's past is required for truly gripping conflict since that's what determines how a character deals with challenges. I reply that this objection is, again, backwards. Detailed background isn't needed to enhance conflict. Conflict reveals background. Dumping half a page of character exposition into the narrative dilutes conflict and diverts reader interest.
When should character background be revealed? Later. After the story's central conflict has clearly emerged, authors can address the cast's back stories at leisure--preferably spread out over the rest of the novel like seed in a tilled field.
I learned that I'd fallen into this trap when several Nethereal beta readers reported difficulty getting past chapter two. When questioned they all agreed that the book's opening was strong, but the second chapter read like a text book. I looked again and saw that they were right. The narrative was bogged down with background minutiae that fascinated me but distracted my readers. Since I was establishing the first novel in a series I couldn't cut all of the exposition, but I did minimize it to the point of readability.
Any other thoughts on handling character background?
Showing posts with label Storytelling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Storytelling. Show all posts
Friday, April 12, 2013
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
The State of the Art
I recently addressed creative stagnation in genre novels. That post led to speculation on where to find cutting edge science fiction and fantasy. Several interested parties identified video games as the new medium for visionary storytelling. I agree that games have inherited a large swath of the cultural real estate once dominated by novels. But is this a positive development?
One fact that tends to be overlooked in a given "video games are the new novels" discussion is that the medium a story is told through matters. That's why artists use different media to tell their stories. One of the most common mistakes made by first time novelists is to write like they're dictating the action of a movie. Similarly, a film shot at the relentless pace of a novel would be an exhausting visual jackhammer.
As is rightly said, film is primarily a visual medium. Directors can include pages of expository dialogue and whole reels of establishing scenes because the visuals keep the audience entertained. A novelist who writes two consecutive paragraphs of description or whose characters spout exposition for more than half a page will quickly find his book set aside. Words are all writers have, so each one needs to be important.
Video games are something of a chimera. They too rely mostly on images. However, it's not uncommon to find blocks of text, audio snippets, and non-interactive video in the mix. Your mileage will vary by genre, but the one feature that all games must have in order to be games at all is challenge.
It's been said that interactivity is what makes games special and that books and films are passive media. As I point out here, that's an oversimplification. Whether you're immersed in a game or staring at a sculpture, all art is interactive. No artist can force engagement with his work. The audience's personal perspective is always vital to shaping the experience.
Games aren't the only interactive art medium. They are the most prominent art form that calls attention to audience participation. Video game interactivity is so overt that players feel cheated if a game is too linear or arbitrarily limits their choices. That is as it should be since the most fundamental level of engagement with a game comes from meeting and overcoming challenges.
The fundamentally different approaches to narrative in novels and games are why I doubt that video games can truly replace books. They're built for different jobs. Conflict is essential to novels, but only as a narrative device. In contrast, conflict is the whole point of a game. Hence the rising criticism of a certain game that shall remain nameless.
Balancing complex character, engaging narrative, striking scenery, and challenging conflict in a game is a herculean task. Overemphasizing character may impede the player's vicarious experience. Excessive focus on narrative can make players impatient. Visuals that are too lush can be distracting, and we all know how frustrating imbalanced difficulty is.
Novels are far more straightforward. All a writer has to worry about is setting up strong internal and external conflict and arranging the story so that the stakes progressively rise. None of that is simple, but it's far easier without the added burdens of game development.
In short, the natural focus of games is on the overall immersive experience. Novels are entirely about the story.
One fact that tends to be overlooked in a given "video games are the new novels" discussion is that the medium a story is told through matters. That's why artists use different media to tell their stories. One of the most common mistakes made by first time novelists is to write like they're dictating the action of a movie. Similarly, a film shot at the relentless pace of a novel would be an exhausting visual jackhammer.
As is rightly said, film is primarily a visual medium. Directors can include pages of expository dialogue and whole reels of establishing scenes because the visuals keep the audience entertained. A novelist who writes two consecutive paragraphs of description or whose characters spout exposition for more than half a page will quickly find his book set aside. Words are all writers have, so each one needs to be important.
Video games are something of a chimera. They too rely mostly on images. However, it's not uncommon to find blocks of text, audio snippets, and non-interactive video in the mix. Your mileage will vary by genre, but the one feature that all games must have in order to be games at all is challenge.
It's been said that interactivity is what makes games special and that books and films are passive media. As I point out here, that's an oversimplification. Whether you're immersed in a game or staring at a sculpture, all art is interactive. No artist can force engagement with his work. The audience's personal perspective is always vital to shaping the experience.
Games aren't the only interactive art medium. They are the most prominent art form that calls attention to audience participation. Video game interactivity is so overt that players feel cheated if a game is too linear or arbitrarily limits their choices. That is as it should be since the most fundamental level of engagement with a game comes from meeting and overcoming challenges.
The fundamentally different approaches to narrative in novels and games are why I doubt that video games can truly replace books. They're built for different jobs. Conflict is essential to novels, but only as a narrative device. In contrast, conflict is the whole point of a game. Hence the rising criticism of a certain game that shall remain nameless.
Balancing complex character, engaging narrative, striking scenery, and challenging conflict in a game is a herculean task. Overemphasizing character may impede the player's vicarious experience. Excessive focus on narrative can make players impatient. Visuals that are too lush can be distracting, and we all know how frustrating imbalanced difficulty is.
Novels are far more straightforward. All a writer has to worry about is setting up strong internal and external conflict and arranging the story so that the stakes progressively rise. None of that is simple, but it's far easier without the added burdens of game development.
In short, the natural focus of games is on the overall immersive experience. Novels are entirely about the story.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Writing Protagonists
I'd like to share a simple concept. If your protagonist sucks, your story will suck.
The engine that drives every story has three parts: a protagonist, something the protagonist wants, and an antagonist (human, environmental, psychological, etc.) who obstructs the protagonist's attainment of that goal. When you relate what the protagonist does to overcome the obstacles in his way, you are telling a story. Since so much rides on the protagonist, he'd better be interesting.
Here are a few tips for writing protagonists who engage and interest readers.
Goals: as I and writers far better than myself have said before, a protagonist must be properly motivated. There must be some goal that drives him through to the end of the story. Passive characters that events just happen to are dull.
Pseudorealism: note that I didn't say realism. That's because I write genre fiction. Fully realistic characters are preferred for interpretive fiction or nonfiction. For sci-fi and fantasy the idea is to give your characters (especially the protagonist) enough believable personality traits to balance the crazy make-believe elements.
Luke Skywalker is a space shaman prophesied to destroy an intergalactic empire. If someone approached you today and made the same claim, you'd rightly doubt his sanity. However, we suspend our disbelief in Luke's case because we also see that he's a working guy lamenting his frustrated dreams. That brings me to...
Relatability: a protagonist's mindset and motivations should be intelligible for the most part. This doesn't mean that you have to spell everything out. In fact, an touch of mystery is good for sci-fi stories. However, if your main character is inaccessible to common human experience, readers will have trouble vicariously inserting themselves into the tale through him. That in turn leads us to...
Sympathy; not Pity: the key to engaging readers is to ease their acceptance of the protagonist as a vehicle for their own vicarious experience. They must live the story through the main character. There is a spectrum of audience reaction to certain characters that runs from empathy to sympathy to pity.
Empathy means actually feeling what someone else feels. If your characters reach this stage (which I doubt is possible for fictional sub-creations), you've missed your exit and should turn back. If on the other hand the reader feels sorry for the protagonist with an undercurrent of contempt, you've engendered pity; not sympathy.
It's easier to describe what sympathetic characters are not instead of what they are. They don't have to be perfect. Protagonists can even have genuinely rotten flaws such as flagrant bigotry and past murder convictions. As long as the character has at least one redeeming virtue and expresses at least tacit remorse for past wrongdoing, he can earn our sympathy.
These are just a few qualities of effective protagonists. Can anybody think of more?
The engine that drives every story has three parts: a protagonist, something the protagonist wants, and an antagonist (human, environmental, psychological, etc.) who obstructs the protagonist's attainment of that goal. When you relate what the protagonist does to overcome the obstacles in his way, you are telling a story. Since so much rides on the protagonist, he'd better be interesting.
Here are a few tips for writing protagonists who engage and interest readers.
Goals: as I and writers far better than myself have said before, a protagonist must be properly motivated. There must be some goal that drives him through to the end of the story. Passive characters that events just happen to are dull.
Pseudorealism: note that I didn't say realism. That's because I write genre fiction. Fully realistic characters are preferred for interpretive fiction or nonfiction. For sci-fi and fantasy the idea is to give your characters (especially the protagonist) enough believable personality traits to balance the crazy make-believe elements.
Luke Skywalker is a space shaman prophesied to destroy an intergalactic empire. If someone approached you today and made the same claim, you'd rightly doubt his sanity. However, we suspend our disbelief in Luke's case because we also see that he's a working guy lamenting his frustrated dreams. That brings me to...
Relatability: a protagonist's mindset and motivations should be intelligible for the most part. This doesn't mean that you have to spell everything out. In fact, an touch of mystery is good for sci-fi stories. However, if your main character is inaccessible to common human experience, readers will have trouble vicariously inserting themselves into the tale through him. That in turn leads us to...
Sympathy; not Pity: the key to engaging readers is to ease their acceptance of the protagonist as a vehicle for their own vicarious experience. They must live the story through the main character. There is a spectrum of audience reaction to certain characters that runs from empathy to sympathy to pity.
Empathy means actually feeling what someone else feels. If your characters reach this stage (which I doubt is possible for fictional sub-creations), you've missed your exit and should turn back. If on the other hand the reader feels sorry for the protagonist with an undercurrent of contempt, you've engendered pity; not sympathy.
It's easier to describe what sympathetic characters are not instead of what they are. They don't have to be perfect. Protagonists can even have genuinely rotten flaws such as flagrant bigotry and past murder convictions. As long as the character has at least one redeeming virtue and expresses at least tacit remorse for past wrongdoing, he can earn our sympathy.
These are just a few qualities of effective protagonists. Can anybody think of more?
Monday, August 22, 2011
Hollywood: the Money Triumphs over Art
Earlier this month, Disney executive Andy Hendrickson declared that visual spectacle; not a good script, is what draws audiences to movies. The chief technical officer produced a chart showing revenues for the twelve highest grossing films of all time as evidence.
Hendrickson's announcement begs the question of why story is losing to spectacle. One disturbing answer is that western society is outright losing the ability to tell stories. This argument gains some traction when you consider Aristotle's Poetics, in which he laid out the basic principles of what makes good stories work. All of his points boil down to this: because the satisfaction derived from a story depends on the feeling of catharsis achieved in the resolution, and since that catharsis arises from the validation of the audience's shared values, it's very difficult to satisfy an audience that can't agree on which values are important. In the absence of engaging stories, filmmakers are appealing to the lowest common denominator.
I'm inclined to take Hendrickson's pessimistic assessment with a grain of salt. There are still movies like The Return of the King, Toy Story 3, and The Dark Knight on that list. Sure, they ain't exactly Shakespeare, but all of them feature solid characters and thought-provoking plots. Hendrickson is also referencing the worldwide box office numbers. Checking the US records adds the likes of Star Wars and E.T. to the list. Both of those films certainly boasted impressive special effects, but they also epitomize master storytellers Spielberg and Lucas at the height of their creative powers.
Frankly, the USA figures surprised me. I'd expected to find it populated with even more mindless CG-fests than infested the world market. Then I pondered the reason for my initial prejudice and the situation started making sense. The current crop of money-driven, committee-written productions has made me forget that the likes of Spielberg, Lucas, and Cameron once produced genuine works of art to critical and commercial acclaim. Another look at the list reveals a second interesting phenomenon. Highly creative and popular films are still being made, Americans just aren't making them anymore.
Hendrickson's outlook seems symptomatic of the profit chasing that's robbed Hollywood of its vision. The studios have abandoned the concept of making films for the love of the art. Luckily, enterprising outsiders like Sir Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro, and Christopher Nolan have stepped forward to pick up the torch.
I think the record shows that you can still make a story-driven movie centered around a well-written script and solid performances. It probably won't outperform the next bloated, gimmick-laden, rehashed tentpole flick; but as long as the world gives people common experiences to share, storytellers will always have an audience.
Hendrickson's announcement begs the question of why story is losing to spectacle. One disturbing answer is that western society is outright losing the ability to tell stories. This argument gains some traction when you consider Aristotle's Poetics, in which he laid out the basic principles of what makes good stories work. All of his points boil down to this: because the satisfaction derived from a story depends on the feeling of catharsis achieved in the resolution, and since that catharsis arises from the validation of the audience's shared values, it's very difficult to satisfy an audience that can't agree on which values are important. In the absence of engaging stories, filmmakers are appealing to the lowest common denominator.
I'm inclined to take Hendrickson's pessimistic assessment with a grain of salt. There are still movies like The Return of the King, Toy Story 3, and The Dark Knight on that list. Sure, they ain't exactly Shakespeare, but all of them feature solid characters and thought-provoking plots. Hendrickson is also referencing the worldwide box office numbers. Checking the US records adds the likes of Star Wars and E.T. to the list. Both of those films certainly boasted impressive special effects, but they also epitomize master storytellers Spielberg and Lucas at the height of their creative powers.
Frankly, the USA figures surprised me. I'd expected to find it populated with even more mindless CG-fests than infested the world market. Then I pondered the reason for my initial prejudice and the situation started making sense. The current crop of money-driven, committee-written productions has made me forget that the likes of Spielberg, Lucas, and Cameron once produced genuine works of art to critical and commercial acclaim. Another look at the list reveals a second interesting phenomenon. Highly creative and popular films are still being made, Americans just aren't making them anymore.
Hendrickson's outlook seems symptomatic of the profit chasing that's robbed Hollywood of its vision. The studios have abandoned the concept of making films for the love of the art. Luckily, enterprising outsiders like Sir Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro, and Christopher Nolan have stepped forward to pick up the torch.
I think the record shows that you can still make a story-driven movie centered around a well-written script and solid performances. It probably won't outperform the next bloated, gimmick-laden, rehashed tentpole flick; but as long as the world gives people common experiences to share, storytellers will always have an audience.
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