Friday, 15 January 2010
I've been reading a lot about characters recently and one thing that stuck in my memory was a comment by an author that readers may be willing to overlook a weak plot, but if your characters don't interest them, they won't keep reading. This isn't to say that plot isn't important, of course it is, but characters are perhaps the most important part of your story because they're what keep people interested. Your readers need to care about your characters - they don't necessarily have to like all of them, but they have to care. It doesn't matter whether they're reading to see if your hero can solve the mystery or your heroine can get her man (or woman) or if your villain is going to get his comeuppance, as long as they care what happens. It doesn't matter how real the peril you write in seems, if the readers don't actually care if your hero can escape it. It doesn't matter how compelling the conflict is, if the reader is indifferent to the outcome. Readers need someone to associate with, someone to feel for, someone to hate, someone to root for - or against. They need a character to keep them hooked.
No character will ever appeal to everyone so don't assume that just because one person isn't interested that your characters are bad (I walked out of a performance of Lady Windermere's Fan because I really didn't care who came out on top but I wouldn't dream of saying that that means Oscar Wilde was a bad writer, although I could be convinced to make some disparaging comments about the casting...), but if no one seems to care, then maybe you should take another look and try and find out why not.
I think I'm going to have to make this several posts rather than just one because there's a lot to cover. Just a cursory search of other people's opinions on characters and characterisation has given me half a dozen topics - names, appearances, mannerisms/quirks, goals and motivations, drawing from real life - but not too much, introducing your character etc., archetypes, credible villains etc. etc..
So in keeping with this week's writing exercise, I think I'll start with the topic of names.
A name is important. In the written media the name is what people are going to use to identify your character (on a TV show you may remember characters as 'that red-headed detective' or 'the blonde scientist', but if you're reading, it's the name that will be the key).
There are several things you should probably bear in mind when picking a name:
Where is your character from?
Frenchmen are rarely called William or Bradley. Sakura will only work for your English heroine if her parents have some connection to Japan.
When was your character born?
Readers will be thrown out of your story if your Regency hero and heroine are called Jenson and Dakota. Equally Edna is not likely to be a twenty year old secretary.
What does the name make you think of?
Adolf is a perfectly lovely name. It means noble wolf. But if your character is born after 1945 then you're going to need a damn good reason to use it. Even if your story is set in 1912, your characters may never have heard of Adolf Hitler, but your readers have and you're going to have to do a lot more work to make them sympathise with Adolf than with Gottfried.
Obviously there are exceptions to every rule and in real life there probably are a few Ednas around now and I know of at least one Adolf (although his parents are white supremacists so that does actually reinforce my point), but people will believe things in real life that you'd have to work a lot harder to convince them of in a novel so unless there's a compelling plot based reason for using a strange name, it's probably best to stick to something that is more believable.
Another thing you need to be conscious of is the genre you're writing in. Pussy Galore and Oddjob are perfect names for a James Bond novel, but they wouldn't work in the world of George Smiley. Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape fit in perfectly to J K Rowling's magical world, but they'd seem very strange in the world of Harry Dresden.
I like my character names to have meaning, but even if you don't want to do that it's worth knowing what the names mean just so that you don't make your readers laugh without meaning too when you name the dead hooker something that means innocence or your craven villain something meaning brave warrior. You might not know a lot about name meanings, but some of your readers will. There's a lot of baby names sites out there to help with that.
If you're writing fantasy or sci-fi you may just be able to make something up, which is great if you like that sort of thing. However, please remember your readers need to be able to pronounce the end result. Xzrbtl may be a perfectly wonderful name for your alien, but no one is going to be able to pronounce it and you don't want your readers pausing every time it comes up to try and figure out how it should be said, because it will distract them from what you were trying to say. In a comedy piece it might make a good running joke, but otherwise, try not to get so alien that your readers end up tying their tongues and brains in a knot over your hero's name (or at least have him realise very quickly that the humans he's met can't say it either and have him introduce himself as 'Xzrbtl, but you can call me Bob.')
Okay, so you've tentatively decided on a name - but no one has just one name. Let's use an example from something I'm working on right now. I'd like to introduce you to Captain Hilary Becker, 4th Earl of Malvern, Viscount Deerhurst. Now he's a bit of an extreme example since he has a name, a rank, and a title, but he should let me cover everything I'm trying to say. Even before we get into nicknames and familiarities, he has more than one formal name.
Debrett's tells me that he should be introduced as the Earl of Malvern and referred to in conversation as Lord Malvern. When addressing a letter to a peer, however, military or ecclesiastical rank take precedence so he would be Captain Lord Malvern. So that's three names. While he's on active duty he would be Captain, Captain Becker, or Sir. (six names). Assuming he inherited his title at a young age, then his contemporaries from school or university would probably call him Malvern or maybe just Becker (eight names). His lover will probably call him Hilary (nine names) or, since he's not terribly keen on his first name, they may refer to him by a nickname or pet name - let's say 'darling' just for the sake of argument (ten names). His younger sister calls him Hils (eleven names). When he eventually has children they will, presumably, call him dad. So already we're up to twelve names and we haven't even considered what enemies or people who wish to needle him or superiors might call him. And other than darling he hasn't got a nickname yet either!
This brings up two important points - firstly, you need to try and be consistent with what you (or the POV character if you're not using an omniscient narrator) call him because otherwise you're going to confuse the heck out of your readers. If he's referred to in the narration as Lord Malvern, Captain Becker, and Hilary, they're liable to think there are three people present instead of just one. Secondly, you need to be consistent with what the other characters call him because it will give more depth to your characterisation and give your readers a short cut to work out how close the other characters are to him without having to spell it out.
Links
Behind the Name - in my opinion, the best name site out there.
Baby Names World - another name site.
20000 names - I like this one because as well as sorting the names by gender, alphabet, and origin, it has categories such as 'warrior names' or 'flower names'.
Popular Given Names 1800-1999 - US only but pretty handy as a starting place for most English speaking countries.
Victorian Era Names - another handy site for fiction set in this era or for when you want your modern character to sound old-fashioned.
List of Most Common Surnames - this is really handy, because I find surnames are much harder to come up with than given names.
British surnames - how common surnames are and how they're distributed in the UK.
No character will ever appeal to everyone so don't assume that just because one person isn't interested that your characters are bad (I walked out of a performance of Lady Windermere's Fan because I really didn't care who came out on top but I wouldn't dream of saying that that means Oscar Wilde was a bad writer, although I could be convinced to make some disparaging comments about the casting...), but if no one seems to care, then maybe you should take another look and try and find out why not.
I think I'm going to have to make this several posts rather than just one because there's a lot to cover. Just a cursory search of other people's opinions on characters and characterisation has given me half a dozen topics - names, appearances, mannerisms/quirks, goals and motivations, drawing from real life - but not too much, introducing your character etc., archetypes, credible villains etc. etc..
So in keeping with this week's writing exercise, I think I'll start with the topic of names.
A name is important. In the written media the name is what people are going to use to identify your character (on a TV show you may remember characters as 'that red-headed detective' or 'the blonde scientist', but if you're reading, it's the name that will be the key).
There are several things you should probably bear in mind when picking a name:
Where is your character from?
Frenchmen are rarely called William or Bradley. Sakura will only work for your English heroine if her parents have some connection to Japan.
When was your character born?
Readers will be thrown out of your story if your Regency hero and heroine are called Jenson and Dakota. Equally Edna is not likely to be a twenty year old secretary.
What does the name make you think of?
Adolf is a perfectly lovely name. It means noble wolf. But if your character is born after 1945 then you're going to need a damn good reason to use it. Even if your story is set in 1912, your characters may never have heard of Adolf Hitler, but your readers have and you're going to have to do a lot more work to make them sympathise with Adolf than with Gottfried.
Obviously there are exceptions to every rule and in real life there probably are a few Ednas around now and I know of at least one Adolf (although his parents are white supremacists so that does actually reinforce my point), but people will believe things in real life that you'd have to work a lot harder to convince them of in a novel so unless there's a compelling plot based reason for using a strange name, it's probably best to stick to something that is more believable.
Another thing you need to be conscious of is the genre you're writing in. Pussy Galore and Oddjob are perfect names for a James Bond novel, but they wouldn't work in the world of George Smiley. Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape fit in perfectly to J K Rowling's magical world, but they'd seem very strange in the world of Harry Dresden.
I like my character names to have meaning, but even if you don't want to do that it's worth knowing what the names mean just so that you don't make your readers laugh without meaning too when you name the dead hooker something that means innocence or your craven villain something meaning brave warrior. You might not know a lot about name meanings, but some of your readers will. There's a lot of baby names sites out there to help with that.
If you're writing fantasy or sci-fi you may just be able to make something up, which is great if you like that sort of thing. However, please remember your readers need to be able to pronounce the end result. Xzrbtl may be a perfectly wonderful name for your alien, but no one is going to be able to pronounce it and you don't want your readers pausing every time it comes up to try and figure out how it should be said, because it will distract them from what you were trying to say. In a comedy piece it might make a good running joke, but otherwise, try not to get so alien that your readers end up tying their tongues and brains in a knot over your hero's name (or at least have him realise very quickly that the humans he's met can't say it either and have him introduce himself as 'Xzrbtl, but you can call me Bob.')
Okay, so you've tentatively decided on a name - but no one has just one name. Let's use an example from something I'm working on right now. I'd like to introduce you to Captain Hilary Becker, 4th Earl of Malvern, Viscount Deerhurst. Now he's a bit of an extreme example since he has a name, a rank, and a title, but he should let me cover everything I'm trying to say. Even before we get into nicknames and familiarities, he has more than one formal name.
Debrett's tells me that he should be introduced as the Earl of Malvern and referred to in conversation as Lord Malvern. When addressing a letter to a peer, however, military or ecclesiastical rank take precedence so he would be Captain Lord Malvern. So that's three names. While he's on active duty he would be Captain, Captain Becker, or Sir. (six names). Assuming he inherited his title at a young age, then his contemporaries from school or university would probably call him Malvern or maybe just Becker (eight names). His lover will probably call him Hilary (nine names) or, since he's not terribly keen on his first name, they may refer to him by a nickname or pet name - let's say 'darling' just for the sake of argument (ten names). His younger sister calls him Hils (eleven names). When he eventually has children they will, presumably, call him dad. So already we're up to twelve names and we haven't even considered what enemies or people who wish to needle him or superiors might call him. And other than darling he hasn't got a nickname yet either!
This brings up two important points - firstly, you need to try and be consistent with what you (or the POV character if you're not using an omniscient narrator) call him because otherwise you're going to confuse the heck out of your readers. If he's referred to in the narration as Lord Malvern, Captain Becker, and Hilary, they're liable to think there are three people present instead of just one. Secondly, you need to be consistent with what the other characters call him because it will give more depth to your characterisation and give your readers a short cut to work out how close the other characters are to him without having to spell it out.
Links
Behind the Name - in my opinion, the best name site out there.
Baby Names World - another name site.
20000 names - I like this one because as well as sorting the names by gender, alphabet, and origin, it has categories such as 'warrior names' or 'flower names'.
Popular Given Names 1800-1999 - US only but pretty handy as a starting place for most English speaking countries.
Victorian Era Names - another handy site for fiction set in this era or for when you want your modern character to sound old-fashioned.
List of Most Common Surnames - this is really handy, because I find surnames are much harder to come up with than given names.
British surnames - how common surnames are and how they're distributed in the UK.
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