Some notes on writing characters...
My dearest, darling Author;
I enjoyed reading your book, I really did. But there were some things that simply got on my nerves;
Your need to tell me absolutely everything, as if every tiny detail were just so integral to the plot, was supremely annoying. I do not need to know a character's hair and eye color when I first meet them, or every detail down to the style of his buttons when he walks into a scene; I do not necessarily need to know what his lunch was or that he went bowling with the guys last Saturday and has been in the league for five years. Take for instance that scene on the veranda, where the one protagonist stepped up to the wall and got his first good look at the sea in years. You wasted paragraphs and paragraphs of words explaining how, when he was a boy and saw the ocean for the first time, it was terrifying to him, left him with a feeling of crushing loneliness. Now, if you had simply said he stepped up to the wall and saw the sea for the first time in years, and had to close his eyes and redirect his gaze to the shore below out of fear, I would have wondered why he was afraid. I would have used my little reader brain to reason to myself, "Ah, he is afraid of the wide expanse of sea. There must be a reason, maybe buried in his childhood; or else this is an effective way for the author to hint at his personality traits without coming out and saying it," and it would have made me feel much happier because i r intelligent. I can appreciate such contrivances, even if they are recognizable as such, because they are subtle and possess a certain measure of tact.
Your use of uncharacteristic statements and phrases, the ones that leap off the page and hit me with a metaphorical baseball bat over the head, are unpleasant to say the least. The best character is a consistent character. I don't care what the proverbial "they" say about catharsis; how many life-changing experiences (and by that, I mean experiences that actually changed who you were) can you remember? I'm going to guess one or two. And so, even a novel that follows one character's entire life, from birth to death, in all probability should only contain about one or two of those things. And the change usually doesn't feel so, so abrupt in real life, either. Therefore, please don't ask me to believe that your characters can go to sleep one night and wake up entirely different the next day. (Yes, Franz Kafka; but you are not Franz Kafka, are you? And we are not talking about cockroaches here.) If your character wouldn't say it fifty-six pages back, they probably wouldn't say it on this page. Don't do it, don't write it. Use your own experiences as a springboard of reason from which to bounce your ideas. If it won't fly in reality, I'm not going to suspend my disbelief for you unless you give me real good reason to (and you usually can't, no offense), or you awe me in other ways so that I don't notice your infidelities (there's even less of a chance of this; unless you're Gabriel Garcia Marquez, that is). See The Good Earth by Pearl S. Bucks.
Let me encourage you to please go back and reevaluate some of your more beloved flowery phrases. I know you must fancy yourself an artist, what with all your language acrobatics, but I am a reader and I appreciate conciseness. Some of your prose just comes off completely awkward, like a contortionist who has managed to tie her own limbs in knots. If you have to twist your language around an obstacle course to get that sentence, your readers are going to be either too lazy or too sensible to follow you through. If we can't say it, we're not going to believe your character would.
On the other side of the coin, if your dialogue sounds too simple, it's a tragedy of a different sort. There's only so much, "Hello, sweety" "Hi, dear" "How was your day, darling?" "I missed you terribly, my dearest." "I love you, my pea." "I love you, too, my heart" we can tolerate before we scrunch up and implode. Make it realistic. How often have you talked like this with another human being? How often have you heard other human beings talk like this to each other?
Some variable differentiation between characters would be nice. Your main characters are never too horrible in that sense, but sometimes I feel you are leaning a little in the way of archetypes; it's much worse with your supporting characters. Everyone has their own little quirks and peculiarities; never forget that the minor characters in your life are THE major players in their own lives. Give them something to set them apart from everyone else, a certain gesture or turn of phrase to be brought in every once in a while. This will say to us readers, "Hey, I know you're there, that you're intelligent and paying attention." So-and-so always wears something that's blue; his brother always moves his hands when he's talking; Joey uses short, clipped phrases like a sports announcer; Jane is always exaggerating details; her mother-in-law plays with her jewelry when she's nervous; etc. etc. etc. But please don't draw unnecessary attention to these things. Pepper them about, don't hit us in the face with it.
Speaking of pepper... Writing is like seasoning a soup. You want a good balance or else it will turn out too salty or too bland, or will taste too much like only one ingredient that overpowers all the others. Sometimes you want one overpowering character; but if your main character is just too much, it will read like a memoir or something really tedious. We will find ourselves thinking, "Oh yes, aren't you great, Ms. Main Protagonist. Whoop-dee-doo." Give them faults, give them neuroses, give them situations where they don't know what to do, give them weaknesses, give them ulterior motives, give them emotions when it makes sense to (and not cookie-cutter or box-cake-mix reactions to things, or else we'll think them cardboard and not human), give them moments where attention shifts away. Etc. etc. etc.
For goodness sake, master transitions. If there is one thing you need, besides a basic knowledge of language and its corresponding grammar, it's how to write transitions. Those moments where you just jump from one thing to the next, or scenes, or through time, or from place to place, are real shoddy. The same goes within dialogue. Spend some time listening to actual conversations; be a wallflower at a party and drift. There are patterns, lulls and climaxes, moments of excitement, awkward pauses. Shifts in topics usually happen smoothly because people don't like to practice awkwardness for the most part. (Those who do, well, there's another character quirk for you to use with discretion.) You will find people saying things like, "Anyway, to get back to what you were saying before," "Oh! Speaking of that..." "Oh, I heard your father was in the hospital..." "Did I mention that?..." etc. etc. etc. There's a certain etiquette that is both practiced and expected, so why not bring that into your writing? It makes things a lot more believable.
Also note that not everything is said in conversations; there's body language, tone and inflection, hints at things that people don't necessarily want to fully divulge in the present company, etc. All of these things are tools in your toolbox! Use them, for the love of literature!
Anyway. So I've left you plenty of thoughts for you to consider the next time you sit down with the "quill" in hand; if you want me to believe that your characters could potentially be real people, treat them as such and I will comply. It's as easy as that.
Keep writing. Write, write, write. Write.
Sincerely yours,
Your consequential reader.
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This letter was, of course, written to myself. I wouldn't be so crude to anyone else, I think. These are some things I've noticed in other peoples' work, however, and they are things that I've been wanting to make a note to myself NOT TO DO in my own work; sometimes I've noticed myself being guilty of a few of these, or parts of these, and that appalls me. Luckily I edit my work pretty heavily, so I catch most of them before they present too much of a danger. But the more aware you are, the better. Right?
So I hope that some of these might prove helpful to some of you other folks.
Cheers.
...And write, write, write.