100 Things Challenge #3: Characters and Character Development
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For me, the most interesting part of any piece of writing, be it something I'm working on or something I'm reading, is the characters. I could (almost) forgive the horrible writing in Twilight, but I found it utterly impossible to give less of a fuck about those characters (Bella is so one-dimensional I can't believe she can even stand up on her own, Edward's a creeper, and Jacob started out almost ok and then just got pathetic). On the other hand, I was prepared to hate Moby-Dick when I had to read it for school, but I actually really enjoyed it, partially because of my professor's enthusiasm for the book but also because I actually found myself caring about what happened to the characters, even though I knew (spoiler alert) they all die in the end except Ishmael.
Even knowing that, it's hard for me to define what, exactly, makes a compelling character. Complexity helps, of course. For example, Malcolm Reynolds (affectionately known as Captain Tightpants) from Firefly and Serenity is a complicated little onion with layers. My mom, who only watched parts of a few episodes in passing, never liked him because she thought was too mean. And he can be, but he's also incredibly loyal and sincerely cares about his crew and keeping his people safe. He's a genuinely good guy who has learned the hard way that being good is a fast way to get dead in the world he lives in.
Development is also really important. If the character doesn't learn anything or change by the end, what's the point? Like Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender. By the end of the series you can really see how much he's learned and grown up since waking up from the ice.
I also like a little humor with my characters. Severus Snape is a fan favorite, and don't get me wrong, I like him plenty and his redemption and death scene in the last few books really jerked at my heart and he's got one of the most compelling story arcs in the series. But he was never my favorite because he was a humorless jerk and (most likely since the books are written from Harry's point of view) seemed like an actual asshole a lot of the time. It was actually Alan Rickman's flawless portrayal that really endeared Snape to me at first, particularly scenes like this one. On the other hand, Apropos from the Sir Apropos of Nothing series by Peter David is in general a pretty horrible person without a whole lot going for him, but he's funny so I like him.
As for how/why my own characters develop from the initial spark/idea/image into something that I actually want to put in the effort of writing a story about well, that's even harder to explain.
Sometimes it starts with the visual. For example, Grey was tall and skinny with long brown hair and a button nose and a guitar before he even had a name. Then the rest of the band filed in and started playing around in my head. I idly daydreamed scenes of their lives on tour and making music together, and as I played them off of each other, personalities developed.
To me it's no different from a little girl playing with her dolls. When I was a kid, all of my stuffed animals had distinct personalities. I had a lot of stuffed cats, and I would gather them all up and pretend that they had meetings or some such weirdness. The one I'd had the longest was the "oldest" and therefore the leader, but the stuffed lion was my favorite and therefore the coolest, and the one that looked like a long Persian cat was snobby because I thought that breed was all "fancy" and stuck up (with their smooshed in faces and glorious hair) and the Siamese cat was the smartest because Siamese cats are really intelligent. I couldn't tell you why or how they developed these personalities in my head, but it made perfect sense at the time.
Now that I think about it, those personalities almost definitely came from appearance--the Persian was snobby and the Siamese was smart because that's how I thought of those breeds (is that racist? I think little-me was a little racist. Toward cats). But there was another stuffed cat that the family dog had gotten a hold of and torn up a bit, and when my mom had to patch him up for me. I "explained" the patches in my games by saying they were scars, and from there I thought up reasons why he would have scars and decided he was a tough-guy alley cat who got into fights a lot. I pretended that he and his ghetto-fab sister (a toy from the same "brand" of a different color) were like the stuffed kitty version of Bash Brothers and they frequently play fought (it is suddenly occurring to me that Blacky and Smokey, the oh-so-creatively named stuffed kitties of my childhood, might actually be precursors or early versions of Vance and Vandy, a clown-themed superhero cousin team of mine. Freaky). So, in that case, his personality came directly from his appearance and the story I came up with to explain it, while his sister's came from playing off of him.
Grey was much the same. While he dressed and had the hair of a tough metal-head, he was too gangly and awkward looking to actually be very intimidating--plus it's impossible to be truly scary looking with a button nose. In my head I could very clearly see his smile, which is big and wide and impish. It's a smile that suggests a playful, friendly personality, with a penchant for mischief and a tendency toward mania.
Other times a character is initially created simply to fill a roll. I imagined Grey as a musician, so of course he needed a band. Morris came in the play bass and was originally supposed to be even more stand-offish than he is now--I had vague thoughts that later in the story he would betray Grey by sleeping with his girlfriend or something, but I scrapped that idea and let them become best friends instead. I made Teddy and JD brothers because it was convenient and they were originally a lot closer (and a lot less argumentative) than they are now. But the super-close sibling trope didn't seem realistic to me (despite using it several times in the past) and I decided that a bit of rivalry with a combative nature would be more interesting, plus it would give their relationship somewhere to go (being in a band together helps them relate and communicate with each other for the first time).
Given how many story ideas I have floating around my twisted little noggin, I have absolutely no idea why some characters get developed and fleshed out while others remain basic outlines and placeholders. Something about their stories just interests me more, I guess.
Sometimes it happens to characters I never intended to flesh out, quite by accident. I previously talked about the utterly ridiculous pre-teen novels I cooked up summaries for while shelving YA books at the library. Allyson Brady didn't interest me at all (though to be perfectly honest that might be my prejudice against female characters--more on that later), but apparently my love and fascination with musicians and bands (more on that later, too) extends even to pop groups, and I found myself thinking about the guys in the Five Kings group.
To be perfectly clear (because for some reason I feel the need to defend myself?) I'm not some kind of boy band connoisseur (despite a recently discovered affection for the classic 90's ones that makes absolutely no sense to me--I was in no way a fan back in the day and yet now I sing Backstreet Boys songs to my friends to make them giggle. You can't judge me, internet), but... boy bands are funny. I don't know how many people have seen the Josie and the Pussycats movie from 2001 (it's one of my all time favorite bad-movies), but my favorite part of that flick was these guys ("Dujour means crash positions!"). There's just immense potential for cliches and cliche subversion and vaguely homoerotic brotherly love subtext (all good things).
Obviously my boy band would have all the "types," the "cute one," the "sexy one," the "funny one," the "one everyone forgets about" and the "bad boy." And a "gay one" because every boy band supposedly has one and they would all have ridiculous "street" nicknames and fabulous hair and... well. Things just sort of developed from there and eventually we got "Confessions of a Boyband “Bad Boy”: The Mostly True Story of Jesse McHenry and Calamity," my one hundred and eight thousand word crack-masterpiece (I told you it was ridiculous. You were warned about the ridiculousness)(I changed the band name because of Reasons).
Completely without meaning to, Jesse has become one of my favorite characters to write. He's complicated and blunt and damaged and just a whole lot of fun, and writing from his prospective has been challenging in ways I didn't anticipate (more on that later). I even might do it again, it's been that fun. I even might do a project from his prospective that's actually fit to publish one day. Hopefully as I post bits of his story, you come to like him and the rest of the guys too.
So yeah. The magic of character development. I created a guy to fill the "bad boy" roll and originally had him as just a tough angry guy, and that turned into "but why are you angry, Jesse--and how did a guy like you get in a boy band anyway?" and the next thing I know he's taken over NaNoWriMo and then an additional 180 pages of my life.
This became so much longer than is at all reasonable, what is wrong with me.