Characterization: On Writing People Who Aren't Us
I think one of the hardest things many writers, fan and pro, have to deal with is writing characters who aren't them. Face it. Most of us are far too boring, or at least ordinary, to be interesting to readers. A good story needs either characters who are larger than life (which we generally ain't) or ordinary characters in situations that are larger than life (which we generally ain't in). (I suppose there's a market for ordinary characters in ordinary situations, but I'd've thought Ambian would be more effective.)
One of the things that fic gives us are pre-made characters. We open the box and out they tumble, all shiny and exciting and fun to play with (when they come pre-broken, they're always broken in such interesting ways). They even come with their own Dream Houses and all those tiny little clothes (that some of us take great delight in getting them out of ;-).
So why, and this follows for the ones out of the box as well as the ones that come out of our own personal workshops, do some writers insist on writing them as if they were the same as everyone else?
I'm not talking about something as obvious as the dreaded Mary Sue, and she's dreaded for a reason. I'm talking about either taking unique characters and filing down all the cool bits that make them unique or creating, from scratch, the most tedious characters on the planet and expecting anyone to care. Remember, too, if a pro is writing a character more than once, they can easily fall into the same trap every fic writer has to avoid - screwing up the character readers already know and love (or love to hate).
I'm also not talking about abandoning realism for the sake of uniqueness. There has to be a root cause for the unique aspects. Miles Vorkosigan wouldn't be the Miles we know and love if Cordelia hadn't grown up on Beta Colony and if Miles hadn't grown up on Barrayar. Gibbs wouldn't be Gibbs if he hadn't lost Shannon and Kelly or had to deal with Boone (the serial killer from a few seasons ago). (And now I have this image of Gibbs having to deal with Miles and I think my brain may just leak out of my ears because of it.)
In many ways, fic writers have a tougher time of it because the characters sprang fully formed from the heads of their creators and fic writers just get to play with them. On the other hand, pro writers get to explore the act of creation and suffer the resulting post-partum migraine. It's two sides of the same problem. Some can do both. Some can't. Some, it seems, can't do either.
I look at writing the same way I look at teaching. You need to know at least 20% more than you plan to teach and you need to teach at least 20% more than you expect your students to learn. In teaching, most of your class (my experience is in teaching adults) wants to get in, learn what they need to know and get out. A few are going to ask questions that go beyond the scope of the class. You can answer some of those without confusing everyone else, but sometimes you have to put them off and ask them to stick around for a bit afterward. It's always a rush to be able to keep feeding their curiosity. The added bonus is that for every 'extra' question you're able to answer in class, the entire class, if they care about the question or not, believes just that much more in your ability to teach them. Nothing quite as useful as credibility.
The same goes for characterization. We need to know more about our characters than we ever put on paper. It's amazing how much more depth it adds to our writing. Know why it gives it more depth? Because we build a type of credibility with ourselves before we rush out to sell it to the readers. It's sorta like driving when you realize that where you look is where the car will go. If the writer doesn't have a clue where to look, the character's gonna be all over the place and the dreaded burning fiery crash becomes inevitable.
The best way out of this dilemma is to use what we know best, which is ourselves, right? Wrong! While writing can be cathartic, we gotta kinda hide that bit from the readers. After all, they're not our therapists. They're our audience. No one cares about our inner-most trials and torments. Really. I know that's a shock, but it's true. Cry on a spouse's or a best friend's shoulder (that's what they're there for), or pay through the nose for a therapist (that's what they're there for), but seriously here, don't expect anyone to care if you use fic (pro or fan) to write out your personal demons (and isn't that what LJ is all about anyway?). I'm sure someone reading this (law of averages here, I have no idea who, if anyone, will actually read this) is going to get all huffy and point out some prize winning or best selling author who did just that. Fine. I'm happy for them. I'll counter with: if people's personal demons were generally all that interesting, we'd all have majored in psychology and therapy would be a spectator sport, not a dirty little secret most folks won't admit to (besides Jerry Springer cornered that market all ready shudder).
It's hard to get into the head of a character that isn't us. But that's the point. It doesn't mean we can't use our own life experiences to help inform how we approach a character. It doesn't mean we can't ferret out previously unseen facets of known characters (or create new characters that glitter in the sunlight), but those facets need to fit what's already known. If there's a seeming contradiction, that contradiction needs to be supported or we risk blowing our credibility. If you write that Jack O'Neill owns a copy of The Wizard of Oz no one's going to think twice about it. If you write that he never watches it (because the flying monkeys gave you nightmares for years), you're going to have to give a reason (though it would be easy enough to hint that Charlie's death had something to do with it).
NCIS gave us a nice example of this recently. Gibbs' habit of building boats, with hand tools, in his basement had been a delightful, and consistent, quirk for five and a half seasons. I know I'd wondered where it came from. Learning that he used to spend his time working on "some damn project or other" in his father's garage (that didn't have electricity) when he was a kid was very nice. We still don't know, explicitly, at least, what he gets out of it, but it's not that hard to guess.
On the other hand, if a writer decides that Daniel Jackson couldn't get laid in college because he was a geek, my very first thought would be:
A. this writer didn't have sex in college, then
B. this writer doesn't know many geeks, and
C. this writer thinks Daniel went to a college for the blind
C. this writer isn't writing about Daniel, she's writing about herself.
Didn't get laid much in college because he was too focused on his work, maybe. Didn't have a meaningful relationship in college because he was too focused on his work, quite probably (because there's solid canon to support his tendency to prioritize work over relationships).
Don't make the mistake of applying personal history to a character unless it fits with what's already known. In the case of original characters, the whole package needs to hang together. The serial killer in your brand spankin' new pyscho-sexual thriller didn't have the same boring suburban childhood you had. While you were moping in the backyard, cursing parental restrictions that kept you from going to the movies with your boyfriend, your character was moping in the backyard cursing the fact that the neighbors hadn't yet gotten another puppy after he secretly tortured and killed the last one. Can there be parallels? Sure. But keep it in context - you are not your character and your character is not you. (And if your sexual awakening was the result of torturing and killing puppies, I really don't want to know about it.)