- They want to be well rounded. All characters want this. Well let's face it, nobody really wants to be thought shallow, do they?
- They want to have decent dialogue. They won't want all the best lines going to the "enemy".
- They want to have enough to do. They don't want to be brought out for one scene and then be forgotten about.
- They want to be well developed in terms of having good relationships with others and so on. No cardboard cut-out characters, please.
- They want to be at least referred to by other characters. You are creating a fictional world, it has to seem real and just as we talk about friends/enemies behind their backs, it should happen fictionally too.
Back to the lists again but tonight, I look at what your character would wish for before they come to life on the printed page. I refer to main characters here, not the odd ones who do walk on for an odd scene and that's it with that being iall that is genuinely required of them. So what do your characters really want you to do for them then?
0 Comments
On my Facebook author page tonight, I discuss books versus movies, which was also an early Chandler's Ford Today blog post of mine. Movies can be a great way of getting someone into an author's work and bring vividly to life the created world. (I'm thinking of Middle Earth and Mordor in particular in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Excellently done and a wonderful tribute to Tolkein I think).
So do story formats matter? To a certain extent no. The important thing is getting the story across. I'm an avid reader but not all of my family are and some prefer audio books. To my mind, they are still "getting" the story, albeit in a different form than the one I'm using. Books, of course, are of vital importance (which is why I said only to a certain extent, no). They are part of our heritage, print is special and it would be difficult to portray poetry in a film! You can read books whenever it is convenient for you to do so and in a wider variety of places, something a movie would find hard to match! And from a fairytale viewpoint, while I have no problem with Disney bringing fairytales to life, you really should read the original versions. Disney really couldn't have portrayed the real version of The Little Mermaid as Hans Christen Andersen wrote it as that would've needed a much higher cinema certificate than the audience it usually caters for! And there are so many fairytales that have not been/are unlikely to be adapted. Given fairytales can be pretty blunt about the horrific fate usually reserved for its villains, Disney would have real problems here in staying true to the story. It's one of those strange things that often you don't get to appreciate what is in your local area until you've moved out of it. My parents, for example, never visited Kew Gardens until they had moved out of London. I guess when something is right under your nose, relatively speaking, it's easy to convince yourself that you'll get to visit so-and-so but never actually get around to doing so!
Is this true for your characters? What is under their noses, whether it be places to visit, friends to catch up with and so on, that they don't get around to actually do and which gives them cause for regret later on? Equally what long held ambitions do they finally get around to achieving and did the reality match expectations? (So often it doesn't!). I've occasionally used settings I know well to flesh out descriptions in my fictional world. I guess you could say I was using what is right under my nose to good effect when I do that. So do you? What could you use to make your narrative deeper, easier to picture and so on? We all come across assumed attitudes that annoy. For example, one of my pet peeves is that your average Audi driver believes they have the perfect right to drive right up behind you, immediately implying braking distances simply do not apply to them. They also think they have the right to go through red traffic lights. None of this will be news to most people (!) especially in the UK, and, from this, you'll gather I'm not keen on Audi drivers. Almost. I have come across some considerate ones, and they're fine, and if you are one of them, great, but sadly where I am the majority are not.
So what assumptions could really annoy you as a writer. Some of these I've come across directly, others I've heard about.
So what assumptions do your characters have and on what are they based? What are the inbuilt "prejudices" the world of your story has as part of its history? (That's why I put speech marks around the word prejudices given for your characters and your world, they will not see it that way. It will be their history, culture and so on). Does anyone challenge those assumptions and, if so, what are the consequences? Can the assumptions be changed? Has anyone ever managed to change them and, if so, for better or worse? September, of course, heralds the start of the autumn season, which is one of my favourite times of year. I love seeing the magnificent colours of the autumn leaves, I like walking through the fallen leaves especially when they're crisp and dry and my spouse and I work our socks off clearing up said leaves from the pavement outside our house. (It does make for a very good workout!). But I think it fair to say September represents new beginnings - new season, new terms and so on.
What new beginnings do your characters experience? Do they seek these or have to make the best of a bad job, so to speak, because said new beginnings are imposed on them? Are there new beginnings they want to have but so far are eluding them? How do the new beginnings change them (and there is bound to be some change)? (Best example of this is Frodo in The Lord of the Rings. Completely changed by his new beginning, his adventures). Do others around them resent the new beginning because they themselves are being left behind (figuratively, not necessarily literally)? And why do you want your characters to have new beginnings? How do they advance the plot? What more do they reveal about the characters that we need to know? |
AuthorI'm Allison Symes and write fairytales with bite, especially novels and short stories. Archives
October 2019
Categories |