Comments on: A Deeper Look at Character

By: Writing Memories for Your Characters | Daily (w)rite

Writing Memories for Your Characters | Daily (w)rite — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 01:35:45 +0000

[...] Have you ever tried writing the memories/memoirs of your characters? [...]

By: janice | Sharing the Journey

janice | Sharing the Journey — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:10:37 +0000

Hope this isn’t lowering the tone, but again, movies and good TV shows are a wonderful place to see this in action.

I found the latest Pixar film strangely moving, with its grumpy old anti-hero.

Another grump was Toby, in the West Wing – pompous and arrogant on the surface but irrestibly interesting and hooking us with his conviction, intelligence, passion and humour.

Joey in friends, who has sex with anything that moves.

Jack Bauer and Jason Bourne, trained killers you root for, even though they’re hardly the cheeriest of chappies.

The Talented Mr Ripley, who murders the only person he’s ever really loved and leaves us feeling sorry for him.

House and the blurting surgeon Andy Brown in Everwood with their God complexes.

We see the same in Austen with the meddling Emma and the judgemental Darcy and Lizzie. All flawed but recognisably human and tantalisingly redeemable. That’s why so many of us love A Wonderful Life and films based on a Christmas Carol; we want some kind of redemption, some second chances, and to feel that our lives and work have meant something. We want to see some of our own latent heroism in others. We want to know we can change our autobiographies. A good book, film or show can give us a taste of that.

By: Larry

Larry — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:18:14 +0000

Andrew — thanks, a great example of what I was going for here. The more we see it in good books, the better we’ll understand how subtle this is.

By: andrewtoynbee

andrewtoynbee — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:59:44 +0000

Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant a dislikable character yet I found myself backing him through The First and Second Chronicles (6 books in all). Despite all his negligent and offensive actions, I wanted – no – I needed him to succeed in his endeavours and hopefully become the hero that all the characters around him needed him to be.

By: Bailish

Bailish — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:27:12 +0000

I don’t think we hold characters in books to the same level of people in real life. I wasn’t rooting for Bill Clinton to change his philandering ways. I thought he was irresponsible in his personal life. Had he been a character in a book, I would have been there for him, following every trial and tribulation.

By: Larry

Larry — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:36:05 +0000

@Nathan — don’t need to make ‘em superhuman, just make them easy to root for and empathize within whatever situation or quest you’ve given them. Human is always better than superhuman, and if they are exceptional, give them weak spots that we can empathize with (like, an athlete who is too shy with the press, or has a cheating wife, etc.). Nothing makes someone easier to root for than if there are huge stakes and the hero recognizes the need to step up, and into the challenge at hand, despite their past, their inner demons, etc. Asking for forgiveness, even when it comes from one’s self, is a huge empathy tool.

I’m not a George Bush fan, but he brought a dark past to the White House. And we rooted for him, despite his faults (at least at first), because he’d moved on, forgiven himself, and was pursuing a higher calling.

Hope this helps. L.

By: Nathan Hangen

Nathan Hangen — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:25:59 +0000

Great advice, so would you recommend giving exceptional qualities to a hero or just trying to make them as human as possible by showing their strengths and weaknesses in full form?