Tag: Characters

Characters, fantasy, Fiction, General Writing

Roleplaying Norms That Don’t Translate Into Fiction

Bruce Byfield

New writers are often inspired by roleplaying. Probably, only film and anime inspire more — with fiction, sadly, a distant fourth. At first, that seems to make sense. After all, aren’t both games and fiction a form of storytelling? Yes, but they are different forms of storytelling. In fact, there are at least seven ways in which storytelling in games differs from storytelling in fiction:

Gaming is communal

Roleplaying tells stories that are outlined by DMs, fleshed out by players’ choices and interaction, and often determined by the dice. The responsibility is shared around. Fiction, by contrast, is entirely the responsibility of the writer. Nor is it generally a matter of chance. It’s far more work — and all up to you, which is why online forums often have posts in which the writer tries to get others to do the work for them.

Gaming largely ignores diversity

Despite recent changes, gaming still tends towards a racial perspective: elves are agile and clever, orcs are stupid and evil, and dwarves combative and good with their hands. Especially in Young Adult books, such stereotyping is apt to get you flayed alive on Twitter today. Just as importantly, such casting usually makes for derivative and uninspiring fiction. What was acceptable in Tolkien is obsolete today.

Gaming is episodic

A roleplaying game can run for months, or even years. While the best games have an overall goal, and even several arcs, all games tend to be episodic, with one session often having minimal connection to others. Some fiction is like that, too; it’s call picaresque. More often, though, fiction is plotted: the first event causes the second, and the second the third, and so on until only one possibility remains at the climax. If you use games as a model, you are likely to lose direction and flounder because of what, in fiction, is a lack of structure.

Gaming does not consider point of view

On the one hand, a gaming session is developed by the players. Even the DM doesn’t always know what all the characters are thinking. A skilled DM might make some information known only to selected players, but, more often, all characters know what the others know. On the other hand, a fiction writer needs to decide on the point of view? Limited or deep third person? First person? Omniscient narrator? All these choices present challenges that gaming does not

Gaming emphasizes action

In most games, character points are based on action — if not killing, then figuring out traps and puzzles. Inner thoughts and dialog are only part of the socializing that is part of a gaming session. But focus on action in fiction, and the result is as mesmerizing as a choreograph diagram. Whether it’s fighting or sex, thoughts and reactions make the scene more readable in fiction.

Gaming focuses on a limited number of characteristics

Because games focus on action, their character development focuses on talents and skills. Anything further will be provided –if at all — by the player using the character. Some players may commission a sketch of their favorite character, but all the things that make fictional characters enjoyable, from background and appearance to how they move and talk, is rarely considered and is unimportant if it is.

Gaming develops characters separately from plot

When you roleplay, your characters are developed before the story begins. In fact, most characters can be dropped into any scenario. In comparison, characters are developed alongside the plot. The plot of Hamlet, for example, depends on a main character who thinks before he acts. Put Othello into the lead, and the play would be over before the end of act one; once he talks to the ghost, Othello would immediately rush off to kill his uncle. Conversely drop Hamlet into Othello, and no one would be murdered, because Hamlet investigates thoroughly before he acts. For this reason, the character sheets that are often suggested for fiction writers are largely useless. They simply provide the illusion of progress.

Two Forms of Storytelling

None of this is to disparage games. Rather, it is to point out that what works in roleplaying is likely to fail in fiction. If games inspire you to tell stories, perhaps you should consider writing roleplaying scenarios. But if you decide to write fiction, carrying the assumptions of games on to a novel or short story is one of the worst things you can do. Instead, read as widely as possible, and learn the conventions of your new form of storytelling.

General Writing

Making Character Lists More Interesting

Bruce Byfield

Fantasy novels tend to have a lot of characters. The Bone Ransom, the novel I am currently querying, has thirty-two, if you count off-stage and historical figures with names, although that number plunges to twenty if I only include those who actually appear. That’s far from the largest cast I’ve come across, but big enough that a list of characters seems to be called for. But character lists are boring to raead, even if useful as an occasional reference. How, I wondered, could they be made more interesting?

I found my answer in Lindsey Davis’ mystery novels set in ancient Rome. Davis plays it safe, titling her lists “Principal Characters” – a wise precaution, since unless you keep track as you write, it’s easy to miss a few. More to the point, her list is not just a dry description of each character, but often includes wry comments. Often, these comments can only be fully appreciated after you have finished the book. For example, her list in Two for the Lions, the first of her books I found on the shelves, includes “Maia: Falco’s younger sister, looking for her chance,” followed by “Famia: Maia’s husband, looking for a drink.” The same list includes “Pompius Urtica: a praetor who never did anything illegal” and “Iddibal: a far from beastly bestiarius.” With entries like these, Davis’ Principle Characters are always fun to read just for themselves.

In the same spirit, my list now contains entries like “Talson: a teenage boy corrupted by stories” and “Skulae: Talson’s sister. Nothing is her fault.” Other entries I am fond of include “Aglachad Torhte: Second Cousin to the Ravenpipers and not important enough” and (for a member of the undead) “Leel: A housecarl who has let herself go.” Whether readers will appreciate these remarks remains to be seen, but they definitely made compiling the list more enjoyable for me.

Characters, General Writing

The Fallacies of Character Flaws

Bruce Byfield

“What are your main character’s flaws?” I scroll past this attempt at conversation several times a week. I never try to answer it, because it is usually based on the assumption that a main character, if not all characters, are only realistic and sympathetic if they have defects. This assumption is so cluttered with fallacies that I have never taken the time to answer it until now.

So far as I can tell, the assumption seems based on a misunderstanding of Aristotle’s Poetics. In discussing tragedy, Aristotle introduces the term hamartia. Harmatia is often popularly translated into English as “flaw,” but, according to Wikipedia, is a much more neutral term, better translated as “to miss the mark” or “to fall short.” Harmatia is the misunderstanding or lacking piece of information that determines the events of the tragedy.

So, right away, the belief that a personality flaw is needed is based on a misunderstanding. This misunderstanding explains why it can be difficult to assign a flaw to a classical tragic hero. What, for example, is the flaw that leads to Oedipus marrying his mother? By every indication, Oedipus is a conscientious, upright soul with a strong sense of responsibility. Similarly, nothing is lacking in Orestes when he kills his mother. Rather, Orestes is caught between his duty to his mother and his responsibility to avenge his father’s murder. Neither Oedipus nor Orestes can be assigned a flaw without stretching a point, although many teachers have tried.

The tradition continues when Shakespeare is taught. I remember being told in high school that Othello’s tragic flaw was jealousy, while Hamlet was unable to make up his mind. Such over-simplifications create the illusion that we have a handle on complicated stories, but do we? Othello does not leap to jealousy by himself, but has his relationship with his wife poisoned by the whisperings of Iago. As for Hamlet, he delays only until he is convinced that what his father’s ghost has told him is true. If you had to assign Hamlet a flaw in Act V, it would be that he acts far too rashly.

Harmatia is a flexible enough term that it can cover Oedipus, Orestes, Othello, and Hamlet, but the hunt for flaws simply doesn’t work. However, few writers today are producing tragedies, so harmatia is irrelevant. Aristotle was not analyzing the structure of stories, but of tragedy, which is only a subset of stories. No matter how you translate Aristotle, his comments have no more than an indirect insight into a modern novel or short story.

Still, believers in flaws are apt to say, a flawed character is easier to identify with. And it is true that an impossibly noble hero is unlikely to be sympathetic. Often, an anti-hero, an amoral rogue with some redeeming traits is more likely to keep readers turning pages. However, all stories cannot be about anti-heroes. More importantly, I have to ask whether a personality flaw really makes a hero more relatable. Do we actually like a character more if they are weak-willed? If they drink too much? Or sleep around? At the very least, flaws only make a character more sympathetic if they are carefully selected. We might identify, for instance, with a ruthless killer who shows mercy, or only murders the corrupt. However, flaws alone do not seem a consistent tactic to make readers identify with a character.

Besides, fiction is not a role-playing game, where characters exist in isolation because the story is shaped by the DM. In fiction, a character depends largely on the needs of the plot. Does the story require someone who changes sides? Then the character involved is likely to be someone with imagination and empathy. Does it depend on a betrayal? Then the betrayer needs a motive like a lost cause or a wish for revenge. Successful characters rarely emerge fully-formed — they develop in a complex interplay with setting and plot where it is hard to say which comes first. If they are created in isolation, they are likely to be unconvincing. No matter how many flaws you sprinkle over them like spice, there is no hiding that you are serving up a bland dish.

Anyway, who is to say what a flaw is? A character who is rash could be praised in one circumstance for resolution, and in another for thoughtfulness. By contrast, working with the concept of flaws seems almost certain to result in puppet-like characters whom no one wants to read about.

What characters do need is an arc: a movement from one state to another. They might set out to accomplish a certain task. They might learn as the story continues, becoming fit to realize their goals in a way they weren’t at the start of the story. Such arcs are what engage readers — not a set of arbitrary flaws.

Characters

Economy of Character

Bruce Byfield

My late friend Paul Edwin Zimmer wrote a story in which a trained fighter defeated a vampire, not through speed, but through the absolute efficiency drilled into him over decades of training. The idea has always seemed a working definition of skill, and, not incidentally, an apt description of Paul’s own writing. However, it’s only recently I realized that it could apply to the creation of characters as well.

Most people, including me, seem to create characters unsystematically. They arise out of the immediate needs of the plot, or emerge full-grown out of their creator’s imagination. Few, if any, seem to consider characters as a long-term part of the story’s development who can become a member of a sort of central casting that can be drawn on to increase the long term efficiency of writing and help to bind the story together.

Perhaps you need to be someways along in your story to realize such possibilities. My own revelation came a third of the way through my first draft. I had thrown my main characters on the road, penniless, and in desperate need of a place to hide as their pursuer closed on them. I could have created a new character, but then I remembered a character who didn’t even appear on the page, a servant whose newborn child had been sacrificed for magical purposes. Nobody would have bothered to tell her, so her story was left unfinished, a minor part of my main characters’ adventures.

That seemed callous — however common in fantasy. However, I realized that I wanted my characters to be responsible. In the middle of their own misfortunes, they took the time to carry the sad news, and in the process found a roof for the night. The next morning, the servant is last seen stoically trudging home.

Realizing I was on to something, I had a soldier who had played a previously minor role show up further down the road. I also took an embarrassing ex-lover with a sheltered view of life — a comic character, a throwaway, really — and set her on the road to maturity with the soldier’s help.

However, the real advantage of having cast only struck me when a main character woke up alone in a village whose language he barely spoke. He had come with his lover and a young hero who was adopting him for political reasons, but neither were available. Two other characters were enemies who were not about to help him.

I did not want to have a chapter of my character wandering around inarticulately, so I needed a few people he could talk to. I found them in the form of a sexually ambiguous shaman he consulted, and a crippled ex-prisoner of war turned blacksmith. Later, I added two Aunties who started as his enemies, and became friendly due to their sense of romance.

All these characters appeared for ruthlessly practical purposes. Yet, after each served an original purpose, by the time I started relating the village’s politics, together they gave me a ready-made crowd cast for crowd scenes. For example, one chapter involves the reactions to the sudden appearance of an item of magic. Between all the previously invented characters, I had a full range of reactions.

For instance, I had originally made the smith crippled because I had the image of him swinging around his workshop on parallel bars. I had no other reason for that detail than it was vivid in my mind. However, when the magic appeared, and others were healed but not him, I had a new aspect to the story, and a new image of the disappointed smith limping back home disappointed. The shaman, a likely candidate for a cure, didn’t want one. As for the Aunties, one was reassuring the other that the cure would not affect their lesbian relationship. I had an entire cast ready to perform without any need to introduce more bit-players.

Nor am I through with this cast yet. Looking ahead, I can already see the roles most of them will play. Like Paul wrote years ago, it’s all about economy — and that’s a lesson I’ve never seen in all the millions of words published on how to write. Maybe it’s one of those skills you can only learn by doing.