|
|
Joined: 8/3/2012
Posts: 8
|
I've noticed that some authors hide or very cleverly insert-at-a-later-time vital information about characters in a story. I'm not talking about appearance because I understand the value of letting the readers own imagination sometimes do the creation here. What I'm talking about is hiding age, or even their name until many pages down the road. Is this some type of clever technique to keep the reader wondering? I've even seen authors use such names as Charlie, or Chris, and not define their gender right away for no plausible reason I can see. Is this some kind of a trick?
Also, it seems that in more of the modern fiction I read, authors purposely finding overly fancy ways to just tell us how old a character is. I find it annoying. If they're thirty-four, just say so. Don't tell me they are fifty years older than the first moon landing or were born the same year Kennedy was shot. If I want play detective I'd rather figure out who killed Mr. Plum in the study with the crowbar.
What does everyone think about this?
|
|
Joined: 8/13/2011
Posts: 272
|
Generally, I think the techniques you're noticing are quite useful in the right situations as you can get across the information you want to give in a more interesting way. Here's an example from Geekomancy by BC's own Michael R Underwood (I'm para-phrasing out of laziness):
'Ree had no desire to move though she would make an exception for Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Christina Hendricks.'
So we have three pieces of information here: Ree doesn't want to move, she's bisexual and her taste in partners. Now, we could have had this set out in a clearer fashion, like I have above, but it's a lot more engaging, a lot more interesting this way.
The same goes for your age example as well. If they're fifty years older than the Kennedy assasination, what does that say about the character saying it? Why have they chosen that particular event in time to reference? If a character says they're 'eighteen with twelve years experience', how does that change your image of them.
|
|
Joined: 4/30/2011
Posts: 662
|
I've found that people like to know a character's name and gender right out of the gate because those things help to orient the reader like setting and time. One reviewer for my WIP novel said that I should also include race (I write fantasy and SF.) because it makes a difference to them. Unless there is a specific purpose for those aspects to be hidden, I don't like to use them and don't like it when other writers use them.
Age is different. I have characters where I never give an age until pages down the line. I have one character where I don't even give his age till chapter 26 because I wanted to reader not to focus on it. Year age versus mental age is tricky. As a writer you have to make sure that your character comes off as the age you intend unless there is a specific reason for advanced maturity or vice versa.
It's interesting that you mention the various indicators people use for age. I could see in first person POV if a character said: "I was sixteen when I saw the first moon landing, and after fifty years I still remember it like it was seconds ago." That would make sense to me. If the writer in third does the same, the context would have to make sense. Say that the character was born the year Kennedy was shot, that information better be relevant to the story.
I don't see Chris or Charlie as gender neutral if I see them on paper. I'm going to think they're male. It doesn't shock me if they're female, I'm just saying that my brain doesn't say, "this name is gender neutral."
|
|
|
|
Rule of thumb: There's a big difference between confusion and mystery. We forget that at our peril.
Are you certain you're not confusing our learning information at the rate the character does, and as the character needs/learns it, and the author stepping in with an info-dump?
If the story is told in the character's POV we won't learn anything the character isn't focused on.
|
|
Joined: 8/3/2012
Posts: 8
|
Thanks for your comments and there are some points I haven't considered before. I think Jay is right when talking about the character only learning things he is focused on. I also like what LeeAnna said about people making judgments too early on, and that mental age compared with actual age are very different, so true.
Obviously age isn't the most important thing to know about the characters and what I have a hard time with is deciding what is. What in the first chapter will help get the readers to immediately identify and root for the protagonist versus items that have little or no importance? Even when I read, I have a hard time deciding what it is exactly that makes me instantly like a character, though I know there is something.
What have you found to be useful tools to use in the first few paragraphs, or pages to solidify a characters existance making them both believable and likable?
|
|
Joined: 4/30/2011
Posts: 662
|
In the first few chapters I make sure I have action and dialogue so that the reader can understand how this person is. Name, gender, age, race, and ethnicity are important because they assist the reader in identifying them, but people connect with action. Have your protagonist do something that makes the reader like them. In screen writing they call this the "save the cat" moment. I doesn't have to be heroic. It could be something as simple as a snarky line to a detestable character.
Right now I'm rewriting my first chapter to put the attributes that people like about my protagonist into the 5 year old version. I make them age appropriate, of course, but I need to make sure they like her right out of the gate so when she does do something the reader doesn't like, they can let it go... maybe.
|
|
Joined: 6/14/2012
Posts: 194
|
Right out of the box: name. Even though it may be an alias (Lee & Miller's Liaden book Agent of Change started with "The man who was not Terence O'Grady had come quietly." That man is someone else, and a very important someone else, but the POV is, initially, that of a minor character, soon to be hors de combat. And that initial mystery, combined with a name, grabbed my attention...as did the situation that became apparent on the first place. The man who was not Terence O'Grady was a prisoner, and the guards (one of whom is the POV) don't expect him to emerge alive from the next little while. This isn't a tactic to use often, but it's very effective here.
Readers want a label for their protagonist, and they want it fast. "Not-Terence O-Grady" wouldn't have held me past the first chapter, even though it wasn't my first Liaden book and I was already guessing which of the characters I knew it might be. (I was wrong. It was the son of the one I guessed.)
Name, maybe gender (I'm not bothered by ambiguous names, and if the gender isn't plot-relevant, I'm not bothered not to be told for a good long while). What is relevant to the character in the situation the character is in? Appearance? In Agent of Change, chapter 2, we see the man who is not Terence O'Grady changing his appearance radically, using specialized tools...who else has this person been? The word "agent" in the title now takes on more significance. Whose agent? Aimed at what? And--being an agent, and having taken other identities--how secure is his own identity? We finally get his name on page 13 (in chapter 2, when he has met a so-far nameless woman in distress.)
Mystery is a really good hook. It need not be the protag's name. It may be the protag's reason for being "there"--it may be something that happens to the protag that the protag doesn't understand.
But, SZavoda, there's a problem you mentioned that only you can solve. You say "Even when I read, I have a hard time deciding what it is exactly
that makes me instantly like a character, though I know there is
something." That is your job as a writer--to dig, hard as it is, until you do know what it is. Because though instinct will help you pick up tricks from books you like, study will do more. Part of becoming a writer--a professional writer, anyway--is paying attention, close attention, to what works and does not work on your own reader-mind. This is not the fun part of writing (for most of us) but it's necessary.
What works for me may not work for you. The way I have defined what works for me may make no sense to you even if (for instance) the opening line of Agent of Change also tweaks your interest..
We don't all, as readers, like the same characters. That's why readers who transition to writers need to start analyzing their own reactions, so they can be more aware, as they write, of whether they've satisfied themselves first (essential) in the writing, not just in the imagining of a character. If you have a character you really like--that you admire, that you want to have seen as you see her or him--have you in fact written down what it is that makes that character attractive to you, yourself?
Here's an exercise that may help. Go back to a book whose opening you really like, an opening that introduces a character you quickly attach to. Go into editor-mode: define that character in every way you can...and compare that character to the person in your life you think he or she is most like (including you, if it's you.) Find the point when you knew you would want to keep reading. You can even chart is (in fact, you should: every descriptor with + and - from 1 to 5.)
What was the character's name (anyone in your family, among your friends, have that name?) What was the character doing? Something you found sensible? Competent? Amusing? Brave? Otherwise admirable? What was the character thinking/saying? Something you found interesting? Surprising? Expressed in a way that you liked? Would this character fit among your friends? Your family? What about occupation? Doctor, plumber, engineer, taxi-driver, space-ship mechanic, lawyer, etc? How do you feel about different occupations? If there's a physical description, note the details--and your reaction to each one of them (you may like that the character has brown eyes and hair, but not like the descriptor "pudgy.") We all have preferences in people that bleed into our preferences in characters--this will help you chart yours.
Go back again and mark sentences for prosody (the rhythm of the words, the accents, long and short syllables) and for vocabulary. Were you caught/interested/pleased by this rhythm? What about the other sounds--assonance, for instance, or the individual word that sparks out of some prose? I can be intrigued by the correct use of an unusual word...another person might be turned off by it. (I became a fan of Leslie Charteris' "Saint" books in high school by one word I didn't know: "chatoyant".)
When you've exhausted yourself with the first page of that book you like, pick up one you don't--whose protagonist is supposed to be likeable but you find him/her boring or annoying. Chart that one the same way. (A word that turns me off: "tresses." About the time some female protag is described with "tresses" I know she's not going to be my kind of female protag. I'm also very unfond of "small white even teeth." And yet I know that there's nothing wrong with "tresses" or "small white even teeth" and plenty of people like characters I've shrugged off because they had flaming/golden/honey-colored/raven tresses.)
You should chart three books--by three different authors--in both your "liked" and "not liked" categories. Now look at your charts in light of your own background, your own interests, your own attitudes. You will very likely find that you like characters you could connect with as friends if you met them somewhere. Your core values are their core values. Your core interests overlap. You think the same things are funny. And those other writers either put into those first paragraphs the things that hook you...or (in the case of books and characters you didn't like) they didn't.
|
|
Joined: 8/3/2012
Posts: 8
|
Excellent post Elizabeth! Great ideas's about charting the books I like, and you're absolutely right. It's those little nuances that make or break it for me right away, and now it's time to capture what it was that made me feel that way.
I've found that when I browse the first few pages of author I haven't read, it really boils down to whether I like the protag or not and for that I'm basing it all on the opening lines of their actions, or dialog, or some internal thought they are having. Kind of like real life judgement I suppose.
For authors whose work I already love, the impulse to put the book down if the protagonist doesn't connect with me is a little slower. I've developed a trust through their other writings that make me believe I'll come to like this new character in time.
I've read 75% of Connelly's work but truth-be-told, I almost put down the Lincoln Lawyer the first time I read it. I couldn't imagine rooting for someone so cocky right out of the gates. Turned out to be one of his best books though so I'm glad I kept on reading.
|
|
Joined: 6/14/2012
Posts: 194
|
Yeah, it makes a difference to me whether I trust the writer from previous books, or not. But even writers I usually like can produce a book that I'm just not that crazy about, and writers I usually don't like can grab me with one that's unusual for them.
Still--if I stand in the bookstore aisle reading and am not caught in the first few pages--that book's not going home with me. (Exception: desperation when stuck at an airport with canceled flights and no knitting. Then I'll read almost anything. )
|
|
|
|