My attitude to characters float somewhere between invisible friends and secondary personalities. What are yours?
Vehicles for exploring conflicting values.
like flies, I can rip the wings off and see how they twitch.
Vehicles for exploring conflicting values.
Largely this for me in a good number of things I have written.
I also use them for experimentation, putting personality X in situation Y, or exploring the underlying themes of various myths through a modern context (and not in a slavish retelling, sort of more in the way the author of the 13th century narrative poem Sir Orfeo treated the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.)
Characters for me are vehicles for understanding; understanding things within myself, or larger things outside myself.
My main characters are usually apathetic and end up doing something crazy. I can't write anything without sex, drugs or violence. It just happens.
i feel like im channeling people. because i think of a name first... but its more like the name comes to me... and then a situation comes to me, and its kind of like that person in my head tells me how they would handle it. thats what i write
I guess my go-to characters are usually me as a kid, or me as an old man, or me with a really cool car or something along those lines. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. There are plenty of me's that are despicable and do things I don't understand, so at least it stays interesting.
@Renfield, you're funny ^w^
Same. Extensions of myself.
as a friend of mine once put it, "they are your children, and you have to cut off their fingers."
It depends on the project and the individual character--in my current project, I would say the female lead is a combination of parts of myself, a woman I would like to be, and even a little of a woman I am afraid of becoming. The male lead, on the other hand, is like a dear friend, a child of mine, a "vehicle for exploring conflicting values" (well put) and many other things. Some of the secondary characters are just expressions of certain things, and some are friends.
Also, this:
"they are your children, and you have to cut off their fingers."
To add, I would say my reaction to this:
like flies, I can rip the wings off and see how they twitch.
Is telling. I was horrified by this, almost as though we were talking about "real people". My characters are very real to me.
Horrified? Mischieviously sardonic in intent though. Going back to characters as 'tools', they are a way to inflict your reader with the emotion and cognitive dissonance that moves the reader's heart cockles in some way, leaving a mark on them. You play with these little pawn pieces and through them you are messing with a real human being's mind. It's very manipulative, unsettling, and beautiful to think about. I had to look up this Vonnegut quote, which is sort of the basis of this storytelling philosophy:
Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
in the words of tommy lee jones (who's a writer, believe it or not) sometimes you have to kill a few puppies.
What if your characters are historical figures, say in a historical-fiction story. Is it acceptable to change the behavior they're known for?
What if your characters are historical figures, say in a historical-fiction story. Is it acceptable to change the behavior they're known for?
I guess it depends. It seems like murky (and dangerous) waters. I am a huge Doctor Who fan, and of course, they play with this a lot, but it's supposed to be fun, quirky sci-fi. I would imagine if it is a serious historical fiction piece you have to be more careful about it...
@Renfield--that is not to say that nothing terrible happens to my characters. Most of my work is about terrible things happening to people--I think my biggest challenge as a writer is telling "the truth" and avoiding that happy ending that can only come when nothing much of importance happens.
But I like how you said it "manipulative, unsettling, and beautiful". That really hits it on the head. I do find myself emotional and moody when I write the darker parts of my stories--but why bother writing fiction if you are going to write about rainbows and butterflies all day?
It sort of depends on whether I'm writing in first or third person. If it's in first person, I feel like I'm a method actor and sort of "become" the character while I'm writing the book. If it's third person, I'm much more distant from the protagonist, and I can allow myself to write in the same style that I've used in previous third person books. But with first person books, the protagonist of one book needs to sound different from the protagonist of another book.
What if your characters are historical figures, say in a historical-fiction story. Is it acceptable to change the behavior they're known for?
Have you read that there T.C. Boyle? One of the greatest literary minds today imho, and he sort of twists historical figures in such a way.
