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antishurtugal_rebornThere have been fantastic essays already posted about the importance of external conflict, but I feel the need to discuss something as equally important and just as absent in the Inheritance Series: internal conflict.
I'm of the opinion that giving a character some super duper powers does not make them an automatic Sue. I do think, however, that if the character doesn't struggle with the responsibility they've been given and takes it all too well for it to be realistic or relatable, then that would help qualify the character as a Sue.
This of course ties in with character development, but it's a special type of character development that I'm talking about. Character development can fall into many avenues: letting your wonderful creations shine with sparks of their personality, show that they have depth by giving them a myriad of emotions, showing how they react differently to their environment and situations, and a plethora of other things you can do to show character development. Internal conflict is more specific in that it ties to how the character develops their moral and world view, or how they think through their actions in the story--so that you can understand how and why they act the way they do, or at least get a feel for why they do what they do. It makes them struggle a bit before reaching a decision, basically, or shows why they don't reach a decision maybe.
It also gives the character something important: humanity. You can make the most super-powered god-like character relatable just by making him question what he's doing, or give him guilt or something, instead of just having him mindlessly go about the story without much thought as to what he does.
I feel, as a person who likes stories best when they're character-driven and character-centric, that it's a lot harder to have have external conflict without internal conflict, and that it's a lot more possible to have internal conflict without any external conflict. You don't always need The Big Bad for the character to conquer; at the risk of sounding corny, it's always more interesting to me when The Big Bad comes from within the character, and that's what they must conquer.
Anyway, how this applies to Paolini. Uh... it basically doesn't.
Oh, he does certainly attempt it, but it always succeeds in falling flat on its face. Usually any psuedo-internal conflict Eragon has just turns into one thing or the other--angst fodder or soap-boxing.
Examples? Murtagh. Eragon will spend pages wangsting about Murtagh and how he feels bad for him and feels betrayed and blah blah blah. While this is all well and good, it's promptly dropped the next time Eragon talks about, thinks about or encounters Murtagh, where he'll just jump straight to "HE'S T3H EBIL NOW!!11" as if he'd never entertained the thought that Murtagh didn't have a choice in the matter. We already know Eragon did think that at some point, but quickly dropped it the next sentence. It seems like none of his thoughts effect his actions, or more importantly, his attitude. He thinks about it, then it's promptly dropped out of the picture until he can wangst about it again.
Another example would be Eragon's vegetarianism. We do see him struggle with it... but it's always rife with inconsistencies and soap-boxing, so we can't possibly relate to him about the issue. It's so completely unneeded, hypocritical and pretentious of the elves and Eragon that I would really call it a non-issue, especially considering how many other things Eragon SHOULD be worrying about.
Like... maybe the fact that he's been given the duty to be the poster child for a war when he's only 15 or 16? Pressure, much?! He's a simple farmboy! It's a big, wide, scary world! Have more reaction, you flat piece of cardboard!
Ahem. The point is, Eragon should have an effing buttload of internal conflict in a story like this. All I get from Eragon is that he's a freaking simpleton because he just blindly follows whatever he's told. He doesn't even interact with any villains--how can he trust anyone's word on who's bad and who's not?! And yet judging by how Paolini made Eragon the titular character, I would assume that he's not supposed to be a simpleton. He should have some trace of cynicism over following Brom's every word, or immediately trusting the Varden--but that can't exist, because that would make Brom and the Varden bad.
Why would they be bad? Because the only time Eragon gets bad vibes from someone is if they're evil. His inherent Sueness results from this; Eragon's thoughts and feelings are truth. He doesn't like Sloan, so Sloan is bad. He likes Brom, so Brom is good. I could go on for days. The only time he was wrong was concerning Murtagh, and frankly I wouldn't jump to say Murtagh is always going remain a bad guy.
This is why he can't have internal conflict. He can't struggle with anything because he has to be right, all the time. Paolini can't stand for Eragon to make errors in judgement, something that every person makes. And as everyone knows, if you can't make mistakes, you can't grow as a person because hey, you're perfect already.
This, as you should know all too well, is a Big Fat Problem, mainly because not only is he right about everything, he's also perfect at fighting and helping lead the Varden. If you don't have any internal conflict, at least have some damn external conflict! At least Superman comics can do that much!
As a result, Eragon doesn't have to struggle with anything, which is truly what makes the Inheritance Series a big fat snore. Just more proof that Paolini needs to have his head surgically removed from his ass.
I agree completely. If Eragon once questioned the motives of those around him, or hesitated over a decision, or wondered for more than a sentence whether or not what he was doing was right, it wouldn't be quite so unbearable as a book.
Case in point: that soldier his killed in Brisingr. Good characterisation would have made him pause to consider the poor boy's pleas for mercy. At the very least. But no, like the Terminator himself, he crushes the helpless, harmless soldier's larynx, just on the off-chance he could have proved a threat.
Maybe Pao just thinks mindless killing is what makes a character strong. A leader has to make strong decisions and stand-by them, after all.
But... I think he fails to consider that even stubborn or strong-willed characters can still think over their actions, either before or after they make their choices. I have a stubborn character myself, but he's incredibly aware of every choice he makes; he weighs out the consequences before reaching a decision, although he usually will always stand-by his initial gut feelings until he's shown otherwise, but he at least considers the other side of the issue, and it'll always weigh on his mind. His stubbornness comes from his unwillingness to act out contrary to what he feels, not because he can't even acknowledge what the other choice is or is even aware of it.
To not even consider all the consequences your actions can have is dumb, not strong or intelligent. It's incredibly stupid for Eragon to think the only thing to do is to kill the soldier. Doesn't he have MAGIC? Couldn't he just make the soldier forget that it was Eragon who he saw, or maybe promise the solider never to tell a soul about what he saw with all that fancy ancient language crap? It's something called mercy and it's what most heroes would exercise. Hell, I'd like to see Eragon just let the guy go without even doing anything and then regretting the decision later--at least he'd have *gasp* made a mistake and then have to learn from it later.
Unless you're dealing with Sloan. then you have to come up with a convoluted scenario to give him a fate worse than death, because obviously Eragon doesn't want to have anyone's blood on his hands.
Makes head hurt. D: Make stop.
Awwww, come on, the old hack-n-slay approach works great; millions of Dungeons & Dragons players can't be wrong! ;)
I was just thinking about that same example about the pleading boy.
Mr. Eragon 'Killing Machine' go around butchering people, gives two lines of "I don't like killing", then goes back to killing without compassion. Saving the pleading soldier would have added more character to Eragon, showing how merciful he can be.
Don't people usually have problems sleeping and such when they kill ton upon ton of people, especially if they are going to 'the void'? But then again Eragon believes the Varden's cause to be so 'immaculately good' that he doesn't need to worry about it, and he is killing humans, not his beloved elves.
Don't forget that he shows more reluctance towards killing animals than humans. While I'd respect it somewhat if it was a show of sympathy for animals and humans, and any other humanoid race (even Urgals), then it would be legitimate, but as it is even his sympathy towards animals is severely inconsistent. Like t he crow he randomly kills out of anger. Sigh.
I would think anyone involved in multiple battles would have trouble sleeping, not just from killing people but from the intensity of battles. Eragon goes from being a normal boy to having to fight for his life. Again, you'd think he'd have a bit more to struggle with on that point, but no, totally fine. He is a hero after all.
Which brings me to another point: What Paolini thinks a hero is. Apparently he thinks it's someone who's already perfect, which is more than a little sad.
Or when he forces Saphira to eat more cattle than she wanted so that he can suck out their life energy.
I don't think Eragon (or Paolini) knows what moral conflict is. Eragon might do this if he's supposed to care about animals but doesn't and is looking for a loophole. "Oh, gee, of course I don't want to kill animals, but Saphira was hungry, weren't you, and I didn't want to waste the energy." It's like a "vegetarian" pressuring friends to give them meat, and then claiming that they only eat it because otherwise it would go to waste.
I mean, come on! If he really cared, he'd drain dribs and drabs from the trees so he could avoid this sort of situation. He should be trying to avoid killing if he cares so much.
Like them slaughtering the poor Galbatorix soldiers. Just wanted to show off how cool Arya and Eragon are during a fight.
Yes, true. Being the most powerful person in the room usually means that you have a fighting chance of being the most interesting person to write a book about. I agree with this. I also think that to be realistic, there has to be some kind of mix of "wow, I'm powerful!" and "wow, I'm stuck with being powerful." Different characters react to this stuff differently depending on how they were raised, the nature of the difference, and their individual personalities, and depending on whether they've grown up feeling powerful or if it was suddenly given to them/foisted upon them.
Paolini's laughable attempts at having Eragon battle his inner demons usually sound incredibly wooden when they show up at all. It's like he hasn't actually thought about what it would be like to have your whole world changed in a month or two. That's because Eragon's life started when Paolini started writing about him. It didn't start when he was born, like a real person.
I am very, very with you on this. Character development means you don't have people who act according to a script. Their motivations must be clear and make SENSE. It's also important that a character's inner battles not come across as whiny wangsting. Deep sorrow, real terror, honest self-doubt, and the tentative beginnings of confidence should have accompanied Eragon's rise to Dragon-Riding Hero. Instead, he's just a story. You never feel ANYTHING from him. You just read a bunch of words about what he does and says. Paolini is a lot more interested in describing his weapons or framing emotions in visual descriptions (most notably, describing THE TEARS rather than THE SORROW if someone is crying).
"it's a lot more possible to have internal conflict without any external conflict."
Yes. I have whole novels that are almost entirely composed of an internal conflict. In one of the versions of my query letters to agents about my latest novel, I say "My story is about more than 'this stuff happens to that person.' My character IS her story." And yeah, there's plenty to write about there!
"It seems like none of his thoughts effect his actions, or more importantly, his attitude. He thinks about it, then it's promptly dropped out of the picture until he can wangst about it again."
Astute observation. (And I'm amused that you used "wangst," because I'm typing my thoughts while reading your entry and had typed "wangst" before I got to a part where you did!) I point this out in my upcoming Brisingr essay--that apparently haphazard, late-stage editing has caused certain realizations Eragon has had to suddenly not apply anymore. (Like, hang on, you are morally opposed to eating animals now that you have "shared" their consciousness, but somehow you have no problem with casting spells on blindly-wandering Sloan so that he will have an easy time hunting? Guess either you forgot you don't kill animals or it doesn't apply unless you have to look at it!)
"He can't struggle with anything because he has to be right, all the time. "
Absolutely right you are. This is Epic Sue.
Paolini is just... too much of a planner. His characters are lifeless. He doesn't let them run loose, or maybe he lacks the imagination to visualize the characters strongly enough so that they can run loose.
I have a character in my own fantasy story who I had originally made a general of an army. The very notion of that now is laughable. In the first draft I wrote, he quickly revealed himself to be many things: effeminate, curious, soft-bellied, clumsy, gentle, compassionate, sensitive, cowardly, though I still hadn't fully realized his other traits, like temperamental and stubborn. I was actually taken aback when one of my readers referred to him as a "lovable dork." I expected him to be regal and elegant--maybe a bit of a prude, but probably not to such a wimpy extent. But that's what he was, a wimp. Not like anyone who had went through military training, that was for sure.
So I made the story accommodate him. And that was fine, since I wasn't digging the military jive anyway (I still can't tell you how you even get to the rank of a general). I'm still continuing to modify the story as well. I'm almost molding the world to suit him, but not quite in a way like Eragon does; it's not so that he's able to have super awesome powers and be the best at something. It's so that his personality suits his era a bit more. When I was writing it in a medieval esq setting, he revealed his views to be a lot more modern, so I made the world a weensy bit more steampunk than ye olde feudal society. Which was only to my benefit since the world suddenly felt a LOT less limited, especially since I actually detest a lot of medieval fantasy.
Point is, I only decide how to modify the story. The characters decide what needs modification in the first place. And usually whenever I decide anything beforehand character-wise, I end up changing it in the actual writing to what makes more sense. (For example, in my notes I'll write something like "Character A wants to come along. Character B agrees, as does Character C, but Character C has some hesitation." Then in the writing it'll end up more like Character B has some hesitation, but agrees because Character C agrees. Character C agrees because he thinks it'll be good fun, while Character A blinks vapidly, completely oblivious.)
And despite how it all sounds, this, as you probably know, doesn't make writers like myself quite crazy. It's just a combination of building up strong characters that can stand on their own and using deductive logic to determine what path they would take given how they simply are--you just do it all unconsciously so it feels like your characters are doing it on their own.
Paolini so obviously doesn't do this it's painful. He barely has what can be qualified as characters. They change at the whim of the story--and what's worse, the story is still confused, stupid and dragged out. It makes the characters incredibly inconsistent and by extension, confusing and hard to pin point. How can you like characters who don't even seem like they're legitimate people?
Aye! You're absolutely right when you say that his over-planning shows in the stiffness of his characters. He hasn't realized that characters drive stories. Even plot-driven stories have to have realistic, dynamic characters.
It's good that you allowed your characters to be changed by their experiences and their interactions with others, realizing your original conception was off. I think there are some people who will think I'm pretentious for saying this, but everything you said about how your characters evolved indicates that you "get" writing and character and are an honest-to-god writer, and it takes one to know one.
One of my favorite writers, Joan D. Vinge, made me burst out crying after reading a foreward she included in a tenth anniversary edition of a favorite book. (I was really very touched and amazed that someone understood the writing process and phrased it so well.) What she said was that she had such a good understanding of and bond with her character that she thinks of him as "a person" that she wants to grow old with, and she acknowledged that some of what she was about to say about him would sound pathological to people who aren't writers. She said that characters make their own decisions, and that they will do things like react to your planned plot points with "You can't make me do that!" or might take an instant unplanned dislike to another character.
I see that in your bit about your characters, you've had this experience. I have too--the exact experience. A protagonist went to a party with her roommate, and immediately some girl there started giving her attitude for no apparent reason. The bitchy girl was sort of a pretentious, aggressive type, and as my main character was already feeling out of place due to not knowing anyone, she reacted pretty badly to having this girl just randomly pointing out her weaknesses. (It was a get-to-know-you type party for the tech crew of a stage play, and it was the main character's first job of the sort; the confrontational character picked up on this and was very smug about "you've never done this before, HAVE you??") My character was so upset partly because she was worried that what the girl said was true, and was frustrated that most people's interpretation of her behavior was "Oh, she's just on the rag" or "She's just jealous because you're thinner and blonder than she is." (Nooo! The problem is that SHE MIGHT BE RIGHT!) I certainly didn't plan to have a character like that in the room, and it wasn't important to the plot (except perhaps to show that not everyone is accepting of new blood in a tight-knit group like a college theatre crew), but I think it did loads for introducing layers for the characters. Not that I was thinking about that when I was writing the scene. It started as soon as these two characters shook hands.
This is also why I'm strictly a sequential writer. I'm not one of those writers who can skip around writing the scenes as the ideas come. I might know that eventually there's going to be a concert scene or a natural disaster or something, but until I actually GET to that point in the story, I don't feel I could write it honestly. The characters involved might be somewhat changed by events that happen in the meantime, and I need to know what those are. I think the good writers who can write out of sequence are the type that imagine the scenes without writing them down and the actual writing is more like a chronicling; in essence, they've got at least a very good idea of "who" the character is by the time this plot point comes around, and they for whatever reason want to write that scene before a scene that comes sequentially before it. (I've gone back and inserted scenes that weren't there before, but usually they are things that could have happened with no change to the later scenes.) I can't write the scene about the baby being born until I've done everything I'm going to do about the pregnancy, if you know what I mean. And I think that's part of the reason people always compliment me on how real my characters seem; because I'm willing to go there with them. In my webcomic there is a pregnant woman who eventually gives birth, and the journey toward her doing so was apparently realistic enough that people have written me to talk about the comic and just spoke to me as if they were sure I must have had children myself. Nope, I haven't. I write about people very unlike myself all the time. But, in the cases where it can be compared with reality, apparently I get it right. That's the power of honest storytelling!
"The characters decide what needs modification in the first place. And usually whenever I decide anything beforehand character-wise, I end up changing it in the actual writing to what makes more sense. (For example, in my notes I'll write something like "Character A wants to come along. Character B agrees, as does Character C, but Character C has some hesitation." Then in the writing it'll end up more like Character B has some hesitation, but agrees because Character C agrees. Character C agrees because he thinks it'll be good fun, while Character A blinks vapidly, completely oblivious."
Exactly. You never know what they'll say, what their words and thoughts will reveal about their motivations. You might think Character A would be hesitant to come on the expedition because it involves a boat and she can't swim, but when you actually write the scene you find that her personality is such that her drive for adventure or reward is stronger than her fear, and she may even pursue swimming lessons before the expedition so she won't be as scared--because that's the kind of person she is. Point is, if you just puzzle it out logically (e.g., "Character A would obviously be more hesitant than most because she can't swim"), it doesn't necessarily make sense in context. When you're actually in the moment, writing it, all sorts of things come out in the wash.
"I actually detest a lot of medieval fantasy."
Me too. For some reason it often turns me off completely. Maybe because it's so damned obvious sometimes that the authors are enamored of the time period, yet don't seem to find it necessary to depict it realistically (e.g., just LOVING to write about going place to place on horses but never suggesting that anyone has to clean their shit out of the village roads).
"Paolini so obviously doesn't do this it's painful. He barely has what can be qualified as characters. They change at the whim of the story--and what's worse, the story is still confused, stupid and dragged out. It makes the characters incredibly inconsistent and by extension, confusing and hard to pin point. How can you like characters who don't even seem like they're legitimate people?"
Exactly. Fans talk about Eragon being a great character, but I think more than anything they're just imagining how kickass it would be if they had a dragon friend, and that's what they're responding to. Concepts. Which aren't Paolini's in the first place. Some rather undiscerning and simplistic readers don't really need much to like a story. They really do feel like "boy goes through coming-of-age hero's journey with a cool dragon pal and beats Evil" is entertaining. These folks often don't HAVE to have a legitimate character to like because they just kind of imagine it happening to themselves.
And yes, they absolutely do change at the whim of the story. It really hurts. I mean, yes, characters can be inconsistent; they can behave contrary to logic; they can be irrational. I can believe that someone who values animals' lives could still get really ticked off and kill a crow out of sheer temper-tantrum-fueled anger. But I couldn't ever reconcile that with a person who also didn't think about it, feel bad about it, or reflect on his terrible deed afterwards. Not if he cries over having to kill grass and bugs to heal injuries. (And wait, why do the plants' deaths warrant sadness if you kill them to heal yourself if you don't also cry whenever you eat a salad? It's just silly.)
I'm not sure if he can become a good writer after seeing what he's done in the realm of "improvement." Seems he's reacted to some criticism by switching some of the plot points so they aren't QUITE Hero's Journey outline bullets (i.e., "Luke, I am your BROTHER!" instead of "Luke, I am your FATHER!"), or trying to include more getting-inside-the-character's-head inner dialogue instead of "telling" (but oh my goodness, it was laughable--the ridiculous list of sensory input Eragon was experiencing when he walked blindly through the cave in Brisingr was an absolute assault on my literature sensibilities!). He's still PATCHING. He's still STITCHING. He's still just running around plugging holes and thinking no one will notice, when what we're saying is that he needs to learn to generate stuff that doesn't have holes in the first place.
I once saw one of my classmates reading Brisingr.... and promptly scoffed. I started to explain to him that it was crap and he responded with "It's fantasy! I want to read about epic battles and dragons!" When I tried to explain to him that fantasy didn't have to have any of those elements he tried to jokingly comeback with "YES IT DOES LOL." D:
It's people like him that reads the Inheritance Cycle; people who just don't care about what crap they feed into their heads as long as it's palatable. I guess anything new scares them??
I just see very little point in writing what's already been written before... or reading what you've already read before. While I think archetypes are true to an extent, you need to at least give it a different coat of paint.
Yeah, I was once told that my writing "wasn't fantasy" because it was not pseudo-medieval and did not involve dragons, magic, or wizards. I actually tend to prefer calling most of my stuff "speculative fiction" (to avoid the stigma that "fantasy" has), except for the one story I wrote which truly is a fantasy. (Retold fairy tale; kinda by definition HAD to be set in a feudal system in a slightly alternate medieval-period-fantasy-type atmosphere.)
I hear the "but everything that CAN be done HAS been done" excuse SO often--people expect that because they have no imagination, the only choice writers have is to keep recycling what's worked. This creative failure pains me indeed. . . . YES, dammit, you DO have to write something new even if you're using tried and true archetypes. Agreed, 100%. If you're not doing anything new, why bother writing it? Just to use different names?
I don't really know what to consider mine except fantasy. It's definitely not epic, dragons and wizards and big battles type of fantasy--but it's got goblins, it has a magic system (very, very low-grade magic system) and has lots of beasts since they're my favorite part of fantasy, and it takes place in a time long before what could be considered modern. There's also a pretty large absence of a "big bad" as it's impossible for me to look at the world like that. The two mains can't even fight for themselves and aren't royalty--high-class, but hardly royalty, as that would make me want to barf.
I mainly feel like a cluttered world sort of results in distracting from the characters. Rowling did it well and I'm sure other authors have, but with other stories, it feels like the author spends too much time going "ISN'T THIS COOL?!" and seems to really pay barely any attention to the characters inside the world as a result. That also ends up making the world cardboard, since they seem to stop at "wow that's neat" instead of delving deeper, like how people in this world use certain elements and how the world around them differs from ours because of this. I think that's probably one of the most fascinating parts about fantasy and a lot of authors end up neglecting it--and so they clutter their world with LOTS of cool stuff, instead of just with just enough cool stuff and then going really deep about how it all works within the world itself.
Anyway, yeah, couldn't write anyone high-fantasy any time soon. I'm sort of a dark person and I like my grey morality and horror-elements--I LIKE my characters being in shit-your-pants danger. It would be incredibly boring to me if they could just uber-fight their way out of it with super duper magic or something. It sort of ruins the point of everything to me. I like having my characters be as vulnerable as possible, since I find it hard to relate to someone who doesn't experience anything like fear.
Yeah, I mean, fantasy's fantasy. I guess that mine kind of is different enough from traditional fantasy to get away with dropping outside it to just plain speculative fiction (though that's an umbrella term that INCLUDES fantasy). I ordinarily write modern stories in which something odd is going on (though probably not supernatural), and they're never fighting a Big Evil. In fact, in the one story I wrote that CAN be considered outright fantasy, the main character kind of IS the main villain, though if you ask her of course she's not. (Seeing it from her perspective certainly makes her actions understandable--she's not wicked at all, just interested in "dark" things according to others. Apparently you MUST be evil if you are interested in death and rebirth.)
"Cool stuff" Absolutely. Chris dropped hunks of description haphazardly where he thought he ought to in the first book, and I guess someone told him that was bad so in the second book he performed a ridiculous attempt to make the descriptions more connected to the action . . . by doing things like "Hey, but how does everyone communicate in this big mountain?" "Gee, Eragon, I'm glad you asked, let me tell you all this blabbity-blah about the communication system our genius author has thought up for us!" He hasn't yet figured out what worldbuilding details he should invent and then just USE--stick them in and SHUT UP ABOUT IT. In my upcoming essay on the third book, I describe his description style as an incredibly tacky movie director who insists on repeatedly ZOOMING IN ON details that he is proud of having crafted while the actors stand still for the close-up and the action stops. Just lovingly craft your world and then let us look at it like normal, Chris.
I like vulnerable characters too. There's usually not a lot of danger in my stories--not physical, anyway--because I usually go for a more psychological element (which can kind of be equally terrifying sometimes). One thing I also like is very strong characters who are nevertheless vulnerable in certain ways. And not just like I gave them a kryptonite weakness or whatever. I've got an incredibly powerful character who's moderately claustrophobic, and it's a phobia that makes sense for her (not because of trauma or anything, but just because she didn't even grow up living inside and her extra ability allows her to fly [among other things], so she sees the world as very wide and very accessible). When she's inside she just feels vaguely uncomfortable, and more so if it's crowded or has a particularly low ceiling. The only time when it really became a problem was when she was on an airplane and had an unexpected meltdown. Surprised the crap out of her, I'll tell you that much. It was nice to put her face to face with her own vulnerabilities, though, since she spends so much time being pretty cocky elsewhere.
Anyone, regardless of power, has to experience fear. (Unless "person-without-fear" is the plot or something.)
I actually thought the "brass knuckles" for the dwarves bit was really awesome--but I wanted to see situations where it actually applied. It certainly wouldn't help in war battles since everyone's fighting with swords, axes and spears and the like, but during a drunk bar brawl? Aw man, that would be sweet. See, that's what he does; he brings something up that's potentially cool but you never get to see it come into full use.
I'm a bastard to my characters so they often get the full-blown psychological and physical most of the time... but that's sort of my inner horror writer making me do it. Mainly, though, even if your character can sword fight--if there's a dragon in the room, make it scary and make it more than sword-fodder! It's respecting the dragon and far more interesting to read than your character kung fu-ing it out of existence without breaking a sweat. The story is in the struggle more than it is in the triumph.
Yup. I'm not at all a fan of villains who are THERE to be beaten and not much else.
I really liked what Eoin Colfer did in the Artemis Fowl series. I was always impressed by how his characters got out of grave danger all the time, but we were several books in and no one had actually died, so ya know, you start getting comfortable. You start thinking "they'll make it, because they always do." And then, unexpectedly, someone important dies. In a minor battle. In a stupid way. Without it being "the only way" and without it being a catalyst for the good guys' eventual win (though it DID of course piss everyone off and make them terribly sad). Rowling did this sort of thing too. Once you were sure that she didn't mind killing your favorite character, suddenly no one was safe, and you could read with a reasonable amount of anticipation and fear.
I pointed out in my second essay that Roran and his crew going across the Boar's Eye or whatever it was was not frightening or scary at all because YOU KNEW THEY WOULD NOT DIE. Same with Arya being poisoned. Eragon is not going to dream about her and rush to her rescue only to find she croaked. It just wouldn't happen in his kind of predictable, horseshit sort of story.
Disagree about Rowling, just because once Hedwig exploded I was like "Kay everyone's basically going to die, now, aren't they?" And then I got tired of Harry having to catch up and wangst about the long list of everyone who had died in the last chapter. "Now who have we got next... cried over Hedwig, cried over Mad-Eye... nooow--Dobby! OH DOBBY BAAAAAAAW." (Though Dobby might've been the saddest death in the book, I'll admit.) She ended up killing my second favorite character (Remus) and I wasn't even that sad about it because he was just one among the piles of bodies, as opposed to when Sirius or Dumbledore died and I was bawling. But that's just my opinion; love the HP series regardless, of course. XD
And on the flip side of that, I wonder if anyone was sad or surprised when Brom died. Sometimes in a book you can just feel a character death coming on and you're just like "Okay, okay, get it over with"--which is indeed a huge problem, because that means the writer utterly failed at making you give a flying crap.
Oh, actually I agree with you about the body count, but the point of my using Rowling as a good example is that there really was uncertainty about who would live, and that's important. (Perhaps she overdid it, though of course at the same time there WAS a very nasty villain afoot.) I'm not a huge fan of Rowling, though--she's not in my top twenty if you know what I mean, partly because the red herrings got tiresome and I felt like she was focused more on trying to distract people from what the story was actually going to end up being rather than just getting on with telling the story. I didn't cry over any of her books or feel particularly shocked or sad about any deaths, actually, but I didn't latch onto any characters or feel immersed in her world. I'm not using her as an example of great writing--just as an example of the importance of uncertainty for the lives of characters who are SUPPOSED to be in life-threatening danger.
I grew up with the books (read them since I was 8 or 9) so Rowling holds a special place in my heart, I'm afraid. :] Do agree that she's not the best writer in the world--reading the Deathly Hollows when I hadn't read any of the books for a long time had me annoying my friends with various criticisms. She's at least an easy read, though. I'm sure she ended up influencing me without me realizing it.
I experimented with outlines once and it was a disaster.
I find outlines fun but I probably end up swaying from them a lot--I certainly never refer to them. My favorite one that I did once was a series of questions that you answered in character. I can't find it anymore, though! I should just make a new one, haha. It was really fun to answer. :D
I can write out of sequence if I want to, but I definitely prefer writing sequentially for the "main novel" so to speak, and I realize that when I write out of sequence scenes then I'll end up changing it to fit the main story-line better, if it stays in at all. I usually only write out of sequence if I've had a certain scene stuck in my head forever--and usually I know the "big things" that happen, and that's the only thing I can work off of for the specific scene (rather than little scenes). I do feel limited when I do it sometimes, though, definitely.
Also a lot of the time when I plan too much for a scene and end up writing the specific things, I end up disliking it more than I liked it in my head--or I'll prefer another scene better, or a specific thing that came up as I wrote the scene. I'm actually specifically thinking of a fanfic I wrote--fanfiction being something that I never wrote until I felt totally connected with the characters from a certain fandom I wrote predominately for for about a year.
What I had in mind was that character A would be sort of tired and just eventually come to hold character B's hand and lean on his shoulder a little, and character B would allow it (when he usually wouldn't) just because he's a bit shell-shocked at the time. I wrote it, and it was okay, but not as fuzzy-wuzzy as I had imagined it in my head. Then as the scene progressed, unplanned with me just winging it, character A decided to become his usual playful/prankster self and pretend to faint just get steal a kiss from character B, which ended up being full of fuzzy-wuzzies for me, and not just because it was a full-on kiss as opposed to them holding hands (which was the only thing they were going to do in my mind since I wanted a subtle ending as opposed to something blatant--but I should've known better with character A, who doesn't ever do anything subtly. :P).
I can't not think of scenes in my head, though. It's how I began writing. So I'll always start to write it how I thought of it in my head and then just allow it to go off course, totally fine with it and enjoying the ride. XD
I just can't really deal with outlines in general because I honestly don't know how my books are going to end when I begin them. The best idea I have is, sort of like an archaeologist, where to dig. I have no idea and almost no control over what I'm gonna find when I do so.
I'm not sure I follow about the series of questions you answered in character. How is that an outline? In any case that's not the sort of outline I mean--I mean like plotting out your timeline or your chapter guide before you write, for the storyline. I've done the "answer in character" thing a ton of times, incidentally; in the encyclopedia I have for my book series, I answered one of those dumb e-mail surveys that always circulates, but for my character in her voice, and for my webcomic the most recent contest I ran (for its 200th issue celebration) was for readers to send in "interview questions," which I of course had them answer on the page. And I got well over a hundred questions from readers, some of which I had to think a lot over in order to answer. Great fun!
Interesting stuff about your writing process. Mine seems to get derailed the most when I let the characters talk. My sections of dialogue tend to get long. It's probably why my books end up with such ridiculous word counts. (One agent who was interested in my next-to-last book really liked my idea and sample chapters and asked me to give her the rest of it on an exclusive basis, and she talked marketing with me a little bit, but then . . . she found out how long it was and dumped it 'cause she said she didn't know an editor who could tackle something like this. D'oh!)
If I have a scene in my head that's out of order, sometimes there are aspects of it that I think will happen even though I haven't gotten there yet, and so what I'll do is jot down the essential nuggets so I won't forget it when I come to the scene. Sometimes they no longer apply. Sometimes the story is so different by the time that point comes that I literally don't know what my notes MEAN.
I thought you meant a character sheet, I guess, which I kind of categorize as an outline of sorts. I can see that they're not totally the same thing, though.
Sometimes I do plot outlines if I feel like I'm going to forget anything but I usually never finish them or I end up going off-tangent from them--which is fine. It's almost like taking notes. I jot things down but rarely do I ever look back on them unless I really need to.
My dialogue scenes get really long, too, most of the time. It's definitely the easiest thing to write... which is why I can't understand people like Paolini who don't seem to get how people talk at all. I don't know whether it comes from him not interacting with people enough or if it's form him thinking "fantasy = formal Shakespearian EPIC purple prose speech." Maybe a bit of both. He just seems to use dialogue, like he uses his characters, to reach some type of goal, as opposed to using it to show who they are as people and how they all get along with each other.
Yeah, I'm not sure what you mean by "character sheet." But yup, I'm definitely referring to making an outline in the traditional sense, an outlining of what happens in what order. I'm certain I couldn't draft a person on a sheet of any kind without having seen them in action first. A collection of attributes do not a character make.
And on the subject of dialogue, absolutely--it's like he has that crazy misconception that some ill-informed medieval-stuff fans have that everyone was called "Lord" or "Lady" back then or something. Hey! I have illiterate, uneducated farm boys! And yet I'm going to put sentences like this into their mouths: "You dote upon her words as if each one were a diamond, and your gaze lingers upon her as if you were starving and she a grand feast arrayed an inch beyond your reach." And--suspiciously--somehow all the characters are going to have the same incredibly weird and repetitive habit of describing everything in GEOLOGICAL METAPHORS and speaking in the EXACT SAME STILTED WAY AS THE NARRATION ITSELF, but surely no one will have a problem with this!
Character profile, sheet, whatever you wanna call it. XD Like this type of silly thing, eh? What's your character's favorite ice cream flavor? Color? Are they a winter or an autumn??
God I have high-class characters and they wouldn't talk like that. They probably couldn't even properly process someone saying that to them as if it was normal. I don't think it's a new thing to speak in a clear, concise way--just because literature for ages and ages was verbose and eloquent doesn't mean people actually spoke to each other that way. It's plain unnatural, especially when you're speaking to someone you know well--then you speak in even shorter sentences. That's because people don't just use words to speak to each other--you use gesture and voice infliction and facial expression and posture.
What I hate is when a love confession is dragged out, where the character lists exactly what they feel about each other. Who does this, especially when they're afraid of rejection?! Unless that's in their personality to just ramble on forever--but even then how can you stay eloquent? People get embarrassed and queasy and nervous when they're trying to confess to someone--they're going to try to make it as short and painless as possible! Most of all, they don't want to freaking creep the object of their adoration out. You don't want to sound like you're obsessed over them or something--it's something called dignity and most people have it unless they're loonies.
Or just any major emotional scene where the character just makes a grand eloquent speech. People, from my experiences, just never work like that--and it almost makes you sillier if you come up with some grand way to say something instead of just being perfectly clear about what you mean.
Re character sheet: Urgh. Well I can see how something like that would be awesome to use for organizing factoids for a character you already know, but I hate the idea of using such a sheet to try to create the people for the story. (And the particular example you sent me the link to has loads of writing mistakes in it. But that's beside the point.)
In my "encyclopedia" about my characters in my series, I divided them into main, secondary, and minor characters and had a different level of detail for each page I included. The major characters' pages did have a lot of almost-pointless stuff. But it was fun to gather and think about, plus I put a drawing on each page. And for the protagonist, I took an IQ test and a few personality tests on her behalf and included the results in the encyclopedia. It ended up being pretty entertaining.
As for expressing emotion properly using dialogue, I have on occasion had characters more or less stop the action and give a speech, but sometimes that happens in real life as well--and if it's something awkward there is often hesitation, phrases like "I mean" or "ya know?" thrown in, and obvious nervous gestures peppered in where appropriate. I'm not always narrating what the characters are doing with their bodies, but they do have idiosyncratic gestures that are a must to include. With Paolini's characters, you frequently see conversation scenes that read as though the characters are standing there facing each other and taking turns talking.
Ooh, and there was this one AMAZINGLY ridiculous bit in Brisingr when Fadawar, the war lord, banged his staff on the ground or something and said "But we are your people!" after which there was description of Nasuada, the room they were in, and a whole bunch of stuff about politics. Fadawar banged his staff again, and then we got a description of Fadawar's jewelry, the jewelry of his pals, and then what kind of jewelry Nasuada HAS BUT ISN'T WEARING. AND THEN after Paolini was done talking to us about 3,000 words later, Fadawar BANGED HIS STAFF AGAIN (and notice nothing had happened except the story stopped for description!) and continued talking. So . . . he banged, we froze for a voice-over, and then he banged again? God, he is terrible at this.
Thanks. :D I'm surprised it didn't turn out longer since the biggest problem I usually have is rambling until whatever I wrote is too long for anyone to read, hehe.
I have an exceptionally high tolerance for Walls of Text, so this doesn't bother me. :)
Personally, I find that he could have fixed this if he would simply have gotten out of the house and experienced real life a little bit more than he has. But that never happened? Paolini experience real life? Laughable. He's pretty much been sheltered since he was born, being home-schooled and provided with a library's worth of reading by dear old mom and dad.
I'm sorry, but as great a thing as reading is, it's certainly no substitute for experiencing the world first hand. Most people went to high school instead of being taught at home. Most people then go on to do something with their lives after that. Some go work, some go to college, some go into the military, some join the circus, some go decide to live on the streets, or whatever. All are things were you are placed within the world, within society, and thus you develop character.
Paolini did none of these things. He was basically ostracized from the world and thus had no grounds to develop character. He believed he had everything he needed to become a "great writer". Well, we can all see how that turned out. Having no character, no personality, essentially no soul of his own means that the characters he writes about have no character, no personality, and no soul of their own either.
Yes, and all home-schooled kids end up in the gutter, useless, broken and alone. :]
Sorry to tease, but you're sort of over-emphasizing the importance of being exposed to high school. You can still be a loser after four years of high school, and worse yet you can be an idiot with a poor education AND a loser! High school is hardly reality as well; I know because I just graduated and I can tell you that most kids hardly had their priorities straightened, even during senior year.
Now, I will agree with you that Pao was too sheltered, but that's more a catalyst to him being home-schooled than a result. I think he was coddled to death by his parents and it gave him a superior attitude. But really, I don't think this attitude would've changed if he went to regular high school. He'd probably develop an even worse complex because of any bullies he would have gotten and any praise he'd gotten from teachers. You can still be spoiled and arrogant in public school, after all.
But mind you, many writers who create Sues suffer from the same things he does in writing--they just don't end up publishing because their parents don't own publishing companies. I think it's from a lack of experience in writing more than it is a lack of experience with people. He's probably spoiled and sheltered but I don't think he's a recently evicted pod-person. Not to mention I think he views fantasy as literal fantasy--as in "it's my imagination so I can do what I want" which translates to "my characters can do whatever they want," etc. etc.
Anyway. I don't think you need to first experience everything you write about. I think it definitely helps to be more mature and have more life experience, but there's also a matter of just having an imagination and a widened world view so you can simply put yourselves into the shoes of another person.
Sorry, I didn't mean to allude to the idea that all home-school kids are wasted, because that's certainly not the case. I do think that home-schooling kind of deprives a child of the experiences one would get by attending actual schools but that in no way do I think that means the child is ruined by being taught at home.
And you're right, you don't have to experience everything in order to write about it, because if that were true than writing would be drab and shallow. I do believe, however, that getting out and experiencing society can give you a better idea of what people can be like and can help develop your characters.
All in all it's just like you said. It boils down to a lack of experience, both in writing but I also think a lack of experience in living is a factor as well, but that's just my opinion.
Didn't mean to sound offensive with all that, my apologies if I did.
Not all parents bar their home-schooled kids from the world, I assure you. :P They'll usually sign them up for youth groups and extra-curricular activities.
On the other hand, being alone has its advantages too. I was home schooled for all of middle school and didn't have any social interaction at all, really. It made me want to go back to public school in high school, but it also left me plenty of time just to think. I sort of developed my own view of the world that was separated from the crowd. I was a weird kid but I was my own person, at least. I think I actually avoided a lot of petty high school crap because of that--still had some of that, but it was very few and far in-between compared to other people's experiences I think.
I do think that experience helps with writing, but more so if you use them to help your understanding of the world and how people work.
I think being home-schooled did foster Paolini's "the world is tailored to me" philosophy, especially since unlike . . . well, pretty much everyone else . . . he went on to experience a reality that pretty much confirmed his belief. Obviously he could still have turned out to be a jerk of a person and a terrible writer if he went to high school as well, but the homeschooling was just one of many aspects of his life that helped establish a trend toward not being criticized. What's interesting is that his parents probably chose to home-school him partly because they DID want to shelter him . . . and I think that's the case because of the way they went straight to vanity publishing instead of allowing their child to try to publish legitimately (because, well, obviously there would have been rejection involved). They just wanted to give him everything and not let him fail. Failure is not the only way to learn, but it's necessary when you want to play with the big dogs and you haven't realized you are a chihuahua.
Oh, and I agree that you don't have to experience what you write about. I'm proof of that! Obviously I've never gone through a dimensional portal or learned the art of prophecy or taken care of a toddler with superpowers, but other things I haven't done that OTHERS HAVE (e.g., having a baby, falling in love, producing a stage play) are sometimes well-received to the point where readers suspect I am writing about my own experiences. And when I write about characters who think differently from me or hold values I do not, sometimes I even have readers "slyly" telling me how revealing my writing is about my true feelings. Ahh, it's so obvious from the way I write about a teenage crush that really I DO have crushes (even though I don't). Ahh, it's so obvious from the way I write about a character who's bitter and lonely that *I* am bitter and lonely (even though I'm not).
I do think Paolini's been unnecessarily sheltered and that his homeschooling is a piece of the puzzle, but overall, I think the problem is that Paolini not only HASN'T ventured outside his bubble but DOES NOT THINK HE SHOULD HAVE TO. After all, he's being hailed as the next Tolkien by a bunch of idiots.
This is all true. I think his homeschooling was certainly a result of his being sheltered. He was coddled so much that he actually believed himself to be the shit. I remember watching a video of him being interviewed and for the first time in my years as a proud geek, I wanted to smash someone into a trashcan. D: Just so he could stop being so damn smug.
I think his arrogance has a lot to do with how he can't empathize as well... since arrogant people obviously have trouble with that. If they're right about everything, why should anyone else ever feel contrary to that? If he's smart, why should anyone else be dumb? If he's hetrerosexual, why should anyone be bisexual, homosexual, pansexual, asexual or anything else? If he's sex obsessed, why shouldn't everyone else be? If he's an atheist, why should anyone have a religion? Of course, anyone contrary to this simply ends up being a bad guy or an idiot, or both.
So it's being sheltered plus being an arrogant prick. He can't step out of his own shoes and into another person's... which is why he probably made his story star a self-insert in the first place. Eragon could never be a girl, or gay, or black, or even cowardly or hesitant to leave his simple farm life, or modest.
Paolini's a total asshole and he makes me embarrassed to be a fantasy writer sometimes, because people think of HIM when I discuss my genre, and that makes me want to give him a swirlie.
And when I write about characters who think differently from me or hold values I do not, sometimes I even have readers "slyly" telling me how revealing my writing is about my true feelings.
That's definitely a skill. When I was reading Lolita I had to wiki Vladimir Nabakov to make sure he wasn't a pedophile because it all felt so visceral and real--so real that I actually felt turned on by what he was saying, when usually I would be like "EW SHE'S EFFING TWELVE."
Definitely something I hope to develop (if I haven't already; I'll assume I haven't since I've never gotten comments like that). It's so easy to go to cliches but it's much more convincing when a character says something and you go "Wow... does the writer actually think this?!"--and actually have to question it instead of going "Stop soap-boxing plz" or "okay this is too personal now." It's that veil of believability that makes you forget that you're reading a book--or at least keep it out of your mind. There's just some books (fanfiction especially has this problem) where you can't get over the fact that it's a book. It can be fun to read, but not very compelling.
Yes, you're right--I mean, obviously you have to wonder sometimes whether an author is so good at describing how a character feels because it's something she's been through, but it's not necessarily the case. Sometimes you can totally tell that the author has only just researched ski trips but hasn't been on one.
I have a book in which the main character deliberately distances herself from society after one too many very deep rejections, and spends the latter half of her teen years as well as most of her twenties throwing herself into her life's work--alone. Then something happens where she has to go on the run because she's being tracked down by people who think she did something terrible, so her best cover is to go to a neighboring city and disguise herself as a person completely opposite herself. During that experience, as you might imagine, she finds that actually some aspects of the things she avoided her whole life are actually worthwhile.
One of those things is romantic companionship. She has her first romantic experiences with men at age twenty-nine and has a lot of mixed feelings about it--concerned that she might be being too "loose," but kind of getting a lot of guilty pleasure out of it. She's a little embarrassed to admit that without this terrible situation where she was FORCED to pretend to be someone she's not, she wouldn't have realized that she wanted something like this (though she did sometimes have curiosities and read romantic novels while she was alone).
Problem is, ON THE OUTSIDE, there are some similarities between me and this character. I also live alone and I also don't have relations with men. But the big difference is that I'm asexual, while this character is very clearly heterosexual even when she's celibate. I got really annoyed when my mother suggested to me--with that sort of smug attitude--that my writing about the character making it with guys was just my way of acting out what I wish I could do or wish I could admit, etc. When I told her (bewilderedly!) that it's by no means true any feelings that occur to a character must be the secret wishes of the author, she just gave me the whole "You can't see that your writing is autobiographical? You can't see how TELLING this is? Well, everyone else can!"
Give me a break.
It just made me so mad to imagine that anyone--especially someone I care about like my mom--would reduce the art of writing in first person to some simplistic, pseudo-Freudian wish fulfillment fantasy exercise. It's so insulting.