Book Review: Characters & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card

[amergina]

Book: Characters & Viewpoint Author: Orson Scott Card 182 Pages

This was the how-to book I chose for this term.
I do have to say, OSC knows how to write about writing. Both this book and How to Write Science-Fiction and Fantasy are very approachable books, chock full of useful information.

In Characters & Viewpoint Card divides his advice up into three sections: Inventing Characters, Constructing Characters, and Performing Characters. The bulk of this book centers about characterization, with a dip into point of view. However, some of what he talks about in he "Performing Characters" sections actually covers POV, just in a different guise. I'll get to that later.

Inventing Characters:

There's a school of thought that says characterization is action, or rather, a character is what he does. This is true... to a point. But motive, the thoughts behind a character's actions are just as important. As Card says:

But in most stories, as in real life, just knowing what someone does while you happen to be watching him or her isn't enough to let you say you truly know that person. [...] A character is what he does, yes--but even more, a character is what he means to do.

Characters are influenced by their past and their reputation, what the character has lived through and how others perceive that character--what they say about him.

Our first impressions of a character also color who that character is: how we react to the stereotypes the author has used. How "like" is the character to us? How different? One interesting thing Card points out:

Characters who violate a stereotype are interesting; by surprising us, they pique our interest, make us want to explore.

So playing against reader expectation is always good. However, I think you also have to be wary of the "breaking stereotypes" stereotypes too: the big, mean looking biker with tattoos and leather who is actually a sensitive guy... that sort of stuff. There are some cliched type-breakers, too.

Card talks about networks--the people the character moves in and out of, habits, talents and abilities, and tastes. Knowing all these things about your character is a good thing. It makes them rounder, more filled out. More like real people.

The last thing Card mentions is body. To him, how a character looks is the least important thing. Of course, every character planning sheet I've ever run across starts with spaces for a physical description, but I do think Card is right to some extent:

If readers know a character's actions motives, past, reputation, relationships, habits, talents, and tastes, they can often get through a whole story without ever knowing a character's eye color, and they'll still feel as if they know the person.

Somewhere, across my city, I sense my mentor agreeing. Still, there is a certain expectation in certain genres for some sense of physical description. However, I'll agree that its way overdone. Unless their eyes change color for a good reason (Michelle Sagara, I'm looking at you), there's really no need to keep pointing out his ice-blue colored eyes. Or whatever.

Card then goes on to discuss what makes a good fictional character. It's all about asking questions and then answering them well. Basically, readers have three questions when reading fiction: So what? Oh yeah? Huh?

It's the author's job to answer them just enough to keep the reader interested. You don't have to tell all, but, as Card says:

Even the uncertainties in your story must be clear, so readers will know ou meant it to be that way, so they'll continue to trust your competence to deliver the story.

There are other questions the writer needs to answer: What made this happen? What is the purpose? What is the result?

To further the story and open up possibilities: What can go wrong? Who suffers the most in this situation?

The idea for characters can be drawn from real life, but Card strongly cautions against lifting any one person wholesale from the people you know. Rather, good characters that don't piss off your friends, relatives, and co-workers come from lifting bits of people (including yourself) and combining them together. Or simply just imagining a person in a situation. Or reading about it in the paper. I've found this true, even with my villains. It often comes down to "what would someone who didn't have this moral code do in this situation?" Oftentimes the answers give me the creeps. And then I run with it.

Ideas for characters sometimes come from the story itself. The story sets up a situation where a character might be perfect. Sometimes the story comes from the characters, who come from ideas. Characters can come from anywhere. But the trick is that they must answer the questions you pose for them.

The last section in Inventing Characters talks about names. There are some important aspects to names. Card points out that you should only have one name for a character, so as not to confuse the reader... but I actually have to disagree a tiny bit. How a character is referred to by others depends on their relationships. I have one character who only ever refers to my protagonist by his surname. Up until a certain point where in the middle of a crisis, he breaks that and uses his given name. This is not at all lost on either the protagonist or the character, and marks a shift in their relationship.

Card also talks about keeping a bible, so you know what you've done in the story. I don't know if this is practical in the first draft stage, but I do think it's a good practice once the book has gelled enough. And that helps quite a bit if you decide to write another book based in the same world/with the same people. Because readers catch inconsistencies.

Constructing Characters

This section is the largest section of the book. The first part asks: "What kind of story are you telling?" because the type of story has an impact on the characters. While all stories should have good characterization, what happens to the character and the depth of the characterization is somewhat dependent on the story being told. Card then talks about his MICE quotient of story types: Milieu (or world) stories, Idea stories, Character stories, and Event stories.

I'll admit that I skimmed this section. Mostly because I both read and wrote about it when he delved into it in How to Write Science-Fiction and Fantasy. And it has been mentioned more than once in modules at school. It's good stuff, and I encourage everyone to check it out.

Card then talks about the types of characters: walk-on characters, minor characters, and major characters. Each, obviously, requires different levels of characterization.

Walk-ons are part of the scenery--but ultimately not as important as even minor characters. They're there for a moment to fulfill a role or add a voice in the crowd, and then they're gone and forgotten. They really don't need to be fleshed out to any great extent.

Minor characters are slightly more interesting characters. The reader shouldn't have too much emotional pull toward them, and they'll probably only show up in a few scenes and then fade away. But the readers will remember them. These characters can be fleshed out a bit more--perhaps they're eccentric or exaggerated. They may be there for humor, or to flesh out the world a bit more. They shouldn't be used as a walk-on is used, however. If they're interesting enough for the reader to remember, they should have some minor impact to the story.

But the bulk of the characterization should be reserved for the major characters. Obviously, the protagonist is a major character, as is the antagonist. But there are others. If a character keeps showing up again and again, chances are they're a major character. If they're not, you have an issue.

Though, Card does point out that a major character doesn't actually have to show up if your other characters keep mentioning him. The play Waiting for Godot is proof enough of this. Card says:

...one of the most effective theatrical techniqies for making the audience notice a character--have everyone on stage look at him, listen to him, or talk about him behind his back. If you do this enough, you never have to bring the character on stage.

Though this can backfire in a novel. One of my biggest beefs with The Lies of Locke Lamora is that Locke and Co. keep mentioning Sabetha, but she isn't ever in the book. It felt like an amazingly big loose end waving in the breeze, screaming "look at me! look at me!" so perhaps this is one of those techniques that works better on stage than in a novel.

Major characters should act. Passive characters just aren't as interesting as active characters. Yes, some of the story circumstances cause things to happen to the character, and cause reactions, but the story should not be a sequence of reactions. At some point, major characters need to forge their own destiny. Even if they fail in the process.

Most often, the story is told from one or more of the major character's points of view. Yes, there are exceptions (Orhan Pamuk, I'm looking at you), but they're rare. And I'll add, generally not found in genre fiction.

There are many many things out of control of the author, in terms of how a reader reacts to a character. Everyone reacts differently. But Card points out several things within the author's control:

Ordinariness vs. Strangeness
The amount of time devoted to the character
the character's potential for making meaningful choices
Other character's focus on him
The character's frequency of appearance
The character's degree of involvement in the action
Reader's sympathy for the character
Narration from the character's point of view

Card then discusses how to raise the emotional stakes. It's our emotional investment that keeps us interested in the characters, and there are a number of things you can do to raise the stakes. Card discusses: suffering, sacrifice, jeopardy, sexual tension, and signs and portents.

He does caution that too much suffering can push a reader past sympathy into amusement. Just look at slasher films. Also that the suffering need not be physical. And that if your characters cry, it means your reader doesn't have to.

Jeopardy can also be tricky, as too much jeopardy and no follow through leads to disbelief. Everyone knows that Nell won't be harmed by Snidely Whiplash and will be rescued by Dudley Do-Right, no matter what peril he places her in. So the Jeopardy there is important. The minute Snidely takes out a knife, carves off Nell's ear, and sends it to Dudley, that will change. You need to make the readers actually fear for the characters in jeopardy.

Sexual tension is also a good way to build emotion, but again, only if it's not overdone. Also, I'd add that it only works until the characters relieve the tension, unless you have a reason for it to build again. But that topic could fill a book by itself.

The trick is to get the reader emotionally involved with the characters... it's what keeps them picking the book back up. They need to know what happens to these people.

The next several chapters in Card's book really cover character archetypes and how different archetypes can be used to affect what the reader feels about the character. I'm not going to cover it all, because its hard to summarize and this journal entry is already hours in the making. I'll point out a few key things I picked up:

Anguish--When your audience is torn between an outcome because they are emotionally invested in both characters and the two characters want the opposite outcome... it causes anguish. It's a horribly wonderful place to put the reader.

Readers disdain victims. Or rather, they disdain the weak. If you put a character into position where they become the victim over and over, the reader will stop having sympathy for them. You can compensate for this by showing that the character had no choice in the matter, and even acted to try to get out of it.

Again, characters that just react like puppets on a string aren't interesting and the reader will become bored.

Readers still feel better about characters who are honest and heroic over those that are cowardly and cheat.

Characters can have enormous self-confidence, but if they start to think of themselves as better than other characters... the reader won't like them.

Murder and other crimes only make a character into a villain if done for selfish reasons. If the character commits the crime to save others, or to punish someone who really deserves it, it creates sympathy. (Stealing bread to feed yourself vs. stealing the bread to give to a starving mother of two.)

Readers like the common man, but also become bored if someone is too common. The character may be the common man on the surface, but underneath, he must always be the hero.

It's in this set of chapters that Card starts to touch on Point of View. He talks about showing the character's attitude in the writing, that is, how a character reacts to an event. You show the attitude of a character by writing from his point of view, how he thinks about an event. In other words, a character's attitude is a deep point of view. If your writing has a good bit of the character's attitude, you probably have a good grasp of deep point of view, because I don't think these are any different.

Performing Characters

This section is all about point of view. It's a very high-level overview of POV. I learned rather rapidly that even though I thought I knew about POV, I didn't. And in fact, what I thought of as deep POV was rather superficial. So as a word of caution, POV is a tricky, tricky subject.

That being said, most people know there are three persons you can write from: First (I do this, we do this), Second (You do this), and third (He/She/It/ does this. They do this.) And there are three tenses you can write from: Past, present, and future.

Generally, fiction is written in first or third past tense. Sometimes in first or third present tense. The other tenses are rare. In genre fiction, they're just about unheard of.

Card has a rule of thumb that I think it good advice:

Choose the simplest, clearist, least noticable techniqie that will sill accomplish what the story requires

I think that's true of every writing technique, but it is important for POV choices. Does your story really need to be told in second person, future tense? Really?

Card then discusses Presentation stories vs. Representation stories. In the former, the author addresses the reader directly, while in the latter, the writer never, ever breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the reader. Both types of fiction have merit, but novel-length genre fiction tends to be more representational. I've seen a number of science-fiction short stories that are presentational, though. And certain books, like The Princess Bride are both. The trick is that if your book is presentational, you need to let the reader know from the beginning, because if you break the fourth wall 1/2 or 3/4th through the book, the reader will pitch it across the room. Set up your contract with the reader early.

Presentational stories are carried by the voice of the character, and the reader will scrutinize that voice much more carefully. As Card says:

In a good representational story, the audience will forgive a certain clumsiness of writing because they care so much about the characters and events. In a good presentational story, the audience will forgive a certain shallowness of story because they so enjoy the writer's style and attitude.

Card then describes First person and Third person narration. At the end, he talks about how to choose what kind of narrator to use, and how deep to penetrate into that narrator's mind. And how deep you can penetrate, given different narrators. An Omniscient narrator won't go as deep as a Limited narrator, and its really hard to have a shallow first-person narration. His examples of deep third person were especially helpful for me, since I set my story up for limited third with occasional deep, but ended up being pretty shallow at times.

And thus, I finally come to the end of the book, and the end of this journal.

In summary: Lots of useful information. A good basic reference on characters that touches on POV.

Comments

[chriscoxadobe.livejournal.com]

Good. Card is a good writer to learn from. He's does some formulaic writing at times (recent Ender spinoffs), but he really does know how to get you inside a character's head and make you care about them (and sometimes about short time characters as well).

[martiancyclist.livejournal.com]

It does seem to me that if you do too much physical description, once they make a blockbuster movie from your book, your thousands of obsessed fans will object to who they cast as your main characters because they don't look right.


...well, best to be safe, anyway.