flat characters – The Fantasy Nook

Thursday Technicalities: Motivation

Introduction

The last few weeks, we’ve been discussing characterization. So far, we’ve discussed internal conflict, acting out of character, and secondary characters. Today’s focus will be motivation.

We all have reasons we do the things we do. Those reasons may or may not relate to whatever internal or external conflict going on, but they will drive our responses to every aspect of life. Our characters should be no different. Even if our readers don’t get to see every motive our characters have, the motives should be there. You, at least, need to know them, particularly if the character is a main character.

What is Motivation?

Motivation differs from internal conflict in that internal conflict is wanting two opposing things while motives are the answers to why you want what you do. No one is ever without a why behind their desires, thoughts, and actions, even if they themselves have no idea what that motive is at the time.

Why Motivation Needs to Be In Your Work

Why does motivation need to be in your story even if your readers don’t ever notice it? Simply put, because your readers notice when it isn’t there. They might not always recognize it when it’s just an undercurrent to the character’s actions, but if it isn’t there, they’re going to notice. They’ll spend energy, in many cases, wondering what those motives are. If you’re going to reveal them during the character arc, this may be fine so long as you’ve written the character in a way that makes it clear to the reader they have a hidden agenda. If not, you’re going to have a problem. Readers who don’t drop the book due to feeling that the characters are flat may leave at the end of the book feeling dissatisfied without even knowing why. As such, motivations need to exist in your characters even when they’re only undercurrents.

Developing Motivations

I’ve told you how important motivations are, but now some of you may be wondering, “How do I develop them in my characters?” Some of us may be lucky because our characters show up in our heads with their own personalities and motivations already at least partially there, and our jobs become straightforward: find a way to put that on the page. But for many, that’s not the case.

My suggestion, regardless of which you are, is to start with their internal conflicts. Figure out why they want those two opposing things. From there, expand out to what drives them as a person. What are the goals they have that may motivate them to act? What strongly held beliefs do they have that drive them to draw lines on what they will and will not do? What matters most to them and why does it matter?

Strengthening Motivations

Once you’ve developed motivation, the next step is to strengthen those motivations. Make sure it really matters to the character. The danger here is that the things they want and the reasons they want them might not matter enough. If they don’t, then these motivations won’t work well as motivations because as soon as it’s easier to cave or to head another direction, the character will. So take a good look at the reasons behind the actions they’re going to take and ask how you can make those reasons matter so much that changing motivations would require a major turning point (at least for the core motivations that will drive core actions).

For example… In my current WIP, Trader Prince of Aleshtain, the male lead wants his freedom more than anything else. But the reasons why he wants his freedom are more powerful than the desire itself. He wants his freedom because he’s trying to flee his father’s oppressive thumb, escape assassination because those behind the throne don’t want him to take his rightful place on it, and find a way to be able to marry the woman he loves. The actions he takes striving for his freedom are motivated by a desire for freedom, but the desire itself is motivated by even deeper convictions and needs. Those convictions and needs matter so much, and come to matter even more in the course of the book, that staying and doing his duty becomes practically impossible. In my character’s case, his internal conflict is tied up in this motivation of wanting freedom and the further motivations behind that because, as the Crown Prince, he also feels strongly bound by duty to stay and try to lead the country even though it doesn’t want him or the kind of king he would be. But in your character’s case, you don’t have to necessarily tie their motives entirely to the internal conflict. There should be motivations behind the two opposing forces in their internal conflict, certainly, but the motivations that mostly drive their actions do not have to be solely tied to said internal conflict.

Conclusion

I hope you’ve seen how key motivations are to your work. Even if readers don’t notice them consciously, the motivations need to be there for your story to work. Take some time to look at your characters. Are their motivations clear to you? Are they clear in the text (with the exception of any motives you’re intentionally hiding for a later reveal)? Have you made them matter enough? If the answer to those questions is no or maybe not, then you’ve got work you can do to improve the story. So do it! It will only make the story stronger.

Thursday Technicalities: Acting out of Character

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Introduction

First off, I apologize this wasn’t out last Thursday! I was having a bit of a hectic week, and I wasn’t able to get around to the post. Hopefully that won’t become a regular thing. Now, last time on Thursday Technicalities, we talked about the idea of internal conflict in a character. Today, we’re going to discuss what Donald Maas calls “character dimensions” and what I’d simply call aspects of a character that make them feel real. Maas used less words than I did, obviously, but initially, when reading through the exercise on this, I struggled with his terminology because I didn’t quite grasp what a “dimension” was. But this is a very important piece of developing your character, so let’s go ahead and dive into it!

What are character dimensions?

Character dimensions, simply put, are the various aspects of your character that make them who they are. For example, if your character is characterized by kindness and warmth, then those are character aspects or dimensions. Dimensions of your character make them multi-faceted and more realistic to the reader. They give us as readers some baseline for what a character will do or not do.

Why it’s important to establish these in your novel

Aside from just making a character feel well-rounded, character dimensions actually give you opportunities for growth, character arcs, and conflict. For example, say I have a character who’s generally non-violent. Let’s just say that they’re a healer and can’t stand the idea of harming another person. If I throw that character into a situation where they have no choice but to fight or die, that’s going to create a whole lot of internal conflict. We need these dimensions or aspects in our characters, regardless of who they are or what they stand for, because without them, we lose the richness our writing can have. But it’s also going to force them to act out of character, and this goes into the next important discussion point.

Acting out of character

Now we get to the portion of this discussion that I pulled the title from. If your character always acts exactly in accordance with their usual dimensions/aspects, they’re going to get boring fast, and they won’t seem like real people. All of us, when pushed to a certain point, will do things that would ordinarily go against the our grain. Sometimes that’s good. Sometimes it’s not, and it creates more trouble for us.

Your characters should be no different. While they may have some aspects that they’ll never compromise on (for example, someone who has an aspect to them where they will die for what they believe probably isn’t going to suddenly wake up one day and realize they no longer believe that thing or are no longer willing to die for it), they’re always going to have something that will push them out of their comfort zone in a way that results in doing something that isn’t in line with their usual character aspects.

This doesn’t have to be anything highly important all the time either. I have a character I’m working with in my current WIP that is used to being good at everything and avoids anything he knows he’s not good at unless it’s necessary to do those things. There’s a scene where he sits down to paint with the girl he’s protecting. That’s extremely unusual for him. He’s bad at it, and he goes further by admitting he’s no good at it even though he’s not fond of admitting weakness or ineptitude. But his decision to do it anyway, even when he doesn’t need to, leads to a bonding moment between the two. In and of itself, the decision to sit down and paint seems like no big deal, but it’s what’s behind the action that goes against his grain that makes it a big deal.

Adding points to your novel that force your character to do something that’s opposite of their usual defining traits brings this kind of life and realism to even the most fantastical of stories. This is why people are able to say of some fantasy books that they’re more realistic than some realistic fiction out there. It’s because the characters feel like real people experiencing real world struggles even though they’re on some other planet, have green skin, and use a lot of strange expressions. There’s an element of humanity and depth to them that resonates with us as readers, and an author who does the work to incorporate this will have a book that can do that.

Conclusion

Hopefully you’ve already got a few ideas going for areas to utilize this tool in your toolbox. If not, I encourage you to sit down and really start thinking about this. Jot down some defining traits or characteristics of at least your main character(s), and then find the opposite of that and see if you can’t come up with some points in your novel where that character might have to act in accordance with the opposite trait, not their defining ones.

Thursday Technicalities: Internal Conflict

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Introduction

With our discussions regarding publishing concluded for now, we’ll turn now to discussing some of the key elements of crafting fiction that you can use to improve your writing, both with a completed manuscript and with one you’re still writing. I’ve recently been working through Donald Maas’s Writing the Breakout Novel, and I’ve found that these areas are ones that can prove challenging but are going to really take your work to the next level.

So, I’m going to go through some of the sections I found to be most useful and important with my own take on them based on things I’ve seen work out well in fiction. Today’s topic is going to deal with conflict within the character, otherwise known as internal conflict. This is an important part of fiction and really brings characters to life, so it’s not something we can overlook as writers. Let’s get started!

What Is Internal Conflict?

Internal conflict is when the character is conflicted within themselves regarding any given situation or decision. This differs from the major conflict that drives your plot (at least in many cases) in that the conflict driving the plot is usually some sort of external conflict that puts pressure on the character and may even exacerbate their internal conflict. In some cases, the internal conflict may be the driving conflict in the story and may create the external conflict due to a character’s actions in response to the conflict internally.

On a more basic level, internal conflict is when a character wants two opposing things at the same time. This simpler definition usually makes it a little easier for us to think about what our characters’ internal conflicts might be. Regardless of what the internal conflict is and whether or not it is the result of external pressures or the leading cause of those external issues, this is a tool in writing that cannot be ignored if you want a character that feels real and alive.

Keys for Internal Conflict

First and foremost, an internal conflict for a character must include two fundamentally opposed desires. This sounds really straightforward, but here’s the thing… You have to figure out how and why your characters could or would want those opposing things. We as people have issues with this in our own lives all the time. For example, consider someone who wants to eventually have a family but also doesn’t want their freedom to hop from partner to partner taken away. Those are two opposing desires. They can’t have both, and they’re eventually going to have to decide which one matters more. We all run into these kinds of ultimatums, and we all eventually go with one or the other when it becomes apparent we can’t have both.

The second key is to make the two options mutually exclusive. We all feel conflicted about things from time to time, but if we can find a way to make both work, then we often do. Furthermore, the options facing a character need to be ones they strongly care about. For example, in my book Bane of Ashkarith, the male lead has a strong desire to uncover the truth and to share that truth–whatever it may be–with the world. But he also has a strong desire to stay alive, and the truth is likely to get him killed if he goes ahead with telling it. He can’t have it both ways. He either tells the truth or he doesn’t. And he has strong reasons and motivations to choose either option, so it isn’t a situation where he can simply decide one choice doesn’t matter that much and just go with the other. No, he has to fight through the internal conflict to make a decision on what to do.

What if my character is too black and white to really struggle in the obvious ways?

You want to ensure that you set your characters up with a similarly stark set of options that lead to internal conflict. Sometimes, however, you find a character that is simply too morally upright and black and white to struggle with some of the more common issues. I’ve run into this recently with my male lead in a novel I’m working on. S is a trainer for an intergalactic organization whose sole goal is to sow dissent, chaos, and evil throughout the galaxy. They are directly opposed to God and anything that could be considered good, though they don’t really care what form evil and darkness takes so long as it does in fact drown out what is good and right. S doesn’t agree with them or their standards, but his situation is such that he must play along.

At first glance, it doesn’t seem like S necessarily is conflicted between two choices. At the beginning of the novel, he’s offered a way out. In order to get out, he has to play the long game and be patient, but there’s no question in his mind or that of the individual who offered him an out that he’s going to take it. He isn’t conflicted about it, and he isn’t conflicted about waiting it out so he can get himself and the girl who offered her help out safely.

So at this point, I’m faced with an issue. S is the protector, the dominant/alpha male who makes sure everyone under his care is safe even if it costs him everything to achieve that. He doesn’t dither over whether he’s willing to make the sacrifice to protect Gwen or others directly under his care. He already knows he will. He also doesn’t question the choice to leave because he refuses to be a part of the organization’s wickedness any longer than absolutely necessary.

“Growing” the internal conflict

In this case, S is a character that starts out with no internal conflict in his mind and must end up “growing” one. The way I chose to handle this? As Gwen begins to change his outlook on the situation and his approach to those around him, he begins to feel responsible for helping and protecting not just Gwen, who is directly under his protection, but also the other trainees whose trainers hurt or even kill them. He comes to a point where he is no longer certain that he can in good conscience abandon it all to run and never look back. Instead, he has a turning point that leads to his internal conflict: leave or find a way to fight back for the freedom of those who, like him, never had the chance to speak up and walk away from the horrors inflicted on them.

Gwen herself is put into a similar position, but she comes to it much sooner and sees it far quicker than S does. Her nature is not the protector so much as it is the outspoken voice for what’s right. That gets her and S into plenty of trouble in a culture that despises the truth and anyone who stands for it, but she stands firm anyway. Her internal conflict then, takes on a slightly different flavor than S’s, but the nature of the two is still similar in that the conflict is not in-built but must instead develop as their viewpoints and goals gradually begin to shift.

What if I just can’t think of anything?

Sometimes, characters make it very difficult to figure out what their internal conflict is or to determine how to push them into one. This might happen because the character doesn’t know what they want or is generally a somewhat weak type of person. I ran into this with Sebastian, a character from an allegorical sci-fi novella I’m working on revising. He falls into the category of “I don’t really know what I want or what I believe”. His problem was that he didn’t believe the popular narrative and was suspicious of the government’s claims, but he didn’t know what he believed if not that. He develops through the book, but I still have the issue that he doesn’t seem to really have much of an internal conflict at the start.

The solution to this? Start thinking about what they really want. If push came to shove, what is it that they’d fight for? Maybe the push might have to be really extreme, but what is the one thing that they couldn’t bear to lose, not accomplish, or fail at? Now take that thing and figure out what the opposite of it is.

For example, with Sebastian, the one thing he really can’t stand to lose is Vivian, the female lead. The opposite of that, to my mind, would be to lose her or let go of her. That gives me an internal conflict right there if I can find a way to set it up through the story such that he wants (or at least has to seriously consider) both paths.

Something else that I also found for Sebastian is that he is fiercely loyal to those he cares about. He can’t stand to lose the people he cares about or to walk away from them. So another conflict I can give him is having to decide between fighting for the people he cares about or walking away. With this character, however, there is no question in his mind, at least in the first novella, on which one he will choose for either of these. So in order to create any kind of internal conflict with him, I have to force him into situations where he can’t choose what he wants to choose. I have to make it so that he does have to walk away from his loved ones or so that he has to give up Vivian.

Sometimes, characters are like this. There should be conflict, but it might not always be clearly caused by the character wanting two different things. Sometimes it might be caused by a character wanting one thing but knowing the opposite is best and choosing the one thing they don’t want to do. This is a trickier one to pull off, and I would recommend you make sure you have at least one main character whose conflict is driven by two opposing options that they want to pursue.

Conclusion

That’s it for this discussion, everyone! I hope this was helpful for you. Next week, we’ll be talking about points of decision. We’ll go over why you need them, how to build up to them, and how they play into your character’s arc as well as the story itself. Until next time, happy writing!

Thursday Technicalities: bringing Flat Characters to Life

February 24, 2020February 24, 2020 Ariel Paiement

Introduction

One of the things writers of all levels can run into is the problem of flat characters. Characters can be flat because they haven’t been characterized in a way that makes them stand out, or they can end up flat because they’re cliche and boring. This is especially concerning if your main characters are the ones that end up flat. So, how do you bring a flat character to life? Let’s take a look at some of the common issues and ways to fix them so the character has a life of their own.

Voice

Last week, we talked about voice as a method of characterization. This is one place where a character can go flat. If they sound just like everyone else in the entire novel, they’re not going to stand out. Obviously, if the problem runs that deep, other characters will also be flat. But the problem might only extend to one or two characters that readers can’t distinguish between because of their similarity in voice. This is still a major problem if it’s occurring with main characters.

I won’t go into great length about voice since it’s already covered in my last article here. Review that to see how you can effectively use voice to provide characterization that is solid and unique to each character.

Direct Characterization

The next thing that could happen is having no direct characterization for a character. Direct characterization is when the author tells the reader something about the character.

This is one that I personally recommend avoiding for the most part, but sometimes there’s good reason to use it. If it’s something we would never learn otherwise but need to know, for example, the author might choose to tell us that fact about the character. Note that this particular type of characterization won’t work for deep-point-of-view because deep POV focuses on eliminating the author’s voice and diving into the character’s point-of-view exclusively.

Indirect Characterization

This one is far more important than direct characterization for bringing a flat character to life. Indirect characterization focuses on all the things we learn about a character through little quirks, repeated actions, or recurring phrases and words. In this method, the character reveals himself or herself a piece at a time through concrete actions and behaviors, not through the author’s say-so.

If a character is feeling flat, there’s a good possibility this is what’s missing. The little habits, oddities, and nuances of a person is what makes them unique, and that’s equally true of a character.

This technique also has the added benefit of allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions and fill the character in with the broad strokes of their imagination, which often results in a more vivid picture for the reader than telling them directly does.

Another important note about indirect characterization is that it can include physical descriptions. Perhaps a character has a particular scar or marking on their body that bears significance to them and continually reminds them of how or why they got it. That can result in indirect characterization because that scar or marking acts as a vehicle to deliver information to the reader regarding that character.

Emotional Depth and Motivation

Another possible problem with your characterization is that they lack emotional depth and motivation. This problem can be the result of a cliche character. It happens a lot with books that focus on character types that have been overused. Think books with main characters like the bad boy, good girl, nerd, or any of the paranormal tropes such as vampires, werewolves, or witches.

Now, it isn’t that those character types can’t be given depth. They can. But often, writers slip into the cliche because it’s easier, and they forget to make the character unique. Emotional depth and motivation can help with this.

Revealing a character’s mindset and giving them just the right mix of emotional qualities can take a cliche character type and make it into an actual three-dimensional character that readers can relate to. Their emotional depth and how they respond to emotional stimuli provides the motivation for their actions in many cases. Even when people are at their most rational, emotion will factor in.

So if your character is feeling flat, check to make sure that your reader can connect to your character on an emotional level and can understand what motivates your character. Often, describing a character through their emotional state can be much more image-evoking than a physical one.

Change

This last one is the biggest problem that can lead to a flat character. If your character doesn’t change throughout the novel and is relatively uncomplicated, they are the definition of flat. The simplest way to fix the problem is to make sure they have a character arc. Make sure that by the end of the story, the character has changed, either for better or worse, and has learned something, ideally. There really isn’t much else you can do to fix this, but if you do that, then your character should be headed in a much more three-dimensional direction.

Conclusion

Though there are many reasons why a character may end up feeling flat, I’ve done my best to cover the main reasons why it happens. Do you have other reasons you’ve found for why a character ends up flat or ways to fix flat characters? If so, feel free to share them in the comments below! If you have something you’d like to see on Thursday Technicalities that I haven’t covered yet, feel free to send me an email or leave it in the comments.