Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Great Characters, Great Responsibility.

We go through our daily lives in cycles. Few of us rarely leave these cycles and when we do, the thing that drags most of us away is entertainment. Whether it be books, movies or music, we use these sources for enjoyment to escape.
Why do we do this? because we want something more in our lives so we enjoy the adventures of others. What makes a good story? Awesome battles? Hilarious jokes? Passionate love?
The fact of the matter is you don't care about the battles, jokes, or love stories. you care about the people in them.
That is why it is so important to create dynamic characters when writing your own story. If you were to simply write a novel about Joe Smith "The Chosen One", no one would really care.
Great characters need to be larger than life, they need to do things over the top, they do things that no one else could possibly dream of.
The first character that comes to mind for me is my own personal hero: Captain Jack Sparrow.
Why? Because he's different, because he's brilliant, because without his personality Pirates of the Caribbean is just another movie with a good guy and a bad guy. Which of these is Jack? Well that's another thing that makes him such a lively character. He's both. The entire story we, along with the cast, are asking ourselves "Whose side is Jack on?"

Jack's a likable guy but you don't have to be likable to be a good character. In fact some of my favorite characters are absolute scum bags. And you know what makes them great? Because they're so darned hate-able. Let me ask you something? How many of you want this guy's head on a stick?
"No, he's a child. How dare you say something so terrible?" You've never read a Song of Ice and Fire or watched the HBO adaption 'Game of Thrones.' This child is perhaps the most despicable human being I've ever had the misfortune of reading about. BUT I absolutely acknowledge that he is a fantastic character BECAUSE he's so evil.

Now not going too far to say that to have a great bad guy he must be pure evil. No, far from it. A pure evil character is lame, and cliche, and it died with Sauron in Lord Of The Rings. Sure Lord Voldemort was close, but that's just me, and lord Voldemort had depth. He wasn't just pure evil. Great characters evoke emotion from us because we feel attached to them in someway.


Essentially we have read about them so long that they have become a part of us, and we think we know them. A perfect example is Severus Snape. How many of you thought you knew him and weren't shocked when you first read that he killed Dumbledore? A few of you knew he was bad all along? ok, ok. I can see that. Surely, even those of you who knew was evil all along had to be surprised when you find out that he was actually in love with Harry's mother. That everything he did was to protect Harry.  "Lily? After all this time?"......."Always." Whispered Snape.

"Always", a powerful word, and one that will not soon be forgotten because of the bravery and sacrifice this man delivered.

Depth is what defines some characters, for others it's shallowness. Not to say that shallowness is bad. You could had a perfectly shallow character with no ambitions or motivations whatsoever, but that character still must have something.

Personality.

Personality is something that could even make Joe Smith a hero in our hearts. Because after all, the characters are what makes the stories great. The characters are what gives us reason to keep reading. We as humans have a programmed desire to know, but even that desire can be extinguished when we know we don't care about Joe. Make your characters original, larger than life, extraordinary.

2 comments:

  1. Yes, Ben Jammin, characters drive a story. Boring characters make for boring stories.

    Oh, and by the way. I wonder if you have any other writers in your family who might be interested in your writing. Ahem.

    Jeff

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  2. Hmmm...other writers...yeah. I'm drawing a blank.
    Only kidding! I will let you read some of it one of these days...it's just that you're an editor, and i would hate to disappoint you because i don't know how to use a comma.

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