Character Development — Dangers of Breaking Relationships With Your Characters
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Character development tips for creative writing –
create new interesting,
original and memorable characters…
or give established characters a breath of fresh air.
In my previous post, The Importance of Building a Relationship with Your Character, I described a little bit about what it was like to be in a strong and working relationship with your characters. But, just like relationships with living people, these connections to your creations have to be maintained through communication and respect. There is such a thing as an Author overstepping their bounds into a character’s life in ways that may lead to stunting the development of that character… or halting it all together.
Learn to Let Go
It didn’t take me very long before I learned an important lesson in writing: The Author’s biggest mistake is ever thinking they are in control of anything during the writing process. As I mentioned in a previous post, writing is an art most thoroughly experienced when your characters are free to do as they please… not as it pleases you. You’re simply there to record the happenings.
However, all too often we try to force characters to conform to our plots and plans, unaware of the fact that by doing this, we aren’t allowing the characters the freedom to grow and develop as they naturally would. This also stresses any sort of relationship you might have with your character — after all, no one likes an overbearing control freak for a friend, family member or significant other. Your characters feel the same way.
How many times have you read a story or watched a movie where the characters felt completely flat and bland… as if their only purpose was to recite lines and act out their parts in the story? Or how about characters that we have watched grow and develop over the length of a story suddenly do something completely out of character just to satisfy the forward motion of the plot?
Readers can sense when a character’s integrity and spirit has been bent in order to further the intentions of the Author. It comes off as something unnatural and can be the starting point for the decline of the character’s development as a whole. Once an Author gets on the wrong course, it is sometimes hard to get the story back to where they need it to be. The character becomes nothing more than a forced puppet jumping from one plot point to the next.
It’s also the fastest way to destroy a hard-earned relationship with your character.
Consequences: Characters in Revolt!
About 75% of the time, if I find myself writing myself into a corner in such a way, my characters will completely rebel on me. They become distant, difficult to read and judge… sometimes impossible for me to write. I complain that I can’t “feel” their intentions and responses to the situations I introduce them into. Over time, I’ve learned that it’s simply their way of letting me know that I’ve gone off course… I’ve overstepped my boundaries… and they no longer want to play the game.
Every now and then I do get a character that’s placid enough to allow me to keep stumbling over myself in the wrong direction without pitching a fit. But very soon, I find myself becoming less and less enthralled with the process of writing… because it’s terribly boring and tedious to have to force one scene after another from my fingers on to the screen. I take a step back from the situation and try to find where I’ve gone wrong.
It’s far easier to connect… listen… understand… and allow your characters to do as they naturally would. You’ll find that the story begins to write itself and your relationship with those characters will begin to strengthen as you learn more about them. Writing isn’t wooden. It’s flowing and alive.
Just like your characters.
Ways to Break Your Relationship With Your Characters
Here’s a list of the ways that writers can destroy their hard-formed relationships with your characters. These are not the only ways, I’m sure. Feel free to list your own discoveries:
- Forcing a character to do something that’s not in-character to do
- Turning a character into a plot device
- Not giving a character enough breathing space for natural development
- Ignoring tangents that can lead to development for your character (especially when they seem to desire it)
- Forcing your characters into an unnatural or unrealistic love relationship (this becomes an EPIC FAIL to the readers, trust me!)
- Changing your character for any reason outside of natural character development processes (ie. reader feedback/demands, fads, fashions, net trends)
- Developing characters simply to embody some sort of intangible symbolic meaning (ie. “This character represents my feelings on XYZ issue.” “This character symbolizes the virtue of truth and justice in my world.”). These sort of characters work in certain kinds of stories… but when you become so worried about what the character stands for rather than who the character is, you’re going to find yourself with a boring and flat character on your hands.
Just remember my writer’s creed: The character will tell the Author what they need to know when the time is right. The character always knows best.
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10 Comments on Character Development — Dangers of Breaking Relationships With Your Characters
Speaking of characters revolting against their author, I’m actually glad they do it, sometimes.
You know how Kalle is, like, my pet figment of the moment? For a character who started as nothing more than a secondary character with no real role in the ‘Raeverse (when he was created almost 13 years ago for the Aelynn story, he was nothing more than Kain’s and Lanha’s son, and ouch, he had red hair), he sure fought his way to be my main character, even surpassing his mom, who was the alpha figment until then.
He refused to be a little red-haired with a terrible name. Back then, the only figments I had who had, in my opinion, interesting names were Lanha, Fred, Dee, and the twins Selan and Sarai. I’d have to look at my notes, but I think Kalle was actually named Max or Alex or something equally overdone. He wouldn’t let any of this slide when I decided to rework that story about three years ago. He led the bad-name characters revolt, forcing me to find new names for most of them (and boy, am I glad I did) and insisted I gave him a make over (and boy, am I also glad I did).
He was actually fine with being only a secondary character in Aelynn’s story; by the time it takes place, he’s entered the awkward period of his life where he’s leaving boyhood and becoming a man. Complete with his voice cracking and growing almost a feet overnight. That suited him just fine that he barely spoke in that story, especially since Dee and Kat would have teased him senseless if he was as vocal as usual.
But soon enough, or rather once his voice finished changing, he demanded his own story. Mister made it very clear from the start that he wouldn’t be a secondary character all of his figment life. So I started taking notes, and letting him develop and tell his story. Before I knew it, he was at the top of the food chain, so to speak. Also grew up to be my tallest figment to this day (6′5″), but that’s a different story. I learned things about him I never knew before; like him being an hopeless romantic, or being a crazy cat person, or getting sea sick whenever he got on a boat, or him being a night owl, or him being far-sighted and requiring glasses to read…
He also surprised me; I never expected him to have inherited a trait, passed down from generations of summoners, that made him turn into a beserker when angered (and I’m actually thankful he didn’t inherit his parents’ tempers). I never intended for him either to develop romantic feelings for anyone, or at least, not that early. Kalle revealing he was an hopeless romantic should have given me a clue that it was coming, but I must not have been paying attention that day.
The revelation kinda messed up some of my plans I had for Darianne; in her case, I always knew Kalle was more for her than just her best friend. Dee’s far less introverted and secretive than he is. Since I thought she was “safe”, it was decided long ago that she would be marrying the Damcyanese Emperor for political reasons, mainly to put an end to the war that Damcyan started since the premature death of Edward. The marriage was doomed to fail from the start, since the emperor is, pardon my French, a power-hungry, hearltess bastard. Dee was supposed to have a tragic death. Kalle refused to let me do it. He rebelled more violently than I expected, built a massive brick wall between the two of us that prevented me from writing more about him, and it’s only when I gave up and let him have his way that I was able to write again, and we came to an agreement; Darianne would still be forced to marry the Emperor (Kalle wasn’t too happy about that one, but understood the inportance of this event to “the plot”), but he would save her from her tragic death.
In retrospect, I’m glad he refused to let me have my way, because it opened up even more possibilities for the future of the story. Not to say I let him have his way all the time; if I was, the story would have ended there and he and Dee would have lived happily ever after, with the sunshine and lollipops and rainbows and bunnies. How boring would it be for the (future) readers?
From that point, I learned to be more considerate of him and decided to not force him through anything he didn’t want. He still lets me give him a hard time on occasions, because we both agree life isn’t always fair, even for figments, but I’ve learned to not step over the boundaries he set up. He still manages to surprise me; I did not expect Frey and Phoebe to enter the picture. Must have been my punishment for misbehaving as an author.
My only consolation is that he can’t blame me for Phoebe giving him grey hair; dude, not my fault if your daughter has her paternal grandmother’s temper and her paternal grandfather’s knack for getting in trouble.
Wow, I just wrote a novel of a comment. *eyeshift*
Excellent post. This is an important concept for writers to understand in their quest for authentic character development and ensuring logical progression in their writing.
Mike Cruz’s last blog post..3 Things Every Writer Needs To Know About Writer’s Block!
*rereads previous comment of hers* LOL typos. >_>
Mike: Thanks for your input, Mike! I read your article, too, and it’s good to know there are other writers out there that have similar experiences!
Abyrae! (so weird to call you that, but I’ll keep trying)
That is SUCH an awesome figment story! Thank you for spending the time to share that here, seriously. It’s so cool to hear how other Author’s figments started, came about and grew to be who they are now. I have a similar story for Tsu/Tai, but I won’t go into all of that here.
Piece of trivia… before Zemi became KluYa’s father, and long before I actually designed him, he also had red hair. ^_~ After I gave him a little more of a Lunar look, the red held over in his clothes instead! XD
Character Development — How to Build a Relationship With Your Character — Wayfarer Wings sez:
[...] I’ve talked about the importance of having a relationship with your character as well as the way to destroy a hard-earned connection to your creations. In this article, I want to focus on what you can do as [...]
Funny you say that, because the red also transferred to Kalle’s clothes. >_>
Oh, and you don’t HAVE to call me Abyrae if that makes you uncomfortable, you know. xD
KJ sez:
A red-haired Zemi… wow. *shudders*
Gaby — Just don’t want to use a name that you don’t want other people to have. I don’t think I can think of you by any other name than the one that I met you under!
KJ — *shudders too* Of course, he was always designed to have a colorful personality. I think that’s where the red came from. Glad I didn’t keep it though? XD
Character Development — Writing Realistic Relationships — Wayfarer Wings sez:
[...] make sure your characters have agreed to disagree and won’t come out of the story bitter and despondent towards you. That’s a very difficult kind of story to write. I’d tread [...]