#If you ever see me saying popsiclesticks just insert your favorite cuss word you like to say when youre excited

[keets-writing-corner]

Intro to Character

Minor mentions of: Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek

Specifically talked about in discussion: Toy Story, Inside Out, Happy Feet, Sleeping Beauty Disney), The Princess and the Frog

So what makes a story great? Well, a lot of different things actually. Cool plot, interesting setting, well use of point of view, but the most important part about a story is forgotten a lot ironically. I’m talking about characters. What do I mean by this? Well, if you’ve ever taken a Creative Writing class, you’ll usually find a ban on genre. By genre, they don’t mean horror, or comedy, they mean like anything that isn’t considered normal in the real world. No flying horses, unicorns, witches, and wizards. No myths, no fantasies, and no folklore. No extremely advanced robots, aliens or space travel. No zombies or vampires. No ghosts. No metaphysical entity and no science fiction.

Why is this though? It seems rather unfair, doesn’t it? I certainly thought so. After all, I had so many cool ideas involving myths from old religions, folklore, even an alternate earth that was a weird mix of medieval times and future technology. For years, I feared the day I would get a teacher or a professor that would enforce this rule on me (I’ve been lucky enough to have super chill teachers so far who didn’t enforce the Genre ban). Until I asked why such a rule existed.

Genre creates distraction. Of course you want to work with all the cool stuff! Who doesn’t want to work with magic, and wizards? Especially after Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings make them so thrilling to read about. Of course you want to write science fiction with Star Wars and Star Trek out there? Have a favorite fairy tale? Why not make a variation on it? It’ll be so much fun! *gasp* Even better? Why not create an entire world?! Freezing popsicle sticks! Can you imagine all the possibilities?! The lore! The history! The alternate laws! The multiple cultures! The different species! Science fiction? What kind of tech do they have? Fantasy? What does their magic look like?

That’s exactly the “problem” with genre. You get so distracted about all these cool variables that the most important part of a story, the characters, have a tendency to become underdeveloped. This isn’t to say “Don’t create stories with genre”, after all, it’s because we have so many great stories that intermingle beautifully with genre that we want to work with it. But the reason so many Creative Writing classes have a tendency to ban genre is because, chances are, the people there are blossoming writers. They’re still learning how to write really good stories, and if they’re allowed that much freedom, the most important part of the story gets neglected in the euphoria of everything else. The reason that the ban is there is for writers to learn how to properly take care of and develop their characters BEFORE they start adding all these cool magic tricks and pyronetics. Without all of the flashy fireworks, seductive circus dancers, and glittery lights, writers can sit down and learn how to work with characters in a familiar setting, the real world. (I will make a post (or several? Not sure yet) about world building, but I will say, anyone who’s tried to make their own world KNOWS that it’s a lot harder than it looks. Some people can do it naturally, others have a harder time and need a preexisting world. Neither is wrong, the point is that by taking away that pressure to create a new world, writing is easier. You’re working with rules already established and familiar to everyone and you don’t need to make any of them up).

So why are characters so important? Well, Stories are kind of about them/revolve around them? I promise you, it doesn’t matter how cool your world is, how much you know about each culture and how much it’s explored in-story, if your characters are boring, underdeveloped and uninteresting, nobody is going to care.

So, I do have many posts planned about ‘Character’, but let’s give a quick rundown on what makes a good character. Remember, I’ll be doing separate posts going into detail about most, if not each, of these AND these are not the only things I’ll be covering about character.

Connection. Audience needs to be able to connect with the character. Sometimes it’s physical appearance, sometimes it’s the gender, sometimes it’s the place of origin. These are all superficial ways of connecting with a character (Superficial in this sense being used as surface level, a character’s physical appearance, and is not a “cheap” way of making a connection). But there are more ways of connecting with a character, aren’t there? After all I connected the most to a tap dancing penguin when I was a kid. There are different ways to connect with a character, superficial ways, and also deeper more internal ways. The main goal of a character (at least a main character) is to have audience be able to see themselves in that character in some way/shape/form.  

Flaws. You hear it all the time. Characters are not allowed to be perfect (I’ll go into this when I cover Mary-Sues). Characters need flaws. What frustrates me however is that flaw is often confused with struggle. Supposedly, we connect with characters’ flaws(again, in my personal opinion this is completely untrue because we actually connect and sympathize with their struggle). What’s the differences between Flaws and Struggles? I literally have an entire post planned covering just that, so fret not! For now, let’s just summarize what I see a flaw as. I see a flaw as a character trait that keeps them from being a “perfect” character. It’s not something they need to overcome, it’s just a part of them. Sometimes a flaw can even be a strength in certain situations, or a strength can become a flaw.

Struggle. Now if you ask me, this is what really makes an audience connect with a character. Everyone struggles in life, or has something they struggle with. These are often confused with Flaws. Let me give a few examples to explain what struggle is. Let me go back to Mumble from Happy Feet. The entire movie, he’s struggling to be accepted. He’s not struggling to be normal or to be like the other penguins, he loves his talent, and he knows there’s nothing wrong with it. He just wishes the other emperor penguins could accept him, and he struggles with this the entire movie (I hope to also do an analysis on Happy Feet in the future, where I’ll be talking about this WAY more in depth). I’ve always felt like I’ve been struggling for people to accept me, especially since all the molds society wants to put me in just don’t work for me, the same way Mumble can’t sing, no matter how hard he tries. Another example. Woody, from the first Toy Story. He struggles with selfishness and jealousy. One might argue that these are his flaws, but I disagree. I think the biggest difference between flaws and struggles is that flaws are static. They don’t change. Struggles do. You overcome them. You learn from them. Woody had to learn to overcome his jealousy and his selfishness, and that’s what he does. Again, I’ve got a lot to say about Flaws VS Struggle (and their third often ignored little sister, maturity), so for the purpose of not making this post longer than it already is, I’m going to move on. Summary of this paragraph: Characters need something to struggle with, internally, externally, emotionally, whatever.

Likability. Okay, this one veers more into protagonist territory, BUT if you want audiences to like/sympathize your antagonists or other characters, this applies as well. This one is basically “Why should I even care and root for this character?” Granted, some of the caring and rooting for them is interlaced with struggle, BUT it’s not until a character does something that’s considered likable that any of this really matters. Literally, you give a character ANY characteristics that fall under being a decent human being, and they will have some sort of a fanbase. Maybe they’re an underdog (this also falls under struggle :D ), maybe they just gave some food to a dog, maybe they have a soft spot for children, maybe they care about someone in their life, maybe they’re super polite! Anything! If a character does any of these things, the audience will automatically like them to a degree, even if they’re a horrible villain. If said villain shows that they care about dogs, or a specific person in their life, they’re instantly more likeable than a villain who treats everyone around them like dirt. On the flip side, there could be a horrible, selfish, anti-hero protagonist, but the moment there’s a quiet moment when they do something kind in secret, the audience goes, “SECRET HEART OF GOLD! YESSS”. Let’s go back to Pixar for a moment. Both in Toy Story and in Inside Out, in the original writings of the movie, the main protagonist was incredibly unpleasant and unlikable to viewers, being overly cruel, or too selfish. Pixar fixed this by doing two things: thing one, they gave these characters some “decent human” traits, and thing two: they gave these characters some struggles that everyone could get on board with. With Joy specifically, they fixed her jerkiness by making Sadness annoying. We’ve all had that one annoying person in our lives, so suddenly, Joy isn’t a jerk, she’s just annoyed by Sadness and is trying to get her to go away without hurting her feelings. Aww now Joy looks like this really nice person who’s tolerating that annoying person and trying her best not to hurt her even though nobody wants this annoying person around.

Motive. I’ve got a lot to say about this one too, so to keep it simple, characters need to want something. This could be a driving goal that moves the story, or not. It could also be something that fuels their decisions that may or may not go against what they need to do, which can cause juicy juicy conflict. If a principal character has no motive, then why are they in the spotlight? If they have no drive, they are passive and will generally not affect the story, which isn’t something a character in the spotlight should be.

Agency. How active is the character in the plot? Is the character letting things happen to them or are they actively trying to take control of the situation. I don’t mean assertive characters over shyer characters, I mean do they actually do anything in the story? Now, don’t get me wrong, Sleeping Beauty was my favorite Disney movie for a while when I was 5 (although, how much of that is due to the awesome dragon and how much of it is because it’s a fun princess story is debatable), but honestly, Aurora has exactly 0 agency the entire story. She gets cursed because her parents decided to not invite Maleficent -> not her fault. One of the good fairies makes the curse less lethal -> beyond her control. Her parents and guardian fairies decide to take her to the woods to protect her from Maleficent while she ages -> not her choice. This guy in the woods tells her he’s in love with her -> she’s a little creeped out at first, then just goes along with it. Her guardian fairies tell her that she’s actually a princess and she’s supposed to return to the castle tonight -> she doesn’t want to, but she literally just bows her head and goes. Curse gets activated -> she’s not in control of herself and succumbs and now she needs rescuing from Phillip. There is nothing wrong with Aurora except that she shouldn’t have been so heavily advertised as the main character. Literally, the only Disney main protagonist with less speaking lines than her, is Dumbo, who’s a baby elephant. He can’t talk. While it’s true that in real life, we can often be in completely helpless situations, that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything or at least try (for ourselves or others), and the same is true for the characters. Now, granted, using Sleeping Beauty as an example was a little cheaty of me because it’s quite common for local legends and folklore to have characters without a lot of agency (and also the time is was made it was encouraged for women to be this way). But it was a deliberate choice of the moviemakers to adapt the motion picture that way. Let’s look at another Disney example, The Princess and the Frog. Another folkloric legend in which the characters don’t have a lot of agency (still more than Aurora, but not much). In Disney’s version, Tiana is all over the place doing whatever she can do. She wants to own a restaurant, so she works two jobs and caters for her friend until she can buy it. Then the dealers go back on their promise. She’s sad, but she’s already thinking about what she can do about it (this is literally the entire reason she turned into a frog, Naveen promised her money which she could use to get her restaurant). Then she gets turned into a frog. What does she do? “Heck no! We’re going to break this curse!” And drags Naveen along. This goes on the entire movie. Tiana is FULL of agency, even in hopeless situations where she was otherwise helpless. Note: Not all characters need agency, but protagonists are not one of these characters. This is getting too long, so I’ll cut it short at this: Characters need to actually do stuff.

Of course, there’s A LOT more to characters than what I just mentioned. Again, I have multiple posts regarding different aspects of characters planned (from arcs, relationships, flaws, struggles, motives, anti-hero/anti-villain, etc). But for now, I think this is a good introductory to Character! Is there anything in here you recognized in your own favorites?