Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card
I'm using this report as a vehicle for working out character and viewpoint elements in my doppelganger book.
This is a great book. It gave me a lot of new insights or different slants on information I already knew.
"Characters who violate stereotype are interesting." I knew this, but then I began wondering how I could make my characters less stereotypical. Rosalind is a willowy young woman who was involved with a flamboyant, drug dealer, black magic boyfriend and has to leave the country to get away from him. Ian is an actor playing Hamlet in Montreal Shakespeare Festival Theater. I'm asking myself if I'm making him too typical of an actor. He's a womanizer, perfectionist in his work, somewhat of a prima donna. His involvement with Rosalind changes him.
"Take characters out of one setting and put them in another where different aspects of their personality come to the fore." Rosalind had to leave New Orleans to escape from a dangerous situation and moves to Montreal. She is a 'Stranger in a Strange Land" there, constantly cold, always trying to find a way to get back and forth to work strictly via underground Montreal.
"Habits not only make the character interesting, but also open up story possibilities." A change in habit might show an important change in the character's life. Ian's habits are going to change when he gets involved with Rosalind and starts trying to figure out what's going on with her.
Orson's three major questions:
"Question 1: So what? Why should I care what's going on with the story?" I think putting the protagonist in danger and torment is the key here.
"Question 2: Oh yeah? Come on, I don't believe anybody would do that."
I liked Orson's comment, "There is nothing so outre´, so off-the-wall, so impossible or bizarre or outrageous that you cannot make it believable within a story. It all depends on how hard you want to work at justifying it."
A large part of Stephen King's appeal has been his insistence on using heroes from the American middle class, living in the familiar world of fast food, shopping malls and television. If you set a murder in a limousine, it's only scary to wealthy people.
"A single word on how to make your characters more believable: details. The more information about a character, the more the audience will believe in him. It isn't that simple though. You don't want just any details, you want relevant, appropriate details."
The most important tool that will make your readers believe in your story is elaboration of motive. If you don't tell your audience what your character's motives are, the audience will assume the obvious motive: a simple, single motive, a naked archetype or a cliché. To make characters more believable, more real, we give them more complex, even contradictory motives, and we justify them better.
"Question 3: Huh? What's happening? This doesn't make any sense. Make sure there's never a moment of confusion or inclarity in your story."
Obscure, confusing stories really bug me. I want to try to withhold some information, but make it clear to the reader what's going on. I hope I have the skill to pull it off.
Interrogating the character:
This section reminded me of Orson's workshop, 1000 ideas in an hour, which I attended at Necronomicon in Tampa last November. In it he posed questions to the audience that built up to a plot. I used this with Rosalind and Ian and it generated some ideas. (During boring meetings at work, I write out questions and have them answer like an interview.)
What could go wrong?
"Who suffers most in this situation without dying or being incapacitated? This is the main character." I started out assuming that this was Rosalind's story since it's her doppelganger. Then I started to feel like it was Ian's story, because he is dealing with her, watching her from the outside and trying to figure out what's going on with her, and it's more interesting to have that information revealed gradually, rather than having the reader know everything up front. Then I wanted to go with her in 3rd person and him in 1st person, but I've settled on having both of then in 3rd person, alternating viewpoints by chapter.
"When you're looking for characters, cast your net first in your own life." I'm drawing on some people I know for this book, particularly the dangerous ex-boyfriend character. Rosalind is probably essentially me.
"Serendipity: Two ideas from unrelated sources." I think that having a plot that is driven by black magic and voodoo set in Montreal is bringing two divergent ideas together. I like the idea of plunging an actor into this surreal, dangerous world. Also, I'm paralleling the play "Hamlet" with the action of the story.
"How to raise the emotional stakes. Suffering. Great grief and great physical agony, well presented in the tale, can greatly increase the reader's emotional involvement." Rosalind's involvement is that she might die or be driven mad by the doppelganger. Ian's is that he may lose Rosalind or that he will be put in prison for the murders the doppelganger has done.
"Sexual tension is related to jeopardy. When a man and a woman meet in a story we assume at least some degree of sexual possibility. If the two characters immediately become important to each other, the sexual tension increases – especially if they become important in a negative sense. Rivalry, contempt, anger. Sexual tension dissipates when characters come together in sexual harmony." This made me think. I had Rosalind and Ian coming together close to the beginning of the story then working together until the murders by the doppelganger pull them apart. Now I'm thinking he'll get weirded out by her and dump her, but her double will stalk him by turning up in strange places, like hanging upside down outside of his 30 story apartment window and giving him "the gaze."
"We like what's like us. The most important ingredient in how much we like a stranger is how much he seems to be like us. While we like characters that are like us, we also tend to be a little bored with them. It's strangeness, not familiarity that excites our curiosity." My reaction to this is to take an ordinary person people can relate to and put him/her in an extraordinary circumstance.
"Heroes always seem to face some uncommon problems, always seem to be extraordinarily contemplative and perceptive. Always seem to reach a moment of epiphany in which they pass along a key insight to the reader. Despite their seeming ordinariness, these heroes always turn out to be extraordinary, once we truly understand them."
"Often when you find yourself blocked – when you can't bring yourself to start or continue a story – the reason is that you have forgotten or have not yet discovered what is extraordinary about your main character."
"You have to begin the story at exactly the point where the main character becomes unique."
"What a character expects will happen in the present tells us instantly what has happened before in the past."
"You've no doubt heard the slogan "Show don't tell." Under some circumstances, that advice is good; under others it's exactly wrong." Right now I'm reading Mr. X by Peter Straub. There are places in there where he is "telling" for four or five pages, but it completely works, because he is a master.
Viewpoint:
"First-person narrators have the problem of time. The narrator, a participant in the events, is telling about what happened in the past. He is looking backward. He is distant in time from the story itself."
"The use of an unreliable narrator can add a delicious element of uncertainty to a story, with occasional revisions of the readers' understanding of all that went before. But badly used, or to excess, the unreliable narrator leaves the reader wondering why he's bothering to read the story, or furious that the author never let him know what "really" happened." I was thinking of making Rosalind a murderer, and the doppelganger a vengeance creature by someone who was involved with the victim, but I didn't think I could pull off hiding that info. I'm going to have her hide certain things and reveal them as the story goes on.
"Third-person narrator – Even though most third-person accounts are told in the past tense, they feel quite immediate. There is not necessarily any sense the narrator is remembering the events. They are recounted as experience. There is no distance in time. However, with third person, there is distance in space. That is, the narrator, though she can dip into one or more minds, is never a person who is actually there. She is always an invisible observer, always at some distance. So first-person is distant in time, third in space."
"The fact that the narrator is telling the story makes it obvious that she lived."
"If your goal is to get your readers emotionally involved with your main characters, with minimal distraction from their belief in the story, then the limited third-person narrator is your best choice." I feel more emotionally involved when reading a first-person narration, because it feels so immediate.
"If you want the senses of truth that comes from an eyewitness account, first person usually feels less fictional, more factual."
"The limited third-person narration invites a clean, unobtrusive writing style – a plain tale plainly told."
Levels of penetration:
This is something I hadn't thought about before. Even though you're in third-person viewpoint and have the ability to look into the character's mind, penetration can be limited, medium or deep, and that can vary in different sections of the story. That concept helped me for this story, because I don't want to reveal everything in Rosalind's mind right away.
"Once you've decided to write a limited third-person narration, you still have a choice to make: how deeply to penetrate the viewpoint character's mind. Omniscient (looking at the scene like a camera), first person (seeing through the character's eyes. We still watch from a distance.), third-person (deep penetration - seeing into the character's mind.)"
In deep penetration, we never see a tag line like "Pete thought," because we're getting his thoughts all along.
Limited third-person – cinematic view. – gives no attitude except as it is revealed by facial expressions, gestures, pauses, words.
The dividing lines between cinematic, light-penetration, and deep penetration narratives are not firm. You can drift along with light penetration, then slip into deep penetration or a cinematic view without any kind of transition, and readers usually don't notice the process. They'll notice the result, however.
Deep penetration is intense, "hot" narration; no other narrative strategy keeps the reader so closely involved with the character and the story.
Lots of good information to ponder . . . Sally
I'm using this report as a vehicle for working out character and viewpoint elements in my doppelganger book.
This is a great book. It gave me a lot of new insights or different slants on information I already knew.
"Characters who violate stereotype are interesting." I knew this, but then I began wondering how I could make my characters less stereotypical. Rosalind is a willowy young woman who was involved with a flamboyant, drug dealer, black magic boyfriend and has to leave the country to get away from him. Ian is an actor playing Hamlet in Montreal Shakespeare Festival Theater. I'm asking myself if I'm making him too typical of an actor. He's a womanizer, perfectionist in his work, somewhat of a prima donna. His involvement with Rosalind changes him.
"Take characters out of one setting and put them in another where different aspects of their personality come to the fore." Rosalind had to leave New Orleans to escape from a dangerous situation and moves to Montreal. She is a 'Stranger in a Strange Land" there, constantly cold, always trying to find a way to get back and forth to work strictly via underground Montreal.
"Habits not only make the character interesting, but also open up story possibilities." A change in habit might show an important change in the character's life. Ian's habits are going to change when he gets involved with Rosalind and starts trying to figure out what's going on with her.
Orson's three major questions:
"Question 1: So what? Why should I care what's going on with the story?" I think putting the protagonist in danger and torment is the key here.
"Question 2: Oh yeah? Come on, I don't believe anybody would do that."
I liked Orson's comment, "There is nothing so outre´, so off-the-wall, so impossible or bizarre or outrageous that you cannot make it believable within a story. It all depends on how hard you want to work at justifying it."
A large part of Stephen King's appeal has been his insistence on using heroes from the American middle class, living in the familiar world of fast food, shopping malls and television. If you set a murder in a limousine, it's only scary to wealthy people.
"A single word on how to make your characters more believable: details. The more information about a character, the more the audience will believe in him. It isn't that simple though. You don't want just any details, you want relevant, appropriate details."
The most important tool that will make your readers believe in your story is elaboration of motive. If you don't tell your audience what your character's motives are, the audience will assume the obvious motive: a simple, single motive, a naked archetype or a cliché. To make characters more believable, more real, we give them more complex, even contradictory motives, and we justify them better.
"Question 3: Huh? What's happening? This doesn't make any sense. Make sure there's never a moment of confusion or inclarity in your story."
Obscure, confusing stories really bug me. I want to try to withhold some information, but make it clear to the reader what's going on. I hope I have the skill to pull it off.
Interrogating the character:
This section reminded me of Orson's workshop, 1000 ideas in an hour, which I attended at Necronomicon in Tampa last November. In it he posed questions to the audience that built up to a plot. I used this with Rosalind and Ian and it generated some ideas. (During boring meetings at work, I write out questions and have them answer like an interview.)
What could go wrong?
"Who suffers most in this situation without dying or being incapacitated? This is the main character." I started out assuming that this was Rosalind's story since it's her doppelganger. Then I started to feel like it was Ian's story, because he is dealing with her, watching her from the outside and trying to figure out what's going on with her, and it's more interesting to have that information revealed gradually, rather than having the reader know everything up front. Then I wanted to go with her in 3rd person and him in 1st person, but I've settled on having both of then in 3rd person, alternating viewpoints by chapter.
"When you're looking for characters, cast your net first in your own life." I'm drawing on some people I know for this book, particularly the dangerous ex-boyfriend character. Rosalind is probably essentially me.
"Serendipity: Two ideas from unrelated sources." I think that having a plot that is driven by black magic and voodoo set in Montreal is bringing two divergent ideas together. I like the idea of plunging an actor into this surreal, dangerous world. Also, I'm paralleling the play "Hamlet" with the action of the story.
"How to raise the emotional stakes. Suffering. Great grief and great physical agony, well presented in the tale, can greatly increase the reader's emotional involvement." Rosalind's involvement is that she might die or be driven mad by the doppelganger. Ian's is that he may lose Rosalind or that he will be put in prison for the murders the doppelganger has done.
"Sexual tension is related to jeopardy. When a man and a woman meet in a story we assume at least some degree of sexual possibility. If the two characters immediately become important to each other, the sexual tension increases – especially if they become important in a negative sense. Rivalry, contempt, anger. Sexual tension dissipates when characters come together in sexual harmony." This made me think. I had Rosalind and Ian coming together close to the beginning of the story then working together until the murders by the doppelganger pull them apart. Now I'm thinking he'll get weirded out by her and dump her, but her double will stalk him by turning up in strange places, like hanging upside down outside of his 30 story apartment window and giving him "the gaze."
"We like what's like us. The most important ingredient in how much we like a stranger is how much he seems to be like us. While we like characters that are like us, we also tend to be a little bored with them. It's strangeness, not familiarity that excites our curiosity." My reaction to this is to take an ordinary person people can relate to and put him/her in an extraordinary circumstance.
"Heroes always seem to face some uncommon problems, always seem to be extraordinarily contemplative and perceptive. Always seem to reach a moment of epiphany in which they pass along a key insight to the reader. Despite their seeming ordinariness, these heroes always turn out to be extraordinary, once we truly understand them."
"Often when you find yourself blocked – when you can't bring yourself to start or continue a story – the reason is that you have forgotten or have not yet discovered what is extraordinary about your main character."
"You have to begin the story at exactly the point where the main character becomes unique."
"What a character expects will happen in the present tells us instantly what has happened before in the past."
"You've no doubt heard the slogan "Show don't tell." Under some circumstances, that advice is good; under others it's exactly wrong." Right now I'm reading Mr. X by Peter Straub. There are places in there where he is "telling" for four or five pages, but it completely works, because he is a master.
Viewpoint:
"First-person narrators have the problem of time. The narrator, a participant in the events, is telling about what happened in the past. He is looking backward. He is distant in time from the story itself."
"The use of an unreliable narrator can add a delicious element of uncertainty to a story, with occasional revisions of the readers' understanding of all that went before. But badly used, or to excess, the unreliable narrator leaves the reader wondering why he's bothering to read the story, or furious that the author never let him know what "really" happened." I was thinking of making Rosalind a murderer, and the doppelganger a vengeance creature by someone who was involved with the victim, but I didn't think I could pull off hiding that info. I'm going to have her hide certain things and reveal them as the story goes on.
"Third-person narrator – Even though most third-person accounts are told in the past tense, they feel quite immediate. There is not necessarily any sense the narrator is remembering the events. They are recounted as experience. There is no distance in time. However, with third person, there is distance in space. That is, the narrator, though she can dip into one or more minds, is never a person who is actually there. She is always an invisible observer, always at some distance. So first-person is distant in time, third in space."
"The fact that the narrator is telling the story makes it obvious that she lived."
"If your goal is to get your readers emotionally involved with your main characters, with minimal distraction from their belief in the story, then the limited third-person narrator is your best choice." I feel more emotionally involved when reading a first-person narration, because it feels so immediate.
"If you want the senses of truth that comes from an eyewitness account, first person usually feels less fictional, more factual."
"The limited third-person narration invites a clean, unobtrusive writing style – a plain tale plainly told."
Levels of penetration:
This is something I hadn't thought about before. Even though you're in third-person viewpoint and have the ability to look into the character's mind, penetration can be limited, medium or deep, and that can vary in different sections of the story. That concept helped me for this story, because I don't want to reveal everything in Rosalind's mind right away.
"Once you've decided to write a limited third-person narration, you still have a choice to make: how deeply to penetrate the viewpoint character's mind. Omniscient (looking at the scene like a camera), first person (seeing through the character's eyes. We still watch from a distance.), third-person (deep penetration - seeing into the character's mind.)"
In deep penetration, we never see a tag line like "Pete thought," because we're getting his thoughts all along.
Limited third-person – cinematic view. – gives no attitude except as it is revealed by facial expressions, gestures, pauses, words.
The dividing lines between cinematic, light-penetration, and deep penetration narratives are not firm. You can drift along with light penetration, then slip into deep penetration or a cinematic view without any kind of transition, and readers usually don't notice the process. They'll notice the result, however.
Deep penetration is intense, "hot" narration; no other narrative strategy keeps the reader so closely involved with the character and the story.
Lots of good information to ponder . . . Sally
posted by Sally Bosco at
8:33 AM
