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Making Characters
making characters got so much easier (and more enjoyable) when i realized my groove was explicitly making characters for plot+theme needs.
(Keeps casts trimmed down, for one.)
like - i don’t … do those eighty-thousand question lists about characters; most of those are useless for my style anyway. Don’t want to know what everyone’s favorite color is or what they feel about their grandparents > do want to know which tropes they subvert, and the why of that first crucial plot-relevant action they take. everything before and everything afterwards both leads to that.
for example - ‘i need uhhh, a random ass meatbag soldier that knew diane and her dad who’s a spineless coward under a totes smooth operator look that tries to shank them and gtfo lol’ boom, hardin. (who happens to be one of my actual favorites - and most well received - villains I’ve ever written. working backwards to find his motivation of why [why’d he betray them? what blackmail would someone need on him to switch loyalties? why’d he serve dictator dad? why does he give a shit about diane? ] has honestly been the meat of the last two chapters. )
likewise - ‘i need a villain who masterminded [redacted] and was an ambassador that mentored diane when they were younger - super charismatic, takes her in under her wing but is a corrosive piece of shit.’ even the visual designs trail that; thinking of station and what kind of institutional power they need in order to apply their will on the plot, how much of a disney villain peacock they are in order to telegraph that corrosiveness, how much they want to resemble which country to get the most sympathy from people, etc.
i - and I would wager a ton of readers - truly don’t give a shit about characters until that ‘why’ chain starts rolling out. and i honestly feel like so many more other characters would instantly be more compelling if that was applied.
no subject
ha! this was actually an earlier character—i don't have his files on-hand atm, but i think i was exploring some black-sheep-of-family dynamics in his backstory? the depressed STEM grad student you remember came later, though he was on the same game :P (those email sessions were great!!! ahh!!!!)
the facets-of-a-diamond metaphor seems very apt. i guess i'd argue it's something like: the observer perspective lets you get a glimpse, abstractly, at how this person behaves around a variety of other people (lots of facets)—but you won't have the full story of the histories of each of those persons, so you're going to miss a lot of subtleties of those interactions, and such.
whereas, when you're doing the actively-engaged perspective: well, i have the complete history of my own life, and the complete history of all my interactions with humans ever, so i can come to that encounter with all that knowledge ("person reacting to me in particular like X usually means Y"), and pattern-match against the bajillion other times i've met a human, and assess the person pretty quickly. it's still going to be just one facet/mask vs getting to see potentially many—but you'll probably see that one facet in much greater detail, and (with some noted exceptions!) i honestly feel like most people don't go out of their way to hide significant parts of themselves—even people i've interacted with in mostly a professional context, i can often get a whiff of what their home life is like or whatever.