Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2014-07-06 04:04 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2014-07-06 04:04 pm
[ SECRET POST #2742 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2742 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 094 secrets from Secret Submission Post #392.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Re: Good writer or bad writer?
(Anonymous) 2014-07-07 02:33 am (UTC)(link)I think for many people, creating a character involves investing at least a small part of themselves into the character's psyche; not as a full-on self-insert, but just bits. It might be the writer's stubbornness, or their compassion, or their response to trauma, or their nervous habits - something that makes the writer empathize with them and understand intuitively how the character will respond to a given stimulus. That fragment of the author's personality within the character can mean that some of that character's actions and decisions become non-negotiable, because doing anything other than Action X feels wrong to the writer. In your example, if the part of Bob's personality that fuels his resistance to killing is drawn from his writer's mercy, or sense of honor, or response to guilt, then "Bob" will probably dig his heels in and refuse to kill the guy, regardless of the disastrous consequences for Bob or for the story - because the resistance to that course of action stems from something in the author's own mind.
I don't know if I'm still addressing the wrong part of the issue, or if this speaks to the part that doesn't make sense for you. Mostly, I'm trying to explain it because this has definitely happened to me before on multiple occasions, and I don't think it makes me weird, crazy, or creepy. To me, it's just something that happens when you imagine a character vividly and completely enough.
Re: Good writer or bad writer?
I get the character thing, like I keep saying! I really do! I have characters like that who absolutely refuse to do certain things, too. But then, you wouldn't put them into plots where they have to do that or the plot can't go on, either, OR, if you have a plot where it grinds to a halt like that, you work a way around that specific thing so the plot point can still happen but not necessarily in that exact same way. Or something forces the character's hand and they dwell and guilt about it forever and react the way they would. Or maybe Bob just dies there, if that's what has to happen, if he refuses to kill something that is trying to kill him. Then other characters resurrect him later. There just shouldn't really be a point where everything stops because a fictional character is dictating what happens next and refuses to go on because there are always a million ways that a certain plot point can go, once you've determined it has to happen.
Like, characters are fallible. Even if Bob is convinced he'd never kill someone, and he tries his hardest to find any other way out there to get past this plot point, it's possible he can't. Maybe this is the one time he fails. Characters fail. Characters fall. Writers can make that happen.
It might feel wrong, but the writer CAN do it... they're just choosing not to. Then if they give up and just say their character and plot is stuck, then they're giving up on finding some way around that, too. They could at least say as much and say it's an executive decision as a worldbuilder and character creator, instead of saying the character ran away and there's nothing they can do about it. There absolutely is, they're just deciding not to.
Which is fine.
But saying "the character ran away from me" isn't exactly true, here. "Stuff happened and I as the writer don't want to figure out a way around it for various reasons (whether it be because the writer dug themselves into a hole, the character grew a different unexpected way, or I just don't LIKE how the story is going any more, or whatever) and maybe I'm ditching this story and so what if I am? It's my right to" is more accurate. Because that's what the writer is doing.
Which is also fine. I've done that too, a lot! But the locus of control never shifts, imo.
Re: Good writer or bad writer?
(Anonymous) 2014-07-07 03:21 am (UTC)(link)I guess part of the reason I'm having trouble understanding the disconnect here is that you say that you recognize "the character grew a different unexpected way" - to me, that's very much what "the character ran away from me" means. Character development happened in an unanticipated direction, and it threw a monkeywrench into the story. That doesn't mean the writer gives up on it forever, just that they're stuck until they figure out where to go from there.
When the character "runs away," yes, the writer could choose to put words on the page that say that the character does what the writer wants him to regardless. The writer could describe a scene in which Bob messily decapitates the guy he needs to kill, and tramples the headless corpse with his horse. It's entirely within the writer's power to put those words on a page, or in a Word doc. But that doesn't make them good, or logical, or in-character.
I mean, the writer also has the power to write that Bob abandons his order of holy knights and runs off to the nearest port city to become an exotic dancer - or in a sudden genre shift, that Bob gets abducted by aliens. These are all things that the writer technically has the power to do, but there reaches a point when the writer has ceased to write about "Bob," the character they created at the outset of this story, and is now writing about an entirely different person who mysteriously has the same name and appearance as Bob. That, in my experience, is why writers don't try to force actions that the character "refuses" to do - because if they write those actions happening, the character will cease to be that character, and it will show in the quality of the writing. You can't make Bob do something Bob would never do, and still have him stay Bob.
So ultimately, I think that saying a writer has absolute power over the characters in their story, once those characters are created, isn't quite true. Once I've created Bob, if I decide I need him to do something that is wholly against Bob's established nature and personality, I can either (a) change my plot expectations, (b) scrap Bob as a character and rewrite my story with Steve, who is willing to do the thing that the plot demands, or (c) begin writing a bad-fanfic version of Bob who does what I tell him to at the expense of established characterization and the essence of what made him Bob in the first place. But I cannot make the same Bob that I started with do the thing that Bob will not do.
Once I have established who Bob is (with the caveat that some of that process may be happening on a subconscious level, in which I intuitively "decide" things about Bob without realizing it), then Bob's personality has some control over his actions, because it dictates what Bob is and is not capable of doing while remaining internally consistent. I have to work with what I've got, or scrap it and start over with "someone" else. But once I've established an understanding of who Bob is, that understanding has veto power over Bob's actions, as long as I want Bob to continue being Bob.
Re: Good writer or bad writer?
Not that I have anything against people who RP smut, just the weird uh, like 'oh it's not really ME, I'm a helpless innocent bystander to the pervert muses in my head =^_^=' bit aaaa
But I see where we fundamentally differ now!
'So ultimately, I think that saying a writer has absolute power over the characters in their story, once those characters are created, isn't quite true.'
Right there! I'd disagree with that. Bob in this story is my creation, I can force him to change at will or change up his entire backstory if I wanted to - if I wanted to write fifty different AUs with Bob where the only thing that stays fundamentally the same is the nature of his relationship with Joe (or Susan, or a 50 foot robot, or whatever), I could do that too. The Bob that exists is only there because I want him to be that way, I as the writer can redefine him at will. Like, everything you mention as a 'can't,' I see as a 'don't want to' -
'I can't make Bob decapitate a guy' - yeah, you could, you just don't want to. 'I can't make Bob ditch his holy order' - yeah, you could, you just don't want to. 'I can't ruin the story by suddenly having it be a space opera' - you could, you just don't want to, and who says genre shifts are necessarily bad or inconsistent? Who says genre-consistency is what you were going for? 'But he wouldn't be Bob any more' - says who? Who decided who Bob is? You're the original creator! You made Bob! What this says to me is 'Bob wouldn't be the character I WANT him to be any more' and that's a whole different story from Bob being immutable. Because who established Bob's personality? You! You can go back change that, too. You just don't want to because you like a certain version of Bob, and again, there's nothing wrong with that.
But all the 'I can't,' well - no. You could. I mentioned having OCs that have strict limits who would never ever do XYZ thing - and they're like that because I like them that way. If I didn't, they wouldn't be that way!
Re: Good writer or bad writer?
(Anonymous) 2014-07-07 12:34 pm (UTC)(link)Yes, you could choose to do all those things - but you couldn't have Bob do those things and still have him be Bob. He would be a new character, who may also be named Bob, but he wouldn't be the person you had created. That's what I meant about characters being fully realized individuals with personalities independent of the plot. Once you've established that, once you "know who they are," you can't just swap out pieces of that personality and still expect it to work just as well as it did before. At least I can't, and I have a hard time seeing how anyone else can. It would turn into option (c) that I described earlier, the flat, bad-fanfic version of the character.
It sounds like we have a fundamental difference in how we see the character creation process. I see it as shaping a personality, essentially crafting an entire (fictional) person, with choices and reactions that will flow organically from the traits and responses they started with. For me, the character creation process is almost more an exercise in discovery than construction, clearing away the clutter to find out what traits flow from previously-established traits, and what details my subconscious has filled in that make intuitive sense about the character, until I have a whole picture.
Whereas it sounds like your process is more of a construction effort, starting with a pile of Lego pieces and picking out the ones you want, deciding how they should fit together, and sometimes changing your mind and discarding a piece you already used to replace it with a different one. The Lego sculpture doesn't do anything unexpected, because it's made of Legos, and halfway through the story you could decide to remove half the pieces and replace them with new ones, even building them up into a different shape if you wanted.
But the times when I've tried to make characters that way, the result has lacked a certain essential vitality and realism, and felt stilted - like I was operating a marionette rather than describing a person. It felt like as soon as I stopped paying attention, the character would collapse lifeless to the floor. Which may be what you expect to happen, since after all the character isn't actually "real," but it's not an approach that works for me at all. It feels too artificial, too inorganic, and the characters don't feel as vivid or fully-realized, even if they're easier to control.
Re: Good writer or bad writer?
Where we're diverging here is at the point where we deem our construction 'Bob.' For me, Bob is just a title. The character itself is always changing and malleable. The character who is currently there, who is currently named Bob, is only 'Bob' because I as the creator deem him 'Bob.' If I choose to not deem him Bob any more, he's no longer Bob.
Like, you seem to make a character, deem this particular set of traits and characteristics 'Bob,' then if any of those change, he's no longer 'Bob' any more. You take a round fruit that's red, tastes sweet, and has a crunchy texture and decide that is a 'Zorgon,' and if any of those traits change, it's no longer a Zorgon. It's wrong to you, because you've self-imposed rules about what a Zorgon is and are unwilling to change those rules.
Whereas I take a character, give him the 'Bob' title for now, and if that character doesn't work, I can change him, and then the 'Bob' title just stands for something else. The character's still Bob. It's just that what Bob IS, has changed. I take a round fruit that's red, tastes sweet, and has a crunchy texture and decide that is a 'Zorgon,' and if somehow the fruit needs to taste sour instead of sweet, I make the fruit sour, and now 'Zorgons' have always been sour all along because I said so. The fruit's still a Zorgon, it's just the meaning of Zorgon has been retroactively edited.
So, I could take 'Bob,' give him an entirely different backstory, and have him still be Bob, because he was only 'Bob' in the first place because I said so. Obviously I can't do this with fic, as I'm not TPTB in that situation, but with original writing, I can! Like I said, I have certain characters that come with set traits, but they're only set because I WANT them to be set, because I SAID they're set, them going against them only feels wrong because I've chosen what I feel to be 'right'... they're playing by the rules I set for them, but as the rule-creator, if I wanted to change those at any time, I could.
It doesn't even have to be lego pieces. It's NOT artificially shoving stuff in whenever and wherever or characters changing all of a sudden. That never really works. It's altering backstories and experiences so that NEW traits, or the traits you want, flow just as organically from them as the old ones did - after all the old ones had to stem from something in exactly the same way. That's how the whole notion of AUs work - do you write many of them in fic or original writing? Change the setting, change the circumstances, characters react to things and develop organically in mostly similar but also significantly different ways from 'canon' because of the changed circumstances... and it's exactly the same idea, as how a character can still be a character even in AU.
You realize that by your definitions of character, AUs should not be possible?
(minor tw for fictional domestic abuse)
Lance is a Paladin who has a rule not to kill. He and his small army of knights are trapped in the last remaining temple of his God, fighting off the the army of the Empire. They're falling, one by one. They can't do this, break their way out of here, without killing the people determined to trap them in, and they're all men of faith, they'd rather die than betray their God. He's watching everyone he loves die around him. And suddenly, he's the last one standing. The leader of the enemy army is approaching him with sword drawn, with smirk on his face and some snide remark about the Peacekeepers. This is the end. There's nothing left to protect, except for an idea. An idea and an ideal that Lance refuses to let die.
Lance tosses away his shield. Fine. Let it end here. He only prays the stories will live on without them.
That's Lance!
Lance is a Paladin who has a rule not to kill. He and his small army of knights are trapped in the last remaining temple of his God, fighting off the the army of the Empire. They're falling, one by one. They can't do this, break their way out of here, without killing the people determined to trap them in, and they're all men of faith, they'd rather die than betray their God. He's watching everyone he loves die around him. But - they're not dead, yet. There are still voices he can hear, holed up in the room behind him.
And there's a hand on his shoulder. It's the squire he's been training with for the past few months, looking to him desperately. There must be something we can do, the kid's expression says. There's got to be something. And he looks at the kid. Remembers how the boy had come up to him tripping over his own overgrown feet like an overexcited puppy, and told him how Lance was always his hero when he was a child, he's honored to be training with him, he really wants to be just like Lance when he grows up, and help people. Be a hero.
This isn't the end, Lance thinks suddenly. It's not about the people, the artifacts, the temples. It's about the idea. About the ideals. As long as some of them survive to carry it on, as long as people like this boy who wants to help the world, keep the peace, do good, exist, his God will never die. He's familiar with the phrase, 'sacrifices must be made, for the faith.' But it had never hit him this particular way before…
He'd never thought of his own soul as a chip.
Lance picks up a sword. He gives the boy one final order. "Don't follow me."
And Lance falls hard.
That's Lance too!
Now if we segue into AU:
It's 1990. Lance is a jaded, 19 year old college student who doesn't know how to connect with people because his parents were always divorced, moving, distant. He's a silent too-serious guy that likes books and doesn't socialize and always feels like he's outside-looking-in at the rest of the world. He has no idea what to do with his life, only that he has to do something. He's currently just eating, sleeping, taking his classes, going for runs, and just… going through the motions. He doesn't know it, but he's desperately searching for inspiration, for duty, for something to believe in. What's the point of it all? Maybe he should drop out and try the police academy instead…?
Still Lance.
It's 1975. Lance is a 29 year old Vietnam vet suffering from PTSD, who is in an abusive relationship with Artie, a flower child militant hippie who he has screaming fights with nearly every night. They've been reported to the police multiple times, and he's been arrested and let go multiple times, when she declined to press charges - mostly because she does it on purpose. She crowds him in and hits him first, riles him up so he lashes out in self-defense, because she LIKES that, because he proves her RIGHT every time he breaks and god it feels GOOD to break sometimes even if he hates himself for that, too. She tells him he deserves everything he's got, that he should have died back there, and the thing is, he agrees with her. Why him and not the others? What the hell were they even fighting for? They're both horrible, broken people.
Still Lance.
It's the Dark Ages. Lance is 40 years old, and a Catholic priest. He doesn't believe in, or like, God very much. What he does believe in is good and evil - or maybe just evil - and he's sworn to protect the innocent from it no matter what the cost. The cost appears to be his immortal soul, because he's forced to break the cardinal rule all the time - thou shalt not kill - because funnily enough, evil doesn't only come in the form of demons and spirits. Humanity is just as capable of summoning that shit up, turning on each other. He's killed a lot of people. He hates himself for it. He's going to Hell, if what everyone says is true. Well, fine, then. Worth it. He's a man with a purpose and he's willing to give everything for it.
Still Lance...
Refuses to kill, kills to save others, has never killed or even thought about it, killed and hates himself for it, kills willingly knowing he's supposedly damned, has ideals, doesn't have ideals, has had his ideals broken and trampled on, etc etc you can come up with a billion variations, have one version act 'OOC' to another version, and still have the character be recognizable and IC to themselves.
It's all in the setup, the backstory, and the circumstances. Everything can feel organic because it can actually BE organic, since organic development stems from somewhere and you can change what that base is. Even if it's something as simple as changing the first scenario from Lance being the last one standing to being the Last one standing with innocents behind him, or having him realize it's not the God/temples he wants to protect, it's the ideas - or as complex as slotting him into different places in history - the world shapes what that results in, what that makes him become.
Could I make Lance a happy go lucky friendly dude who loves his friends and whose life is merry? Yeah, actually. Sure! By changing the backstory so that happy!Lance is what naturally results from how his life goes. It wouldn't make him OOC, it'd just make that particular universe something that's never happened to him before. There's absolutely no reason for Lance to be grumpy and angry and grim if he grew up and professionally played with puppies for a living and was happily married, or something. It doesn't make suddenly him a different character or a different person, it just changes everything else about the world (which the writer has control over) to make it all organically lead to happy puppy Lance.
But you know, giving characters happy perfect fulfilling lives, well… that's no fun.