Character / Ensemble Cast Development Strategies (Writerly) (No! Really?)

BlackShanglan

Silver-Tongued Papist
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ETA: (Just to clarify issues raised in the thread - these are things I did with a screenplay after the initial 30-page scene-by-scene note draft.)

I've been working on a piece with five characters who each contribute to the plot / mood / emotions / character development. This is a challenge for me, especially the character development. I have a bad habit of having characters be the same people over and over without growing or changing. This time I think I've turned a corner, and two strategies really helped.

Character-by-character questionnaires

With five characters, it was harder to spot the poorly developed ones and work out what was wrong. I took them one by one and worked out the following:

  • Starting nature / personality.
  • Ending nature / personality.
  • Key dramatically performable central need (i.e., what character physically needs to achieve and can be seen achieving).
  • Key internal development goal (emotional / intellectual / spiritual, non-physical).
  • Lowest point in the story.
  • Heroic moment(s) / high points.
  • Key interactions with other characters.
  • Key contributions to the central theme of the piece.

Just working out the start/end points quickly showed me the internal development goals (or lack of them) and got me thinking of the characters as struggling forward rather than standing static. The low/high points were a big help, too. I had one character who was constantly withdrawing and another who was a drama queen. Working out more coherent individual development helped fix that and showed me the other tool ...

Mapping character high/low progression to the plot

During the above, I realized that two of the characters followed opposite patterns of development. One had her biggest challenge early and then grew in strength; the other started strong but had a hard blow late in the story. I got curious about the patterns of development of the other characters. Then I got fancy. I graphed them. :D

I numbered the vertical axis from 1 to 10, with 1 being a character's lowest, least active/effective moment and 10 being shining heroism. On the horizontal axis, I put the dozen most major plot / emotion events in order. Then I plotted each character's status at each point and drew a colored trend line through them.

It's great! I could see immediately that one character spent the whole first half sulking and doing nothing. I tweaked his development and got him more active, and adding joy and hope gave the sad parts more impact. The drama queen kept plunging into the depths of despair; I kept the most important low point, then re-worked others to emphasize his strengths and let other characters do more so that he didn't come off as a whiner. I also saw how to move the action forward at each point; when one or two characters were wallowing in despair, I could see which others were stronger and ready to move on.

Best of all, I realized that I had two pairs of characters with highs and lows at the same points - responding to the same events, but in different ways and for different reasons. That showed me what they could do for each other and the broader themes by providing equal and opposite perspectives. It also gave more kick to individual development; the two characters who are strongest in the early story get hit hardest by later events, and that helped me see that the two shy, more uncertain people from the early story had a chance to be the heroes too.

Now I'm off to get all of that into the draft. :D Does anyone else have something hopelessly geeky to contribute? ;)
 
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I've been working on a piece with five characters who each contribute to the plot / mood / emotions / character development. This is a challenge for me, especially the character development. I have a bad habit of having characters be the same people over and over without growing or changing. This time I think I've turned a corner, and two strategies really helped.

Actually, BlackShanglan, I noticed the same problem with Harry Dick and all the 8 or 9 stories I've written of him. What I've seen is "the insane mystery and porn writer, Jenny Jackson" is always bailing him out. In the latest, I wrote myself out and let him do what he can do. Maybe that will allow him to become the incredible dork he really can become. I'll have to see.
 
I numbered the vertical axis from 1 to 10, with 1 being a character's lowest, least active/effective moment and 10 being shining heroism. On the horizontal axis, I put the dozen most major plot / emotion events in order. Then I plotted each character's status at each point and drew a colored trend line through them.

Did you then use the Pritchard Scale to evaluate their worth? lol ;)

I don't know, maybe I'm missing something... but I can't even imagine plotting characters on a graph, you geeky horse, you! Just the thought of it makes my head hurt... :eek:
 
Did you then use the Pritchard Scale to evaluate their worth? lol ;)

I don't know, maybe I'm missing something... but I can't even imagine plotting characters on a graph, you geeky horse, you! Just the thought of it makes my head hurt... :eek:

I don't think they need to be plotted, SK. But one of my own criticisms of stories is that characters don't change. A good story is like a journey where the character goes through some catharsis and becomes something different in the end. I think that's what Horsey is getting at.
 
I'll have to think about this one. On the surface, it sounds like you think all characters should follow the same arc--which people don't do in real life, so why should they in stories? Also, I see no problem with a minor character being lazy, lackluster throughout a story, not changing at all. This too is real life. If the story doesn't focus on that character, there's no reason they need to be changing--or developing at all. It's not about them.

And then, like SK, I'm not into plotting characters on graphs either--except for continuity in a longer work. Can't think of anything that can make a character sterotyped and uninteresting faster than that--or my writing experience more tedious and boring.
 
I don't think they need to be plotted, SK. But one of my own criticisms of stories is that characters don't change. A good story is like a journey where the character goes through some catharsis and becomes something different in the end. I think that's what Horsey is getting at.


Again, why would all characters in a story need to change? You have key characters, at least one of which should change, yes. But if a minor character is there merely to serve the plot and/or as a ploy for the major characters, there's no requirement for them to change. The story isn't about them. People don't all arc together like that in real life; why would they do so in a realistic story? And if you have five major characters in a short story, all of which you want to complete Black's shopping list, you're going to have a pretty busy/messy story, I think.
 
if you have five major characters in a short story, all of which you want to complete Black's shopping list, you're going to have a pretty busy/messy story, I think.

or a long one... ;)

I don't fauly horsey for plotting characters... I just wouldn't do it myself. Not my thing. *shrug*

But I bet 3113 will love this post! :D
 
or a long one... ;)

I don't fauly horsey for plotting characters... I just wouldn't do it myself. Not my thing. *shrug*

But I bet 3113 will love this post! :D
I love it, as it's exactly the thing I'm wrestling with as I begin to (try to) write long novels.

In my neverending search for toys, I downloaded a trial software called "Power structure" which offers a bunch of different ways to do any particular thing-- graphing character development is one of them. It's helped-- Of course it doesn't do my thinking for me, dammit! :eek:
 
I love it, as it's exactly the thing I'm wrestling with as I begin to (try to) write long novels.

In my neverending search for toys, I downloaded a trial software called "Power structure" which offers a bunch of different ways to do any particular thing-- graphing character development is one of them. It's helped-- Of course it doesn't do my thinking for me, dammit! :eek:


See, I need something to do this with PLOTS for me... when I have to outline a plot... ugh... :rolleyes: But characters? Nah... they just do what they do. ;)
 
Again, why would all characters in a story need to change? You have key characters, at least one of which should change, yes. But if a minor character is there merely to serve the plot and/or as a ploy for the major characters, there's no requirement for them to change. The story isn't about them. People don't all arc together like that in real life; why would they do so in a realistic story? And if you have five major characters in a short story, all of which you want to complete Black's shopping list, you're going to have a pretty busy/messy story, I think.

Jenny can certainly speak for herself (I've never noticed any reluctance in the past), but I've always understood her not to mean that every character has to change, but that there has to be some change in one of them (or in something else in the story) in order for it to really be considered a story. I understood her post here to say the same thing; her crit is that none of the characters change, not that all of them don't change. But with a whole entire story to my credit (and another in the hopper!), I'm prepared to be wrong. ;)
 
LeCarre's George Smiley never changed. And there are others, too numerous to list. People usually change when they experience a rite of passage such as when they become adolescents, join the military, become parents, retire, etc. But we're pretty stable most of the time unless something extraordinary drops in our laps.

For me the problem is keeping characters interesting over the course of the book. I dont care that they change, I care that they provide an impulse to the story.
 
Ohh Shang... that's taking procrastination beyond the line :D

I almost wish you hadn't dragged me there. Most of my characters climb over obstacles to get what they need. I swear I'll have to kill one of them off just to get even.

I recently bought a MacFamilyTree in order to plot the lives, families and off-spring of the main characters in my inter-connected novels. I'm at 29 family linked characters :eek:

Some of them I actually know, just. Little Bas***d's keep breeding :rolleyes:
 
Jenny can certainly speak for herself (I've never noticed any reluctance in the past), but I've always understood her not to mean that every character has to change, but that there has to be some change in one of them (or in something else in the story) in order for it to really be considered a story. I understood her post here to say the same thing; her crit is that none of the characters change, not that all of them don't change. But with a whole entire story to my credit (and another in the hopper!), I'm prepared to be wrong. ;)


That's fine, but I'm not a medium. I took Jenny's post to mean what she posted--in the plural--in keeping with Black's posting in the plural. I was posting to what she actually posted, not to what you think she meant and seem to think you need to defend.

I also wasn't posting to Jenny herself, I was posting to her interesting comment as it was actually stated.
 
LeCarre's George Smiley never changed. And there are others, too numerous to list. People usually change when they experience a rite of passage such as when they become adolescents, join the military, become parents, retire, etc. But we're pretty stable most of the time unless something extraordinary drops in our laps.

For me the problem is keeping characters interesting over the course of the book. I dont care that they change, I care that they provide an impulse to the story.


In a story, it doesn't have to be the main character changing at all--there's a panoply of other elements that can provide the needed change in a story. And "no change" can also work as the central theme. As I've indicated before, I've written stories where the whole point was that the change didn't occur when the reader is dying for that to happen. It's called being realistic with the human condition. And the story is just as good a story if it can reflect that human condition well--and make that the central point of the story.

If all stories followed the same formula and character arc, we'd only need one story and then we could go walk away and do something else.
 
SR71PLT

Very true.

I recently got into one helluva fight with a close friend because I added two schizophrenic characters to my current project. I needed something bizarre to re-ignite the story in the middle. I considered lepers, but schizophrenia is common, and leprosy isnt. Plus lepers arent deranged. Schizophrenics will hold your attention for a while, at least until the protagonist is able to function once more.
 
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George Smiley is the agent of change in the Le Carre novels. My main characters tend to be the same, evidently-- I'd like to get one of them, in one plot arc, to be the pro-active one!:rolleyes: They're all so lazy....
 
If all stories followed the same formula and character arc, we'd only need one story and then we could go walk away and do something else.

Or we could write the same story, over and over, with different characters but the same predictable arc... and call it... mystery writing! or... or... romance! :D
 
Opps, double post because this one was hung up in the submit system and I backclicked for another run at it. Sorry.
 
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George Smiley is the agent of change in the Le Carre novels. My main characters tend to be the same, evidently-- I'd like to get one of them, in one plot arc, to be the pro-active one!:rolleyes: They're all so lazy....

I rather think of George Smiley (one of my favorite characters--and utterly authentic) as the agent of stability, sanity, and nobility in a world of vast change/festering evil around him.

Anne Tyler's best-selling novels also are mostly structured on such a stable/unchanging character, with the change being what's happening around them, and the point of the story being that the main character doesn't change in the face of that challenge.

With both George and Anne in mind, I wrote a story in a statewide competition that took second place in which the central character (the only one who says a word aloud in the entire story--going counter to another one of those "we always" formulas) remained her resilient self, annoying/endearing habits intact, while her whole world crumbled around her--and she still came out unscathed.

But this may have gone a bit (or more than a bit) beyond Black's structuring of the thread. And, basically, I feel that if such detailed character mapping is considered helpful to a writer, go to it. I just would find it too limiting and creativity dampening for my writing style. I directly channel all of my characters in an attempt to instinctively have them do what they would do if they were real people--and sometimes they'll take a quirky burp path. Usually this turns out to be a Eureka moment for the story.
 
Or we could write the same story, over and over, with different characters but the same predictable arc... and call it... mystery writing! or... or... romance! :D


Wouldn't Incest be more appropriate? :D

But now we are circling back to Tom Clancy, methinks.
 
It might depend on the particular needs of the particular story.

Anne Tyler is a good example, and you pointed out something that I'd never completely realised about her :rose:
 
Jenny can certainly speak for herself (I've never noticed any reluctance in the past), but I've always understood her not to mean that every character has to change, but that there has to be some change in one of them (or in something else in the story) in order for it to really be considered a story. I understood her post here to say the same thing; her crit is that none of the characters change, not that all of them don't change. But with a whole entire story to my credit (and another in the hopper!), I'm prepared to be wrong. ;)

You are correct, Anna. Going back to Horsey's orginal post, he has five main characters. So I stated that in plural. No one cares what happens to all the secondary and back ground characters.

As far as the main characters, there are two possibilites. First the character does change and becomes a worse or better person through the journey. Or, two, he doesn't change and the story devolves into pathos. Even in that case, there is some understanding on the part of the reader or, hopefully other characters, that this is the case - thus they have changed.
 
This is a screenplay, so it's got room for the group of characters to develop a little, albeit not in the depth you'd get with a hefty novel. Basically, everyone has one significant goal to shoot for. The tricky balance is doing that in a way that neither derails the action nor comes off overly simplistic.

See, I need something to do this with PLOTS for me... when I have to outline a plot... ugh... :rolleyes: But characters? Nah... they just do what they do. ;)


I don't know, maybe I'm missing something... but I can't even imagine plotting characters on a graph, you geeky horse, you! Just the thought of it makes my head hurt... :eek:

If it makes you feel less horrified, this was all done after the initial complete note-draft (30 pages of scene-by-scene notes). :) I let the characters have their heads for that and do whatever felt natural. Now I'm sharpening up the characterization and structure together.

One character, for instance, begins depressed and has a good reason for it, but in the draft he just withdrew and moped for half the script. The visual aid of the graph helped me realize just how long he spent passive and silent. Graphing the highs and lows of the characters against the plot helped me to see how the two interacted. The plot was dragging in some places because too many people were passively moping.

I'll have to think about this one. On the surface, it sounds like you think all characters should follow the same arc--which people don't do in real life, so why should they in stories?

No, I don't think they should. That's why I was pleased to see the differences in their development patterns.

Also, I see no problem with a minor character being lazy, lackluster throughout a story, not changing at all. This too is real life. If the story doesn't focus on that character, there's no reason they need to be changing--or developing at all. It's not about them.

Yes. The story focuses on these five characters. None of them are minor.

And then, like SK, I'm not into plotting characters on graphs either--except for continuity in a longer work.

Yes. It is a longer piece. That's why I'm finding it helpful.

Can't think of anything that can make a character sterotyped and uninteresting faster than that--or my writing experience more tedious and boring.

Fortunately, I've had much happier experiences with it. It's helped me to flesh out the characters who weren't getting enough development (thus avoiding creating uninteresting stereotypes) and focus the ones who were a wee bit too excitable. Of course I wouldn't suggest that there's one way of writing that works best for everyone; I was just sharing one that worked well for me. Thus far my own creativity seems up to the challenge.
 
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