How do you figure your characters have "depth" and are not just wish fulfillment / in service of the fantasy?

[NotWise]

My personal feeling is that readers tend to form a basic idea of a character's appearance within a split second of the character being mentioned. They'll be willing to mould that idea to fit some details provided by the author, but don't ask them to change it too much because that takes more effort on their part, and either they'll ignore it or they'll have two conflicting pictures in their head.

So if I mention "a pale-skinned redhead in a green dress, coming towards me with a smile that promised either pleasure or trouble", most readers will have an image in their mind by the time they've finished reading that sentence. I could add "a golden band around her arm, with a green stone I was pretty sure was tsavorite", or "a dusting of freckles that fell from her face to her chest", and that would enhance the reader's image.

But if I said "piercing hazel eyes above a straight nose that led down to full red lips over a firm chin" and "tight ringlets that fell to just below her shoulders", or whatever, those details might conflict with the reader's picture. It's either wasted information, or it's resented.

So my policy is to present enough information in the initial sentence for the reader to form that first image, and never add anything later that conflicts with the first impression.

The main part of my description of Hope in No Brand on My Pony was, "she looked like a refugee from some religious cult." I include impressions like that in lieu of details. In Mom, Sex, Guns and Rock-n-Roll, Grace and Zelda were described with, "I feel like I've seen them on TV."

 

[SkyBubble]

Do you have concerns that your characters aren't fleshed out enough?

Nice pun!

 

[SkyBubble]

Personally I feel the sex is hotter if you connect with the people fucking.

Yes, character you can care about are more interesting.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Yes, character you can care about are more interesting.

Of even if you write them as dislikeable, it still makes them more than just a set of genitals.

 

[FrancesScott]

For me, I can’t really conceive of not having my characters be people, even if their attributes and foibles are only line drawings. They don’t have to be a renaissance masterpiece, but they have to be at least sketched in a way that is plausible and realistic. Otherwise is just a clinical description of fornication. Motivations are even more important.

 

[vanmyers86]

When my characters take on their own lives and start telling me what they're gonna do next, that's when I know they have depth.

 

[FrancesScott]

When my characters take on their own lives and start telling me what they're gonna do next, that's when I know they have depth.

Every time I read someone saying that (and it’s very very common) I really fail to connect with the concept. I know it’s a metaphor for the subconscious, but I’m generally hyper-aware of what I’m trying to do with a story. It’s as much an intellectual exercise as an emotional one. Maybe it’s me who is the outlier here.

 

[JayHawnee]

There’s a distinction to be made between the ‘depth’ of a character and whether a character is interesting.

I’d much rather read about a briefly sketched character that was interesting than a really boring person whose inner desires and feelings were throughly explored.

Certainly if you’re writing strokers, there’s a tremendous skill in doing a thumbnail sketch of a character who makes that short little story properly hot and alluring.

I think, the key lies in how well the character depth is connected to the story that is told.

A character doesn't need to be deep just for the sake of it. But if their own little world adds directly to the story, it can be unbelievably compelling.

Take just a man, who fucks his wife and happens to be an accountant, who collects stamps and is bored with his life. On its own, that's not necessarily exciting. But when he uses his stamp collection to break free from his routines and seduce his boss at work?

Suddenly, even those mundane details can be part of what makes a story interesting and hot.

 

[iwatchus]

It is common for my conscious mind to be unaware of what my characters are doing. My favorite was when a character had been hiding that he had been laid off all weekend from his fiancé and his best friends (and me until about three words before he confessed.)

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Every time I read someone saying that (and it’s very very common) I really fail to connect with the concept. I know it’s a metaphor for the subconscious, but I’m generally hyper-aware of what I’m trying to do with a story. It’s as much an intellectual exercise as an emotional one. Maybe it’s me who is the outlier here.

I agree. The characters don't become who they are by chance. It's where the story the author envisions leads them.
Sure, some unplanned quirks will emerge, and I love it when that happens. They add flavor, nuance, and subtle life to the characters and story. But I, too, find it hard to connect to this idea that characters just somehow happen.
Maybe there are authors who pants it to such a degree that they only have the faintest idea of the story they want to tell, or the characters they want to create, but I find that hard to believe.

 

[UsuallyPresent]

-snip-

BUT, I also think that if the story is done right, plot and character will blend seamlessly. The character serves the plot and the plot appears to emerge organically from the character. I think a good writer can get at this blend from either direction, but I think achieving that organic blend is the goal.

Respectfully disagree. While that can be the case, the main plot can be going on ‘over there’ whilst our protagonist/antihero/villain/whatever goes on about their lives. ‘Beware of Chicken’ (off KU & RoyalRoad) is one case in point where the protagonist has fled the center of the plot where demonic possessions, invasions, and cultivator nonsense goes off elsewhere while he does his damndest to just grow his rice, care for his friends, & love his wife.

 

[BellaBestia]

My approach in either reading or writing a story is what does the character want to tell me about this particular sex scene or what is it about them that they want to tell me through recounting this sex scene. I’m interested in the person more than or maybe the same as the sex. Sometimes the personality comes out directly in words in descriptions or dialogue, sometimes it’s in their actions and more subtle. I’m interested in the why more than the how.

 

[iwatchus]

I agree. The characters don't become who they are by chance. It's where the story the author envisions leads them.
Sure, some unplanned quirks will emerge, and I love it when that happens. They add flavor, nuance, and subtle life to the characters and story. But I, too, find it hard to connect to this idea that characters just somehow happen.
Maybe there are authors who pants it to such a degree that they only have the faintest idea of the story they want to tell, or the characters they want to create, but I find that hard to believe.

For me, the characters come first and the story grows out from that. I have an idea where I want the story to go, but it's not always where it goes. Like @FrancesScott noted, I'm sure it's my subconscious acting on their behalf, but I do not know where they are going go with a scenario that I put them in. I have a guess and if they are going too far off track, I have t put the story aside until I figure out how to entice them back into an interesting story.

But sometimes, it works really well. In my nude day story, my MMC said something really really stupid. He knew it as soon as it came out of his mouth, but he was 18 and having sex for the first time. That perturbed the plot significantly, but it became a better story for it, although it weakened the actual nude day scene somewhat later, which I never did manage to fix.

On the other hand, in the story I am hoping to finish soon, the two main characters will not cooperate. I am trying to inject suggestions into their head, but so far they aren't buying it and until I believe they are going to be nicer to each other, it has to wait. Right now, I am just hoping that if I keep them hostage long enough, Stockholm Syndrome will creep up and they will get along. (Before someone calls me on that, it was just a joke, I know that's not how it was theorized to work and that the whole thing is bad science.)

 

[AwkwardlySet]

For me, the characters come first and the story grows out from that. I have an idea where I want the story to go, but it's not always where it goes.

That happens to me, too. The story sometimes ends up going in an entirely new direction. But still, who the characters are up until that new fork in the road is, to a large degree, a product of the initial idea. They don't just develop randomly.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I tend to start with a character, then ask, "who would she/he meet?"
Once I've decided on who that person is the plot starts to form.
What would bring them together (or keep them apart)?
Who else is in their lives?

Good storytelling is about people. If people don't care about the people IN the story why would they care about the story at all?

If your characters aren't interesting, your story isn't going to be interesting.

 

[iwatchus]

That happens to me, too. The story sometimes ends up going in an entirely new direction. But still, who the characters are up until that new fork in the road is, to a large degree, a product of the initial idea. They don't just develop randomly.

Sometimes they effectively do. I will see someone walking on the street or at a restaurant and imagine what they are really like. Then I think about what could be an interesting scenario for them. Roughly half my storie are that. The other half are a touch scenario (like my recent novel, where Iwondered what would happen if someone got ESP when they got a concussion).I had three bullet points for my initial outline (one of which I ended up abandoning because it did not work for my characters).I spent a while (background task for a month) fleshing out the MC in my head. The 120K just grew out of what he would do (and then the other characters) in the situation as it evolved. I very rarely intervened to adjust the story. I did know information that the characters did not and I stayed true to the two points Ihat survived in my mini-outline.

I would often plan out the next chapter or so, but they often did not follow plan.

After watching the Sanderson lectures, I now think I should have added some foreshadowing of somethings that happened, but I didn't.

A few of my stories are really plot driven, but that is the exception. I tried to do more plotting for stories like 15-18 in my catalog and it hurt them, so I have backed off as much, limiting myself to likely paths in the short term. Everyone writes differently.

 

[eboni664]

"Write what you know." Of course my characters are wish fulfillment. I write about my kinks, it's a fucking porn site.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Sometimes they effectively do. I will see someone walking on the street or at a restaurant and imagine what they are really like. Then I think about what could be an interesting scenario for them. Roughly half my storie are that. The other half are a touch scenario (like my recent novel, where Iwondered what would happen if someone got ESP when they got a concussion).I had three bullet points for my initial outline (one of which I ended up abandoning because it did not work for my characters).I spent a while (background task for a month) fleshing out the MC in my head. The 120K just grew out of what he would do (and then the other characters) in the situation as it evolved. I very rarely intervened to adjust the story. I did know information that the characters did not and I stayed true to the two points Ihat survived in my mini-outline.

I would often plan out the next chapter or so, but they often did not follow plan.

After watching the Sanderson lectures, I now think I should have added some foreshadowing of somethings that happened, but I didn't.

A few of my stories are really plot driven, but that is the exception. I tried to do more plotting for stories like 15-18 in my catalog and it hurt them, so I have backed off as much, limiting myself to likely paths in the short term. Everyone writes differently.

Your point that, "it did not work out for my characters" is a great one. If you really develop a character you need to have a sense of her personality. Then you can run into plot ideas and the character has to do something to drive the plot and you think, "she wouldn't do that." You can either betray what you've written so far and create an inconsistent character or rethink your plot.
I am 20k words into an idea and I realized that there is no way these two characters would have sex. Not now, not in any reasonable future. So, I've had to completely rethink my plot. It's probably in the pile that will never end up on Lit because it isn't really a Lit story at this point.

 

[SimonDoom]

Respectfully disagree. While that can be the case, the main plot can be going on ‘over there’ whilst our protagonist/antihero/villain/whatever goes on about their lives. ‘Beware of Chicken’ (off KU & RoyalRoad) is one case in point where the protagonist has fled the center of the plot where demonic possessions, invasions, and cultivator nonsense goes off elsewhere while he does his damndest to just grow his rice, care for his friends, & love his wife.

I've never heard of Beware of Chicken and am curious how this works. Isn't the REAL story the one that involves the narrator/protagonist while the other events are background? The fleeing is itself part of the story, isn't it?

I'm especially curious how this works in an erotic story. What's erotic about a story where the erotic event offscreen and the protagonist goes about doing something else while the erotic events are happening?

 

[jsmiam]

I think there’s room to say this topic is to a degree overthinking. and I don’t mean that in a contrarian way.

This is Literotica. An erotica site. Unless you’re reading in the non-erotic category, it’s virtually guaranteed that at least two people are going to get lucky. No matter how deep and complex and conflicted the characters are, somebody’s gonna score!

Compare that to the last time, no, the last 100, the last 1000 times you went to the store, ran into an old acquaintance, went to a doctors appointment, went to a restaurant, got a haircut. Did we end up having sex with the deep and complex person we met? We did not.

Compare the 100 percent likelihood of sex ensuing on a story here, to the 1 in 100 to 1 in one million chance of sex ensuing in real life.

So write your story and do your best to make the characters realistic and deep and complex, I’m not saying don’t. But here on Literotica, they’re still going to have great sex, guaranteed. That part in particular, the probability of the sex being practically 100 percent guaranteed, isn’t real or reflective of real life.

But coming full circle: it’s fine. it’s ok. It’s good. I wouldn’t read an erotica story with only a 1 in 100 chance of sex. Nobody would. So if we were truly realistic in our scenarios, in the depth of our characters, in how we really behave in real life, we might as well really go to the store or the doctor or the barber in real life.

 

[UsuallyPresent]

I've never heard of Beware of Chicken

A well written cultivation isekai, only brought it up as the first tale that fit the pattern off the top of my head

and am curious how this works. Isn't the REAL story the one that involves the narrator/protagonist while the other events are background? The fleeing is itself part of the story, isn't it?

I'm especially curious how this works in an erotic story. What's erotic about a story where the erotic event offscreen and the protagonist goes about doing something else while the erotic events are happening?

Maybe a Toys & Masturbation or voyeur tale as someone listens in on EroticCouplings/Group Sex/BDSM/etc?
Maybe BDSM where the protagonist is kept bound/caged and the events occur in their perceptions but not their reach?
Loving Wives had elements of this already - one spouse fucks & the other is either oblivious or encourages it.

The driving force of the tale isn’t directly experienced by the point-of-view written, only secondary & lesser effects ripple thru to affect the PoV.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I think there’s room to say this topic is to a degree overthinking. and I don’t mean that in a contrarian way.

This is Literotica. An erotica site. Unless you’re reading in the non-erotic category, it’s virtually guaranteed that at least two people are going to get lucky. No matter how deep and complex and conflicted the characters are, somebody’s gonna score!

Compare that to the last time, no, the last 100, the last 1000 times you went to the store, ran into an old acquaintance, went to a doctors appointment, went to a restaurant, got a haircut. Did we end up having sex with the deep and complex person we met? We did not.

Compare the 100 percent likelihood of sex ensuing on a story here, to the 1 in 100 to 1 in one million chance of sex ensuing in real life.

So write your story and do your best to make the characters realistic and deep and complex, I’m not saying don’t. But here on Literotica, they’re still going to have great sex, guaranteed. That part in particular, the probability of the sex being practically 100 percent guaranteed, isn’t real or reflective of real life.

But coming full circle: it’s fine. it’s ok. It’s good. I wouldn’t read an erotica story with only a 1 in 100 chance of sex. Nobody would. So if we were truly realistic in our scenarios, in the depth of our characters, in how we really behave in real life, we might as well really go to the store or the doctor or the barber in real life.

But there's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.
My characters don't have sex every time they run into someone at the grocery store. Sure, it's safe to say someone at some point in the story is going to get lucky.

If characters aren't going to have depth, then why bother with any plot at all. Start with two people in a bedroom, a car, a hotel room, an airplane lavatory, or wherever and start with them fucking and end when they're done. If those are the stories you want to write, by all means write them! There is certainly a market for that. But there are stories here on Lit that are tens of thousands of words long that have barely any sex in them (and not just in the non-erotic category).
That's one of the things that differentiate porn from erotica, at least for me.

 

[iwatchus]

I think there’s room to say this topic is to a degree overthinking. and I don’t mean that in a contrarian way.

This is Literotica. An erotica site. Unless you’re reading in the non-erotic category, it’s virtually guaranteed that at least two people are going to get lucky. No matter how deep and complex and conflicted the characters are, somebody’s gonna score!

Compare that to the last time, no, the last 100, the last 1000 times you went to the store, ran into an old acquaintance, went to a doctors appointment, went to a restaurant, got a haircut. Did we end up having sex with the deep and complex person we met? We did not.

Compare the 100 percent likelihood of sex ensuing on a story here, to the 1 in 100 to 1 in one million chance of sex ensuing in real life.

So write your story and do your best to make the characters realistic and deep and complex, I’m not saying don’t. But here on Literotica, they’re still going to have great sex, guaranteed. That part in particular, the probability of the sex being practically 100 percent guaranteed, isn’t real or reflective of real life.

But coming full circle: it’s fine. it’s ok. It’s good. I wouldn’t read an erotica story with only a 1 in 100 chance of sex. Nobody would. So if we were truly realistic in our scenarios, in the depth of our characters, in how we really behave in real life, we might as well really go to the store or the doctor or the barber in real life.

In a short story, you are mostly right. I mostly write longer works. If you go to the store in the story, it is unlikely to result in sex. But almost all stories talk about the exceptional cases, not the normal ones.

Even in the short story, I want to read a story where I believe the characters will have sex, nt that two pre-programmed robots are having sex on demand.

 

[UnexpectedLuggage]

My characters exist for the sake of the story. The POV character is usually meant to represent the everyman, not super ripped with a giant dick. A regular dude with average looks and an average cock size. But, he exists purely to live out the fantasy of the story.

The girls, likewise, exist in service of the fantasy. They are, usually, loosely based in some way on someone I know, or are a mash up of a couple people. Most of what I write is my personal fantasies I've had, so take that as you will.

As far as giving them depth, I usually try to have some. Most times that's just back story on how they know each other, and subsequently got into their current situation. Sometimes mannerisms slip in there, attitudes and the likes.

Which is where I think depth is, for me at least. I want some back story, I want to know who these people are and how they got to this point. For me, stories lacking "depth" usually means they just jump right into the fucking with no build up (and in my experience the sex is usually pretty short one paragraph "they fucked and he came" type deals). I don't need a novel, or someone's entire life story, but  something to at least make me care a smidge.

 

[iwatchus]

Taking a break from this discussion, I keep mis-reading the title of the thread with (depth as death) and thinking we are turning our erotica into shakespearean tragedies.