So Good Their Bad

[Guest]

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[lesbiaphrodite]

I see what you mean.

I don't write good guys or bad guys. I like characters whose flaws and also their good qualities are right at the surface. I'll leave it to the reader to decide if they are good or bad. To qualify them in that way, on my part, would be to suppress who they truly are.

I don't do good/bad in life, so I certainly don't do it in fiction.

 

[sr71plt]

Most of my key characters have flaws showing.

(And I hope "So Good Their Bad" was an intentional pun)

 

[Guest]

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[3113]

Good stories need a bad "guy" and a good "guy"(not necessarily a person, could be beast or nature among things) to add tension and to drive the plot.

The age-old mantra is:

Man vs. Man (that's anything from a high school rival to fighting unknown enemies on a battlefield to a man-man institution be it gangsters or police or the bank)

Man vs. Nature (anything from hurricanes to jungles full of nasty creatures to battling against disease)

Man vs. Himself (fighting one's own inner demons and weaknesses)

Most great books have more than one of the above for the protagonist to face and maybe defeat--or be defeated by as he strives to achieve whatever it is he'd trying to achieve. The Grapes of Wrath, for example, has all three.

Getting out from behind the literature lecture podium now

Are your protagonists/antagonists like that? Do you give your good guys flaws in their character or in their appearance? And what about bad guys are there some redeeming qualities? Opinions?

Well, to be fair to the stories on lit, they are (1) short stories, and these narrow a writer's ability to create super deep protagonists/antagonists or intricate battles between them. And (2) A lot of readers come to lit for sexy stories and don't want to get into the deep psychology of the characters. If the reader comes here looking for candy, than they don't want to know about the nasty cheerleader's bad childhood. They just want to see her get the spanking she deserves from her heroically good rival on the cheerleading team.

I don't think we can criticize the simplicity of such characters without knowing what kind of story they're from or what kind of audience they're aimed at.

For myself, I rarely write up simplistic, one-note good-or-bad characters, though the shortness of short stories sometimes leads me to short-hand rather than full out psychology. I'm more likely to shaft the villain in such cases than the hero, however. A too-good protagonist would be, IMHO, dull to write. But sometimes I cheat on the antagonist and just have them be awful (hey, I've got to get to the sex, here! No time to waste explaining why they're so bad)

 

[rgraham666]

My favourite character to write is a vampire who's capable of ripping twenty people to shreds, and has. He also loves the woman in his life dearly. Also he is quite quite generous and warm.

A hero? Not really. A villain? What he goes up against are often far worse than him.

I'll leave it for the readers to decide.

 

[Weird Harold]

... And (2) A lot of readers come to lit for sexy stories and don't want to get into the deep psychology of the characters. If the reader comes here looking for candy, than they don't want to know about the nasty cheerleader's bad childhood. They just want to see her get the spanking she deserves from her heroically good rival on the cheerleading team.

I think that while the readers amy not consciously care about the "deep psychology" of the characters, they will subconsciously miss the depth of characterization if it is completely missing.

That doesn't necessarily mean that writer's have to rub the reader's nose in deep psychology and waste a lot of verbiage on backstory, explicating the childhood trauma's that made the head cheerleader so nasty, the author does need to understand what drives the characters to be as nasty or sticky-sweet as the story requires.

The real problem with amateur erotica is that it, all too often, completely lacks any conflict at all -- it's about Barbie and Ken in a play-world viewed through rose-colored glasses. A textbook on the anatomy of being double-jointed is more interesting than Barbie & Ken sex.

 

[sr71plt]

Hmmmm. I'd say that most of my stories posted here are directly centered on man vs. himself--even if using others to get at this--and the psychological struggle of it is pretty much the whole ball of wax.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Hmmmm. I'd say that most of my stories posted here are directly centered on man vs. himself--even if using others to get at this--and the psychological struggle of it is pretty much the whole ball of wax.

Ditto here. except I don't have anything posted here, but back when I did...

But yeah, that's my favorite use of erotica, to enable some sort of self-realisation for my protagonist, and those are the most satisfying stories for me to read.

And jamison, one of the first things that I ever started writing was like that-- not that my love-interest was especially good, but that he was Prince Absolutely Charming for my main character-- who of course, was myself, in what my fanfic friends call a "Mary Sue". I was pregnant and bored. But soon enough, the possibilities caught my interest and the two-dimensionality of the characters got embarrassing, and I separated the Her away from myself and made them both less telepathic. I ended up with about a hundred thousand words of... Well, it never went anywhere, but the sex was blinding!

One of these days...

 

[Darkniciad]

Should have seen some of the mail I got when I posted Ebon Genesis. Everyone was perfectly content to hate the twisted madman that is Zoraster. Then, I go and show the events that awakened the monster, and reveal that tiny vestiges of the man he once was still fitfully smolder within him in the main storyline *laugh*

There's really only two kinds of baddies that work: The completely insane, and the guy who actually believes he's the good guy.

Hmm -- the pair of those together reminds me of someone around here...

The opposing element doesn't necessarily need redeeming qualities, just goals that could be considered noble from certain perspectives. Most people would be hard pressed to find anything redeeming in Hitler, and yet he was a hero in his own mind and to certain elements of the populace. Extreme example, but you can take it all the way down to a guy spreading rumors because he truly believes that he's better for a girl than the "loser" she's with.

 

[3113]

I think that while the readers amy not consciously care about the "deep psychology" of the characters, they will subconsciously miss the depth of characterization if it is completely missing.

You have more faith in readers than I do. Barbie & Ken sex is remarkably popular among lit readers who seem to want just that sort of faceless sex and damn the characterization.

As for levels of depth, I'll agree that real readers love a good twist and shades of gray. But I'm not so sure humanity, in general, feels the same. The popularity of religions preaching and presenting a completely and utterly good "God" vs a totally evil "Satan" is certainly indicative of a need for a clear, simple duality without any messy gray spots. (And, yes, before you start to lecture me about how the Bible is hardly black and white--Duh!--that doesn't mean that religions built on the Bible chose to see or interpret those grays as gray. The evangelical are often remarkably capable of explaining away messiness and ambiguity in favor of black-and-white simplicity).

 

[Guest]

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[Guest]

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[Stella_Omega]

I love killing a character; it pisses readers off and tells me I wrote well enough that they're that emotionally involved.

A lot of my major male characters have a part of me in them so I write them with some of my emotional garbage or give them something similar to what I had to deal with in my life. They tend to be depressed-brooding types. I need to stop type-casting those poor saps.

I've never killed a character. I think I should.


I have that same problem, my characters indulge in a lot of avoidance *coff* and my protagonists often have to be prodded into action by someone else... *waves at 3113 and voluptuary-manque*

 

[Luke's Angel]

Good stories need a bad "guy" and a good "guy"(not necessarily a person, could be beast or nature among things) to add tension and to drive the plot. The evil could be the protagonist instead of antagonist since stories don't always end "happily ever after" and vice versa where the good doesn't always win in the end.

I've read stories here on Lit and other sources, mainstream fiction where sometimes the good protagonist is too good and the bad antagonist too bad to be believable. The characterization tends to look like cookie-cutter all dressed in white sheriffs and bank robber all in black of the old Hollywood westerns, or cartoony super heroes/villains.

Are your protagonists/antagonists like that? Do you give your good guys flaws in their character or in their appearance? And what about bad guys are there some redeeming qualities? Opinions?

There is good and there is evil. These are absolutes. The war is eternal.

 

[rgraham666]

There is good and there is evil. These are absolutes. The war is eternal.

This is one of Satan's most successful lies. For 'goodness' people have tortured, enslaved and fought bitter wars with no point other than to inflict destruction on other human beings.

Hell is full of saints and holy warriors.

 

[Stella_Omega]

There is good and there is evil. These are absolutes. The war is eternal.

How very.. Biblical!

 

[TxRad]

I've never killed a character. I think I should.


I have that same problem, my characters indulge in a lot of avoidance *coff* and my protagonists often have to be prodded into action by someone else... *waves at 3113 and voluptuary-manque*

Killing a character off is interesting. "Eugene"was my try at it. I got kind of carried away though and killed almost everyone

What started out as a simple suicide ended up being two murders and a suicide.

It's not fairing to well with the votes but the comments are nice. I think I need to pull it and expand on it some.

 

[Lee Chambers]

My favourite character to write is a vampire who's capable of ripping twenty people to shreds, and has. He also loves the woman in his life dearly. Also he is quite quite generous and warm.

A hero? Not really. A villain? What he goes up against are often far worse than him.

I'll leave it for the readers to decide.

I remember that vampire from one of your Halloween stories awhile back. That guy was bad ass.

 

[rgraham666]

I remember that vampire from one of your Halloween stories awhile back. That guy was bad ass.

I've written about eight more stories with him in them since then.

He's sort of becoming my Conan the Barbarian.

 

[sr71plt]

I love killing a character; it pisses readers off and tells me I wrote well enough that they're that emotionally involved.

A lot of my major male characters have a part of me in them so I write them with some of my emotional garbage or give them something similar to what I had to deal with in my life. They tend to be depressed-brooding types. I need to stop type-casting those poor saps.

I killed a character in one of a series of mainstream espionage novels and it pissed my mother off so much that I had to think of a way to resurrect the character in the next novel. (Which I did--but then killed her off again. I rather enjoyed seeing my mother pissed.)

 

[NoJo]

Killing a character can be an inexperienced writer's ploy -- often a plot cop-out. It should be done literally when necessary: when the story dictates it.

It is not to be confused with the "kill your children" dictum, which means don't hang on to characters, scenes, etc just becuase you have affection for them. These characters clutter the story and weaken the narrative drive

 

[Stella_Omega]

I love killing a character; it pisses readers off and tells me I wrote well enough that they're that emotionally involved...

My favorite web cartoonist killed herself off;
http://www.letterstoawildboar.com/index.php?date=2008-03-23

 

[Weird Harold]

You have more faith in readers than I do. Barbie & Ken sex is remarkably popular among lit readers who seem to want just that sort of faceless sex and damn the characterization.

Not so much faith in the readers as an understanding of how people tick -- 90% of readers can't tell you why they prefer one Barbie & Ken story over another, but if you force them to choose between two similar stories, the one with more "character" will almost always win out.

The structure of a "Story" as opposed to vignettes and essays isn't an arbitrary distinction voted on by some author's convention or in dark dungeons by a secret society of college professors. The elements of a proper story -- including the need for an antagonist to oppose the protagonist -- are derived from millinea of storytellers learning by trial and error how to make an audience pay attention to their stories.

Stories need "Conflict" and "Resolution," "Heroes" and "villians," because that's what captures an audience's attention and holds it. It has nothing to do with the audience's conscious choices, it's just how the human mind works. Even short stories and vignettes are generally better received if they incorporate some degree of "traditional story elements" -- even if the readers (and sometimes the author) don't recognise them for what they are.

 

[Oblimo]

I've never killed a character. I think I should.

Oh, you should. It's fun.

There was one character I wrote three paragraphs about and thought, "Oh, you are so gunna die." It was hot little thought, as Terry Pratchet would say.