Writing Action with Good Character Development

[Everyday_Man]

Better do your home work.

okay.

 

[Carnal_Flower]

Ho kay, Big Daddy.

I'd say a plot advances on a give and take between revealing/concealing. But the point being, the actual tension and suspense only means something when it's firmly tied to a strong characterization.

Cupcake you don't understand suspense. Suspense is all about concealing character.

 

[sr71plt]

I'm closer to JBJ's definition of this than any required priority given to characterization at all.

And I certainly don't think you have to establish character before giving action. That flies in the face of what is currently popular in opening a work of suspense or a thriller.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Ho kay, Big Daddy.

I'd say a plot advances on a give and take between revealing/concealing. But the point being, the actual tension and suspense only means something when it's firmly tied to a strong characterization.

You don't get what suspense is all about. I cant imagine Raymond Chandler or John Le Carre or Dashiell Hammett dissecting characters from the start.

 

[Carnal_Flower]

Well, there's different kinds of suspense.

A spy-based plot doesn't need much characterization, true.

But for a suspenseful plot that is tied to character (per the OP's question), my two cents is character needs to be very clear first. At least, a good sense. You don't have to know everything at first. (Perhaps I should qualify that this is how it works for me.)

I do get suspense. It's fun. I'm writing one now. In the beginning, I allude to a character's shady past and "those dreadful accusations." I don't know what those are . . . yet, only, that he's hiding from something. I've built intrigue just by tossing in a line, and THAT, in turn, has fed elements of the plot. The plot is going to unwind the murky suggestions of something evil and criminal. That's suspense. Who is he? You follow the plot along but now it is becoming character development as well.

Vs. Was it Mrs. White with the candlestick in the ballroom, where you don't need to know who she is or why she did it.

You don't get what suspense is all about. I cant imagine Raymond Chandler or John Le Carre or Dashiell Hammett dissecting characters from the start.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'm closer to JBJ's definition of this than any required priority given to characterization at all.

And I certainly don't think you have to establish character before giving action. That flies in the face of what is currently popular in opening a work of suspense or a thriller.

Not in an opening of a story, that can just be all out chaos and it doesn't matter. But by the middle of the book you should know why this character does what they do and how they know how to etc...

You go a whole book with the character being a superhero with no explanation of how they got that way then you have....James Bond and he is as boring as white paint.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Well, there's different kinds of suspense.

A spy-based plot doesn't need much characterization, true.

But for a suspenseful plot that is tied to character (per the OP's question), my two cents is character needs to be very clear first. At least, a good sense. You don't have to know everything at first. (Perhaps I should qualify that this is how it works for me.)

I do get suspense. It's fun. I'm writing one now. In the beginning, I allude to a character's shady past and "those dreadful accusations." I don't know what those are . . . yet, only, that he's hiding from something. I've built intrigue just by tossing in a line, and THAT, in turn, has fed elements of the plot. The plot is going to unwind the murky suggestions of something evil and criminal. That's suspense. Who is he? You follow the plot along but now it is becoming character development as well.

Vs. Was it Mrs. White with the candlestick in the ballroom, where you don't need to know who she is or why she did it.

Youre making a different argument than Lovecraft68. Any exception to your thesis invalidates your assertion.

 

[Sammael Bard]

I would say the trick is to establish the character well before the action, that way no explanation is needed.

Look at it in a real life example. Say you know someone has strong feelings on a matter, then you're at a party and another person says something very upsetting about that matter.

You're first thought is "Oh, man so-so is going to go off" why? because you know them.

So once your reader knows your character his actions/reactions should be expected by them and they know the motivation behind them.

IF you say a character has a martial arts background at some point early on, then there is a fight the character knows he is going to have some moves.

But if you never mention it before either the reader is "Okay, where did he learn that" or you have to interrupt the flow with "Relying on his years of martial arts training, Brett easily blocked the..."

Now that doesn't sound all that awkward, but then the reader is...hey, that was never mentioned before and they think you're making up stuff as you go along.

Oh and I credit you for taking the story down. A lot of people are so number/ego driven they could never take a story down with that high of a rating.

My problem is fundamentally different than what you're telling. The actions of my characters are perfectly believable. It's the character depth that he's lacking. You don't have a clear picture of the man himself.

And thanks! I won't say that I don't give two shits about Lit ratings, because I do. A little, but I do give two shits about the score. It's just that....I believe that my story can reach a 4.90 in Sci Fi category if I get it right. I'm willing to take down any story if I see an improvement, whatever be the score.

Perfection is a farce, but I like to try and get as close as possible.

alot of the characters I've read or watched that involved violence never really obsessed about the violence in there life, it was just there, something that happened and then was over.

Most of it was subtle ... Patrick Batemen killed, but there was no dwelling on it, Hannible Lector did it as a matter of course, Jason Bourne was capable of amazing violence, but it was a matter of daily life, it wasn't integral to who they were ... it was a big part, but it was never the focus ...

if you write violence for the sake of violence, then your reaching for an idea most people don't want to embrace.

Edit:

Just watched Fury, War Daddy shoots a pair of kids who blew up a tank ... he does it and then he has a moment of regret and then gets pissed at his gunner for not doing it first, another scene he forces a guy to shoot someone, not out of need or like, but necessity ... writing for the sake of gratuity makes no sense (haven't read your story, so ... not sure what your scenes are like).

That's another mistake I think I made.

I focused too much on the violence instead of something more meaningful. I wanted my character to be defined by violence and anger, but I focused more on the former.

Does the action develop around the character or does the character develop around the action? Or do both just happen with no notable development? How can we (readers) tell that a character has developed? Do we WANT a developing character, or merely a player who does what we expect? Does reacting to action transform the character? Does the player's inner voice tell us they have changed? Can we believe them?

The character develops around the action. That was really what I intended.

During the entire course of the story, I wanted to show him become a war-hardened veteran who doesn't flinch at doing the necessary thing.

I'm afraid that didn't come off well either.

Great questions, all in all. I'll keep them in mind while rewriting the draft.

action is action, but it's the before and after that makes the character, not the during. You can put thought in the scenes, but it won't make the scene.

Right you are.

I don't know that the character development would be fully rounded when the actions starts. It might come up and hit the character in the face and he/she has to react. In my Warrior series one of the main character doesn't sit down to talk about where he's from and how he got where he is until the fourth/forth(?) book when he meets someone from his home country.

Some of what he discusses is hinted at in the prior books, but not completely. Plus there are so many characters in these book, that they would be much, much longer than they are, in order to fully develop them before any action takes place.

Let the reaction to action define the character. Make how he reacts consistent each time he is faced with some action. Then with side comments you can define him/her even more.

Or am I deceiving myself? I don't know. I write what I like and most, if not all the time, I leave it the way I initially wrote it.

I tried that, but I failed in providing the good afterthoughts. I've got to concentrate more on that, I guess, but I'm improvising now. I won't concentrate all the afterthoughts in one place, but, like TxRad said, use smaller strokes throughout.

 

[Sammael Bard]

Not in an opening of a story, that can just be all out chaos and it doesn't matter. But by the middle of the book you should know why this character does what they do and how they know how to etc...

You go a whole book with the character being a superhero with no explanation of how they got that way then you have....James Bond and he is as boring as white paint.

Well, if it's about deception, it doesn't have to do that either.

If you get the time, try Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. It's a glorified Loving Wives story with a far better plot and writing than you'll ever see here. You have two characters saying they did this and they did that -- one in a diary and the other in RL -- but only one of them is telling the truth. You don't even realize that a character is friggin' lying until you start reading Book 2.

But you, along with the others, have made a valid point though.

To break a farce, you need to build it first.

I think a decent characterisation is required for an immersive experience. If your story doesn't have some random killer doing it all, you need a character who readers know (or think they know).



ETA: Just to stand clear, I'm not writing something of this ^^^ nature. I have a plot that's tied to the character's integral change. Carnal Flower put it right:

But for a suspenseful plot that is tied to character (per the OP's question), my two cents is character needs to be very clear first. At least, a good sense. You don't have to know everything at first. (Perhaps I should qualify that this is how it works for me.)

 

[Hypoxia]

I don't think of my story players as developing so much as revealing themselves. Most of my characters are based on real people but I don't try to tell all about them up front. We may be three pieces into a series before we learn a significant character is black or bi or masochistic. I think of my stories as unpeeling the players. Their (re)actions are part of the reveal. How do they face events? That's where I try to insert tension and drama.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

After playing Stump the Chump here all day I started two old John D. MacDonald books last night, and both launched with significant action and little character development. In one an unknown thief breaks into a home, knocks out the unknown victim, and steals all her money. In the other an unknown guy in a bar is enticed to leave by an unknown hooker, and mugged by her unknown accomplis'.

 

[Lien_Geller]

Having read Insidious, I’m not sure your initial re-write there would do much to assist the issues I found in the story in terms of getting a deeper characterisation of the protagonist. For one thing, the beginning was slightly jarring in that it seemed like it was set in an ancient gladiatorial arena. This one seems like it’s at the end of some sort of medieval battle. The main story is futuristic military sci-fi. So in the initial read I wasn’t sure how the first part of the story connected with the main story at all. Is it even the same character? Just his spirit maybe? What does that entail?

Some stuff has been said here about the importance of reaction to action. That’s a good point, and it’s one that you didn’t seem to bother with much at least in the initial few pages of Insidious. Instead, it was largely plot-focused and the early plot was quite generic too. Sometimes you can get away with that if you’ve got a deep enough character to maintain interest, but without it the story struggled.

One of the big things I mentioned when I looked at it was that his mother’s death seemed to have a big effect on his life because of his love for her, but you never showed that relationship properly. You just told me that she was a poor woman who got beaten up a lot. It’s pretty much the only thing I could find in the early half of the story that really goes to the characters motivation.

I also think that’s a highly important aspect of creating interesting characters: Aligning your reader’s interest with your character’s motivation. In the second part of Insidious, you did that a lot more effectively. You actively showed us the relationship he had with his team and that he cared about them. So when they were placed in danger, it was a hell of a lot easier to invest myself in what was going on.

In the beginning he’s just a guy going through the motions of a particularly unpleasant and intense method of military training. Intense special forces training is also a quite alien experience to most people. It’s sci-fi too, which doesn’t help in this respect. That’s why it’s so important to forge a bond between your reader and your protagonist. I don’t have to like the guy, but I need to find his struggle compelling. A good way to do this is by finding ways for a reader to be able to relate to him through common experience. An asshole superior. A gruelling physical run. These are some ways we can get attached to characters in these sorts of situations. Most people have been in similar situations, though perhaps not with such severity. Band of Brothers did it by turning Easy Company’s drill sergeant into a complete asshole. This made us hate the antagonist, relate to the company as a whole, and like Richard Winters more because he sticks up for them. Boom! Investment achievement unlocked! Not saying you should go down that same route, but hopefully you can see what I mean by what it accomplishes.

A couple of more general examples on folding characterisation into action, with a few of my favourite movies as examples.

In Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World the opening scene is fantastic in establishing the character of Jack Aubrey. From the moment he shows up, he’s immediately a commanding presence. He sets about actively doing things aboard the ship preparing for an attack, so he’s proactive. There’s a moment where he checks for danger, even though he’s not entirely sure of the skill man who told him about it. So he’s sensible, and he trusts his crew. Then the ship is attacked and he immediately knows what the lights in the fog mean, probably saving peoples lives by telling them to get down. After that, he springs into action immediately going about defending his ship and attacking the enemy. Again, proactive. The moment I’m going to refer to though, happens when the ship is hit when he’s ascending stairs to the deck. He falls and hits his throat on a step. This is a great moment, because we see for the first time that this guy is actually human. He’s vulnerable. Also, because of everything that’s come before it, we’ve been shown that the ship and everyone on it is going to be in deep shit if they lose this guy. At first it even looks like he might have been hit. He hesitates, looks around at the carnage on deck and for a moment we think he might fall over. The first time I watched it I’m mentally yelling: “Get up! Come on!” and then Aubrey lets out a war cry and pulls himself up on deck to get back to work.

That’s a great moment of characterisation that shows us a lot of things about this guy and plants us squarely in his corner (where the movie wants us to be.) He’s competent, courageous, and tough. All of this is done in the middle of an action scene.

Next, look at big action set-pieces in 2 relatively recent movies Avengers Assemble and Man of Steel. The final act of Avengers Assemble is one huge action set-piece and yet there’s plenty of characterisation going on there. Here’s a few examples. The police are panicking and the city around them is going nuts. They don’t know what to do until Captain America shows up and immediately takes command of the situation. He calmly delivers a series of orders, and punctuates it by beating the snot out of an alien. Like the characters he’s talking to, we see that this is definitely a guy who’s got leadership qualities. He’s actively protecting people and planning rather than just reacting. His presence immediately calms the situation and rallies the police into an active force to work for him in a crisis by inspiring the two men in front of him. Later, there’s a slight diversion from the main action when Cap bursts into a bank to save people from aliens armed with a bomb. This shows that even in a crisis, this guy will go out of his way to save people in need. Then, afterward he gets blown out of a window and lands on a car. There’s a moment when we see how much the guy is hurting, but he gets up again anyway. Again, all this is shown through the action and it gives us a real feel for the guy and what he’s doing. Also, throughout the whole movie Cap has been uncertain of himself until that moment. We see that this is where the guy is comfortable and at home. He might not get modern references, but there’s no one else you’d rather have around in a crisis. It’s a victory for him, and it feels very much earned by that point in the story. Again, it’s all conveyed in the action.

Set that against Man of Steel where Superman fights Zod at the end of the movie. First, he’s punching him in the open. Then he’s punching him inside a building. Then he’s punching him in space. Then he’s punching him in the city again. This goes on for about 5 minutes and it’s like the story has just completely stopped. All that’s happening in terms of character and plot can be described with “they fight” and that’s pretty much it. It’s all flash and no substance.

 

[Carnal_Flower]

The Great Gatsby? It's not hard core action, but there's at least three strong plots and they are all intertwined with the question of who he is.

I'd like to see a story/book that has dealt with action and great character development with finesse. If you have any in mind, or if you've dealt with this sort of thing in the past, feel free to suggest. I'm all ears.

 

[karaline]

I'd like to see a story/book that has dealt with action and great character development with finesse. If you have any in mind, or if you've dealt with this sort of thing in the past, feel free to suggest. I'm all ears.

This is not a genre i've read massively but a few years back I read Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane, although I hadn't started writing at that point and so I wasn't reading critically I remember coming away from that with a feeling that the characters were very real and I understood them -so he must have done something right.

The other thing that springs to mind is all those Swedish detective series; The Martin Beck Stories, Wallander, (actually I don't recall the character development being outstanding in the Larsson's millennium trilogy).

 

[Sammael Bard]

Having read Insidious, I’m not sure your initial re-write there would do much to assist the issues I found in the story in terms of getting a deeper characterisation of the protagonist. For one thing, the beginning was slightly jarring in that it seemed like it was set in an ancient gladiatorial arena. This one seems like it’s at the end of some sort of medieval battle. The main story is futuristic military sci-fi. So in the initial read I wasn’t sure how the first part of the story connected with the main story at all. Is it even the same character? Just his spirit maybe? What does that entail?

Remember that zombie apocalypse in the end? That's where the futuristic world ends and the medieval one begins.

I'm resisting from quoting your entire critique, but I'll take on the points you've raised as best I can.


You said you were more invested in the second part of the story than the first part.

The most likely reason:

I wrote this story over a period of a year. That's long how it took for me to finish this thing. By the second half I was more comfortable with my character's skin and my writing was quite different than what it was 8 months ago. I improved, if that makes any sense. This was an example of my writing style "then" and "now".

When I first asked for an editor, it was just 2 lit pages long. My story was that short. I deleted it, wrote it, and rewrote it again to 30k words. I added more plot, action and the whole stuff to it before I pressed submit. Just ask my beta-reader. He's been through it all, the whole year.

I didn't have a clear vision of what I wanted to see in my story. The plot was never static, to begin with. I changed it as I saw fit. I just had a general outline in my head and I wanted to build my story around it. Even now that I'm rewriting, I changing the way he got inducted into the military and making the pieces of his childhood more detailed so that I can build a good story on top of it.

Like I said, the plot isn't fixed.

I liked the examples you've mentioned. I'll certainly watch the movies again and try to learn something from them. You did nail the scenes, though. Having watched Man of Steel a few couple of times, I wondered what was missing, but couldn't quite put a finger to it.

 

[Sammael Bard]

The Great Gatsby? It's not hard core action, but there's at least three strong plots and they are all intertwined with the question of who he is.

This is not a genre i've read massively but a few years back I read Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane, although I hadn't started writing at that point and so I wasn't reading critically I remember coming away from that with a feeling that the characters were very real and I understood them -so he must have done something right.

The other thing that springs to mind is all those Swedish detective series; The Martin Beck Stories, Wallander, (actually I don't recall the character development being outstanding in the Larsson's millennium trilogy).

Ta muchly.

I'll add those to my to-study list.

 

[LadyVer]

So, I took down my story Insidious. The stats, just before I took it down are below:

Rating: 4.84, Votes: 203, Comments: 6, Favourites: 21, Views: 3568

I was pretty damn happy, given how quickly stories get bumped off the new list in Sci-Fi (usually less than a week). For most part, readers gave me a very detailed feedback of how entertaining it was. I meant it to be entertaining, so thank you.

A good few said that my character lacked depth. He's doing things, but the things don't define how he thinks or clarify his ideologies. That was the point that gave me second thoughts on my story.

This is the first time I ever wrote something with loads of "cool" action, so I was more focused on how I'd make the plane jump sizzling or killing soldiers look badass. Now that I want to rewrite the thing, my brain is shooting blanks. This is what I rewrote in an entire week:

I just wanted something that holds the reader's attention and convey the character at the same time. Not the best thing I've come up with, I admit, but it's a start. I previously had an arena scene where he got beat up, and I think this is slightly better than that.

Anyhoo, my question:

How do you rewrite something to include character development without changing the integral action scenes?

I realised that to have a better character, I have to sacrifice a bit in the action. Otherwise it becomes longer than necessary.

I want to make it look better but can't find a way without deleting a 30k word story.

I'd like to see a story/book that has dealt with action and great character development with finesse. If you have any in mind, or if you've dealt with this sort of thing in the past, feel free to suggest. I'm all ears.

FYI, it's hard to give an opinion from not having read the entire story. I enjoyed the excerpt you posted. I didn't see anything that made me feel or think you have a character development problem. What I did see were just a bunch of minor mechanical errors that disrupted/impeded the flow of reading. If I were to offer any advice, it would be to get at at least a full copy edit, possibly a structural edit (since that's where your concerns appear to be focused), and then upload it commercially.

Good luck!

 

[BuckyDuckman]

How do you rewrite something to include character development without changing the integral action scenes?

Action defines your character, Sammael. Characters are presented with mostly binary problems. Should they turn right or left? The choice they make defines and reveals them.

Sure, you can toss in throwaway thoughts that paint a picture of the character:

I yanked the rubber band from her pretty blonde hair and used it pull back my darker locks. Dead, she wouldn't miss it.​

Okay - so we know he has long hair and that it's not blonde. That's a bit of character development.

Maybe making multiple choices clearer? Or, sharing how he feels about making the choice he made. Honestly, in the passage you shared, you've done that and I think it puts you on the right path for your goals.

Good luck!