Character Development

I don't enjoy summer vacation. All this unstructured time gives me the idea that I have nothing to do when, in reality, I have lots of things to do. Go get a haircut. Finish my student loans. Update my resume. Write blog posts. When you're scheduled you find time to do things becuase you know you won't have time later. When you're not scheduled, the famous phrase "Aw, I'll just do it later" becomes later and later and later until you find you've never gotten around to doing it at all.

One of those things for me, unfortunately, has been blog posts.

Melisa, one of my writing class students, wanted to know how to develop her characters better, and I didn't have anything to tell her. How do you teach character development? I've always been told I have well-developed characters, and I'm trying to figure out why that is. What makes someone two dimensional or three? Where does that leap come in?

Storm-brain over at the Veritas Writing site thinks well-developed characters come after filling out a worksheet of things like "Things this character has in their pockets" and "Foods this character will never eat" as well as more mundane questions they might ask you at the doctor's office like "Height" and "Mother's maiden name." Other writers agree with this technique, and I think to a certain extent it helps, but a well-developed character embodies all the things on the worksheet without having them mentioned in the story.

A common mistake that beginning writers make (and I've been there, I've done that, I'm guilty, too) is to create this elaborate mental picture and then share the entire thing with the reader in the first several pages of the story. The reader doesn't care that your leading lady is exactly 145 pounds and her eyes are really cerulean instead of just blue -- they care about her thoughts, her emotions, what she's going to contribute to the story.

In the first few pages of the Rose rewrite, which I'm going to use as an example here because it's recent and people seem to generally like Rhoswen, the reader learns several things about my main character, Rhoswen of Anfalas. They learn she has dark hair, that she's good-natured and kind, that she is tallish (taller than her maidservant, anyway), that she is going to be married to someone she has never met and she's sad about it not because she's afraid of marriage but because she doesn't look forward to leaving her home. We don't know that she's a gardener, that she enjoys playing the harp or that she has a fairly good singing voice because we don't need to know. Her skill with the harp doesn't come up until the fifth or sixth chapter becuase it didn't need to.

When characters are presented for judgement in front of the reader, they say "I did this." Well developed characters say "I did this because..." and give a reason. The reason is not always immediate -- it would have been really easy to write Rhoswen as a woman who was afraid of marriage. But the first reason she gives for being hesitant about leaving home is that she's going to be homesick. She's not afraid of marriage -- she's afraid of childbirth, because her own mother died in childbed. (A little hokey, I know, but my mother's afraid of heart disease because her mother died of heart disease -- it's kind of the same thing, right?)

Long story short, well developed characters have motivation. I have a theory that character motivation is directly linked to author motivation. Why YOU are writing this story will probably have a great effect on how much thought you give to why the characters are doing what they are doing. Oftentimes beginning writers simply want to be part of the story, and this is reflected in the characters they write. Why are you doing this? Because my creator wanted to. They don't have enough internal substance (all those little background details) to stand on their own when they stand before the Writing Gods and are asked to explain their existence.

So, Rhoswen, why are you caring for the wounded in Osgiliath even though it makes you a little uncomfortable?


Well, Reader, I'm doing it because it's something I'm good at and getting better at, because it's part of my duty as the future wife of the steward to care for the people, and because having a job leaves me less time to think about Boromir being gone. At least that last one's what I tell myself, but my freinds don't think it's working.

If you had asked the first incarnation of Rhoswen that question I don't know that she would have had an answer. Actually, the first incarnation of Rhoswen wasn't a healer or a gardener. She didn't have any hobbies. She was a showpiece.

Art imitates life -- My characters are sixty percent me and forty percent who I want to be. When I need to write that forty percent I study the people around me, what I like about them and dislike about them.

Writers need to distill, clarify and collect people as well as experiences, not only becuase it helps them describe things but also because it gives them an arsenal of feelings, emotions and settings with which to play. When I wrote the last chapter of A Rose in the Briars, a chapter that deals heavily with grief and funerals, I thought a lot about all the funerals I've been to and the emotions and actions of the other people that were there. I also used the ten-year old version of myself to write the ten-year old Miriel, who appears at her father's funeral trying desperately not to cry. The observation Rhoswen makes about her ("Why do children think they must take on the world?") was something that was said to me when I was ten and wondering why Slobadan Milosevic was such a terrible, terrible person and Yugoslavia was such a political mess.

Motivation is only one small part of character development -- Does anyone have anything they think I've missed?

New Books, Author Talks, and Fanfic

Let me begin this post by saying that I never buy new books, and when I do, I buy paperbacks. I'm a poor college student and both space and hardcovers are expensive. So when I shell out twenty-six dollars to get a hardcover copy of Rick Riordan's book signed by him (in person!!), it's kind of a big deal for a lot of reasons. I was just as excited as all the ten year olds I was sharing the theatre with, and they were really excited. I got there a half-hour early (the doors opened an hour early) and sat reading my new book against the background of the musical gymnastics of the Tivoli Theater organist and the excited murmurings of the nearly 800 people who'd come to listen to what Mr. Riordan had to say. ( I also observed that I was probably the only college student in the audience, so I don't know what that says about me... or about my fellow college students, for that matter.)

I'm fortunate enough to live in a heavily suburban area with at least one indie bookstore, Anderson's Bookshop, within reach. They're wonderful people there, and they really love what they do. They also bring A LOT of authors to come and sign books, and I got lucky -- Rick Riordan was one of them. So I paid my money and bought my book and went to go hear him speak.  I guessed from his blog that he's a really laid-back, cool kind of guy, and seeing him in person confirmed that for me. (Truth be told, I wouldn't have minded having this guy for a middle school language arts teacher; the teaching profession has lost a special one there.) He basically book-talked his new book, The Red Pyramid, which I thought was funny, since these kids have already both bought it and dragged their parents out on a school night to let them hear the author speak. They're not the ones that need the book 'sold' to them on why it's a good read. But it was good to hear a well-done book talk.

After his prepared remarks, he took a few questions from the audience, most of which I took notes on if I didn't know the answer already. (Ten-year olds ask some really obvious questions sometimes.)

He says he was inspired to write about Ancient Egypt because that was always popular with his students while he was teaching. "Maybe it's the mummies, maybe it's the pyramids -- I don't know exactly why." It takes him about a year to write a whole story, but he's trying to shorten that to six months now that he's writing both the next two books in the Kane Chronicles and the new Camp Half-Blood Series Heroes of Olympus. The title is always the last thing he writes  and the he really made my day by reaffirming something I'm going to share with my writing campers at the end of June.

He said that if there was one thing that he'd recommend to new writers it would be to outline everything that's going to happen in the book before you start writing. That way, he explains, you'll never be stuck on where the story will go next. He talked about how he started writing when he was twelve and there are a lot of stories he never finished, but that's because you're just practicing and you're learning how to write.

A real life example of prewriting! Fantastic! I was really excited for that.

Anyway, I've had a post-it note with a question for Riordan all ready and waiting on my desk since I found out he was speaking at Anderson's -- it was a good question, too, I think. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to ask it to the big group because I think there was a little ageism going on with the microphone lady, but I guess that's what I get for being a college student going to a young adult book signing. The question was this:

Mr. Riordan, on your blog you've made several posts about YouTube videos of tapes of Carter and Sadie Kane that fans have made themselves from the audio clip posted on your website and you say that 'it all must mean something.' I was wondering if you could expand on what you meant by that and what you think of other fan-produced works like fanart and fanfiction based on your work?

Needless to say, I didn't have time to ask all of this in the signing line, so I clipped it down to a very simplistic version of my original question.

Scene.

Me: Mr. Riordan, I have a question. What do you think of fanfiction? [had to add the 'question' marker since I obviously looked old enough not to be the one getting the book signed for myself]

RR: *slightly stressed face, appropriate for a man who's had to sign several hundred books in the space of two hours* Well, you know I can't read any of it, for reasons of copyright and all that, but I don't...I mean...I... I don't like it. It's like someone else trying on your clothes. *gestures with hands as if indicating he is trying to get something slimy and disgusting off them.*

Me: Trying on your clothes. That's a good one. Thanks! *moves along in line and writes this down in notebook*

End Scene.

And it was a good one. In fact, it was a great metaphor. Writing fanfiction and using someone else's characters is exactly like trying on someone else's clothes. I don't think he'd ever gotten that question before (His lack of an immediate answer would seem to suggest this) and I'm glad I asked it for that reason. There are a dozen better ways I might have asked it, whether he was impressed or flattered that children love his characters so much that they want to write adventures of their own for him, but I didn't, and I think that means I got an honest answer.

Does this mean I'm going to take down my PJO fic because I have it from the author himself that he disapproves? Nope. The way I figure, my one lonely PJO fic uses a character Riordan himself used for about a paragraph, and my story uses characters exclusive to PJO for a small fraction of the story. I think it's a fair exchange, more like borrowing a pair of socks from a friend after yours were soaked through than stealing a favorite t-shirt. You return the socks when you're done and thank him for the gesture.

I had a lot of time on the drive home to extend my metaphor, and this is what I came up with.

If writing fanfiction is like trying on someone else's clothes, then isn't writing fanfiction about a dead author's works something like second-hand clothes shopping?

Think about it. Jane Austen's dresses are having the ride of their life right now if that's the case.

Check Your Flamethrowers at the Door -- a few thoughts on Flaming.

I know I've been talking a lot about the Percy Jackson people on this blog lately, but it's really interesting watching this community work and evolve. It's like I'm turning into the Jane Goodall of fanfiction. It's kind of scary and kind of cool at the same time.

And lately, I've been thinking a lot about flames.

I've been seeing this kind of notice in story summaries for years, but I haven't started thinking about it until now -- it's the kind of hopeless, feeble attempt at saving face you could only find on the internet. "Plz don't flame! first fic!!!!!" the newbie writers cry plaintively from their summary boxes.

First of all, if you think your story is worth flaming, chances are you might be right, which means that you ought to go back and change it, get a second opinion from someone you trust and whose writing you admire...something else besides putting a note in your summary that might only attract more flamers.

I understand why people put the notes there. They're scared. They're venturing out onto the ice for the first time and they don't want to end up at the bottom of the lake with ten-thousand pounds of icy pressure drowning them in the sentiment that their writing sucks. And after a lot of further thought about this, I realized that not only does flaming hurt the recipient, but in the long run hurts the writer of the flame and the community as well.

A lot of you may be sitting in your desks going "Really now? Flaming doesn't hurt the flamers." But it does. Allow me to explain.

The reasons behind how flaming hurts the recipients is easy enough to understand. It's almost a form of cyberbullying, a senseless barrage into why the story is terrible and, in tandem, why the authors as people are terrible as well. Without face-to-face interaction, critiques against the material become critiques of the author themselves. (And often, flames bite into an author's personal character, asking why they'd be such a terrible person to put this up in the first place.) Flames also hurt recipients because they do nothing to solve the problems that started the flame. If flamers are truly anti-bad writing, they should begin by telling people (personally, not just in a blanket statement on their profile page) what it is they need to fix.

Now, on to the tough sell -- how flaming hurts the flamers.

The best writers (as Nancy Atwell, writer-workshop teacher extraordinaire, tells us in "Writing from the Inside Out") are the self-reflective ones, the ones who in addition to reading extensively THINK about what they're reading, why they like it, and what they can incorporate from that writing style to better their own work. I experienced this firsthand last semester when my Writing Essays professor asked us to read several essays by Annie Dillard (AMAZING!) and incorporate something from her writing that we admired (her sentence structure, her format, etc) into our next essay.  Flaming as a practice does nothing to encourage this reflection -- because flamers don't stop to identify problems as well as possible solutions, their own writing doesn't benefit from the give-and-take process of attempting to mentor another writer.

When you attempt to explain what you would do differently, you're mentally problem-solving for something that you yourself might have to do in the future.  When writers begin to work collaboratively and mentor each other's work, they gain an increased understanding of what they themselves need to change in order to become better at what they do. I know I've become very mindful of the critiques I give others and make sure that I'm following my own advice when I post my own stories.

Flaming is also hurtful to the flamers for another reason -- by starting blogs like Flamespots, (a collection of the worst PJO fanfics on the web) writers are drawing attention to the terrible examples of writing, which beginning writers see ALL THE TIME.  Instead, attention should be given to the exemplary pieces  in the collection, which serve as models for newer writers to emulate (like Annie Dillard in the example above.)

Now, I know what the hard-core flamers are thinking -- We haven't got time for all this hold-your-hand-and-talk-you-through-it nonsense! The world's a tough place. Deal with it. And I realize that in some cases, this very well might be true and there may not be much time for mentoring. If that's the case, then go with my mom's Golden Rule --

IF YOU CAN'T FIND ANYTHING NICE TO SAY, DON'T SAY ANYTHING AT ALL. 

This works in fanfiction almost as well as it works in life. A lack of reviews says volumes to a new writer. It says "No one likes this enough to take the time to tell me; I need to change something." Just like attention-seeking children, sometimes giving them the cold shoulder is the best thing to change behavior.

In addition to all of this, flaming is hurtful because it doesn't foster a sense of community or networking, only fear.  (And as we all know, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering and suffering  leads to the Dark Side.) Who's going to want to begin writing if they know their first efforts are going to be knocked over like so many passers-by in a police chase? Heck, even I was scared to post my first PJO fic, and I'm a senior in college! People respond much better to the sentiments of a helping hand up --  "Well, I didn't loooove  it, but if you changed this it could be really good -- keep working at it!" than a stomp in the face suggested by "You have got to be kidding. Seriously? Is your conscience clean after you posted this piece of sh*t? It can't be. It just can't." How can you expect the quality of writing to improve if you don't offer any suggestions on where to start?

Flamers only network with other flamers. Constructive Critics network with new writers and become mentors, sounding boards, and beta readers.  Mentoring means that you hold yourself to a higher standard because you know someone's looking up to you for advice and direction. (This is also great practice if you want to teach English and/or writing some day like I'm doing this summer, but that's a small side-note.)

Constructive Critics also get emails like this in thier inboxes (received after five lengthy and at points kind of harsh reviews were sent to the same author) "Thanks for your in-depth reviews. Nobody apart from my beta has given me such CC before. I really feel as though I can improve this story with your help!"


That's much better than a flamewar, methinks.

All Systems Go!

An update on my summer plans. I've been officially rostered on to the schedule of events for Teens at the Glen Ellyn Public Library  -- my writing workshop has been given the green light and I'm going to be teaching a (hopefully largish) group of teens how to improve their writing the last week in June and the first three weeks of July!

I don't have words for how excited I am!


I've also got some of my freinds lined up to make some short YouTube videos on what they're now doing as writers in College. I've got a comm major who's also in my book arts class now and one of my other English major friends who is involved in our poetry club and our school newspaper! (By the way, if you're an English major friend of mine and you're reading this, email me to talk about doing one of these videos, too!)

We're winding down to our last week of the semester here at CSB; several of my friends have just returned from London where they were studying abroad. It's hard to believe I've been home from Ireland for a whole semester now -- one of my freinds brought back a a whole lot of Digestives, which I practically lived on last semester, and they really brought me back.

Today I learned two new book bindings, one of which I'm going to be using for my final book project, which is going to be printed saturday and bound sunday. Tomorrow I'm turning in a semester's worth of writing prompts and four finished essays for my Writing Essays class. Sometime between now and next Wednesday I'm writing five lesson plans for a unit I just finished timelining this morning. I had no idea how good it feels to have at least a vague idea of how you're going to fill two and a half weeks of classes. And I have a really awesome final project planned!

There hasn't been a lot of time for free writing during all of this -- I posted my one and only Percy Jackson fic to great acclaim last week and I think it's been nominated for an award. I really hope it wins -- I've never been nominated for an online award before. Work is still progressing bit by bit on my Life of Godfrey piece, and I'm hoping I have some time in the carride on the way home to brainstorm a little bit.

Not Without Ambition -- Summer Plans take shape

It has been a very productive last two weeks. Since my last blog post, I've curated a book (put all the pages together in the right order, bound and covered the whole thing) typed my last essay for my Writing Essays course, have almost finished my portfolio for Writing Essays, sent a belated birthday package half-way around the world, and helped work a triathalon. I've sent in  all my paperwork for one summer job (camp counselor's assist at my local Park District) sent an email asking for another job (summer term rush at the bookstore) and am now planning another caper.

I'm going to try and host a writing workshop this summer.
 

Yeah, I know, ambitious. I haven't really got any credentials to be doing this kind of thing, but I figure three years as a literature/education student and seven years as a participant in online communities should be to my advantage. Where did I get this crazy idea? Well, the dinner we hold for the English majors every year brings one of our alumni back as a guest speaker, and this year's was a woman who since graduation from Saint Ben's has worked on a children's lit mag, New Moon Girls, become a freelance copy editor and is now working as a young adult librarian.

Basically, she's where I want to be in ten years.

So after this, as well as the extended study of the Percy Jackson fanfiction, I thought it would be really cool to get together a group of beginning fanfic writers and talk to them, face to face, about how to create better stories online. Online critique is some of the worst to write and to read, and most of the time it's the hardest to get anything helpful out of, too. Beginning writers are either good from the get-go or really downhearted that the only thing people are saying about their stories is "This sucks; go do something else for a hobby, you loony." It doesn't have to start like that, but the advice given to these beginning writers is all the same, and it doesn't mean a terrible lot unless someone in real life affirms that yes, this would make the story easier to read or more interesting or what have you.

And I'd like that affirming person to be me. Now I realize I can't get a group of fanfictioneers exclusively, so I've expanded my criteria to beginning writers (6th through 12th graders) of varying ages to impart some lessons I've learned over the years. I began drafting a one day workshop.

After talking to several people (two professors included) it's morphed into a four session seminar. Here are the basic topics we'll be covering at each meeting.


Week One -- I'm a Writer: Who are You?( And what are you writing about my story?) -- introductions, goals,  and how to leave good reviews
Week Two -- Before the Pen Hits the Page: Prewriting your Way to Good Product -- timelining, research, narrative decision-making
Week Three -- Creatures of Habit: Developing a Writing Process and a Revision Process
Week Four -- So, What Happens Now?  On getting published, online communities to join before that happens,  and how to get more help doing what you love

Thoughts, suggestions... strong hints I go get a new hobby? I'm open to anything.

Before The Pen Hits The Page -- Pre-Writing Your Way to Good Product

Yesterday in Pedagogy we began our unit on Writing Instruction, a process that my whole class (all eleven of us) has agreed is nuanced and complicated and definitely intertwined with reading. If you want good writers, it's been decided, you have to make them good readers first, and if you want them to be better readers, you have to get them to reflect on their reading activities by writing. Creating this kind of classroom, with the constant stimulus of new reading material and the constant expectation to have to think about it later, allows for the most development of a student's personal voice and taste when it comes to their own books, which will hopefully encourage them to read more later.

I've been reading voraciously for years. That is why I know what I enjoy reading and what I don't enjoy reading. I have a hard time explaining to people that I put the book down because I don't like the way the author structures sentences. Some people get it; some people don't. It's also why after three years, my mom can read this blog at home and hear my voice coming out of the computer. Constant practice is making it easier to put my narrative voice into type.

The first step of the writing process in the classroom should begin with Pre-Writing, a brainstorming process where the student puts down a lot of thoughts on paper first and then goes back to organize and further distill those thoughts. One process is webbing, where a central idea (the big question of the paper) is placed in the middle and offshoot thoughts are added to form a thought web. Another is questioning, a method where a question is asked by the teacher, the paragraph answer is written down and then four or more questions are asked to further shape your answers and finely tune your paragraph. This second method is a freewrite, where your brainstorm takes place in complete sentences and may form part of your finished work.

And while we were learning all of this, I began thinking about prewriting in fanfiction. The PJO people (I love them dearly, but they are really quite young) are showing more and more stories about "How to Write A Better Fanfic" and it saddens me that pre-writing never seems to show up on their lists.

So I've created some interrogative prewriting questions for fanfic. When I defined Fanfiction for my Linguistics paper (boy, was that a while ago...) I decided this brand of writing comes down to this:

Fanfiction. N., fan(atic), one who admires or follows + fiction, a work of writing not based in fact. A story written by a fan of a particular existing work in which the writer re-examines the work and attempts to answer a question the work has raised. Also the entire body of said works. May also be clipped to 'fanfic.'

Questions in fanfic are things like "What event or series of events was Jack Sparrow talking about when he said 'Clearly, you've never been to Singapore'?" or "What happens to Elizabeth and Darcy AFTER the happily ever after?"  The first prewriting question an author should ask themselves is


1. What question in the Narrative am I trying to answer?

I just started a fanfic recently to answer a question I have about the character Godfrey in Kingdom of Heaven -- "What was Godfrey like before he came to the Holy Land?" We'll use that for example purposes here.

The second question is harder for younger writers because we don't teach them to look at both sides of an argument.

2. What possible answers can I find in the Narrative already? Am I creating this story because I don't like those answers?

This question is especially important because we need to see what preconceptions people already bring to our fanfic when they read it. If the book says that Percy and Annabeth end up together, it's going to be harder for you to make the case that Percy should really be with Rachel. You can do it, and you should do it, because fanfiction is meant to be subversive, but know that you're going to be talking to a tough crowd if you do. Come to the fight armed.

If the answer to the second part of that question is "Yes, of course!" you're going to have to work harder to answer some of these other questions. For the Godfrey question, I have to look at what other characters say about him; Tiberias and Baldwin IV both describe him as a friend, Baldwin recounts the episode where Godfrey determines he has leprosy, his brother in the extended edition talks about how his brother took the Cross. In this case, I don't need to answer the second part because I like the answers and I want to reveal more of them. The second part becomes important when creating stories around the premise of an alternate romance than the one the Narrative offers.

3. What answer did I want to find when I was reading?

I'd call this question the 'I could have been chasing ghosts' evaluation. Regardless of what it is we read, we bring to that text a list of assumptions and world views that shape what we read and what we pass over in a text. I'm going to use religion for this question because it's a bigger example (and I can make a pun!) I read the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper and relate it to the Eucharist because I'm Catholic and that's what my theology teaches me. Judaic scholars read the same accounts and recognize that Jesus celebrates the Passover wrong because it's their tradition and they're trained to notice that. Catholics pass over the Passover part, and Jews pass over the 'Jesus is trying to be divine here' part of the story.  (Passover, pass over...see, there's my pun. I didn't say it was going to be good.)

If we read to look for evidence, we often skip the parts that could form a counterargument. This is bad, because in those counterarguments we could find (or create, as in Question 5) more evidence towards our goal.


4. What answer do I want to create?
Hopefully you already answered this question when you created what question it was you were trying to answer, but if not, now's the time to do so. Recognizing here that you're going against the Narrative is important -- if you are, it means you have to work harder than those canonically leaning fanfic folks to sell your case.

5. What, if anything, can I use from the Narrative to create my case?
Return to the evidence you collected or recalled in question 2 and see if there's anything there you can use. With Godfrey, I realized I could include his brother, his friendship with Tiberias and Baldwin, and his 28 year stint in the Holy Land as building blocks in my narrative. His brother's the reason he leaves in the first place, one of the first people he meets is a sixteen year old Raymond of Tiberias, and the story takes place over a good 28 year chunk of time. I'm also using the image of his house at Ibelin and Godfrey's flashbacks from the beginning of the movie.

6. What additions to the world of the narrative will I have to create in order for this story to work? How or where can I find help creating them?

Since very little is said about Godfrey in KoH, I needed to create his parents, where he was from in France, his hobbies, and perhaps most importantly, his history in love. To do this, since I had little Narrative scaffolding to work on, I turned to my Medieval Life sources about life in Frankish towns and cities during the 1150s, SCA name lists and chivalric code books.

In my Rose ReWrite, I needed to create the domestic sphere within Gondor -- what the women do when they're not looking pretty in the narrative. For help on this, I returned to Tolkien and looked at points in the narrative where women are involved in Rohan and in Gondor as well as researching what life was like in medieval cities and castles. Armed with these facts, I'm working on the less war-like side of life in Gondor during the War of the Ring.


When I was discussing the  'cyberbullying incident' of several weeks ago with my Pedagogy teacher, she seemed to think researching the links between home literacy and school literacy and the links that exist (or don't exist) between the would make a great senior thesis. Why do fanfiction writers shy away from teaching influences online? Why aren't they using tools they learned in school and applying them to their productions outside of school? Do we need to give them more tools they can use outside of the classroom? Is there a way to bring products like fanfiction into the classroom for instructional use?

It would be a fascinating study, I think.