They Are People Not Places
They Are People Not Places
Less a self-help and more a meta-writing blog today. A thought occurred to me and as such things do they lead to other thoughts and an important, for a writer, question.
Which lead to the conclusion above “They are people not places.”
Which I’m sure sounds just vague enough to be a little annoying but please, do come a long with me.
Characters. Characters are people not places.
Too often as writers, creators as this certainly applies to any art form in which you create or oversee a character, we think of characters as places.
A place is a collection of traits and how it makes you feel. It is its colors, its size, its smell, and the homey atmosphere that invites you in, the jagged noise that hurts your ears, the aura that makes you want to leave. Too often writers forget places have an emotional component; but that is a blog for another time.
A character can be a place too, your lover can make you feel like home.
But a character must be more than a place. They must be a person. What differs a person from a place is drive, determination and action. But not just in the big broad ways “He is a good guy and fights the evil guy.” That’s not really a character. That’s a plot thread you are enacting through them.
A person has a favorite food. Has an embarrassing childhood memory. A person may have a very strong opinion about the velvet darkness that is coffee and despise the warm leaf juice that is tea.
These are the things that make a character a “person and not a place”. Even if you don’t see it, even if it neve comes up, for them to be alive you, the writer must be able to think of them as an individual. Like someone who could walk into the room and have a conversation with you. Not just to parrot the things you like and feel but of themselves.
The question that spurned this was “Does your character have any hobbies?”
The answer, of course, is yes. Everyone has hobbies, but if you can’t picture your character’s hobby then they’re not a character to you, they’re a place. They’re a collection of things but you can’t imagine them doing something unrelated to plot and theme. Because places have things done to them, they do not do things.
*points up*
For those who do not see the picture, it is of a man holding a trident on the edge of a boat.
Urkjorman, the minotaur from the Family of Thunder series, likes spear fishing. He likes being on a boat in general as the sea brings him closer to his faith, but he likes fishing. Drifting in a boat, net or line trawling through the water as the waves gently rock him side to side and the salt air fills his lungs. It is a kind of peace he has not known in his travels. And spear fishing, diving into the water to kill things with a harpoon before his breath gives out or the sea life kills him. Well that’s a challenge and my man Urk loves a challenge.
if bowling existed he’d probably like that too, just ‘cause it’s noisy.
Does bowling exist? I’ll think on that. ^_^
Back to my point, characters are more than places, more than collections of traits useful for pushing the story forward. Oddly I feel readers understand this better than most writers. It’s why they(we) become possessive of them and say things like “They would never do that!” They recognize a true character has a soul all their own.
And our job as writers is to find that soul, create it, and display it to our audience so they can experience it. So they can invite our characters into their homes for a conversation.
I hope you found that interesting my dear friends.
Take care and God bless.
~S.Wallace