Characterization:  How Much is Too Much?

September 30, 2008

Mary Rosenblum:  What I wanted to talk about is characterization. How much to include in your story and how much to leave out. The danger is always that you'll spend so much time on backstory that the actual story arc gets lost in the fog of details about your character's life and past.  And that's a very real issue. Too much backstory is quite bad for your story.  You need to know a lot of backstory about your character. But the idea is not to include all that backstory, even if you find it totally fascinating.   It ends up turning your story into a biography rather than a story, and if your reader expects a story....well, that's not good.   Instead, YOU need to know all that backstory so that your character can behave consistently.  

That's the real key to characterization...that your character behaves like himself or herself in every situation. And that's not particularly easy to pull off, especially if you don't know the character well enough yourself.  Then your character tends to do whatever the plot requires...in one scene she can behave quite submissively and in another scene she can be Wonder Woman, going in the face of armed bad guys.   we don't see the reasons for the submissive behavior in scene one, your hindbrain, a real expert on human behavior, goes 'uh uh, she's not real, she's just a plot puppet'.   And you simply don't engage strongly with the character. The story doesn't seem 'real' it just seems like a story. Big shrug.  That, alas, is the case with a lot of published fiction...the heroine is The Romantic Heroine and does whatever the story requires. The character is The Fantasy Quest Hero and does whatever the story requires. Those stories don't generally rise above the vast sea of stuff out there, don't get significant attention and really don't last. They're simply not memorable.  

 So the key to strong characterization is to know enough about your character so that he/she reacts consistently in every situation, but don't include that character's entire biography. Yes, you will need to include some backstory of course! Her wariness of men will make a lot more sense if we know that she was raped at thirteen, or fled a violent stepfather.  But we don't need to know everything about her entire past.

Rae: It's best to do your character worksheet before you even begin writing. Is that what you are saying?

Mary Rosenblum:  It really is, Rae. It's pretty critical actually.

Rae: I find that my characters grow as I am writing the story. Is this normal?

Mary Rosenblum:  It is normal Rae.  I find that my characters are not fully fleshed until I complete my first draft.

JuliaB: It would be hard to have a good plot if you don't know how the character will react first, wouldn't it?

Mary Rosenblum:  You're right, Julia. What happens is that you make the character do what is best for the plot.  And that might not be the way that real person would react in that situation.  Sometimes, you have to find a 'work around' if you need your character to do something that he or she would not naturally do.   For example, say you have a character who is getting over a really bad failed relationship. And this is a romance, so you need to get that character together wtih the new boyfriend to be. But she doesn't want to go on a double date, she's not interested in parties. She really wants to hole up and lick her wounds for awhile.  So having her best friend invite her to a party and having her say 'okay, sure' might seem phony to the readers if she has been doing ice cream and videos every night.  Instead, you might have to force a meeting so that she has to engage with the new guy, even though she's sour on all men right now.   Maybe you have her car break down in a bad neighborhood and he comes to her rescue. She doesn't want to accept any help but she's scared to death. And then you can engineer a reason for him to contact her again. Why should she do it? She's wary of all men right now.  But if she leaves something of hers in his car or he leaves something in her car, they have to have contact again.

What would not be believable, after you have painted this injured I-hate-men portrait of her, is to have her immediately fall for him, first time they casually meet.  makes her seem very flighty, not very deep, and she is more plot puppet than real character.   It is a very good idea to go through each scene and ask yourself 'Is this really what my character would do here?  If it is, you're fine. :-)   And of course, in order to do this, YOU have to know the character well enough to answer that question. The more thought you can give to your characters, the better they'll be. Not only do the character worksheet...that's just a beginning....but also think about them for a few days before you begin to write the story. Internalize those worksheet details. What does it mean that she grew up with an overbearing stepfather? How does she react to people in every day situations...at work, on the street?

Rae: do you do outlines or plot skeletons when you write?

Mary Rosenblum:  I do, Rae. I like to know where I plan to end up and sort of how I get there, although I always leave myself lots of room to change. Stories are organic and they grow and change with the growth of the characters.

JuliaB: How dangerous is it to base a character on someone you know? I wrote a short story about someone I hadn't seen for 25 yrs and a week later she turns up in the restaurant at a table next to where I'm eating!

Mary Rosenblum:  Well, Julia, if you've fictionalized the character, you're safe from legal suits. You're not safe from a very ticked-off friend if she doesn't like the way you presented her, though!  Personally, I find real people too limiting for a work of fiction and I don't use them.

JuliaB: How much fictionalization does that mean? Besides changing the name?

Mary Rosenblum:  Oh, I might use someone superficially....the woman I saw working in her yard, with a confident, intelligent face, a long braid of gray hair, very fit and muscular. But that's just an image and an impression. I make her up to suit the story.

JuliaB: Okay, so it's alright to base characters on physical images if you play around with characteristics and personality.

Mary Rosenblum:  Julia, you have to worry only about libel, legally. If your representation of the character costs the real person in a real way....loss of a job, etc...you can be prosecuted. If you simply make that character look and act like your friend, you are safe from a judgment against you.  : Even when you make up characters from whole cloth, someone is going to 'recognize' people.   You can even use real names in a work of fiction as long as you don't libel the person. I strongly recommend against that, though. I feel it's highly unethical, unless you're using a public persona, such as a politican, musician, someone who already has a public face.

Rae: I'm writing a story about a woman who is in a wheelchair, and a person thought I was writing about myself. I still tell them I am not, but they don't believe me. They assume it is my autobiography. How do I convince them it is not?

Mary Rosenblum:    You can't Rae.  People will believe what they want to believe.   That's why you find that disclaimer in the front of most published fiction...any resemblance to anyone real is an accident.  This is why it's not particularly a good idea to make your MC a writer. People assume it's you and that you're being a bit self indulgent.  But the key to characterization is to internalize that character and then put as little backstory on the page as you can manage.  The readers need to know about key events that help explain the character's responses to events and people.  But they don't need to know the character's entire history.

Rae: Oops. I made my MC a writer. Does this mean it will not be good?  Why is it bad to have your MC be a writer?

Mary Rosenblum:    Not necessarily, but if the MC is a writer AND in a wheelchair, and you are both in a wheelchair and the author, good luck making people believe it's not you! That doesn't mean it won't work as a compelling story. It simply means that readers will start the book with some preconceived ideas.

Rae: How about if I do a pen name?

Mary Rosenblum:    That'll keep people who know you from assuming it's you. But then you can't boast about the book you just published. It depends on how much it's going to bother you to have people think it's you.  If your character is very obviously NOT you, that shouldn't be a problem.  And this is where good characterization helps you. If the reader feels that the MC is quite different than the author he/she knows, it's not going to be much of an issue.  If your characterization is weak and your character talks, thinks, and acts an awful lot like you most of the time...well, there you go.  The stronger your characterization, the less likely it is that the readers thinks it's you...the ones who know you anyway.

JuliaB: What if it's knowledge, say and art teacher who writes about a college professor who teaches art. Wouldn't that make it more authentic (I have a degree in art education and I'm writing a mystery series about a college art professor).

Mary Rosenblum:   It does, Julia. The stronger your characterization, the less likely it is that the readers thinks it's you...the ones who know you anyway. I always encourage my students to set stories in a universe they're personally familiar with...a college if they're a professor, the world of long-haul trucking if they're truck drivers.

JuliaB: Whew. Good.

Mary Rosenblum:   But readers aren't going to be as immediately aware of you as college professor, say, as they are of you as writer. Even if it says you're a professor on your book jacket blurb.

JuliaB: True.

Mary Rosenblum:   Now in first person, characterization is even more critical. Here, your main character can tell your readers about his/her history, but that's going to be limited by just how much this character is likely to share information with a stranger...the readers. So here, you're going to have to reveal character through this person's speech and thoughts, but first person can be a bit weak in dramatic tension to begin with. Long soliloquies about the past are not going to help you.

Rae: wouldn't that be a backstory dump?

Mary Rosenblum:     Precisely, Rae.  It's your job as writer to convey as much critical information in as few words as possible.   You want to imply rather than elaborate.  Most novice writers are entirely too eager to dot all the i's and cross all the t's, to make sure that not one reader will have the slightest question about this character.   that means spoonfeeding the readers so much information they tend to faint from boredom!  What's left for us to discover? Not much.   that the more interactive your story is...the more the reader participates in understanding what's going on...the stronger it will be.

Kard: Does it make sense to have the back story of the MC more scattered than in one lump sum?

Mary Rosenblum:     Exactly, Kard.  We all love to have our curiosity tickled, as long as that itch ultimately gets scratched.  If your character behaves in a way that seems unusual, we'll wonder why. What happened to him in the past to make him act like this? Drop in a hint here, a hint there so that when we finally find out the truth of that past, we're just about to figure it out on our own.   It's perfectly fine to dribble information about the character's backstory to the reader all through the first third of the book or story.   A very common novice trait is to start with an exciting bit of action, then have the main character drop into a reverie about his/her entire life.  only does this completely stop the story in its tracks, but it leaves the readers with nothing to discover. One of the challenges, in fact, of a series with the same main character is that you have to depend much more on plot to engage the readers once that main character is well established in the series.  This is why many series have a main character who grows and changes over multiple books.

Rae: it's important to have your character grow.

Kard: That's fine to have characters change, but sometimes I as a reader am unhappy about the change.

Mary Rosenblum:     Well, real people grow all the time, so if your character is utterly static, how much reality is there?  Yeah Kard, authors are always walking a line between what they want to do and what makes readers happy. Readers often disagree with what you do to or for characters.

Kard: I wish they had changed differently I guess it's similar to having the author kill off the wrong person in my estimation

Mary Rosenblum:    And that, right there, Kard, is a very good reason to write books yourself. So you can do it your way. That's how I got started!   So, to sum up: Know everything about your character but give the readers just enough that they understand your characters CONSITENT behavior. And CONSISTENT is the gold key here.  Remember....characterization is an iceberg. Four fifths of that ice mountain is invisible under the water. Only one fifth sticks up into the air...or into your story as the case may be.   Well, I hope this helped! I'll post the transcript of this chat in the usual place...Writing Craft: Forum Transcripts. Thanks for coming, all!  Have a good week!