Another complication is that there is a difference between liking stories based around 'character', and being particularly interested in human characters. After all one might be a mountain climber, but not care for mountaineering films.
For the most part characters in fiction are a lot less complex than real characters. Also they don't generally put a bomb under your ideas in the way real people do.
Put it like this. A racist person might see Hal Mellanby and think to him/her self 'ah, but in real life black people aren't clever enough to be top scientists - it's just BBC political correctness' (or whatever racist people think in the privacy of their own minds). But in real life if they are confronted with a black person who (say) explains quantum mechanics to them, they don't have this escape do they? Real life puts a bomb under preconceptions.
The same with your ideas on sexism, love, self-sacrifice, totalitarianism etc.
So, I often find ideas, milieux and plots more interesting than fictional characters, because I frequently think that fictional characters are simplistic, rigid, and implausible. They reflect the author's prejudices, and reinforce the readers'.
Only if a character is very well done (or, I suppose, to be honest) reflects my particular prejudices and priorities, do I value that character very highly. The best character descriptions of all are those which make you recognise something in real life that you have never noticed before. But crikey, I think you almost need to be Jane Austen to pull that trick off again and again.
Alison
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From: Alison Page alison_page@becta.org.uk
So, I often find ideas, milieux and plots more interesting than fictional characters, because I frequently think that fictional characters are simplistic, rigid, and implausible. They reflect the author's prejudices, and reinforce the readers'.
This might underlie the appeal of the characters in B7. They are real enough to warrant interest and attention, but at the same time not real enough to completely satisfy. Solution: write lots of fanfic that fills in the gaps and pads them out to a more satisfying degree of wholeness.
I think it was Steven Pacey, in some interview or other, who observed that ninety per cent of the lines for the regular cast could have been given to just about any of the characters. I think he's got a point. (Actually, you can have fun with this - take a script and swap lines about. It works most of the time. Having just tried it with a few bits of Deliverance, I would say Avon's lines can be handed over to Blake relatively intact, but Blake's lines don't work half so well for Avon.)
I suppose the character junkies' retort would be that although you keep the same words, they get delivered in a completely different way. What's more important - the words, or their delivery? The relative importance of each might differ from character to character, I suppose.
Neil
Neil Faulkner wrote:
I think it was Steven Pacey, in some interview or other, who observed that ninety per cent of the lines for the regular cast could have been given to just about any of the characters. I think he's got a point.
That's probably true IRL as well, for people of equally similar backgrounds. Lots of conversation is simple information exchange. But the other 10% is essential to characterization (actually I'd make it closer to 80%/20%).
The characters _do_ sound different - at least they do to me. It's one of the reasons I bang on about voice when it comes to discussing fanfic. In a really good fanfic, if two of the regular characters are having a conversation, it ideally ought to be possible to strip out everything except the dialogue and still tell who's talking. That's what I'd aim at, even if I couldn't always achieve it. Obviously it's easier with some characters than others.
I suppose the character junkies' retort would be that although you keep the same words, they get delivered in a completely different way. What's more important - the words, or their delivery? The relative importance of each might differ from character to character, I suppose.
If I said 'you're very clever', only my delivery would tell you whether I was being sincere or sarcastic. Delivery is IMO of roughly equal importance to actual words.
Mistral
Mistral said:
The characters _do_ sound different - at least they do to me. It's one of the reasons I bang on about voice when it comes to discussing fanfic. In a really good fanfic, if two of the regular characters are having a conversation, it ideally ought to be possible to strip out everything except the dialogue and still tell who's talking.
Actually, in a really great fanfic it should be possible to remove the character names and still know who's talking.
I suppose the character junkies' retort would be that although you keep
the
same words, they get delivered in a completely different way
Case in point: if anyone except Avon were replying "Well, hooray for us" in response to Gan's "I think we make a good team" (Time Squad)
-(Y)
From: Dana Shilling dshilling@worldnet.att.net
Actually, in a really great fanfic it should be possible to remove the character names and still know who's talking.
I have noticed this a couple of times. Judith Seaman can do it. It's not something I look out for, though. It's probably easier to spot characters talking out of character than in because it clashes with our expectations.
What grates me most in fanfic dialogue is the way many writers try to capture the exact phrasing of lines with lots of superfluous italics and '...'s (forgotten the technical term for them), together with a liberal peppering of adverbs. If we know who's talking and we've got a firm enough grasp of the context, we should be able to hear the lines the way they're supposed to be delivered.
Neil
At 01:44 PM 2/7/01 +0000, Alison Page wrote:
For the most part characters in fiction are a lot less complex than real characters. Also they don't generally put a bomb under your ideas in the way real people do.
Put it like this. A racist person might see Hal Mellanby and think to him/her self 'ah, but in real life black people aren't clever enough to be top scientists - it's just BBC political correctness' (or whatever racist people think in the privacy of their own minds). But in real life if they are confronted with a black person who (say) explains quantum mechanics to them, they don't have this escape do they? Real life puts a bomb under preconceptions.
I don't think it usually works that way. Sincere belief is impervious to both logic and empirical evidence. Art, on the other hand, can sneak in, appeal to the emotions (one passionate propaganda poster is worth a thousand reasonable words). In real people you can always find real flaws (maybe your hypothetical black genius has an unpleasant odour--then hypothetically racist me can think "so 'They' *can* be quite clever, but only at the cost of personal hygiene...I shudder to think what her house must look like and just imagine her poor neglected children--we should really discourage 'Them' aspiring to such heights if these are the social costs" etc.). Yeah I know I'm getting even sillier than usual, gotta go ;-p -- For A Dread Time, Call Penny: http://members.tripod.com/~Penny_Dreadful/
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Alison Page -
Dana Shilling -
Mistral -
Neil Faulkner -
Penny Dreadful