27 replies to this topic

[Sci-2]

What books do you feel have done a good job of characterization? A bad job?

What do you count as proof of good characterization? (For example, one might say empathy or being able to predict reactions/responses)

How much telling is okay when he comes to characters?

What have been some clever ways in which you've seen characterization achieved?

[Memory Lane]

sciborg2 said:

What books do you feel have done a good job of characterization? A bad job?

The most vivid characterization that I can remember reading recently comes from several Stephen King books (particularly The Shining and Pet Sematary), plus A Song of Ice and Fire. Bakker gets a few characters right as well.

Those have characters that I can immediately identify and explain, both in terms of characteristics and motivation. I can point out that Jack Torrance is a failing writer and struggling former alcoholic, plagued by self-loathing, a sense of being "put upon", and a grudge towards anyone who is better off than him because of background.

There are a lot of books I've read where characters just fade into the background, although not many with "bad" characterization (I usually put those books down). Lost Symbol by Dan Brown is one of the bad ones, since the main character (I can't even remember his full name) is just a vehicle for the plot and exposition.

sciborg2 said:

What do you count as proof of good characterization? (For example, one might say empathy or being able to predict reactions/responses)

Being able to understand a character, knowing why they do things and how it proceeds organically from their character traits . . . while still despising them if they're awful people (such as Cersei).

sciborg2 said:

How much telling is okay when he comes to characters?

It really depends on the character, but I think it's done best when it comes through in the character's voice, and colored by their beliefs. So, when Jack Torrance is thinking about his history of alcoholism, the exposition is colored by his self-pity and sense of victimhood, about how it was all inevitable once he took that first sip in high school, etc.

Extra points if we get some of the same stuff from a different character with a wholly different point of view (like Wendy's in The Shining about the first time she saw Jack come home truly shit-faced).

sciborg2 said:

What have been some clever ways in which you've seen characterization achieved?

One of my favorite instances was at the beginning of the first Tyrion chapter in Game of Thrones, where we find him reading up in the library and shuddering at the sound of a wolf's call. That alone told me a lot about Tyrion (just as his "request" to Shae when he hired her told a lot about him as well).

[Grack21]

IF I knew the answers to these questions I'd be a writer.

[Roose Bolton's Pet Leech]

Characterisation is certainly one of GRRM's major strengths; another within the speculative fiction genre who comes to mind is Lois Bujold (who, oddly enough, has also written a major series where a deformed and highly intelligent dwarf is a main character).

Then you've got the likes of Mervyn Peake, who wasn't so much interested in creating traditional humanness within his characters so much as reveling in their grotesque eccentricities. Gormenghast features superb characterisation, it just isn't conventional.

[Triskele]

Haha, Sci.

I will respond in full later.

Suffice it to say that I think GRRM is a master.

[Memory Lane]

GRRM is really good at capturing that "every person is the hero of their own story" factor when doing Points of View. Tyrion is the premier example of that.

[Nearly Headless Ned]

Daniel Woodrell excelled at this with Winter's Bone heroine Ree Dolly. He didn't spell it out. Just used the reactions of other characters and her own actions to allow you to come to your own conclusions.
Can't recommend the book highly enough.

[Shryke]

I think GRRM's real strength on this subject is his ability to show-not-tell a characters ... characteristics in a very short space of time.

In a few pages, he can give you a real sense and impression of a character without ever having to resort to actually telling the reader "This person is X". We instead read and come to the conclusion ourselves that the character is X.

The Red Viper is probably the best example of this.

[Shryke]

So I guess, in more general terms, I think good characterization is when the characters make sense within their context (ie - their past meshes with their present state) and their actions make sense given their characteristics. And, as importantly, all of this is actually shown. We aren't just told "This person is X" but see it ourselves as we read the story.

[Ser Greguh]

Shryke, on 23 February 2012 - 12:26 PM, said:

The Red Viper is probably the best example of this.

Interesting.  I felt that Oberyn was very much the opposite in that regard.  He's one of the few characters for whom, upon his introduction, another character (whose judgment we generally trust) gives an internal-monologue laundry list of his personality traits that generally turned out to be accurate.  It's not that he's a bad character, just that I think he's a bizarre example to bring up in a show-don't-tell compliment.  He's more tell-then-reinforce-via-showing.

For GRRM characters, I think that Lysa is a fantastic show-don't-tell example.  Off the top of my head I'd also name Rickon, Osha, Asha, Theon, Viserys, Drogo, and Alliser Thorne as other good ones.

I think having a POV character as perspicacious as Tyrion probably makes show-don't-tell a bit harder when introducing characters through his POV.  He measures everyone he meets and he's written as a good judge of character, so it's hard to avoid it, I imagine.

[Shryke]

Ser Greguh, on 23 February 2012 - 12:41 PM, said:

Interesting.  I felt that Oberyn was very much the opposite in that regard.  He's one of the few characters for whom, upon his introduction, another character (whose judgment we generally trust) gives an internal-monologue laundry list of his personality traits that generally turned out to be accurate.  It's not that he's a bad character, just that I think he's a bizarre example to bring up in a show-don't-tell compliment.  He's more tell-then-reinforce-via-showing.

For GRRM characters, I think that Lysa is a fantastic show-don't-tell example.  Off the top of my head I'd also name Rickon, Osha, Asha, Theon, Viserys, Drogo, and Alliser Thorne as other good ones.

I think having a POV character as perspicacious as Tyrion probably makes show-don't-tell a bit harder when introducing characters through his POV.  He measures everyone he meets and he's written as a good judge of character, so it's hard to avoid it, I imagine.

"tell-then-reinforce-via-showing" is "show-don't-tell".

If it weren't, having one person describe another in a story would be bad and that's a path to utter silliness. (it also negates fun techniques like, say, having a person be described and then deliberately not match that description in order to say something about the person doing the describing)

It doesn't matter if someone enumerates another characters traits, what matters is that the character in question actually shows the existence of the traits they are claimed by the narrative to possess.

To go back to the Red Viper, in one chapter of chatting with Tyrion, GRRM shows us the character and leaves a very firm impression of the type of man he is. Not because Tyrion tells us what kind of man he is but because we see it as the chapter goes along in how he talks and acts.

[Ser Greguh]

Shryke, on 23 February 2012 - 01:22 PM, said:

"tell-then-reinforce-via-showing" is "show-don't-tell".

If it weren't, having one person describe another in a story would be bad

I guess we disagree on definitions more than anything, which makes this a boring semantics discussion, but my brain just instinctively rejects the inclusion of a concept that involves telling with a maxim that includes the words don't tell.  Instead I reject that the avoidance of show-don't-tell is bad in and of itself.  I guess I prefer the simplification of the maxim simply to "Show".  This perhaps serves no purpose other than to sate my obsessive insistence on logically consistent terminology.

Plus I do think there's a meaningful distinction to be made between "show-don't-tell", "tell-then-show", and "show-then-tell" without labeling any of the three as bad.  They have different effects.

There are probably phrases for this that I'm butchering.  I haven't taken a writing class since the eighth grade

[Sci-2]

I think one thing that works well is when you sympathize with a character to the point you find yourself trying to rationalize their actions or gloss over them.

I remember mentioning I thought Akka was a good a person until someone pointed out a few of his weightier sins. Ennis was also good at this sympathetic asshole concept, especially in Preacher.

[dbcooper]

Some characters that stand out in my mind:

Finch in Finch
Stark in Only Forward
Crispin in The Sarantine Mosaic
Cazaril in The Curse of Chalion
Ender in Ender's Game
Case in Neuromancer

In general, you can expect to find excellent characterization in anything by Abercrombie/Bakker/GRRM/Guy Gavriel Kay.

[wolverine]

What I love about George's characterization is how he can so massively change the reader's opinion about some of his characters and make it believable.  His character's seem to be well thought out with clear motivations who act in ways that mesh with their characterization.

I actually think that when Erikson invests some time in a character he does a really good job as well.  Characters like Tehol, Anomander Rake, Trull Sengar, and Icarium were very good.


The biggest thing I can't stand in characters are when they act totally irrationally without any explanation.

[Roose Bolton's Pet Leech]

Ser Greguh, on 23 February 2012 - 01:40 PM, said:

Plus I do think there's a meaningful distinction to be made between "show-don't-tell", "tell-then-show", and "show-then-tell" without labeling any of the three as bad.  They have different effects.

One issue of tell-then-show I've angsted about in my own writing is the worry that if you're subsequently showing, the initial telling becomes redundant. I think in such situations, the initial tell should be saying something about the character of the teller (and how they relate to the person they're describing), it shouldn't simply be a summary of what is to be later confirmed.

[Memory Lane]

I forgot about an even bigger example of bad characterization: the Left Behind books. Now there's an example of the Telling contradicting the Showing.

It's actually quite interesting when an author either intentionally or unintentionally characterizes someone through an action.

Edited by Codex Bass, 24 February 2012 - 10:23 AM.

[Ser Greguh]

Roose Bolton, on 24 February 2012 - 06:02 AM, said:

One issue of tell-then-show I've angsted about in my own writing is the worry that if you're subsequently showing, the initial telling becomes redundant. I think in such situations, the initial tell should be saying something about the character of the teller (and how they relate to the person they're describing), it shouldn't simply be a summary of what is to be later confirmed.

In my experience there is a blurry line between "redundancy" and "reinforcement".  To me it often boils down to an authorial judgment between efficiency versus verisimilitude.  Consider the introduction of Gregor Clegane, who, IIRC, we first see through Ned's eyes at the tournament.  Ned waxes for a moment as to the his fearsome reputation, the murder of Elia and Aegon, and sure enough, before long he's cutting the heads off of horses, going berserk and trying to kill Loras, and terrorizing the Riverlands.  So it's redundant from a standpoint of pure information, but it also reinforces the reality of his worldbuilding in that it stands to reason that this crazy-ass psychopath should carry the reputation that he does, and that Ned should comment on it in his internal monologue when he first encounters him.

There are a lot of variables and a lot of balances to be drawn.  You want at least some of your characters to be good judges of character, but making them perfect and using them as authorial avatars of character judgment is lazy and sloppy (GRRM comes close to this at times with Tyrion and Jon, and I think Bakker crosses the line with Khellus, though that's a trap he constructed for himself in creating the Khellus character to begin with and giving him a POV).

And perspecitve / relativism, to which you allude, is important too.  To Catelyn and Brienne, Ned is honorable and admirable; to Tyrion and Jaime, he's laughably naive.  That says as much about the viewers as it does about Ned.  Creating good characters is about having a complete understanding of how they fit into your world.

[Mr. E]

Ser Greguh, on 24 February 2012 - 10:54 AM, said:

And perspecitve / relativism, to which you allude, is important too.  To Catelyn and Brienne, Ned is honorable and admirable; to Tyrion and Jaime, he's laughably naive.  That says as much about the viewers as it does about Ned.  Creating good characters is about having a complete understanding of how they fit into your world.

Bravo. I agree: once you have complete understanding of who they are and what they do and how they fit, you can take them in whatever direction they need to go...maybe not necessarily where you want them to go, however.

I think the mistake many writers make with characterization is letting the story direct the characters instead of vice versa. It's unnerving, not thinking you have control of a story, but it's the characters in the story taht the audience truly relates to--if we don't care about the characters, then there's no reason for us to care about what's happening to them, which means there's no tension or drama no matter how complex the story is.

It reminds me of a story I heard about Stephen King...actually he talks bout in in On Writing, where he was expecting Misery to be a novella or a short novel at most where the writer Paul Sheldon dies at the end.

Buuuuuuuuttttt....

As King literally says, Sheldon turned out to be tougher and more enterprising than he thought; instead of forcing the story into his pre-chosen form, he "let" Sheldon do what he wanted, i.e., followed the path of characterization he set up to its logical conclusion. And from that sprung Misery, which is objectively probably one of King's best novels.

[Mikael]

It really depends on the story though. What if GRRM let his characters run wild and AA managed to get himself killed by some stupid Night Watch before the confrontation with the Others!?