Bibliography: Characters
(bibliography: 6/7)
Today’s slate of books is mostly about writing characters, but necessarily covers viewpoint and dialogue at the same time.
I don’t have much summary to offer; I think this content is self-recommending. Your fiction should almost certainly have characters in it, and those characters probably shouldn’t suck. Read some of these books to find out how to write compelling characters.
Characters and Viewpoint, by Orson Scott Card, 1988
My personal value derived: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Assumptions this book makes about you as a writer:
This book sees you through all the way from the very first inklings of character inspiration, through the development and fleshing out of the character, to the technical aspects of bringing the character to life on the page. It doesn’t assume that you are already halfway through that process. Even though it covers all of the stages from the ground up, it doesn’t feel like a book for beginners or “dummies,” it moves swiftly through the introductory material and gets to the good stuff.
What I took away from this book:
This was one of the first technical manuals about writing that I ever read, and I learned a lot from it. It’s really solid. If you want to write fiction, you should probably read this book.
I don’t think Card is the very last word on the subject; Kress has something to add (see below). I don’t actually like most of Card’s characters very much! I find most of them pretty flat and obnoxious. Even so, Card writes incredible stories and his characters work very well in those stories, so he’s doing a lot of things right, and his book explains how.
Almost coincidentally, this is also the book with the MICE framework in it.
Dynamic Characters: How to Create Personalities that Keep Readers Captivated, by Nancy Kress, 1998.
and also
Characters, Emotion, and Viewpoint: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting Dynamic Characters and Effective Viewpoints, by Nancy Kress, 2005.
My theoretical, potential personal value derived: ⭐⭐⭐
Assumptions this book makes about you as a writer:
You want to write a commercially successful book, but more importantly, you want to stay interested in your own book long enough to finish writing it. It’s going to help if you are excited by your own characters.
You know that you need complex, motivated characters to drive the plot forward. And you want people to remember your books primarily by your characters.
What I took away from this book:
I haven’t actually read either of these. I picked them up because I really respect Kress as a writer, and I liked Beginnings, Middles and Ends (reviewed last time).
I shouldn’t have bought both! It turns out that CEV is a revision and an expansion of Dynamic Characters, with a lot of overlapping material.
I spot-checked and read the chapter about complicated characters, and I think Kress did a really nice job here. Not only did she explore the idea of inner conflict, she worked through several ways of showcasing that inner conflict, using dialogue, exposition, alternating scenes, within the same scene, and so on.
Other people’s reviews indicate that Kress goes a lot deeper on emotional resonance than Card does, and her book has exercises to work through, while Card’s does not. The books overlap to some degree but there’s enough difference that it may be worthwhile to read both, if you’re a serious student of fiction-writing.
Dialogue: A Socratic Dialogue on the Art of Writing Dialogue in Fiction, by Lewis Turco (with “Fred Foyle”), 1989.
My theoretical, potential personal value derived: ⭐⭐⭐
Assumptions this book makes about you as a writer:
You write fiction, your fiction has characters, those characters speak to each other, and you’d like to write their dialogue well.
What I took away from this book:
I’ve only skimmed it so far, though I can imagine going back and reading it properly. It’s a short book, at only 118 pages including the index. It does not work well as a reference book, I think — it’s meant to be read straight through, start to finish, because the book itself is a Socratic dialogue about dialogue. It’s a clever trick, executed well, as far as I could tell at a glance.
I especially appreciated the brief treatment I read of the differing affordances between writing fiction (e.g. novels) vs. scripts (e.g. plays or screenplays).
The Real Story: The Gap Into Conflict (The Gap Cycle Book 1), by Stephen R. Donaldson, 1991.
My personal value derived: ⭐⭐
Assumptions this book makes about you as a writer:
Well, first off, you should know that this book is primarily a novel, not a book of writing advice. I’ve listed it here because of the 19-page Afterword by the author, in which he discusses many aspects of writing, with The Real Story itself as a case study. I came to notice this Afterword because Eliezer talks about it a lot; you can see some discussion in our blog post about HPMOR: the (Probably) Untold Lore.
What I took away from this book:
Donaldson talks about “the basic three-sided story,” and that phrase was my clue that there is a library of basic character systems in fiction, of which his Victim/Villain/Rescuer triangle (identical to the Karpman Drama Triangle in transactional analysis) is only one example. In retrospect this should have been obvious. As a therapist, I thought primarily in systems: how does this couple, or this family, reinforce each other’s maladaptive behaviors, and why is it hard for them to break from their current dynamic into a healthier one?
Now I just need to use my therapeutic systems knowledge for evil rather than good, and then I’ll have a good story.
Writing Unforgettable Characters: How to Create Story People Who Jump Off the Page, by James Scott Bell, 2020.
My theoretical, potential personal value derived: ⭐
Assumptions this book makes about you as a writer:
You have the pull to write, and you’ve actually done quite a bit of writing, but your characters are flat. You need help figuring out why and what to do about it.
What I took away from this book:
It’s quick and easy to read, with little bite-sized chapters that I find very engaging. I can imagine someone holding a bad manuscript in one hand and this book in the other and going back and forth between them, checking to see if they’re following the advice and what fixes they might need to make.
This might work better for pantsers than for plotters, I’m not sure.
I did read the chapter on making your characters more complex and I was disappointed by the answers there. They boiled down to “just think about it and the answer will come to you.” I have heard much better answers to the question than that. (For example: mash together two simple characters with different, conflicting motivations.)
I think this book isn’t bad, but you would do much better to read Card or Kress instead. If this were the only book on its subject, the potential value would shoot up to two or three stars, but it’s just outmatched by the others.
The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression, Second Edition, by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, 2012.
My personal value derived: Ø, but not because it’s a bad book!
Assumptions this book makes about you as a writer:
You want to convey a strong sense of emotion in your writing, and you want to obey the commandment to “Show, don’t Tell.” You don’t want to just say that a character is furious, you want to show that character getting into his antagonist’s space, looming over them and glaring.
Unfortunately, you’re not quite sure how. You need a richer vocabulary for how feelings, thoughts, and behaviors tend to link up in human bodies. This is a reference book for you. Each of 130 emotions has a full two-page spread of associated behaviors, physical sensations, and other associated phenomena.
What I took away from this book:
I never use this book for writing, probably because I put a lot of skill points into understanding and teaching this subject matter when I was a therapist. I already have a pretty good command of the subject.
I think it would have been very good for me to read when I was a therapist-in-training, though — or better, yet, when I was a tiny little autist, completely cut off from my body and unaware of my emotions.