Why Poor Characterization Is A Godsend

Sometimes, as a writer, you run into a patch where you write shit. It’s kind of inevitable. The idea, as you improve over time, is to recognize the shit and tuck it away where the public won’t read it and associate it with you. You know, in old drafts or something.

And Then, To Fix Your Shit, Of Course

But as you’re writing, and particularly if you’re writing regularly, you will come up against a character, or a particular emotion, that you just can’t write worth a damn.

When you come up against your own shortcomings as a writer, rejoice! Here’s why your own terrible characterization is actually a marvelous gift from life to you:

Why Bad Characterization Is Such Good News

Bad characterization immediately shows your ignorance of human nature.

Ignorance can be rectified; recognition of the problem is the hardest part. Fixing weak characterization gives you a shortcut to much, much better writing, and the improvement is easy and fast, if emotionally jostling.

Writing Ability As A Blanket

Imagine, if you will, that your writing ability is a blanket, and it is currently full of holes, but you have learned to see the blanket as normal, and don’t realize where the holes are. The reader, in each of your stories, sits down on your blanket and discovers that it’s incomplete.

If your blanket is cozy and warm, most readers will put up with a lot of holes, but if the blanket (your writing ability) is threadbare, or icky, or full of crumbs, or (heaven forfend!) sticky at all (which is what writing is like when there are control or entitlement issues in the writer), the reader is likely to eye your blanket and stroll away, or to sit for five seconds, discover the unwanted texture, and then slip inconspicuously away to change their clothes. Because sticky! Ew.

I Hate Getting Sticky; Could You Tell?

So your job, as a writer seeking to improve (in order to attract the greatest number of people to sit on your blanket), is to find out all the holes and texture problems of your particular blanket and fix them up until you have a big, wide, hole-less expanse of warm, fuzzy, just-like-Mother kind of blanket.

The easiest, fastest way to improve your blanket is to find the holes in the fabric.

The holes in the blanket of your writing craft are incorrect or weak characterizations.

Weak characterizations come from a lack of empathy.

How To Get More Empathy

Fixing an empathetic lack is so easy that it’s laughable.

All you have to do to become a better writer, after you discover that your characterizations in any particular area are weak, is to hunt out a living, real-life type of that character, or a person experiencing the emotion that you’re failing to capture, and spend time with them, and become their friend.

Authenticity is key, here. You can’t go collecting material from human beings as though you were stripping the wings off butterflies. You go and you be a real friend, a good friend, and in no time at all, your characterization will deepen, your hole in that area of your writing blanket with vanish, and more readers will be tempted to park their asses and stay for a while.

Examples

BAD WRITING:

Dr. Hooper was an anesthesiologist who had no time for his only daughter. She was often lonely, but coped with the lack of parental guidance by taking up surfing.

She was too young to surf, but their house was by the lake, and she tried. The lack of actual waves often deterred her, but she took out the surfboard every day from the back shed, paddled out to the middle of the lake, and waited for a suitable storm to come along and whip up some good waves.

It was a miracle she never fell in and drowned, for she did not know how to swim.

GOOD WRITING:

There was a passage into another dimension out in the middle of the lake behind Miriam’s house. She’d first found it while sitting on the surfboard, staring down into the water and waiting for her father to come home and shout at her. She wasn’t supposed to be out on the lake at all, for she didn’t know how to swim, but her dad, a nurse, worked so much that Miriam had decided the only way to get his attention was to die.

She didn’t mean to actually die, of course. She was planning a dramatic rescue. She would slip off the board, as soon as he saw her, and flounder helplessly while he screamed and swam out to save her life. Miriam had plotted out the whole thing, and found the idea romantic.

As she’d been sitting on the purple and pink surfboard, staring down into the water, she’d seen a repeated flash of silver light.

At first, Miriam had paid no attention to this flash, for she told herself it was only sun dancing down beneath the water. The silver shape was too regular, and when she lay down on her stomach to see better, she found a round, unmistakable edge curving down below. She paddled the surfboard, and turned in the water, and eventually discovered that the silver curve went in a wide circle, about twenty feet in circumference, and the center of the circle had fragments of geometric light inside.

Hm, Miriam thought, and she paddled to the shore of the lake, planted the surfboard firmly in the sand, and set out into the shallows to figure out how to swim.

She wanted to get down there to look around, and her dad would never give his permission, if he knew what she was up to. She figured she had a good ten minutes to practice, before she’d need to hide the board and get back into the house.

In conclusion

If you run into a terrible characterization in your own writing, or find that you’re struggling to capture an emotion or experience within that character, the fix is easy: go forth into the world and find a friend. Make a friend, rather, out of the class of humans who share key traits or circumstances with your struggling area, and you will deepen as a writer, improve as a human, and gain empathy, which will knock that poor characterization right in the teeth.

And there’s nothing like beating up your own terrible writing for building your opinion of your work.

You’re reading Victor Poole. In my current novel, Zephyr has been entrusted with a delicate mission involving an ugly secret and a couple of dead kids.

What Really Happens When You Base A Character On Someone You Know

Many of my characters are constructed from people I knew, or know currently, in my real life (hi, Jamie!). As I’ve said before on my blog, I have a peculiar knack for reading people’s body language and energy casings, and this results in some fascinating (to me) tinkering over character formation and subsequent arc development.

Combining Potent Personalities In A Blender—Then Go!

One of my favorite characters, a king named John, is an extraction and distillation from an interesting quasi-genius I know quite well. It is not the full person, but about a quarter of the original, drawn off and grown out into a complete personality.

How Does That Happen?

First, I take a person who tickles my curiosity. In the case of John, the base personality was an enigma to me; there was a twist of childishness and frank genius in my source person that nagged at me. I isolated that element of character, and pressed it out into a human form. This is kind of like taking a swab from inside someone’s cheek and then putting it in a damp plastic mold and waiting for new life to fill out the desired shape. Okay, that sounds kind of nasty. Instead, let’s say it’s like cutting one branch from a tree, and splicing it into a plain tree to grow a pure strain of fruit. There, that’s more palatable.

Victor, Sometimes Your Analogies Are Just Too Strange

After I’ve gotten the piece of person I want, I start to tease at the new character, pushing at different aspects of the personality to find the weak spots. If I were to do this on a straight copy of the real person, the source body from which I drew the character, the book would rapidly become very deep, very personal, and very, um, committed. You can’t take an authentic human, a real person with a complete aura and set of personal qualities, and then chuck them into a narrative setting and not come out with sterling literature. Literature, however wonderful it might be, is not usually suited for fantasy or science fiction work, because it is just too damn serious (see, Harder Than Rocks, which is charming, and perfect, and very sobering at the end). (See also My Name Is Caleb, which is based on a combination of three very abused people I know well.)

Genre Fiction Is Not Suited For Complete Characterizations

Fantasy has got to be a little bit fun, or at any rate, sufficiently light-hearted to serve as an escape. I pushed the envelope about as far as I could with Ajalia and Delmar, but even they are quixotic enough to escape the melancholia of genuine humanity. People are dark inside, not because most of them are bad (though many of them are), but because there is an unbearable weight of pain, oppression, and sorrow that goes before every person, and trails along behind.

Enough With The Sober Philosophizing, Victor!

What happens when you take a person you know well, and use part of them, or most of them, in a character in your novel? Well, if you are possessed of any discretion, you will conceal what you have done! But what happens is that you start to get into your source’s head, and you start, if you have skill as a writer, to inhabit their skin, or some part of their soul.

Examples

Bad Writing:

Leopold was so fed up with the state of his enormous, too-big house of expensiveness, he was ready to throw it all into disarray with a haphazard auction at the lowest social bar, rung, or placement possible for a man of his elevated station. He was to the point, in actual matter of factness, of considering giving up the family noblelands, and going into the space realms to live as a carnival barker, or a lackey to a pirate-type-rubbisher. This, in fact, was what Leopold told himself, but his butler-chef, Marinker, was already plotting to thwart such a disastrous state of affairs, and made a balanced breakfast of greens and egg whites, hiding a silver sheaf of money under the plate as an added temptation. Leopold never had any money, because his butler-chef had strict orders from the elder brother to keep all household monies under strict lock and key.

Good Writing:

Leopold was upset; his hair fell to one side, and his normally scrupulous trousers had gained a set of wrinkles across the hips. He paced up and down the superfluously thick carpet of his needlessly-large library, and meditated on the various schemes he had sketched out for the purpose of obtaining money.

Toddy, his older brother, always kept the cold, hard cash far from Leopold’s sticky fingers, and the young man, who had only recently gained his majority, was seriously contemplating running away to the star-blazer’s circus, to live as some kind of freak. He’d have to mutilate himself, but lots of young men did that. At least, that’s what he’d read about in Science-Mudo Monthly. They had pictures of the space-freaks there, sometimes, young men with five noses, or an extra set of lips in their cheeks. It wasn’t so bad, he told himself, and you could always pay for a cosmetic fix after you’d made your fortune being chased by moon monkeys and standing on your head during the fire show.

Marinker was well ahead of young Leopold’s schemes; the butler slid discreetly into the library with all the fanfare and clatter associated with a timid mouse, and lay a tray of spinach and eggs noiselessly on the bench of the ivory harmonium. Clearing his throat ever so gently, the butler crinkled a pair of shimmering silver bills under the plate; the money made a lush rustle, and Leopold’s ears pricked up instantly. Marinker slid like an eel from the room, and Leopold pounced on the funds.

And Remember, Celebrities Have Proprietary Energy Signatures

Don’t use famous people unless you are very, very good at energy alterations, and even then, people will be able to taste the foundational composition. Use nobodies, strangers at the park, friends from elementary school, and people you know well enough to predict. Age can always be adjusted, and characters can be mashed together to make original flavors. When you use real people to inspire your characters, be prepared to develop startling empathy for your subjects, and don’t use too much of one person unless you’re prepared to make a literary tome.

You’re reading a blog about writing by Victor Poole. Almost all of my characters are drawn from pieces of people I’ve known (or know) in real life. I like to combine touches from as many as four people to create original subjects (like Leed).