A.C. Crispin wants the characters you write about to BEAT YOU UP! ~_^

[Arrogantcur]

She wrote three of my favourite Star Wars novels (a trilogy telling the story of Han Solo's life starting when he was a teenager and ending just before he met Luke and Obi-Wan), as well as two good short stories appearing in Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina and Tales From Jabba's Palace. This made me interested enough to look at her website a long time ago. I forget when I first read this (http://www.accrispin.com/ACC_Characters.pdf), but in this forum I think it might start a good discussion. After all, we have a few professional writers here and a bunch of people who write just for fun.


Imagine you're walking down the street one lovely spring day, and come face to face with the protagonist of your current writing project. Your character sees you and knows immediately that you are the person who created him/her and who is responsible for his/her current situation (i.e., in the middle of the story). Both of you stop dead and regard each other searchingly. If you're doing your job as a storyteller properly, what happens next? What reaction does your character have to you? I don't know about you, but any of my characters would unhesitatingly attack me — either verbally or physically, depending on their natures. In most cases, they'd punch my lights out — which is the way it should be.

The reason for that, as she goes on to write, is that if a character can solve every problem before them easily, it doesn't make for a very interesting story. So her characters have lots of problems and lots of pain, and that is more interesting as a story. I agree with that.

However...I think it's possible to put your characters through too much. Sometimes I read stories where characters suffer horribly, and I wonder "How can these people still be sane? How can anybody be the same and go on as if nothing happened after experiencing so much trauma?"

If it just took one really bad day to destroy the Joker's sanity, what about somebody who's had a really bad life?

My feeling is that you want to make things difficult for your protagonist, sure, but not go so far as to make their life absolute hell. Give them obstacles that cause them to break a sweat, but nothing that causes them to break their bones.

What do others think?

[titanfan]

I think it really depends on the character, the writer still has to know how much a character can take. Many people thought having Ralph and Sue Dibny suffer that much in Identity Crisis flashbacks made their positively cheerful demeanor in the future seem unrealistic. But I think there are characters (like Nightwing) who could go through the ringer (and have been) and remain relatively unscathed. Some characters like Oracle and Black Canary still bear the scars of past traumas that have happened to them, which is one of the things that make them so interesting.

Sometimes there is also some suspension of disbelief. On soap operas, there are characters who have been raped, married and divorced multiple times, cheated on, have had numerous friends and relatives murdered, and still have the same relative demeanor--and the viewing audience just accepts it.

[Eliseu Gouveia]

Silversparrow is too much of a goodie two-shoes to cave my head in. She´d probably just give me a wedgie.

Immortal Tristara would chop my head clean off. Then, she would regret not torturing me before killing me.

Nadra would giggle in contempt, then continue walking.

[Red Jack]

most of my characters would be indifferent to me unless I was a threat or being threatened (depending).

[Wind-Breaker]

I made a thread years back that had a similar theme :smile: :

Writer meeting Hero: Bendis Meets Hawkeye (http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=148112)

Writer meeting Villian: Morrison Meets Magneto (http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=148196)

[Solaris]

It depends on the story, and the character... just like in real life. Some will deal with a series of major traumas and keep going, and others will collapse under the weight.

I don't think you should just put a character through hell because you want to put someone through hell, or enjoy thinking about it---that's f'ed up.

We have to be able (IMO) to identify with our protagonists in some way, to kinda/sorta see them like real people. You give them challenges and things to work through, yes. For some, those things may be truly awful---but the story lies in how they *deal* with these things, not in the fact that they suffered them. *That's* where the interest lies.

So... for one character, being somewhat OCD over something may be a minor issue (or even a humorous schtick) among other more difficult challenges... and for another, it may the the core to her life story, the situation which has impacted her behavior and viewpoints for years.

In other words, treat 'em like real people as you write: see them as another person you're learning about and studying, and usually, someone you come to care about in some fashion. As you discover them and come to care for them, most readers will, also.

[Black Atom]

I think it's a good rule to follow. I think it's far worse to be over-protective of characters, really, which is the situation most comic characters are in (the exception is Spider-Man, who should be really insane given all the stuff he's suffered). Joss Whedon's kinda known for torturing the characters fans love the most.

[JKCarrier]

The problem with applying that logic to mainstream superhero comics is that the characters go on and on indefinitely. In a novel, or a movie, you can have a character going through "the worst day of their lives", and show the consequences of that, and then the story's done. In a comic, a character has their worst day ever...and then what? You've got to do another story next month, and you have to keep topping it. So then they have their even worser day ever, followed by their really really worstest day, and their worst to the worsth power day, and...

This is what finally drove me from X-Men in the '80s. Claremont had torn every character to shreds physically and/or psychologically (usually both) at least once, and most of them were on their 3rd or 4th trip through the wood-chipper. At some point, it stops being "character development" and starts being torture porn. Not every story has to be about someone getting "pushed to the edge".

[TomStillwell]

Toy Boy would buy me a drink...and then lift my wallet to pay for it.

[Corrina]

"What's the worst thing that can happen to this character?" is not a bad question to ask when writing the novel.

You get the most drama out of a pushing a character past the point where they think they can survive. But too many writers interpret that as death or destruction, literally. If you did, all stories would be intense and tragic.

What it really means is that you need something at stake for the character.

Take a very light example, Sex & the City, the movie. Just because I watched it last week and it's fresh.

What's at stake? Well, nobody dies. Mostly, love and friendship is put to the test. Without that at stake, without that little desperation behind the glamour, the movie is only the pretty outfits and the nice locations.

But Carrie Bradshaw is certainly going to want to kick the ass of the writer of the movie about halfway through.

When I write, I usually know what's called the Dark Moment. Which doesn't have to be a tragedy--it's the point in the story where it's clear that going back to the safe place is never going to happen.

[Arrogantcur]

This is what finally drove me from X-Men in the '80s. Claremont had torn every character to shreds physically and/or psychologically (usually both) at least once, and most of them were on their 3rd or 4th trip through the wood-chipper. At some point, it stops being "character development" and starts being torture porn. Not every story has to be about someone getting "pushed to the edge".

When I got to the part of the original post where I said there's only so much a human being can take, I actually was thinking about the X-Men. Storm and Cyclops were tortured by Stryker, everybody on the team except for Cyke and Kitty was tortured by Sauron, Magneto kept them all locked in place for I think weeks being fed and tended to by a robot with the specific intent of driving them all mad, there was whatever the Brood did to them (which I'm certain was very bad), there was Rogue almost going insane after her fight with Danvers, there was Wolvie getting crucified, on and on and on.

When a bitter Havok said that he was giving up for good in issue #251 because he'd made a lot of sacrifices, had the scars to prove it, and things weren't any better than they had been when he started...well, part of that was Psylocke telepathically pushing him in that direction for her own reasons, but it made sense. All of those guys had earned time off to recover. I'd say that if they were real people, they would need time off to recover. Otherwise they'd all crack under the continued strain.