Café Session # 3Literate Beans Group: Here Hey all! I know we've been on a bit of a hiatus, but it's time to get this pot stirring (again). :B Anyway, the last two sessions have been made to more or less let everybody get comfortable and let loose. However, now we will begin to move into more thematic discussion, the first of which will be centered around characters. And some questions for you lot (YOU DO NOT HAVE TO ANSWER THEM ALL LOL): What do you think makes a good character? What are some examples of good and bad characters you've seen (can be from any medium, film, novel, etc.) Why do you feel this way? What are some characters that you've written before? Describe them. What do they look like, what are their motivations, what's their personality like, what are their fears, etc.? Would you be friends with your character? Why? And finally, if you do choose to do so, you may ask to have your character critiqued, and receive feedback on them. This feedback can be positive traits you find endearing about the character, any improvements you may think the characters needs to be strengthened, and so on. Who knows, you may even learn something new about your character in the process!
Maaaake waaaaaay for Prince Plumsyyyy~ Hmm, first of all, the way they are written, or rather, the author's writing style. Why? Well, simply because you can have any given character outline, that when put in paper by the hands of different people/perspectives gives out visibly distinct results. They might have the same name, the same behavior pattern, and even be in the same setting and story, but they are, essentially, different characters, don't you agree? Secondly, as I just mentioned, there's the setting. This one is a lot more noticeable than the last aspect. A character's surroundings and circumstances are defined by and also define them. Take an old-fashioned gentleman who goes by the name of, say, Ashwin (sorry bro) for instance, and put him in an epic medieval novel that revolves around knights, crusades, moral integrity, all that romantic idealism. Fits perfectly, right? :3 Now, imagine this same character in some dystopic, ultra-individualistic society. The character~~setting contrast index goes through the roof! (k, I'll stop now ;--; ) Anyway, in both situations, we have the exact same person there (consider same author as well), who may be nonetheless equally relevant to either plot. However, two different sides of his interactions and personality are explored in each, therefore having separate effects on the reader. Lastly, I personally prefer not to deem a character as "good", "bad", "solid", "weak", etc., because, despite my username, I don't believe I hold the technical knowledge or experience to judge them, lol. ______________________________________________________________________________________________ Okay, so I can't really answer those last two questions, seeing as how I have never created any characters, EVER. So... Yeah. :/
What do you think makes a good character? Characters are, in my opinion, the hardest thing to do correctly in any given medium. In a film you've got 2 minutes to define the character and at most 2 hours to flesh them out. In a book you've got to describe them, but you don't want to get bogged down in telling when you should be showing. That all established, I think a good character depends on what they're supposed to do and what their context is. Sometimes a character with a ton of good lines qualifies, sometimes it's that one character who does and says so little that the few things they end up doing make them a total standout. In general, I'd say good characters need to feel three dimensional, fleshed out or real depending on how you want to word it. They need to feel like they've got a real presence and being. They need to say and do things that make the audience think consciously or unconsciously that, "This is something character would say/do." The need to be a person. That right there makes a character at the very least internally consistent and that means so much more than many people know. To go beyond that you've got to make the character accomplish their goal. Is it a villain? Then make them supremely hateable. Is it a hero? Make them the kind of person that would save people, maybe even the kind of person you'd like being saved by. You can then choose to complicate, reverse, invert or blend roles and goals but your character should no matter what stay true to form. If they change in some way it needs to be in their character to have changed. A ball won't fall without gravity, a character won't change without a push in that direction. Next you need to have a place for the character. A position in the plot and in the lives of the other characters. If a character doesn't have good meaningful interactions you're basically relegating it to the unused pile. Creating a good solid character can only happen if you creating a corresponding group dynamic. How do To go further than that is really beyond me. I don't know what you do after you make your character internally consistent and pointed. Maybe you try to cater to the audience or try to change the audience's opinion to fall in line with what you do. But at the end of the day, a character is a person and you should make people believe that. It's a real shame that I can't give any specific advice, but characters are an amorphous part of writing and there are too many formulas and ways to go about it. What are some examples of good and bad characters you've seen (can be from any medium, film, novel, etc.) Why do you feel this way? I'll let this one pass. I'll just say bad is not the opposite of good in this case so much as a lack of it. Failure isn't defined by what you do as much as what you don't do. I'll leave it there. What are some characters that you've written before? Describe them. What do they look like, what are their motivations, what's their personality like, what are their fears, etc.? In order from newest to oldest. 2 years ago Erica...um...Smith(because Smith is generic)- Appearance: 5'6". Shoulder length brown hair. Blue eyes. Pale skin, some freckles. Massive scarring to arms, legs and torso. Dress: Pastel color palettes on sweaters and cardigans punctuated with black skirts and striped stockings. Hair clips keep hair looking more managed. Motivation: I could say she's motivated by love and probably get away with it, but I feel like it runs a lot deeper than that. She puts herself in danger to protect the people who are important to her with the intention of helping, but she doesn't do it because she feels they need protecting so much as she feels like she has something to prove to herself and possibly everyone else. It has something to do with an inferiority complex built into her character that makes her go so over the top.and out of her way. In the beginning I wrote her to be a side character in something bigger who was aware enough of her metaposition to want more so failure and contradiction have been kind of built into her modus operandi from day one. Personality: She'll do the right thing to make herself feel better, but she's self conscious enough to feel guilty about it. Overall not the most agreeable person, even pretty abrasive at times but she doesn't mean it, she just doesn't like portraying herself as completely bland and doesn't really have a better way of spicing up her personality. History: Stereotypical childhood friend character who gets shunted off to the side when the magicshit gets revealed. In a misguided attempt to help she ended up severely injured and hospitalized. When she made it back home she tried to distance herself from her old social group and forget all that nonsense. It doesn't really work. When the stress really gets to her she decides to go out and make another misguided decision related to more magicshit. She's feeling like this time is going a lot better so far. 3 years ago Arica Aden- Appearance: 5'8". Chin length dark auburn hair. Green eyes. Slightly tan skin. Thin build and athletic figure. Dress: Red and white Chuck Taylors, faded green cargo pants, dark blue hoodie and black beanie cap. Motivation: She wants to preserve her current lifestyle. She likes how things are more or less and her motivation is to keep things familiar and comfortable. Personality: She's more often than not aloof and unsociable around even people she knows not for lack of wanting to talk but for lack of wanting to talk to just anyone. While she's not as quick witted or intuitive as some people, she is still smart, just in a less pronounced way. She is the kind of person that has a routine and really follows it. She always knows where she's going and what she's doing, never lost or at a loss. When faced with something new she'll frequently become frustrated, but if she ever does get a handle on it, she's not going to let it go. History: Relatively normal life. He parents are the interesting ones and she knew it. Especially her father who went around to world conferences on martial arts with fair regularity as a keynote speaker or guest of honor. She always just assumed her parents would always be there, that nothing could touch such amazing people. In high school as she was beginning to open up to her classmates her father had an accident and wound up in a coma causing her to give up on forming connections for another four years until she started having strange dreams and premonitions of her own death. 4 years ago Guy Loser- Appearance: 5'10". Short light brown hair. Hazel eyes. Lightly tanned skin. Middle of the road build, but muscular. Dress: Pinstriped suit to match his partner. Motivation: Admiration for Edwina Laud. Personality: Follower. He's incredibly capable when it comes to technical work, but can't lead even himself. He tends to follow people that he sees as superior to him, that's how he wound up as the ace's errand boy. History: Son of a common midwest family he joined the military and quickly rose to prominence in his unit. Upon returning from his tour he was asked to join the NSA to work on special missions. He would have refused if the person asking hadn't been Edwina Laud. A particularly forceful woman with skills that easily shamed the veteran Loser. From then he worked hard to get a spot in the same office as her and after several years he accomplished his goal. They're technically a team now but he's clearly the lackey in this relationship. 6 years ago Callum Byron- Appearance: 5'9". Shaggy black hair. Brown eyes. Pallid skin. Skinny. Dress: T-shirt and shorts. Motivation: Whatever is in front of him. Personality: Caution punctuated by impulsiveness. He's still a kid in the end. He doesn't have some great overarching goal or motivation to make him do anything. He likes exploring his world but he won't really fight the flow too much. He's a reactive rather than driven or proactive but will sometimes act otherwise when dealing with something new. Before entering Escher he was far more reserved and disinterested. History: Fairly average upbringing didn't prepare him to deal with losing his mother to a serial killer. After finding and assaulting the killer he retreated into himself and stopped doing anything at all. He refused to see a psychologist and his father didn't have the heart to force him. So he spent the next few years of his life standing still. When a random storystarting magicshit event occurred he ended up entering Escher, another world, and started living his childhood again albeit far more dangerously than most would. Would you be friends with your character? Why? Erica? No. She's overly emotional and quite frankly really annoying. Pitiable yes, likable no. Arica? No. She's basically me as a literary character. I wouldn't be able to make nice with a storyme. Guy? No. He's quieter than me. We'd never get a conversation started between the two of us. Callum? No. He's got basically nothing in common with me. ask to have your character critiqued, and receive feedback on them. Sure. Do as you choose.
THIS ISN'T MY FULL POST but: Pretty much everything Jiku said here. I always found the most memorable characters to be the most realistic. in that they've got a real presence there. As I mentioned in my first post, characters like Nick Carraway, I didn't really care about or found memorable because they didn't have as much of a presence as Gatsby or even Daisy (granted, I hate that book with a passion so I'm a bit biased). I also even find that flaw in some characters I've written. They're too far in the background, there isn't that group dynamic like Sora/Riku or the TWEWY cast, and reading over past works I can see that the characters almost seem to compete for the spotlight, or one character is in the spotlight too much. Which brings me to another point, in that too much of a presence can be a bad thing. While the protagonist is certainly important, having them dominate the show and tossing other main characters off into the void is also nearly as bad. While the protagonist will have more opportunities at the spotlight, the other main characters need to have a presence about them too, or the group dynamic is nothing more than a "Protagonist's Fanclub" type thing, at least, for me.
What do you think makes a good character? This is a slippery answer. I personally believe that it depends upon the fictional work in itself. For example, a dynamic and round character with more flaws and realism would work in a story that has a more mature setting, while a more static character would be fine in fictional work that does not really require the character to be dynamic. Sometimes people put fictional work on a continuum of importance from something being less mature and heavy to more mature and heavy but I feel that fictional work with less seriousness and more static characters (e.g. slice of life 4koma) can continue to offer insight on various things you could get from reading other books really, one simply has to look into it. In this way characters can be generally equal to themselves in regards to their setting. Certainly it would be wonderful if a static character had more development but that does not imply that the character's existing flatness is inferior to a potential development if it fits the context of the story. But I am straying away from the point of the discussion a bit. What are some characters that you've written before? Describe them. What do they look like, what are their motivations, what's their personality like, what are their fears, etc.? Typically, I attempt to keep my characters realistic because most of my stories tend towards emotional realism in regards to events (as best as "emotional realism" can get in magical realist ridiculousness or some other such things). An example would be the protagonist of a story-in-progress. She leads an interesting life in regards to her many personas and experiences within multiple levels of reality. On a variation of the internet, she masquerades as the well-liked and fairly calm B-Boson, but this underlies the many different ways she acts in many different situations. One could say her default mood offline is inquisitive yet shy, but also sarcastic, but also quick to give up. When she is with her aunt, she becomes more irritable. When she is with her younger cousin, she gains an almost maternal serenity. When she is with her teacher, she is extensively cautious. And the discrepancies between talking to her teacher online and offline show the various parts of what makes up Beatrice. She is not a character who really has a truly "default mood" because, like many people, she reacts differently to different situations. And even in this she slowly changes to become more confident in herself, as confidence is perhaps the underlying tie between all of these faces. I feel she fits in the particular story because one of its major themes is indeed the discrepancies between online and offline actions and communication, along with the many faces that make up a person's identity.
I actually will have to say that I don't totally agree with you here. I feel that static characters shouldn't just be for less serious work and I think that static characters don't have any more excuse to be flat than more dynamic characters. Flatness should be unrelated to motion. One prime example, Yagami Light of Death Note. He's probably the most static character I've ever seen in a manga with a real story. You can tell that he doesn't change worth **** because he states his goals at the beginning and his methodology for achieving them never wavers. He stays the same the whole time, it's the world around him that's changing to conform with his true self. He's not a ball rolling down a hill, he's an onion being peeled. That's incredibly three dimensional but also undeniably static. Another example would be like Troy Maxon of Fences. He's very static, he's stuck in his own past even and dies in denial. But you see his history unfold and why he's so set in his ways and how the world moves around him. So a static character isn't just someone on the side or a character in a short periodical. There's no problem with lack of development because without a stable reference point, how do you see everything else change? So I agree that static isn't bad but I feel that flatness isn't an intrinsically related trait so much as a coinciding one. When it comes to offering insight: that's a fine line you're walking. On one hand you're letting your reader write your book and on the other you're giving them food for thought. I probably got a little incoherent around the top X lines, X being all lines but this one, but I'm very ill at the moment, so please forgive me.
Aha, your point about static characters was actually what I was trying to make (but probably worded badly). So I do agree.
Lol this made me look at my old stories and cringe lololol. Good choice, Plums. What do you think makes a good character? To be honest, I'm not exactly sure. I'm not that much of an avid reader nowadays. But I can attest to liking certain characters more than others. And I feel that good characters are the kind that resonate with the reader and don't remain stagnated on some general outline. Characters need to be layered and deep. As Jiku said, you need them to be a person. Characters tend to fall flat when they're not conveyed in a human manner. Strange is the case where characters are only black and white. They have a multitude of shades and that's something that can be explored through showing. Show not tell. This also applies to characters. Saying a character is something (kind, evil, good, fun) in monologue or in the narrative can only go so far, and sometimes it may also seem conceited. So I think good characters evolve through the story and plot. Not only through telling, but also through subtler things like expressions or dialogue. Or even clothing (if the character starts wearing dresses more often, the reader will notice) But yeah, characters that evolve with the story, I guess. They also need to be human. What are some examples of good and bad characters you've seen (can be from any medium, film, novel, etc.) Why do you feel this way? I guess an example of good characters I could point out is first, Persona 3. I really liked this game because ALL of the characters felt human. Their dialogue was more complex than something just to advance the plot. The writers took the time to make characters believable. Also they managed to avoid defaulting to anime-ish tropes ad-nauseum even when the plot centered around Kawaii Anime teenagers saving the world from teh DARK LORD SATAN. I also need to add the Sevenwaters Saga to this. I know most are not familiar with it, but most of the books deal with the Heroines trying to save their bloodline. The reason why I mention this book is because often times, it seemed like the Heroines make wrong decisions or don't know what to do. But they somehow make it work. I find that gives it a human quality. You're not always going to make the correct choices. What are some characters that you've written before? Describe them. What do they look like, what are their motivations, what's their personality like, what are their fears, etc.? This is from an old story I wrote years ago. Lol. So the characters are sort of 'eh'. Spoiler Ein Favre Appearance: 5'8". Slightly short curly dark brown hair. Dark Brown eyes. Pale skin, and normal kid body (as in not muscular but not really too flabby; this changes as the story progresses) Dress: He's very simply dressed and not fashionable. Being the sort of person who likes to hide, his wardrobe consists of many hoodies and muted colors. Motivation: He's pretty much moved by circumstances at first, but as the plot becomes more brutal and certain discoveries are made, he begins to become forceful about his reasons. Even if they remain the same 'circumstances' reason. He's pretty much swept along. Personality: He's the typical reserved teenager and usually aloof about most things. As a contrast, he's very opinionated and stubborn when prodded. As the years pass, he becomes softer in personality but colder and calculating towards situations. He's supposed to have a 'Dark' Motif. History: A shy and depressed teenage boy that gets swept up by circumstances when his school is burned down. It is later revealed that it was arson and that the reason for it is actually linked to him and to other teenagers. He tries to act innocent and nice, but his cold and biting side can sometimes surface. When faced by people who have no qualms with killing him off, he decides to kill back. Bianca White Appearance: 5'5". Long flowing strawberry blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. Porcelain-ish white skin. Dress: Usually found with white clothes and white dresses, all in part to childhood trauma involving her father and mother, and somewhat of a pun in regards to her name and last name. Motivation: She's crazy. And while she looks stable and no-nonsense, she's very much affected in the head. She had no qualms with killing anyone or anything that stands in her way. All she truly wants is to find some semblance of salvation. Whatever this means is yet to be seen. So her motivation is a little skewered. Personality: Extremely Alpha and commanding. She has no problem telling people things and will often be very blunt even when not asked to. She can be downright cruel and sometimes may even snap. Regardless of all that, she's been shown to be nice and motherly. Hers is not a case of 'deep inside she's good' no. She knows she's crazy and damaged and that she's blunt. She chooses to be this way and kill if necessary. Because she can. She's supposed to have a white Motif. History: From early childhood she and her younger brother were very involved with a project lead by their father to replicate the 'Visage of God' in which they ended up being experimented on and left scarred emotionally. His father had always wanted her to be 'pure like the snow, pure like heaven and its heavenly host' after escaping her father's grasp some years later this stuck with her, which is part of why she's died her hair lighter shades of blonde and why she wears white dresses (people just assume she's trying to be theatrical) While she harbors no visible hatred for his father, she wants him dead. Roy Sekundes Appearance: 6'. Short Light brown hair and light hazel eyes. Well built but somewhat tired and battered looking. Dress: Usually found in noir-ish elegant detective clothes. Not because his profession demands it, but because he likes it. his clothing include a lot of dark browns, silvers and copper. Motivation: He's been tasked to keep track of the children that have been experimented on, so at first he's very into it as his job. But as time goes by, he starts developing affections towards Bianca and Ein and comes to see them as siblings. Thus his mission becomes a more personal one. Personality: He seems stern, yet laid back at first. But he's very emotionally invested and fragile upon further exploring. He abhors being part of the Sekundes Clan/Family. History: When he was a teen, he was initiated into the Sekundes family by choice of his own. From then on, he was trained on how to fight and other useful skills. He has a rivalry with his step-mother and is on shaky terms with his sister. Would you be friends with your character? Why? Probably not. They're all mentality affected in some way. Maybe Sekundes, but I have an aversion to people who look 'too perfect' which is partly what I was going for when writing him.
It occurred to me that it might be the case as I was rereading it to respond, but figured it'd do no harm either way.
I don't really have any original characters to speak of so I'm just gonna answer the first two questions, What do you think makes a good character? This might seem like a bit of an odd answer but I think they have to be flawed. Reason being that they have got to have something that the reader/viewer can relate to or recognize, in order to be an interesting and dynamic character. I think a lot of writing characters relies on the fact that the audience understands, to some extent, the characters' motives even when their actions are not necessarily good ones. A character without any real flaws lacks personality, and their motivations and thoughts will probably come off as two-dimensional and flimsy. Additionally, I really don't think the audience has to like the character for the character to be well-written -- in fact, I think some of the best characters in fiction can be the ones that are despicable, and are written to be that way. What are some examples of good and bad characters you've seen (can be from any medium, film, novel, etc.) Why do you feel this way? Gonna talk about one that I think is particularly good/interesting. Will have to think about a bad one and come back. There are a few good characters that come to mind for me but one of the strongest ones is probably Manny Calavera from Grim Fandango. By way of introduction: Grim Fandango's setting is based on the Mexican Day of the Dead, which descended from Aztec mythology. The plot centers around this day on four separate years, taking place in the Land of the Dead. The game's story goes that dead souls must spend four years there to settle their regrets and cleanse their sins, after which they may proceed to their final rest, the Ninth Underworld. Souls that lived particularly good lives, however, are eligible to move on to that final rest sooner. The folks who decide that work at the Department of Death, an organization that looks into what you qualify for based on your actions in life -- and the employees are all people who lived particularly bad lives themselves, condemned to the job as a form of 'community service' for their actions. The Department works much like a travel agency; the workers take on clients and give them options based on their qualifications. This is where we meet Manny, a worker there, who used to be top of the heap in terms of clients -- but has fallen into a bit of a slump. All he seems to be getting are terrible clients, and when his latest charge ends up another dud, his job falls into jeopardy. His rival Domino, a relatively new recruit, gets nothing but perfect saints and sends them off on the Number Nine train, the best possible package that gets the client to the Ninth Underworld in only four minutes. Manny can't help but think something is a little fishy. Right off the bat we know he hasn't been a very good person in the past, because he works at the Department of Death. And right off the bat, he's given a motive, a reason to pull the plot forward -- if he doesn't figure this out, he's going to be out of work. He starts to investigate, and things escalate from there. I won't get into specific plot points any further because really ya'll should play it but needless to say over the course of the game a lot is revealed about Manny: Spoiler Obviously it's established from the get-go that Manny's no perfect soul. He screwed up when he was alive, big enough to end up at the Department of Death. He can be a bit of a sarcastic jerk and has, at times, somewhat of a short fuse. But he is dedicated, and pursues things to the bitter end. He's not immoral. He works hard throughout the entire game to keep promises he makes, to see things out to the end. When he sees something wrong, he actively works to fix it. ...And he uses any means necessary to do so. Over the course of the game, Manny manipulates people, steals, lies, and cheats. He owns a casino with rigged roulette tables. He counterfeits IDs and betting stubs. He does all sorts of things that a 'good' person would not necessarily do. But he does it for a good purpose, and over the course of the game therefore works toward redeeming himself despite these actions. Manny is decidedly flawed, but not a bad person. The events of Grim Fandango, in fact, made him realize that himself. In playing the game I recognized why he did things the way he did things and rooted for him, even when what he was doing wasn't strictly speaking a 'good thing'. All of it was necessary for an overall reason that I could get behind, and that I could understand why he was so dedicated to.
Flaws aren't necessary to understand or relate to a character and you don't need to understand a character for them to be good. Sometimes you want a paragon or an avatar of something. Sometimes you want purity of personality and ineffability. This goes back to what I was saying about characters needing to fulfill their roles. Not all characters are supposed to be comprehensible, relatable or 2deep4u. That doesn't make them flimsy. I will always say that I like static characters better than dynamic ones because they are representations of willpower and steadfastness that I have to respect in spite of myself a lot of the time. Someone who is too strong and stubborn to be changed by anything no matter how extreme can be just as interesting as someone who grows up and learns a lesson. And a character that you can't relate to or understand can be good too. That huge disconnect between you and them creates a different relationship between them and the rest of the characters and really puts to question how they do what they do and why they do it. It makes a good enigmatic character at the least. So rather than saying your points are wrong, I'm thinking that it's more that they're incredibly limiting. You're ruling out entire classes of characters and I feel like you should give them a chance. You might end up liking them.
Yeah but the stubborn unfaltering kind of static character is usually overdone in certain works, specially anime. You get the idealistic teen who makes things work out by sheer force of will and being stubborn. I do get what you're saying and I've seen the static character type being used and being done extremely well (specifically in the Sevenwaters series they make use of both static and dynamic ones as mains). Done incorrectly, you might end up with a flat and uninteresting character. And to be honest, in reality, everything has some sort of flaw. While I agree that these flaws don't neccesarily need to be showered at you from every character, or having them be a major point, I think it's somewhat impossible to have a main character and have them be flawless, because that is basically stripping away part of their humanity and part of the reader's bond with them.
Yes, definitely. Not every character needs to have some glaring flaw that we devote chapters and chapters to (unless you're me), but they need a backstory, something to keep them real, a motive. If they are simply in the background, they may not need to be fleshed out as much as others in story, but they require thought nonetheless. Writers (J.K. Rowling comes to mind) that form entire life stories for each and every character, insignificant as they may be. 99% of it may never appear in what the reader gets, but in order to make a character lifelike, we need to get inside their head--understand their past and their present--only then can we avoid trite arcs and development for those characters. We need static characters because we have them in life too--people who have their **** figured out, know what they stand for, and who they are. In stories with younger characters, however, it's less realistic to have static characters about, because young people are still getting to know themselves. Not to say that every young character has to be dynamic and every old static, but it's an observation all the same. I write primarily fanfiction now and while it can be partially attributed to the fact that entire worlds and plotlines often escape me, it's also because I tend to get very attached to characters. That leads to some imaginative results; characters inspire me. I write about them because I feel there's something left unsaid for their story, there's a piece of them I feel is left unexplored, and so on. I love to find characters whom I relate to, or at least, can see them as a human.
I agreed up until here. This is a very personal opinion here but I don't think you need to form a relationship with a character for them to be good. It's all about how good a job they do at being what they are meant to. It ties back into my stance on ineffability. Something that you simply can't comprehend is just as interesting if not moreso than something that is well within the scope of your understanding. For instance, I fell in love with the Kumagawa character in Medaka Box the second he said he'd ripped a girl's face off to see if he truly loved her and not just her looks. There's no way I can relate to that or connect with a character like that, but I loved the fact that he was so divorced from the standard perception of reality that it only seemed natural for him to do that. Sometimes a character is good because of the way they explore humanity or represent a larger concept or say "hey, what if..." rather than how much of a 'human' they are. That's why allegories can have good characters too.
What do you think makes a good character? This is pretty much personal preference here, but I'm a sucker for dynamic characters. It's always been really interesting to me to see them start out at Point A and develop and mold with the situations around them to get to the next stage. I always end up reading stories and reflecting the characters back onto myself, which is a bit silly (and also egotistical oops), but I usually never go without asking myself "what would I be like if I went through this what would be my choice, etc." This reflection mostly occurs mainly with more realistic fiction, like Perks of Being a Wallflower or Paper Towns, though I have compared myself t one or two of the animes (7th grade dark times indeed). >_> For more ~fantastic~ fiction, I still prefer dynamic characters because I like to see the change, though as Jiku pointed out, static characters can be really well done characters as well. Sho Minamimoto from The World Ends with You immediately jumps to mind. He was the antithesis to Neku's growth, having limited the world to just a garbage heap and equations to rule over. But it's very difficult to say you didn't enjoy him. he may not have changed, but the stubbornness and quirkiness of his demeanor just set him apart as a villain for me. What are some examples of good and bad characters you've seen (can be from any medium, film, novel, etc.) Why do you feel this way? To give an example of a dynamic character, I really really adored Okabe Rintarou of Steins;Gate. During the first few episodes he's depicted as some crazy nutjob and is really static: he knows who he is and what he wants, and he will achieve STEINS GATE!!!11!!! But when the plot kicks in and we see more of the dynamics of his relationship with the other Lab members, we see him change from this strong mad scientist persona into one of a man unsure of what to do next. The vulnerability was really human and just hit it home with me. Posting my answers to the last two later, need to dig around for my character sheets haha.
That's a bit morbid. But it gets the point across and it was something I hadn't fully considered.To be honest, I still think it's easier to create relatable characters. Because it's proven to work. However, taking the example of Kumagawa, I think it creates a different dynamic that is also very interesting. For example, I would be repulsed by his actions most likely, and that would make the character something odd in my eyes. And that is valid. It creates a dynamic between reader and character that doesn't have to be relatability.
