The Tell-Tell Sign of Boring Characters

Last time, I posted about a video critique of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and mentioned that it had lessons applicable to anyone trying to tell a story.  Today I would like to discuss one such lesson: how to tell if your character is boring.

At one point in the video, the reviewer poses a challenge: 

Describe the following Star Wars character WITHOUT saying what they look like, what kind of costume they wore, or what their profession or role in the movie was.  Describe this character to your friends like they ain’t never seen Star Wars.

Ignoring the double negative in the last sentence, and without dwelling on the characters the reviewer refers to, consider the point of the challenge itself.   It is a test to see which characters the audience remembers, understands, and (most importantly) cares about; and which ones they don’t.

With that thought in mind, I will reword his challenge slightly in order to make one of my own.

My Challenge:

Describe a character, from your own work or another’s, without saying what the character looks like, how they dress, or what their profession or role in the story is.  Do not mention details of the story’s plot, or the genre of the story itself.   Describe this character to your friends as if they have never seen or read the story for themselves.

If a reader or viewer can reasonably described a character out of context, without going into specifics of the story itself or even the genre in which the story resides, then the character is more universally understandable.  The audience can form an emotional connection with the character; will come to like or dislike them, to care about what happens to them.  If the story is told well, the character will be remembered and talked about with others who also experienced the story.

If a reader/viewer cannot describe a character, then there will be less of an emotional connection.  They may not care what happens to the character.  If the character is central to the plot, then the audience may become bored with the whole story.   If they do talk with others about the character or the story, they will have little to say, except perhaps to mention how forgettable both were.

For myself, I am reconsidering my central characters and seeing how well they withstand my challenge.  If I cannot write down a satisfactory description that meets my stated requirements, then I will know I have a problem, that the character needs to be reconsidered and possibly reworked.  

I plan to add a section to my new website where I will include these character descriptions.   I hope it will serve both to remind me of my intentions for these characters, and to help me write them honestly.

Such character descriptions are not sufficient for making interesting characters.  The descriptions themselves are a form of “telling”, and (as mentioned here and elsewhere many times) a writer should always strive to “show, not tell”.  Nonetheless, if a writer cannot create a “telling” description of a character filled with interesting facts, odds are they will “show” their audience someone boring and forgettable. 

A Day In Development

I have spent most of today fussing over my new website.  It is a new experience for me, and it takes some getting use to. 

For much of the day I tinkered with WordPress, getting the website’s blog fully functional as it were.  This consisted largely of finding plugins, installing them, activating them, and setting their properties.  At this point I am cautiously optimistic that the blog is in good shape. 

I have installed plugins that should allow users to subscribe to the blog and sign up to receive e-mails of blog posts or RSS feeds.  Users can also have the blog post to their Google home page. 

I also installed plugins that should help prevent spam and perform regular backups automatically.  One plugin will provide ping-back tracing, which should increase traffic to my site.  Another plugin will make sure that all the major search engines are notified of new blog posts.

One problem I face is that the blog has a different style than the rest of the website.  And its menu’s don’t link back to the same pages as the main website.  I am going to worry about correcting that later, however, as the bigger problem of the website itself demands my attention.

To put it simply, the main website looks like crap.  Between the wrong pictures, dull colors, and crummy fonts the site is repugnant.  I have identified the primary style sheet used and have replaced the onerous fonts with ones easier to read.  I need to tweak with the size of the fonts and the colors, but already it looks a smidge better.

I also discovered a way to take output a Microsoft Word document as either a PDF or an XPS.  This means I now have a safe way of putting my documents on my website the preserves the font and formatting.

These are baby steps towards having a more sophisticated online presence.  Small advances to promoting my writing and seeking an audience for the tale I wish to tell.  I look forward to when I have the major technical issues solved and can focus again on writing.