Character Development--Limits?

[D-KeyNote]

Ok, so I know that the most frequent problem in this area for most people is not enough development.

I think my problem, however, is too much.

Unfortunately, I don't have any published work with any of my characters, mostly because I'm still developing them at this stage (for more than a few years). But my question is how much is too much when building a character?
Aside from the obvious, like when the backstory for each character is more than enough to fill a volume.

[trenton_dawn]

Usually I feel like I've done enough when I think I know the character as a person. Like, if they were real, I'd probably say I know them as a friend would. Sure, there might still be things unaccounted for, but friends have a way of surprising you all the time, too. Sometimes it can even help make the character more believable by giving them room to grow once the story starts.

[mitchellbravo]

Strive for a particular balance of character and story. Some people prefer to read something that has a lot of action, while others prefer character development thinking-oriented stories. Many writers can balance both well. It's a matter of figuring out where you want to place your story on the spectrum.

If a story starts to read like (in the case of a first-person narrative) somebody's diary, or (if third person) notes being taken from a seriously obsessed stalker trying to make note of every possible thing about a character, that's when character development has probably become too much.

What do we need to know about a character in order to make a story work? Identify what are the most important aspects of that character. Make certain that if the audience learns something about a character, it has a purpose. It should fit in with what we already know about the character, and it should help to shed light on why they make certain choices in the future.

An example: The fact that a character likes reading could have many implications for a story. If she reads at least one whole book every day, the audience knows that this activity consumes a considerable amount of her time. If she has a whole room in her house devoted to books, depending on the condition and organization, we may also assume that she is wealthy, obsessive, a hoarder, materialistic, scholarly, or afraid of letting things go.

If we hear that she likes reading, but never see her read, never see her discuss a relevant book with another character, or never really see her love of reading have any impact on the story or any symbolism for something larger and less tangible, it is a detail that could in all likelihood be cut, and never missed.

[HABE]

<snip> Unfortunately, I don't have any published work with any of my characters, mostly because I'm still developing them <snip>

You're kind of answering your own question here.

A lot of people fall into the trap of filling binders full of back story and reference for their worlds and characters and overlook the fact that it's all meaningless outside the context of a story that's not getting written. It eventually becomes a habit to just keep thinking about a project and harder to get around to actually doing it.

Here's a terrible secret. Much of the development you spend years thinking about goes out the window as soon as the characters step onto the page. Context changes everything. You will get better ideas as you watch characters in action than you ever could just by thinking about them in the abstract. And if you don't give them breathing room to develop as you write them, they won't breathe at all.

[mitchellbravo]

Yeah, HABE also hit the nail on the head there. Almost every single one of my characters did a total 180 as soon I started actually writing/drawing my story and "found" them. Characters who were brash are now meek and vice versa; I had one character who was supposed to be very jealous and hateful who turned out to be gentler than a feather full of feathers, and a character who had absolutely no personality but now has one of the stronger personalities out of the whole cast.

[D-KeyNote]

It eventually becomes a habit to just keep thinking about a project and harder to get around to actually doing it.

That is spot-on what's going on with me. -___-
Part of it is that I keep changing the plot to make it more realistic (a high school story, as over-used as that is), and I take into account how that would affect the characters as people. That usually takes me back to square one every time I modify the story.
Perhaps I'm more psychoanalyzing my characters than deveolping them. I've started writing a few times, getting to 70-something pages before throwing the whole thing out.


I suppose another thing that I keep obsessing over is about stagnant and dynamic characters; if you were to treat your characters as people, they'd all be changing in one way or the other. However, I want to stay away from as many cliched character molds as possible.

[Epsilon]

I've fallen into this trap myself. I felt like I wanted to know every detail about a character before I wrote them down, so that I could tackle anything that came their way. But then when I finally got around to writing, that character's long history suddenly made me feel stifled.

As mentioned above, there really should be room for your character to grow. For me it keeps the character interesting and I don't feel the weight of four years of pre-production hell looming over my shoulder. I say, if it's important to the story then it's a detail worth keeping. If you come to a point in the story where you DON'T know something about a character, that's ok too. You can then take the time to step back and learn.

So make that story happen. =)

[Thera Dratara]

First off, I don't think there's actually much required as information to a character. I mean, all you need is their basic motivation and morals, their abbilities and how they present themselves and a short history, and then you've got a three dimensional static character.

The problem is mostly how you will be conveying this information to the audience.

A recent example of a pretty bad YA novel I read about had the hero be the typical jerk-with-a-heart-of-gold character. And while the writer had the jerk-part down quite well(he was an absolute asshole) the heart of gold bits were failing completely, with the character even feeling out of character for those moments of kindness(or even worse: manipulative).
Why? Because showing kindness isn't just something you do for anyone. In fact, most people only do nice things for people they respect.(or want to manipulate the hell out of) And during those jerkish moments the character showed no respect at all. Zero, zilch, nada. And then during those moments of kindness the readers still viewed the character with those same respectless actions in mind, resulting in incredibly fake behaviour.

Perhaps, the best way to look at your characters' traits is to take each one of them, and imagine how you are going to convey this to your audience. For something like 'likes coffee' this is easy. Your character just drinks coffee. For something like cowardice though, it requires you to 1). set up a scary situation. 2) have your character respond to it by being scared. 3) most importantly, have another character respond courageously to it. This helps you build your plot as well, because any trait that isn't conveyed in the story, doesn't exist to the audience.

Character development works the same way, for each change that the character goes through, the audience should be notified of the turning point.
For example, a boring old proffesor starts using the word 'cowabunga' a lot. Why? Because he has become a fan of the teenage mutant ninja turtles of course! Thus you show the audience that he's reading the comics during scenes or wears the t-shirt. You can even show the point that he got hooked, like maybe his nephew introduced it to him and he started reading so he can relate to his nephew.
And with something like a coward turning into a courageous person you'd do the same, though it's a bit more complex.
First off, the character needs to have an event that shows their cowardice. Then, there's an event where the character would need to see that choosing the cowardly route is disadvantageous. Now either you let him choose the courageous path first, or first still choose the cowardly route, fail, be angry at himself for doing so, and represent a similar event where he can show he learned from his mistake and chooses the courageous path.

Tl;dr: Anything that isn't conveyed to the reader in the story is unrelevant detail. You can choose to make it relevant by presenting it in the story, but as long as it won't be shown, it's too much.

[HABE]

I've started writing a few times, getting to 70-something pages before throwing the whole thing out.

It might be easier to get motivated by starting off with a short story, character spotlight, or series pilot with a page count that isn't so intimidating. A small doable goal vs. worrying about doing justice to the beginning of an overwhelming epic is pretty freeing.

Looking over your posts here and on DA, I think you've got a lot of reasons to be confident that your characters will be cool as soon as you let them out from under your protective wing.

[D-KeyNote]

...I predict an authoritarian-esque parenthood in my future.


I guess the two things I'm afraid of when I write are:
1. the characters are inconsistent (kind of exactly what Thera Dratara read).
2. the characters will take on stereotypical roles that I hate (which, I am aware, is my own bias, since a good story can't only consist of people you like).

And the fact that the character I know the least about and have the hardest time predicting is my protagonist. ._.
I'm hoping to play off that, though. If I can do it right.

So make that story happen. =)

This was actually very encouraging. Thanks!

Make certain that if the audience learns something about a character, it has a purpose. It should fit in with what we already know about the character, and it should help to shed light on why they make certain choices in the future.

Ergh, that's another thing that grates me--it's only my personal opinion, but when writers start doing that, it sometimes seems like the traits that make up the characters personality are used to further the plot rather than define them as people. I can see why you suggest it though; the opposite would be showing the audience something about a character that has no relevance later in the story, so why even bother mentioning it more than once?
It's a fine line that authors tread. -___-"

Oh, and HABE, thanks for checking out my dA.
I'll start trying to dump my babies out of the nest soon.

[mitchellbravo]

Make certain that if the audience learns something about a character, it has a purpose. It should fit in with what we already know about the character, and it should help to shed light on why they make certain choices in the future.

Ergh, that's another thing that grates me--it's only my personal opinion, but when writers start doing that, it sometimes seems like the traits that make up the characters personality are used to further the plot rather than define them as people. I can see why you suggest it though; the opposite would be showing the audience something about a character that has no relevance later in the story, so why even bother mentioning it more than once?
It's a fine line that authors tread. -___-"

Well, you can play loose with this rule, but it's a good rule of thumb if you're trying to figure out what's necessary, which is what I assumed you meant by this thread.

Notice that I mentioned that facts don't need to have literal incarnations of their relevance- they can hint at something larger.

A well-written story will include only those details that are *somehow* relevant, meshing them so smoothly together with the plot that you don't realize that that is why they are being described. I'm not saying that you have to be like, "Character A likes Character B, and is mean, and has dissociative identity disorder, and hates his parents, and is diabetic, AND THOSE ARE THE ONLY THINGS WE ARE EVER GOING TO LEARN ABOUT THEM BECAUSE THEY ARE THE ONLY IMPORTANT THINGS EVER." Because that wouldn't be a well-rounded character, I would asume. I'm saying that you should write with purpose.

For that matter you should draw with purpose too. But again, it comes down to the writer/artist's style. Some people can get away with very very minimal details. Some can get away with a fuller pallette. It's not the same extent for everyone. But it's important to keep in mind that just because you love a character and find them fascinating, it doesn't mean all your readers will, and if you go waxing poetical about them for too long it will be off-putting. Proper character development allows readers to understand a character's actions and motivations. Under development leaves the reader wondering "Why?". Over development might drive the reader away, as they think "I don't care enough about this character to keep learnign this much about them."

[trenton_dawn]

Not everything you introduce has to further the plot but it does have to further the character. Details that are revealed about a character should either be things that help us to know him/her as a person and understand their modus operandi, or they should be things that people are very interested in learning. Obvious examples of the above are: what kind of person are they emotionally? What kind of personality? How do they feel about what they are doing and/or the events that have taken place so far? What were life-changing events they experienced in the past?

On the other hand, there are details that feel meaningless to the reader. For a trivial example, a character's favorite food, or exact birthday, are rarely relevant to anything. For a more interesting example consider something like, what was the first car they ever owned? What's their middle name? Are they allergic to seafood? When's the last time they got a speeding ticket? In some stories these details may end up having no relevance to anyone and may or may not even be useful for knowing the character. In others, they might. So the challenge you face is starting to shortcircuit your planning process when you start drifting into this territory.

[corruption]

When you have an idea what the comic will be about, and you know what characters you need, look at them and find the things their past will need to have in order to fit the comic. Flesh out the basic details and there you have a character sheet with all the needed information. By not filling in too much detail you give yourself room to change things latter. Just remember to keep things constant.

Character development in the comic can be interesting and take turns you never expected at first, so plotting that out in detail is a waste of time that makes things harder for you. Plot out the main points the comic will need and try to guide the development of the characters so they do what they have to do. Sometimes good authors chaange the story line mid-story arc because the plot does not fit the characters, and the comics are better for it, other times they are worse for it.

[Thera Dratara]

...I predict an authoritarian-esque parenthood in my future.


I guess the two things I'm afraid of when I write are:
1. the characters are inconsistent (kind of exactly what Thera Dratara read).
2. the characters will take on stereotypical roles that I hate (which, I am aware, is my own bias, since a good story can't only consist of people you like).

And the fact that the character I know the least about and have the hardest time predicting is my protagonist. ._.
I'm hoping to play off that, though. If I can do it right.

1. Make sure that everything the character does is based in the views they have. I have a character that is quite a scaredy cat, but is atheistic in a world where there's physical gods. So when he is confronted with one of them, he's a lot less respectful toward them, regardless of how scared he'd normally be. Because his 'atheism' cancels out the fear he'd might have of these physical gods. So look at your characters and figure out their basic views in life, and built their responses around it.
2. Pinpoint why you hate those stereotypical roles first, then avoid having that same problem show up in your own characters. Like, I hate romantic triangles. I figured this is because I find that when superficial, one character always seems the better option then the other. So if I were to enstablish one myself, I'll need to try to make both options equally good.

I know how you feel about your protagonist, I had the same with mine. Guy kept squirming out of any situation I put him in, but eventually, I figured what made him tick and I could devise situations that were a lot harder for him to avoid.

@Trenton_dawn. Things like favorite food and birthdays aren't much important to the reader, but they are important to the writer. Knowing that a character has a favorite drink allows the writer to know instantly what he'll order in a cafe. It's just a little consistency thing to keep track of.
Also, wouldn't you say that things that further the character, are part of the subplot that communicates the character's character arc?

[trenton_dawn]

@Trenton_dawn. Things like favorite food and birthdays aren't much important to the reader, but they are important to the writer. Knowing that a character has a favorite drink allows the writer to know instantly what he'll order in a cafe. It's just a little consistency thing to keep track of.
Also, wouldn't you say that things that further the character, are part of the subplot that communicates the character's character arc?

In my experience, when people say "plot" generally they're thinking of whatever their main story is. But in a sense character development is also plot, yes.

Yeah, I agree that knowing those things about your character can help you be consistent and understand them, but only if you actually plan to use those details, e.g. is your character ever going to celebrate their birthday? Or reference it? If so, make note of what it is. If not, why bother?