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 Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2007 11:50 am
Q1.) How complex...
A.) do you like your characters to be?
B.) do you like your plots/storylines to be?
Q2.) Do you prefer...
A.) simple characters with an easily understood background?
B.) complex characters with complex backgrounds that sometimes take you a while to get to grips with?
C.) simple plotlines that are easy to follow?
D.) complex plotlines that seem confusing until you follow the story through?
E.) complex plotlines that twist and turn in different directions, that are linked to one another in one way or another, forming a web of information?
For Question 1a, I say VERY complex.
For Question 2b, I say again, VERY complex.
Why? Because simple ends up being boring and 9 times out of 10 and the likelihood of stereotypes conforming to their usual typical selves is much greater.
For Question 2, I answer: B, D and E.
Why? Same reason again. Simple is boring. I lose interest very easily this way. Complex plotlines keep me on the edge of my seat, making me want to read more and more and more.
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Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2007 8:42 pm
I believe I am firstified.
I think complexity is a good thing. Simple stories are for simple people. I shouldn't know how a story is going to end when I begin it. As far as characters go I enjoy people I can relate to. I am by no means simple and thus would not be able to relate to a simple charicter.
I will use my own charicter as an example of how even complexity need not mean difficult to understand.
His name is Skinner Magnus. Like all of my characters from the series he's an assassin. Rather simple right? Now consider the fact that he kills people to prove that he's better than his father that kills people who actually removed the skin from Skinners face as a teenage boy. It is for this reason that he skins his victims. Now consider the regret he feels that his little brother by a few hundred years fell to the same fate. He feels that he should have killed his father when he had the chance. Now consider that he is one of five founding member of The Brotherhood a faction formed after the Assassination of Cesar. Now consider the fact that he's still alive in the year 4120 and nobody knows how. Now add in his hatred of killing, but the necessity to do so the beat his father and to kill personal demons so to speak. Then add in VooDoo superpowers, and a longing for company that he can't find in a crowded room. That is Skinner in a nutshell. Not too simple for a charicter, yet if you look over it, it all has a reason and all seems logical.
Complexity need not lend itself to misunderstanding or difficulty of comprehension. Assuming of course that I converse with people of at least average intelligence which I believe I do. I thank you for your time and we resume your scheduled broadcast.
That's where it takes a good writer. To make keep you guessing without making you feel to stupid. To make you feel for a character, and to see his depth without drowning you in minute details.
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Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 7:43 am
Give me complex any day, but everything in moderation... (can you tell I'm a Libra? *g*) Some characters are and should be simple; plotlines as well. But life is in the details. A simple character can become complex, and any situation, like a new car, changes in value as soon as you drive it off the lot. smile Sort of like the character of Sam Gamgee in LOTR; he seems very straight-forward, very simple, clear motivations and all--but as the story goes along he grows, matures, changes, and his motivations change as well. The plot conforms around his changes, and those of many other characters as well--which is a wonderful thing!
On the second question, give me some of all of it. Parts of plots will by their nature be deceptively simple; other parts must be complex. One of my hardest jobs as a writer is not over-using the "Omniscient Observer" viewpoint; I've just finished a story where a father and son are speaking of important events, yet the majority POV is the father's--and in too many places I have gotten into both characters' heads, sometimes in the same paragraph. It's not easy to only show things from a single POV, that's for sure! So it's important not to get too complex in the wrong places.
But I really prefer reading (and writing) things where it may not be immediately clear what's up with a character or a situation. Severus Snape in Rowling's Potter books is a perfect example. Things happen in and around him, and he acts in certain ways, because of motivations she only hints at; sometimes we find out quickly (Quirrell's confession that he was the one spelling Harry's broom, and that Snape was actually trying to stop him) and other times we learned nothing until the admissions at the end in the last book. She did that particularly well, though most people with a clue were betting he was not totally evil.
So yes... complexity wins for me every time, but I will read and enjoy simpler characters and plots *within* the complexity, and will write that way myself.
--Jasta
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Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 1:27 pm
I think simple characters need to be minor characters unless they are going to grow and BECOME complex during the story. Otherwise, characters with long, detailed backgrounds are the more interesting ones. Simple characters seem to not have much of a purpose. If the main characters are passing by, then we're only going to see one or two of them only once, and maybe one or two again another time - but they never become integral to the plot.
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Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 3:04 pm
Well... most of the time they don't become integral, true. But sometimes we get surprised by a character insisting on remaining on stage, or returning later. But yes, by and large characters should be more complex if they're going to be around.
It's interesting to look at fanfics and see how many of them STAR characters that are otherwise very minor in the original work. I think it makes for a fascinating writing exercise, good for practice, to write stories about people who otherwise have smallish parts--filling in the blanks, as it were. For instance, in FF:AC Reno the Turk pilot has a relatively small role, and generally is used for combat, convenience, and humour. However... there are a LOT of fanfics about him. attempting to fill in his back-story, because he's just caught people's admiration and interest. So, I agree with you--but I am seldom surprised when the "little guys" suddenly start making noise. *g*
All of my "simpler minor" characters have a back-story already because I designed them that way; I like to know why they are where they are, doing what they're doing, when the heroes appear. smile Maybe I'm a tad obsessive in that. *g*
Jasta
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Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 12:48 pm
However, with Reno I've always got the impression that there's a LOT more to him than the game and Advent Children let on. I think we're meant to know there's more depth to him despite having a smaller role than some of the others. Rude is the same I think.
There are characters even with smaller roles that you can just tell have more depth to them than they let on.
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Posted: Sat Oct 06, 2007 12:28 pm
I prefer complex characters. I want something to grip me from the start otherwise it gets chucked intoa box never to see daylight again.
In stories it's better to be out there than boring. People want to see drama and actually be sat there all night trying to finish the book to find out what happens.
I admit I have made a character and she is kind of complex...(still working on her!) but it's not what you see on the outisde, it's what's on the inside and what you can't see that makes a character.
Just like yo usaid Reno..I would love to know more bout him I mean he just interests me so much that I want to know more. I believe he is very complex and what happened in his life.
So may things go through your minds to make them so different from the norm that sometimes you do end up doing the norm, but with something like a dark past, you can turn it into so many things and build up from that and make it something amazing.
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Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 9:32 am
*nods* Absolutely.
Reno and Rude are very interesting. Them and the (so-called) Clones, who actually act more like aspects of Sephy than true clones... Yazoo comes across like the Anger Incarnation, Loz like the Brute Strength, and Kadaj is the Intelligence and Need Aspect... cool stuff.
And talk about conflicted "good guys"--Vincent! Sheesh...
The neat thing is that for the most part they are complex, not flat and one-dimensional. Kadaj, Reno, Vincent... to a slightly lesser degree Rude, Yazoo, and Loz... someone did a lot of homework and fleshing-out that we don't see, and I hope we get a chance to as time goes by. smile
I have a much harder time writing overly simple characters. If the tavern keeper is grumpy, I need to know why... even if the pirate is leaning on the bar leering at wenches, I have to know WHY he's drinking too much and treating women as chattel. smile Overly simple=boring for me, whether to read or write.
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Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 10:52 am
What about characters that are generally happy?
My pirate, for example, has one heck of a horrific past and yet he's grown up to be a decent young man who's for the most part, cheerful, oves getting into trouble and being flamboyant.
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Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 7:57 pm
I have nothing against happy characters. smile
But you do realize, right... a happy guy who has been through heck and comes out decent and happy... is a complex character. *grins* And it's kind of a neat, subtle twist on the usual dark, conflicted hero who has had a rotten life...
Pretty neat, actually.
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Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 9:50 am
That's a good analogy Jasta. smile
What do you think when you see such characters though?
*Urge to talk rising still.*
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Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 12:30 pm
DM_Melkhar Q1.) How complex...
A.) do you like your characters to be?
B.) do you like your plots/storylines to be?
Q2.) Do you prefer...
A.) simple characters with an easily understood background?
B.) complex characters with complex backgrounds that sometimes take you a while to get to grips with?
C.) simple plotlines that are easy to follow?
D.) complex plotlines that seem confusing until you follow the story through?
E.) complex plotlines that twist and turn in different directions, that are linked to one another in one way or another, forming a web of information?
For Question 1a, I say VERY complex.
For Question 2b, I say again, VERY complex.
Why? Because simple ends up being boring and 9 times out of 10 and the likelihood of stereotypes conforming to their usual typical selves is much greater.
For Question 2, I answer: B, D and E.
Why? Same reason again. Simple is boring. I lose interest very easily this way. Complex plotlines keep me on the edge of my seat, making me want to read more and more and more.
I've been told that my world is quite complex, but I knew that already.
However, I think if it's too simple then it ends up boring. Think of how complex this world is for goodness sake. If a world is going to be realistic then it's got to have numerous complexities, but not all of them have to be present in the same story.
Let's get this one up and running again because I personally need to get cracking on what I'm doing with my writing because I've just started this professional writing course of which a published author is my tutor. When I said I wanted to work on my own material, he asked me for plotlines of the first trilogy, character profiles of the main characters and a chapter by chapter list! I know what happens at the beginning and at the end, but big parts of the middle are a jumbled up mess. confused
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Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 10:53 am
Having a world that is complex is a good thing. Presenting too many of those things in a single story can make the story too cluttered, though. I tend to focus on one major theme of the world at a time for any given story and have two or three sub-themes thrown in for good measure. How those themes are manifested in the characters and events tends to vary quite a bit.
Berz.
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Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 2:50 pm
This first plotline of mine is quite a complex one though.
If you think of it like a spider's web (funny how I use the term and I can't bear the touch of the damn things - as mentioned in the phobias thread in The Village), then the pattern will make some kind of sense.
You have a central point which is essentially where everyone ends up or what the main theme of the story is. Then, you've got various strands extending from the middle that are attached to the framework of something like a piece of trellis or branches of bushes or trees. After that, you've then got the cross-pieces that link all those strands up with one another.
So, in one way or another, everything that happens in this plotline links up with something on the other side of the web somewhere along the line.
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Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 3:18 pm
Yeah, that's actually a pretty basic tenant of writing fiction; the thought web.
The plotline can be as complex as you want (with, of course, allowances for what a publisher will be willing to deal with for length...). As long as the themes aren't. Basically, if you end up with more than one center point, you've got a problem.
Berz.
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