There is no novel without character. You can have all of the other ingredients, plot, thematic content, pace, action, style, psychology, tension and poetry, but if your characters aren’t credible and if they don’t live with each other then you don’t have a novel.
Characters are what hold the different parts of your narrative together and they are the main ingredient for holding the attention of your reader. The reader may or may not be interested in plot, but either way the emotional link between the reader and the theme of your novel will be the characters. Consequently, it is character which is the main motivator of tension. And tension is what ensures that your reader keeps coming back for more.
When thinking about writing skills, the creation and presentation of character is of the utmost importance. Effective characters ensure some form of reader identification and tension. Ineffective characters lead to a lack of reader identification and no tension. And this amounts to a lot of words, perhaps to some kind of ‘prose poem’ but it doesn’t amount to a novel.
This being the case I intend to concentrate on characterization for the next few entries in this series. For now I shall content myself with remembering one piece of advice I was given as an apprentice writer many many years ago. Whenever you are faced with a choice between characterization and one of the other ingredients of a novel, always choose characterization. Characterization or pace. Choose characterization. Characterization or plot. Choose characterization. Characterization or action. Choose characterization.
Always choose characterization. Why? Because you can return to the text later and increase or decrease the pace, you can return later and tinker with plot or add pages of action. Most elements of the novel will allow you to come back and alter them, sometimes profoundly. But it is almost impossible to return and revive a character who was still-born.
Table of contents for Learning To Write
- Learning to Write I
- Learning to Write II
- Learning to Write III
- Learning to Write IV
- Learning to Write V
- Learning to Write VI
- Learning to Write VII
- Learning to Write VIII
- Learning to Write IX
- Learning to Write X
- Learning to Write XI
- Learning to Write XII
- Learning to Write XIII
- Learning to Write XIV
- Learning to Write XV
- Learning to Write XVI
- Learning to Write XVII
- Learning to Write XVIII
- Learning to Write XIX
- Learning to Write XX
- Learning to Write XXI
- Learning to Write XXII
- Learning to Write XXIII
- Learning to Write XXIV
- Learning to Write XXV
- Learning to Write XXVI
- Learning to Write XXVII
- Learning to Write XXVIII
- Learning to Write XXIX
- Learning to Write XXX
- Learning to Write XXXI
- Fictional Character
- How Many Plots Are There?
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Jan 7th, 2007 at 7:04 am
Though I’ve not read Lessing in years, this review of her latest - and apparently characterless - novel The Cleft reminds me that we need to take all dogmas, including the writerly ones, with that proverbial pinch. Here’s the link:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/generalfiction/0,,1984239,00.html
jb says: I also have not read Lessing in years - perhaps not since The Golden Notebook. But if anyone was going to write a novel without characters or plot I would not be at all surprised if it was her - she is nothing if not courageous.
While taking your point about dogmas, including the writerly ones, I wonder if a fairer review of The Cleft isn’t represented in Jane Cornwell’s interview of Lessing in The Australian:
There is more in the interview worth reading. Not only about this book but about Lessing and her life and ideas.
Jan 7th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Now I am genuinely curious about The Cleft, though to be honest, it’s quite far down on my list of reading priorities.
jb says: I can hear what you’re saying.
Jan 8th, 2007 at 1:58 am
I do a lot of serious reading for school and such, but for fun I like the Sookie Stackhouse, Dead Until Dark books by Charlyne Harris. Sookie is for me such a strong character and the last book she seemed like a limp fish compared to the earlier books. I still liked it but in the next book I hope Sookie’s characterzation is back.
So I totally get what your saying, even in fun books
jb says: Hi Susangalique. Thanks for dropping by. Hey, I read your interview.