There are different schools of thought about characters. I won't painstakingly reference them all here, because the point I'm interested in making isn't some esoteric observation about writing styles. I will mention what I consider the two extremes.
Some writers will argue the characters exist to serve the story, and that is the only reason for their existence. To some extent it's easy to understand that view, because, really, the characters are the central exposure for the story. Even if the writing is highly descriptive of inanimate elements, the hook for the readers lies in the characters. You can't engage people effectively if they have no point of reference, and few readers are so enamoured of rocks that describing one for 400 pages will engage them. This school of thought means that characters then become a function of the plot, or an avenue to convey the theme and plot in play.
At the other extreme are the writers who believe the story serves the characters, and is in itself irrelevant beyond that. Again, it's easy to understand that view, because the importance of the contact point is paramount to keep the reader interested. But to keep a reader engaged is almost as difficult at this extreme if the writing is so internal to a character that the viewpoint becomes exclusive. Deep first person narratives have always suffered the risks of creating a story that becomes inscrutable, because of the viewpoint tangle that develops if the protagonist can't know something that the plot hinges upon. That isn't to say such a mechanism is fatal, because a great mystery can develop from this sort of focus, but it is a risk and can put a writer in a bind. How do you close a plot loop if the narrator simply can't ever know the necessary detail? Sure, you don't always have to...but the fact is readers tend to prefer closure, however artificial.
Now, stripping away all the extras, what I'm really observing above is that there is a spectrum writers traverse when it comes to balancing their stories and characters. Experience generally imparts that balance, and you develop traits that assist you in maintenance of that balance. Each writer has their own method, ultimately, because the nuances of style that exist are broad; but there are also some common aspects. A writer with experience will basically get a sense of when their personal style is best served by focusing away from or toward the core of the characters.
This leads me to an observation I made several years ago when eBooks were becoming more common. Many of those writers were young (or at least inexperienced), and for practical purposes they were the vanguard indie authors whose passion was evident in every word. I noticed early that the central problem with most of their writing wasn't that they lacked ideas, and certainly not an absence of talent, but rather a lack of balance. It came home hard when I was reading a short that I would have called brilliant, except for one shattering problem -- in the third act the writer ran into a wall. They had to step out of the narrative form they chose to deliver a key plot point. Now, they could have tried to sneak it in with a wink (those of us who write a lot occasionally do that, and logic be damned), but their inexperience led them to instead violate their style. And it was jarring enough that a really fine story suffered a deadly blow, breaking the illusion of continuance.
Part of that reading experience led me to examine my process, reading some of my original works from 30 years ago. It confirmed for me that inexperience was only part of the problem. A greater part of it is background process. What I mean by that is illustrated by an example that is fairly simple to track. Imagine a scene between two characters. One is your central protagonist, and you've established them for the last 100 pages in your story. The other is a critical character, emerging at this juncture, who is purposefully about to engage the protagonist in a way that turns the plot sideways. Experience in writing is what makes you aware that this new character must be as firmly established in your (the writer's) mind as is your protagonist, or they are essentially a human analogue for exposition. So, you, as a writer, tend to create a back story, or otherwise develop the character off-page. It is what makes a reader feel that this character exists independent of the story, and therefore critical if you want to maintain the illusion of an indepdent and cohesive reality internal to the story.
Experience alone, then, isn't in itself the issue. What it does is helps a writer understand how their style reacts to pokes and prods. You can essentially say it helps you write a circle around the necessary degree of unreality that exists in any fiction.What really tells is the background process that helps you craft the reality that includes this emerging character in a way so that, even if they are briskly described, the reader comes away with a sense there is something fundamentally real behind their presentation.
One of the key principles of what I have come to call the Writers' Universe project is that there are mechanics that underlay this sort of background process that can take an inexperienced writer and accelerate their experience, by reducing the time they spend managing off-page details. My memory palace functions as a repository for an array of very deep details about very minor characters, and I seldom mistake their details, not because I'm brilliant, but because I've trained my mind to hold onto those details. I believe that mechanical process trap can be taught, and modelled, and I truly believe that if a tool contained that mechanic the vast array of young writers out there with real talent would benefit from it.
What happens off-page doesn't stay off-page, but there is a right and wrong way to impart the depth of creation. Too many young authors recognize the enormous outlay of time spent on those unseen details and so overwrite to expose them, or lose track of them if they don't. A good tool captures not only that effort, but I believe it can curb the tendency to imbalance that comes from inexperience. No, it can never eliminate it; but it can alter the equation. And, no, it will never turn a bad writer into a good one -- but it will turn a good writer into a better one by redirecting the energy spent managing those details into creating the context that relies upon them.
I believe characters exist, even if their story is never told, but I also know that the stories we tell must operate in a consistent manner in context of their characters. To achieve that is to achieve balance, and balance comes with both experience and better process. Readers should get the sense that every person they meet in your story exists, maybe not in their world, but in the world represented in the story being told. That makes the fiction immersive, and the experience rewarding.
So, a large part of what I want to develop in the Writers' Universe is this supportive model for detail management to make characters easier to trace as they flow throughout the creation, freeing up the mechanics so that writers can write the tapestry they wish, rather than manage the threads that comprise it.
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