Convincing Characters

Characters are fickle creatures. They like to take you on long journeys, telling you they'll be great. Eventually, they simply flounce into oncoming traffic, though, and that's the end of it.

Finding the perfect character for the job is actually one of the most difficult things to do. It's all very well to plop a carefully shaped human being into a situation, but it's quite another thing trying to make them do what you want them to. The more like a real person you make a character, the more traits the idea takes on - if they're rebellious little so-and-sos, then you can expect them to rebel against what you want them to do.

Take, for the sake of argument, a grumpy goat. Goats are unusually stubborn at the best of times, and they eat all your clothes while they're at it. The only way to force a goat to go anywhere is to either drag it along by a rope, or pick it up and carry it to wherever it is you want it to be. This tends to be a bit of a problem, because if the place you want it to be is, say, insecure, the goat will simply gravitate back towards its original position. Such are characters: If they don't want to be somewhere, you can't force them to be there, otherwise they'll eat through the walls to get out. In short, you have to go with what the characters want.

Unfortunately, this tends to be a bit of a problem. If you put a stubborn character in a situation where what they choose is a turning point for the whole thing, then if they go for what you don't expect, then you may have a difficulty at hand.

I'm aware that I may be confusing some of you. Allow me to explain myself. When I say 'choosein relation to a character, I don't mean to say that the author actually allows the character in question to choose - more that an author should be able to locate the path of least resistance, or what a character's personality would want to do, and just go with it.

The great thing about a path of least resistance is: It has very little resistance attatched. That's why it's so called. In writing terms, it's simply easier to write the character into the story if they follow the path they want to. Events come to mind much easier, as do situations in which the person/thing may be put. That's why going with what the character wants is so important.

The alternative to all this is, when your character gets annoyingly stubborn and doesn't want to go where you wish them to go, you simply kill them. It's surprisingly good fun to kill off characters, and therapeutic too.

This post is winding down a bit now, so I'll round it off by saying: Characters, beware! If you don't bend to my will, then you'll die. Muhahahaha...