As an amatuar writer, I want to ask, how important is character develop in fiction, or writing in general? It’s often lauded as being one of the most, if not THE most important element of a story, but is it really? I’ve read good stories with good character development, and good stories with next to none,and the same for bad stories I noticed that it’s sometimes brought up in regards to movies or books that I felt worked pretty well, but the critics felt a lack of character development is a significant flaw. As a book, I’ve seen **Lord of the Rings ** cited for this, though I never noticed it nor did it bother me. At least as far as some of the characters goes it’s untrue. Frodo is quite a different person when the comes back then when he leaves, Legalos and Gimili go from loathing of each other to a stout friendship. Though, to me, it was always more about the quest then the people on it, so to speak.
A movie I can think of hearing this was Black Hawk Down where some people complained that the characters weren’t developed enough. I found it interesting condition in the book, they do attempt to develop 15 or so characters thoughout the book and It didn’t matter much to me at all because I couldn’t keep them all straight anyway(All I remember is that one of the characters was reading a John Grishem book and had almost finished it prior to starting the mission. I wondered a little if he survived to finish the book). The movie probably would have been worse because of the limited screen time(it was already 3 hours) and the fact that most of the time you couldn’t tell who was who anyway(helmets, shaved headed and obscured nametags).
Or does it really just break down to what kind of things you read for? I was having a discussion with my mother about this tonight and we were discussing Dr. Zhivago. She mentioned that she could tell it had been written by a man(she didn’t use that in a negative way), which is something she also said about Cold Mountain as well. That men tend to view things as being event driven and women as character driven. I had to agree with her somewhat(at least if one compared Gone with the Wind(Female Author) to Cold Mountain(Male Author)). She said because Dr. Zhivago, the book, at least, is much more focused on the events of circa 1917-1920 Russia, as compared to the movie which has much more of a romance oriented angle(okay, the movie-book comparison doesn’t quite fit, but I can’t think of a similar setting book written by a female author).
Any thoughts? Is/Should character developement a rule or more of a suggestion, depending on genre/context/intention, etc?
how much John Steinbeck have you read? He is one of my favorite authors and his characters are intensively real.
LOTR does not have characters so well developed and perhaps that’s why I don’t care as much for them.
I’m reading Steven King right now, which I rarely do, but he’s another one with well developed characters.
When I write, that is one thing I strive for even more than plot.[http://www.teemings.com/issue11/formal.html](my Teemings story)
You write for yourself and you write for your audience. What you write and how you write comprise your personal style.
Joanna Russ once said something to the effect of “you can’t take a story apart like a watch.”
I’ve always understood that to mean that a good story is an organic whole. It is not about its character development, or about its plot, or about its style, or about its symbolism, or any of the other things that are taught in English classes, even if they can be abstracted after the fact. A good story works as an entire piece, each part of it necessary and complete.
It’s obviously true that genre fiction as a whole tends not to stress character as much as mimetic fiction, although the best writers know how to include character along with the other demands of the form.
But some mimetic fiction - the minimalism that was popular in the 1980s or the modernist and postmodernist fiction of the 1960s. e.g. - also leaned heavily on other devices for the sake of the story.
It depends. It all depends.
As you are an amateur writer, my advice would strongly be to work on your character development skills to the greatest degree possible. For one thing, you have to know the “rules” before you can successfully break them (unless you’re a genius, in which case all bets are off). For another, there will always be a large portion of your audience who will expect character development as a part of any good story. And most importantly, it is the extremely rare and specialized story indeed that good character development does not improve.