Characterisation - just what do we mean...?

[Stewart Hotston]

Prompted by a couple of threads where the term characterisation has been used with (what I suspect) different background understandings of what that actually means I was wondering:

• what do people think of as good characterisation?
• does this make literature from different cultures (especially those whose mainstream culture is unaffected by modern anglo-saxon psychology) harder to access?
• what writers would you highlight as being excellent at character?
• what books do you think hit both characterisation and story perfectly
• what books do you think did one but not the other and how did that impact your enjoyment?

I'm not doing a school essay or anything so I'll stop there - it's just that as I've read viewpoints different to my own and different from others I wondered if we were sometimes talking past each other as to what we meant by characterisation and if that could even serve to create an echo chamber where we only like what we like.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I'm a huge character reader and writer (my reviews can be condensed to the characters rock, the sf can be dodgy.... )

Good characterisation is, for me, characters who are believable and take decisions that make sense based on who they are, who are deep and immersive, and who feel real. That last one is the biggy for me.

Does it make lit from different countries harder to access - I don't think it should per se, but if the culture is for writers not to show their characters (because people don't like to show themselves to others) that would affect the reading for me. But I read some sf last year (danged if I can remember who) by a Chinese female writer (iirc) which was great at making the traditionally reserved character come to life.

Excellent at character - for sf Lois McMaster Bujold has to be up there. Miles is frustratingly annoying but he is very, very real. But I often look to non sf for characters - De Bernieres in Captain Correlli's Mandolin is ace. Also, Isabelle Allende and Carlos Ruiz Zafon come to mind.

Good mix - Zafon again, I think is good. Abercrombie, too, although I don't read much of his I think he gets the balance well. Oh and Robert Galbraith - very well balanced. Excellent, actually.

Does one, not the other:

Great characterisation, daft story - A Long way from a small, angry planet - Becky Chambers. Too episodic for me.
Great story - Children of Time, Adrian Tchaikovsky. Didn't like a single human character or believe in any of them (although the spiders were awesome)

 

[HareBrain]

what do people think of as good characterisation?

Where the character is uniquely themself, and where every action or word or thought makes sense within the whole character, even if it seemed odd at the time. It helps if they're interesting too.

does this make literature from different cultures (especially those whose mainstream culture is unaffected by modern anglo-saxon psychology) harder to access?

Possibly, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. This is a pertinent question for SFF writers, as we're supposed to be in the business of writing cultures different from our own. As a reader, that's one of the things I look for (and, in fantasy, rarely find).

 

[The Big Peat]

Prompted by a couple of threads where the term characterisation has been used with (what I suspect) different background understandings of what that actually means I was wondering:

• what do people think of as good characterisation?

I think there's two different strands of it to me.

The first is verisimilitude. Do they feel like a fictional character, or do they feel like a real person? I think decision making is pretty key here, as how and why characters make decisions is often a source of reader ire.

The second is depth. Little quirks, distinctive speech patterns, hearing their thoughts about relatively unimportant things, preferred items... generally, the more we know about the character (as long as its presented entertainingly), the better.

There's a lot of overlap, but I think you can have deep and interesting characters who are clearly fictional as all hell and also very real characters with no particular depth.

I think you can divide good characterisation again in terms of talking about major characters and minor characters. They are two different skills and the latter is, imo, the more impressive. Any fool can create a deep and interesting character with 300 pages. Its when the character gets 3 pages that it gets difficult and I think a lot of authors rely on stereotype at that point.

I would argue that, as a rule, verisimilitude is more important to major characters - if you're with them all of the book, things are gonna get pretty difficult if they lack that lifelike feeling - and depth is more important to minor characters. A few cool details about a minor character will make them far more memorable than any amount of realistic decision making because they simply don't have enough of them to make.

• does this make literature from different cultures (especially those whose mainstream culture is unaffected by modern anglo-saxon psychology) harder to access?

Maybe? The reality is the language barrier makes noticing and accessing these works difficult enough for me that I don't really know. I read a few books translated from Spanish and Italian and don't find them hard to access, but I'm not sure how much that means. One of these days I'll get around to reading some translated wuxia and see how that goes. I find the few Japanese and Korean films I've watched awesome.

In general though... I think I don't need the characters to think like me as long as they clearly think as themselves, so generally I don't think there is a significant barrier.

I'd add that, if considered literature, anime/manga has become sufficiently big to suggest that literature from other cultures can totally take hold.

Also, I think we possibly underestimate the variety of culture in the Anglosphere. Example - if I've read one despairing comment on Robert Jordan's view on gender relations, I've read a hundred. The more time I spend in western PA, the more I think I understand them. That was his culture and its not the one of many of his readers.

I'm going to go away and think about the other three questions.

 

[Randy M.]

Prompted by a couple of threads where the term characterisation has been used with (what I suspect) different background understandings of what that actually means I was wondering:

• what do people think of as good characterisation?
• does this make literature from different cultures (especially those whose mainstream culture is unaffected by modern anglo-saxon psychology) harder to access?
• what writers would you highlight as being excellent at character?
• what books do you think hit both characterisation and story perfectly
• what books do you think did one but not the other and how did that impact your enjoyment?

I'm not doing a school essay or anything so I'll stop there - it's just that as I've read viewpoints different to my own and different from others I wondered if we were sometimes talking past each other as to what we meant by characterisation and if that could even serve to create an echo chamber where we only like what we like.

Probably echoing what others have said, they have to speak and think in ways that I find reasonable and appropriate to the situation they are in (and situation is not just the current events of the story, but the culture and society being portrayed, too). I found it no harder to believe in Chinua Achebe's characters in Things Fall Apart than I do characters in a short story by Walter de la Mare or a novel by Hemingway, though they are continents and cultures apart.

Good characterization: Dickens, Faulkner, Hemingway, Le Guin, Tolkein, Mervyn Peake, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Caitlin Kiernan, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Jonathan Carroll, etc.

Note that almost all of those writers show strengths and weaknesses with different characters. I'm convinced by most of King's lower class characters, but less so by his rich folks. Hemingway's characters are often somewhat bigger than life, but still convince me as plausible as people.

Less good: Niven/Pournelle, Agatha Christie. Not to say the characterization is bad so much as shallow given the premise of the work.

Horrid: Tom Clancy. His machines and weapons are more interesting than his characters, even his main character, Jack Ryan.


Randy M.

 

[The Big Peat]

A long time later...

John le Carre is my very favourite writer and observer of character. In particular, I think he's rather good at the moment when you (or the protagonist) looks at someone and realises they aren't X, they're Y and you don't like Y. He's strong at giving everyone their own voice, which matters a lot to me. Nothing makes characters feel fictional quicker than realising they all sound the same.

Of course, its a lot easier when you write omniscient and allow yourself ample paragraphs for introducing characters.

I think Lindsey Davis is a great example of how to do characters when you're working solely with first person (as she does for most of Falco) and a fair pace. Everyone seems to have a personality, everyone seems to make an impact on the narrator. She also works in a lot of nuance to the regulars and is fairly damn funny. Funny helps.

Fantasy wise I think Terry Pratchett is well up there and blends the two above rather well. Guy Gavriel Kay is rather spiffy. I'd agree with Jo that Abercrombie's characters are rather strong... but unfortunately that mostly makes them very punchable and ruins my enjoyment. And I very much admire Hobb, if not enjoying her work. I'd say strong characterisation is a must for me, but clearly its not enough, or I'd love Hobb.

On the other end of the spectrum, I'll happily read Clancy most days despite agreeing with Randy's assessment. David Eddings was the man who first introduced me to the idea of cliches, simply because I worked out it must exist after reading his characters. I still have a soft spot for him. Mind you, Eddings does have rather charming characters, even if 90% of them sound like smartass middle-class Americans and they all look like they just came from a production line.