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Alright you scruffy-lookin' nerf herders (sorry if you're not a Star Wars fan). I saw the movie this weekend, like many other who contributed to the $200+ million that's been made, and I absolutely loved it. Jaw-dropping planetary landscapes, stunning music score, and some really sweet good guys, but I'm obviously not here to talk about that (It's not the proper setting).
What I will talk about is three things about characters that we as writers need to incorporate into our writing, a la Star Wars.
There may be spoilers, so don't read ahead if you don't want it.
I repeat, there more than likely may be some spoilers ahead, but read on at your own risk...
#1) Create good guys that you can see progress from start to finish (even if it's a multiple book series). Perfect example...our little girl Rey, who starts out as nothing but a lowly scavenger on a planet that's akin to our beloved Tatooine (not a va-kay destination). While she starts out as really a selfish, scared, little girl, she becomes the sweet lightsaber-wielding jedi woman that knocks evil Kylo Ren on his butt, and quite possibly slices off his luscious locks he has no doubt been nurturing his whole life. She progresses, and it isn't a long stretch. It isn't like those attributes and values weren't existent in her before, but through the conflicts that came about in the book, those qualities were able to peek out, and eventually redefine her as a character. Same goes for our characters...we don't want to completely pull a 180 degree stretch, but maybe a 120 degree turn. We need to make it so those qualities are somewhere buried within our character's souls, and use the events that we write to make those qualities redefine our character, either for better or worse. It would be a completely boring novel to have an altruistic do-gooder remain that way to the very last punctuation mark, because we like progress - it's human nature.
#2) Create bad guys who have weaknesses, and use those to define their toughest moments. Perfect example - Kylo Ren. He is the epitome in my opinion of the perfect evil guy. Someone who fights against their light, someone who is human. I don't want to see a story that involves some evil bad guy who was just born from the womb as a mother-killing evil creature who never wants thought about some good thing he/she could do. It makes our antagonist so much more relatable if there is a subtle backstory, even a hesitant move during a conflict to make us think twice about our hatred for that character. I love questioning if I really think a character is truly good or truly bad, and Kylo Ren shows us the internal struggle he's having in defining himself as the ultimate bad guy...which leads me to the final character point.
#3) Don't be afraid to kill off your most beloved characters, even if they are a stunningly charming and handsome scoundrel. One of the arguably most tense moments (even more tense than blowing up the big planet-killing planetary base) is the moment that our antagonist activates that one switch point that redefines him as a bad guy. Our dear sweet Harrison Ford (AKA Han Solo) attempts to sway his son (BIG SPOILER), Kylo Ren back to the light, and the intensity is felt as that lightsaber is held on by both father and son, only to end in Han Solo's untimely (but desired from a literary standpoint) stabbing death. You feel as though a piece of your soul has been wrenched from you and thrown down to the bottom of the space station pit along with Han, or Mr Solo. That only makes me crave the ultimate destruction of my bad guy that much more, it solidifies in my head that even though there is some light in that bad guy, he is just too bad, and must die in the end. The worst thing would be to have a reader come to the end of a book where the antagonist has been dealt with, only to wish it had gone the opposite way, and that the good guy would have died. Emotions invest us, and as writers, we need to portray that with our characters, even in death.
So there you go...as a means of doing firsthand research, if you haven't seen the movie, I would highly recommend you go see it in the name of literary research while you chow down on bottomless popcorn and make a slob of yourself in the dark. They have a perfect formula for their characters, and I think even if your novel has a weak plot, if your characterization is strong enough, it can tip the scales to make it a great novel.
So go watch a movie this week!
-C
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