{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/essays/actions-are-louder",
  "description": "|",
  "path": "/posts/essays/actions-are-louder",
  "publishedAt": "2022-07-10T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "; foreword\n\n: This is an old essay; not all the assertions herein are ones I'd\nagree with today, though it was instructive to its recipient.  I have\na new essay, [](miming-chars.html), which touches on the subject of\nwriting characters, and I have two more recent blogposts (check\n</posts>) that aimed to build up more useful conceptual tools, but\nthey stalled out in a half-finished state.\n\n  Perhaps one day I'll written a better essay, but till then, this one\n  isn't too bad.\n\nOn my discord, this series of questions\nwas asked:\n\n> how do you guys write interesting characters, or rather - how do you\n> make a character interesting\n \n-[click to []{.prompt} full question]\n: ::: blockquote\n  l've spent my youth in, mostly, fanfiction, or using emergent\n  characters that l came up with on their own, and l loved to pit\n  them against each other and watch their clashing personalities\n  just produce of chemical reaction, for me it was always \"put these\n  two in a setting, transcribe the results\", subconscious did all\n  the work for me to generate pages of dialogue and interaction\n\n  but this one book l'm working on, it emerged as a story, then to\n  move the story it required characters, and... they never got\n  developed enough to became their own people, they are rudimentary\n  waypoints or symbols of their utility, they kinda can be pictured\n  enough to be set near each other on a cover and display some\n  personality, but... l have no idea who they are beyond that, they\n  don't interact when l put them in the scene, they fumble for words\n  because they don't know what they want, and when l make them want\n  things, they do it in most boring and unimaginative way bad actors\n  would improvise\n\n  and l realize l never had to develop a character, l always used\n  something that l already had a good grip on\n\n  how do people make interesting characters? what process do they go\n  through to come up with distinct traits that make them move in\n  directions their role requires from them? how can l use the story\n  itself so that their personalities would be more entwined with the\n  story themes and events?\n:::\n\nI started typing up a quick answer and --- whoops, here's another\nessay. Where to start? How about something pointed:\n\nThere are no characters, only actions.  The illusion of 'character',\nthen, arises from an urge to correlate actions to some underlying\nreality beyond the page.\n\nIf you have a problem with your characters, then, my answer is to\nimprove the actions, not the implied reality. I personally do little\nwork on characters outside of writing them (or imagining them) in\ncontext, and I think it's unnecessary to do more than that. It feels a\nbit like recording one's practice for a live concert, noticing an\nerror and fiddling with the practice recording when it's most\nimportant to fix the playing.\n\nAnalogies aside, then, this framing tells us one thing: for a\ncharacter to be interesting, it must either be a series of interesting\nactions, or an interesting series of action.  Of course, the ideal is\nboth.\n\nI think most people have a fine sense of when an action is interesting\n--- it's the things that makes you go \"'oh man that's cool\" or \"ha,\nnice\" or just \"damn.\"\n\nBut to add on to this sense, to compliment it, it's important to\ndistinguish a truly dramatic action from what is merely behavior.\nTo say that a character takes an action, ultimately, is to say that\nanother character wouldn't take that action.  Breathing is not an\naction, and flinching from pain is not really an action --- but not\nflinching from pain?  That says something, reveals something.  It is\n--- forgive me --- characteristic.\n\nWhen a character engages in rote behavior, it may be helpful to stop\nand ask if they could instead act characteristically.  It's useful to,\nrather than ask \"what would this character do?\", instead ask \"what\naction reveals the most character?\"  If a character's actions are\nwindows into an imagined underlying reality, then the interesting\naction is the window with a clear view, a new angle, a dramatic vista.\nPaint the window, even, if you have to.\n\nWhile an interesting actions are rather easy to pin down, by contrast\nan interesting series has more variables; it can't quite be held in\nyour mind all at once.  But I think the tools to navigate it are just\nthose I introduced in [](ur-development.html); after all, a character\n(which is to say, their actions) is just a subset of a story.\n\nFor a series of actions to be interesting, then, means they reflect a\nfruitful juxtaposition --- a defining contrast, a defining logic.\n\nTo tie this back to your struggles, then, what you're looking for is\nnot a list of \"traits\", but proper sentences: a character should have\na dynamic, such that it's unnatural to describe them without 'but's or\n'so's. \"He's a knight, but he has no sense of morals.\" \"She wants to\nsave the world, so she'll turn away no one willing to help.\"\n\nIf I had to dissect the anatomy of character... well, there'd be no\ntemplate, each one is unique --- perhaps for this, one, a metaphorical\nappendage is atrophied, while in this one, there is a gland which\nknows no analogue in the conventional. By all known laws, this\nshouldn't be able to fly, but---\n\nStill, to put forth a practical bauplan, the way I'd cut it first\nwould probably be past, present and future. Or to give more useful\nlabels to those: history, context and direction.^This is, I'll admit,\nnot quite a fully [original\nframing,\nthough mine has mutated some.]\n\n- History is the backstory, whatever secrets and traumas or\n  inspiring moments lead us to this particular character.\n- Context is the present moment, the relation to wider worlds,\n  both for setting --- do they live in a city or a wasteland? Rich or\n  poor? --- and more importantly, their relation to other characters,\n  whom they love or hate, whom they're indebted to or master over.\n- Finally, direction is where the character is going. This is both\n  their explicit goals (as after all, every character should want\n  something, even if it's a glass of water), but this is also any\n  unforeseen unfoldings. (Are they on a path of self-destruction? Are\n  they running out of goodwill from those around them? None of this\n  will be a goal, but it's nascent in their history and context.)\n\nAny of these can be interesting. You can start with an archetype ---\nfrom the sound of it, your characters are already plenty archetypal\n--- and then put a twist on some facet. Do they come from an\nunexpected background given their status? An easy way to give is there\nbeing more to learn about character --- so do they have a secret? What\nis their relationship to the other characters --- do they have someone\nto bounce off of, someone they contrast against? They doubtless have a\ngoal, but no one is singularly driven; what other goals do they have,\nand do any of them conflict or compromise their central goal?\n\nThis lens is useful at the broadest level, but it feels a bit like\ndefining a vertebrate by reference to the head,\nthorax and abdomen. Integral,\nsure, but there's no reference to legs or internal organs, let alone\nwhether it has a menacing set of teeth, a wild color pattern or wicked\nhorns.\n\nWhat might I append to this model? For one, an axis that ranges from\nphysical to psychological and social. Each of these qualifiers adds\nnuance to the three aspect, but the fit is a bit looser.\n\nThe physical history may include injuries and disabilities, but also\nunchanging facts of birth, appearance and aptitudes. Physical context\nwould obviously entail health and fitness, but I'd also toss in how\nthey dress and groom themselves. And for physical direction, this\nmight be the most anemic, but important character arcs --- coming of\nage, growing old, dying --- fit well here.\n\nPsychological history is naturally those vaunted traumas and habits\nand instilled beliefs. In psychological context, I'd put what's common\nthought of as a character's inner life: their emotions and opinions.\nFinally, psychological direction becomes the most iconic form of\ncharacter development, the eventual evolution of their feelings and\noutlook.\n\nI suspect you get it, at least enough to be unsurprised by how the\npattern completes; social history is past associates, prejudices and\nreputations, family and pedigree, while social context is your friends\nand status, and social direction is career ambitions, life scripts,\nand so forth.\n\nNow that's a lot of different categories to work out, but it's a\nmistake to see these as blanks to paint within in order to get a\ncomplete character. If you did that for every character, then given\nthe amount of pipe needed to convey all of these facts to the reader,\nthe result would either be clutter or unseen, wasted work.\n\nAnd this not even a complete picture; what I've described so far might\nbe a the theory of a character, and the practice is different still:\nit's the actual actions they take, as informed by that 'theory'. And\nthose actions can themselves be split up: trivial actions like nervous\ntics or speech patterns, simple actions they take within a scene, and\nthe bigger, abstract actions composed of those simple actions in\ntotal.\n\nAnd actions themselves come in different types: there is what a\ncharacter says, versus what a character does to the world, and what a\ncharacter does to other characters. (And those themselves have inner\ndifferentiates: how does a character talk to this one versus that one?\nWhat do they do this part of the world versus that one?)\n\nThis last point is a more general one: there is no character, only\ncharacters. Each one, given enough screentime, contains multitudes.\nThis isn't just mere banality of arcs --- of course a character can be\ndifferent at the end than at the beginning --- but distinctions and\nexceptions within their own behavior. A character is not the same one\nwhen angry, or in their element, stripped of their connections or\nright at home. It's all so much.\n\nSo instead, I present all these classifications as colors, to",
  "title": "Actions are Louder"
}