Taleweaver

I'm trying to choose a name for the main character of my series.

Cedric (though his real name is Cedrych)

Aidan

Caleb

Ethan

Hector

If you had to number these from 1 to 10 with 1 being the type of thing you most enjoy experiencing in fantasy stories, what would they be?

Romance

Action

Mystery

Humour

The main character growing/learning life lessons

Magic

Seeing imaginative things/places

Drama

Sad moments/angst

Other characters developing

...reading about main characters dealing with issues?

I've never given much thought to character arcs, but they're something that comes up over and over again. What exactly makes a bad one? I've got plenty of examples of GOOD characters, but I'm hoping someone can show me someone with a bad arc so I can at least figure out where I can go wrong.

And BQ: What IS a character arc? I'm thinking it's how a character changes, but I don't know what kind of change has to be (do external changes count? Emotional states, like happiness and sadness? Does it only count if facets of who they are as a person change?). For example, Character A is happy until her father is murdered by Character B. Character A learns how to fight and then overcomes obstacles to finally bring Character B to justice. Character A is happy again. That's really simplified, but assuming it stretches out over an entire book, does that count as a decent character arc?

I'm still surprised by how people give glowing reviews of the characters in Harry Potter. Everyone seems to go on about how real they are and how much they grow, but they don't really. Characters like Neville change over the series, but they don't get enough screen time to be shown developing in a realistic way. There also other characters like Remus Lupin and Tonks who get some serious praise, but again, I don't see it.

It's not like I dislike them or anything, but it's hard to figure out how much development /growth/struggle/realism good characters need when my own views feel so out of sync. It makes me wonder if my self-imposed standards are too high, or if maybe people mean something else when they talk about great characters.

So here's my question: what, from a writer's or informed reader's perspective, made you feel that the characters in Harry Potter worked so well? What made them so real to you, despite the fact that many of them don't show up for very long, or do very much (compared to characters in other books with smaller casts)?

People always say they want real characters, characters that grow, etc. I'm all for character growth, but how much development do you really want to see in the characters you read about? It's hard to judge with the way fans exaggerate everything in posts and book reviews. It's hard to quantify phrases like "absolutely mindblowing" and "so real I could touch them".

In my writing, I focus on having interesting characters and character dynamics. I remember how much people loved the characters in Harry Potter and this threw me off because, in my eyes, JK Rowling developed most of her characters in a sort of light-touch way. I didn't think they were THAT developed. Otherwise the books would have ballooned in size. But you'd think that the stories had followed them intimately and and divulged their inner journies in all of their entirety from the way readers talked about the books.

So how real exactly should characters be? How much time should a book devote to characters' inner journeys, emotional issues, personalities, etc. for those characters in a book's cast to be good?

And I'm talking about ALL of the characters here, not just the main character, who naturally gets a disproportionate amount of "screen time".

When you're starting a new scene, how do you usually pick what angle to come at it from? How to get the scene going in the right direction/with the right feel? What things do you consider?

The technical aspects of writing aside, has anyone else noticed a big difference between the kinds of stories you find on sites like fictionpress and the kinds of stories you see in books on the shelves? Why does this gap exist? Do you think it's because they're being weeded out?

Basically, there are some evil beings in my story who do terrible things in the background and have authority over "the night", i.e. everything supernatural that goes on behind people's backs. They're unofficially known as the "midnight royalty". I'm not sure whether to go with that or the "underworld royalty".

What do you think?

...would you still like them, or do you think you'd see them very differently?

I get the feeling that a lot of manga would get a lot of flak for not being deep or meaningful enough if they were novels. And they'd be considered strange. I can just imagine peoples' reaction to shounen and shoujo stories if they were published as written books.

1. Do you like magic?

2. If yes, do you prefer serious magic or lots of silly (but imaginative) magic like in Harry Potter?

3. Do you like weird creatures?

4. Do you like fights?

5. If the answer to 2 is yes, do you like fights where the main characters do superhuman things? (Not just casting spells, but superhuman feats -- speed, strength, jumping from roof to roof, cool "choreography" like you'd see in anime, etc)

6. Do you prefer quests or mysteries?

7. Do you prefer it when there is a little or a lot of romance in your fantasy?

8. Do you prefer third or first person?

9. What is your favourite fantasy genre? Uhh, sub-genre?

10. Finally, last question! What is your favourite fantasy book of all time?

:D

My current story gets going about three chapters in. Basically, the first chapter is where my main character meets up with the creepy lady who'll be employing him. I start half-way through some action, where he's in a graveyard running from a living stone angel with a sword. After he beats it (it was a test), the lady takes him to her shop/house. He meets the people who work for her and gets shown around. It's interesting by itself because the employees are weird and the shop-house is a bit like JK Rowling's Hogwarts or Dianna Wynne Jones' House of Many Ways (bigger on the inside than the outside), except that it likes to eat people who get lost. After this chapter, a customer arrives and he gets told to help her with her request, which is where the villains show up and the quest begins.

Chapter one and two should be about four thousand words each (about 30 book pages, together). Do you mind, or do you not care as long as the story is interesting?

Everyone says that character change is essential to a good story. I don't understand why. Isn't it okay if a story just shows you the various facets of a character's personality? If their behaviour is interesting enough in itself, shouldn't that be fine? I write stories with lots of magic/action and *some* of my main characters change for the better, but my main character is pretty likeable and stays roughly the same. He gets STRONGER and I slowly reveal what drives him, but his personality doesn't change as my story progresses (although his opinion of people changes sometimes). All this talk about change being vital is kind of worrying.

Do you think character change is essential? If yes, WHO should change in a story to make it a good story, and HOW MUCH?

When a story is unfolding, what kinds of things are you hoping to find? I apologize that this question is a bit vague, but I don't know how else to put it. People always reply with, "Good twists!" but I'd really like to narrow it down a bit more than that. Twists are events that reveal surpsing facts and radically change the direction of the story, but for the rest of the time, how do you want the story to advance? I'm assuming that you want the main character to face interesting problems so you can see how they get out of them, and you want your thirst for whatever emotion you're hoping to find (love, awe, joy/humour) to be sated through all the little incidents that occur. There also need to be answers to questions about things that have happened, as well as secrets and MORE questions raised that you to look forward to.

Is this everything that you need for plot development? Or is there anything else that I've missed out?

When a story is unfolding, what kinds of things are you hoping to find? I apologize that this question is a bit vague, but I don't know how else to put it. People always reply with, "Good twists!" but I'd really like to narrow it down a bit more than that. Twists are events that reveal surpsing facts and radically change the direction of the story, but for the rest of the time, how do you want the story to advance? I'm assuming that you want the main character to face interesting problems so you can see how they get out of them, and you want your thirst for whatever emotion you're hoping to find (love, awe, joy/humour) to be sated through all the little incidents that occur. There also need to be answers to questions about things that have happened, as well as secrets and MORE questions raised that you to look forward to.

Is this everything that you need for plot development? Or is there anything else that I've missed out?

At my university there's this girl who I always see walking around alone (in the canteen, in the town centre, etc). In the three years I've been there, I've never once seen her to speak to ANYBODY. It's weird because she's cute. A few months back I thought about going up to her and talking to her, but I didn't want to just stop her in town, so I put her out of my mind and went home. Yesterday, though, I was with some girl friends in the canteen when she came in and sat two tables behind us. I figured it was as good an opporunity as any, so I worked up the courage to go speak to her. I sat down on the opposite end of her table and basically said, "Hey, what's up? I see you around often but I've never seen you speak to anyone, bla bla."

She sort of stiffened up and looked uncomfortable. I'm not sure why, because I was careful to not be imposing -- I'm good at making friends and I know how to adjust my behaviour depending on the situation/a stranger's personality. She said something really quietly, I can't remember but it made me certain she wanted me to go away. I thought she might be worried that I was going to ask for her number or something, so I jokily said that she didn't need to worry, I wasn't hitting on her and I just wanted to say hi. She said, again really quietly, "I just want to eat my lunch." I took the hint and said that I'd see her around, and then I said my name and asked her hers. She told me, so I said bye and went back to eating/chatting with my friends.

I can kind of guess why she's always on her own now -- I doubt its because people haven't tried to talk to her. I'm pretty glad that nobody could hear our conversation, because otherwise having to go away so quickly would have been embarassing. But it just makes me want to get her to warm up to me more! What do you think I should do?