{"id":33609,"date":"2016-11-10T06:30:43","date_gmt":"2016-11-09T17:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=33609"},"modified":"2016-11-10T09:24:17","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T20:24:17","slug":"all-about-the-characters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2016\/11\/10\/all-about-the-characters\/","title":{"rendered":"All About the Characters"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"daughter-of-blood-by-helen-lowe\"<\/a>

USA<\/p><\/div>\n

Yesterday I talked about the SFF phenomenon where worlds become characters in their own right<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet New Zealand Maori, the indigenous first people of this country, have a whakatauki<\/em> or saying:<\/p>\n

\u201cHe aha te mea nui o te ao?
\nHe tangata! He tangata! He tangata!<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0What is the most important thing in the world?
\nIt is people! It is people! It is people!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"GoldenCompass\"<\/a>For me, this is very true of reading and writing fiction, although I would substitute \u201ccharacters\u201d for \u201cpeople\u201d, as not all great characters in Fantasy-SciFi are<\/em> people:\u00a0 e.g. the ent, Treebeard, in JRR Tolkien\u2019s The Lord of the Rings; <\/em>the dragon Morkeleb in Barbara Hambly\u2019s Dragonsbane;<\/em> or the daemon Pantalaimon in Philip Pullman\u2019s The Golden Compass.<\/em><\/p>\n

As a reader, the characters are almost always what makes the difference between my liking a book and loving<\/em> it. I enjoy interesting and quirky ideas and worlds that stretch my imagination, but if I don\u2019t care about the characters, then it\u2019s very hard to really care about the book.<\/p>\n

\"gameofthronesp\"<\/a>Whether I love them or hate them, I want to be engaged by the characters. I want to laugh and cry with them through the action of the book, to hold by breath when scary stuff is happening and breath a sigh of relief when the protagonist wins through\u2014or doesn\u2019t, as does happen sometimes, e.g. with Ned Stark in GRR Martin\u2019s A Game of Thrones<\/em> or Roger at the end of The Golden Compass. <\/em>(I apologize if these are spoilers for some blog readers, but hope these books have been around long enough that this is not the case.)<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m also a writer and creating character is an essential part of the process. I still want to be engaged by them\u2014after all, if I\u2019m the author and not engaged by my characters, then it\u2019s unlikely anyone else will be!\u2014but not necessarily to like them.<\/p>\n

\"gathering-of-the-lost-by-Helen-Lowe\"<\/a>

USA<\/p><\/div>\n

And sometimes, it\u2019s when someone tells me that they don\u2019t<\/em> like a character that I think: \u201cA-ha, my work here is done!\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes, too, it is the characters you have to work hardest on that are the most rewarding\u2014not because they are likeable necessarily, but because they are human<\/em>.\u00a0 Working to achieve that fine shading as the story unfolds is very rewarding for me as a writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I talked about the SFF phenomenon where worlds become characters in their own right. Yet New Zealand Maori, the indigenous first people of this country, have a whakatauki or saying: \u201cHe aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata! He tangata! He tangata! \u00a0What is the most important thing in the world? It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epicfantasy","category-funstuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33609"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33612,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33609\/revisions\/33612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}