The 3-dimension thing

[nnozomi]

Some rambling about writing to distract from RL worries.
Thinking a lot about antagonists and how they’re introduced, and also the flip side of, I don’t mean protagonists exactly, “good” characters? When I was reading Freya Marske’s A Marvellous Light a little while ago I was disappointed by it on these grounds: I felt like all the characters were very clearly presented as “good, you should like this person” or “bad, you should dislike this person,” making them flat and uninteresting to read about, especially the bad ones. To be fair, I’ve only read book 1 of a trilogy, but I did not get the impression that she was setting up for more character development later on. I wonder if she did it deliberately that way, or just was not interested in focusing on this particular kind of character work? I feel bad about criticizing Marske’s book this way, but she’s obviously a very talented writer and—okay, speaking to my personal interests alone—I wish she had put her talent to work less for her sex scenes and more for her characterization.
I mean… to take three examples of media that I think do this right.

Waters of Time>

I was talking about Erica H. Smith’s Waters of Time series in my last post; the author has a (spoilery) post on her antagonists which makes it clear how few are of them are simple un-fleshed-out baddies, and how many of the others change over time from villain to comrade or from villain to terrible-person-who-is-also-complicated-and-relatable. She notes that “writing antagonists can be fun, but it’s more fun when they are complicated people and have at least a partial redemptive arc, or when they appear to be one thing and turn out to be another, or keep changing roles,” and I think this applies to reading (or watching) antagonists too.

Guardian

Guardian has an assortment of villains-of-the-week, but nearly all the “villains” who get notable amounts of time on screen are more complicated than they appear (Sang Zan in a way, Zheng Yi, Ye Huo, An Bai and friends, Ya Qing, Sha Ya, Zhao Xinci in a sense, not to speak of Ye Zun (and as for the evil administrators, Gao Jingfeng is clearly in over his head and failing to cope, while the Regent is skillfully never quite evil enough to be absolutely on the bad side)). Most of the straight-up “bad person because the narrative says so, the end” characters (Zheng Zhongyuan, the Rebel Chief, the fight-promoter guy) have very little screentime, so we’re not bored by them. (I could go on at length about this issue in cdramas in general…see also Chen Moqun and Wang Shi'an...).

Marlows

Antonia Forest kind of specializes in flawed characters who may be on the “bad” side of the narrative to various degrees, but who also come with complex internal lives and motivations—Lois Sanger, Marie Dobson, Lieutenant Foley, Ginty, Patrick, Jukie, Tim, Edwin. Which makes them stay with you (in contrast, I remember the name of exactly one of Marske’s “bad” characters, and very little else about him, because what is there?), and makes the narrative itself more complicated, and thus makes the “good” characters more complicated too. We feel growing sympathy and even admiration for Foley, blended with a growing awareness of his amorality and ruthlessness and just generally being a horrible human being, which makes it clear why he becomes an untouchable but ever-present part of Peter’s mind later on; the virtuoso scene describing Lower IVA’s reactions to Marie’s death comes off in part because Marie is unlikeable but also someone hard to feel good about disliking as it becomes clearer and clearer how hapless she is, particularly posthumously. Edwin Dodd is an antagonist who’s also someone placed in an impossible position and struggling on his own terms.

In part instinctively, I’ve been trying to do this in my own original thing. (There is one unambiguous antagonist who is just a straight-up bad guy, but he’s off-page.) I’m still struggling with the other two major ones; by trying to make my antagonists ambiguous and—not relatable exactly—imaginable as fellow human beings?, I feel like they keep slithering away from me qua antagonists, which makes it hard to hang on to the conflict., But just setting them up as the evil X or the would-be evil Y isn’t very helpful; one is very determined but also very alone and trying to work out whether she was right to cut off most of her private feelings (aagh, very little of this comes out on the page, not sure how to work it in) and the other is driven by selfish and self-centered motives but also believes he’s doing the right thing. (Plus one other newish potential antagonist whom I have modeled gleefully on a favorite cdrama character not to be revealed, who is deliberately ambiguous; I’m gonna keep him that way, it’s more fun.
In terms of the other side of the equation, I am so damn fond of my main characters at this point, I’m afraid of doing that thing where the author loves the characters but hasn’t put in the work to make the readers love them too. In a way I’m better off having my three distinct protagonists, since they can have a range of flaws and good points which compensate one for the next? I feel like “putting in the work” is the keyword here on all counts—taking the time and effort to make the three-dimensional framework where all the characters’ motivations seem like “yeah, that’s what they would do in this context” as opposed to “Because The Author Said So.” Sorry, I feel like I’m just restating extremely obvious tenets of writing fiction, but--? Any thoughts, advice, good or bad examples welcome.

Be safe and well.

Comments

[passingbuzzards]

These are such interesting thoughts, and now that you’ve made me think about it I’m having a hard time coming up with any particularly complex antagonists in the media that I like! In some cases this is because the core conflict of the story isn’t really an individual, but also I think I’m just an easy sell when it comes to character motivation; if the narrative sets someone up in a particular way I’m usually pretty ready to take it on faith. (I’m also the kind of person who will almost never notice a plot hole unless it’s pointed out to me, so I think my suspension of disbelief just tends to be very total, especially with TV and movies.)

Though now that I’ve written this it does occur to me that Andor is really excellent about complex villains, and indeed the fact that all the major characters on that show feel three-dimensional and human is a big part of the appeal! But I think it’s not a prerequisite for me that a villain have genuine depth. (And this is terribly cynical and facetious, but I can’t help but think that there’s so much full-on cartoon evil on display just opening the political news on any given day that “this big bad is evil for no meaningful reason” doesn’t even feel like a stretch, heh.)

taking the time and effort to make the three-dimensional framework where all the characters’ motivations seem like “yeah, that’s what they would do in this context” as opposed to “Because The Author Said So.”

Possibly a bit moot given my characterization-duplicity(!) but I feel like the only time the question “why did this character do this” truly comes up in the reader’s mind is when the character is doing something that’s fundamentally not the logical/rational action in the situation, no? If they do something that’s blatantly irrational or detrimental to themselves / the situation / whatever, we definitely need background for what drove them to do that, but otherwise it’s not something the reader would feel the need to question, imo, since logical progression means we’re already on the same page. Idk; I think character motivations making sense tends to flow pretty naturally from witnessing those characters’ feelings about things as we go along, but that does mean it’s important for those feelings to be rendered at least semi-explicitly!

[nnozomi]

I’m also the kind of person who will almost never notice a plot hole unless it’s pointed out to me, so I think my suspension of disbelief just tends to be very total
Oh, me too! I believe what I'm told by the plot (unless I'm in nitpicking mode, but that rarely happens the first time through with anything).

I can’t help but think that there’s so much full-on cartoon evil on display just opening the political news on any given day that “this big bad is evil for no meaningful reason” doesn’t even feel like a stretch, heh.
Too true and very depressing...

when the character is doing something that’s fundamentally not the logical/rational action in the situation, no? If they do something that’s blatantly irrational or detrimental to themselves / the situation / whatever, we definitely need background for what drove them to do that
I don't disagree, but one thing I think makes characterization interesting is that the logical/rational action isn't always the same thing--I mean, for instance, you've been writing Vorkosigan fic (which I haven't yet had time to read properly...) recently, right? I feel like in any given situation, if you asked, say, Simon Illyan, Mark Vorkosigan, and By Vorrutyer what the logical action was, you'd get three different answers, and all of them would be correct for that given character--so the action has to be not necessarily objectively rational but rational according to, as you say, how we've witnessed the character acting/feeling so far. Which is the fun part, and also the hard part!

[passingbuzzards]

Oh yeah, definitely! This just had me thinking about it sort of sideways, hah, in that I feel like the reader isn’t generally approaching character actions with vast analytical skepticism to begin with, so provided that we spend enough time up close with a character we’re pretty unlikely to feel like they’re driven by “because the author said so.” (And really this is the essential difference between fiction that’s character-driven and fiction that isn’t, right? Because for me all the books that jump immediately to mind as having this issue are ones falling under headings like hard sci-fi / speculative cyberpunk / Sci-Fi With a Message, where the author’s principal concern was very obviously to show off their worldbuilding or their politics, not their characters. Cough, Frank Herbert...) ITA that ensuring that the reader has a feel for what the character’s “rational” looks like is the crucial point!

[nnozomi]

so provided that we spend enough time up close with a character we’re pretty unlikely to feel like they’re driven by “because the author said so.”
that ensuring that the reader has a feel for what the character’s “rational” looks like is the crucial point!
Yes, excellent way of putting it on both counts! We need to get far enough into their mindset that it just feels natural to be along for the ride, wherever it's actually taking us/them.

where the author’s principal concern was very obviously to show off their worldbuilding or their politics, not their characters.
Yup, ask me why I've never managed to get very far into any of those, oh dear. (Trying to think of examples and not coming up with any because I've steered so clear of them, but I agree with your point. I did think of one of a number of counterexamples in Melissa Scott, at least in my favorites of her books, which are quite heavy on both worldbuilding and Messages, but still focus heavily on individual characters with individual concerns, making them satisfying for me.)