How True to Life?

[polymath]

I'm interested in character here. Do characters with self-serving agendas balanced with self-sacrificing traits ring truer to life? Or do self-sacrificing agendas balanced with self-serving traits ring truer to life?

What else about characters builds reader rapport? Do characters forced by circumstances (events) into actions they're not prepared for but rise to the occasion by trial and error ring true to life? Can rapport be built with characters who don't fit their preferred settings and nobly or self-servingly attempt to impose change, even if albeit quixotically?

If a main dramatic complication forces a character to act far out of normal character from equilibrium disruption, is it sufficiently true to life for narrative arts? If a complication causes a contrary rethinking of a widely accepted idea, can it ring true to life?

Of course, that leaves character clashes to fill out the SPICE parameters of narrative arts, Setting, Plot complication, Idea, Character, Event. Ideally, character clashes are truest to life. However, for the sake of credulity, nemeses and protagonists clashing at a gallant matching of ability perhaps somewhat favoring nemeses tends to ring truest. How much Pushmi-pullyu of inequal ability rings true? More than anyone normally can bear? Less than an average normal person experiences? What about hypersensitive personalities more conscious of social hypocrisies than the average expectation of tolerance society projects? (Cultural coding conventions.)

That's the reality of existence. Without complication life would be too easy to be interesting enough to thrive and grow and develop healthy lifeways and lifestyles. Otherwise, we'd all be eating lotuses and contemplating our navels while we languish in mediocre sameness.

"May you live in interesting times." Chinese proverb. How true to life. Though we all need refuge from interesting times as well.

[Guardian]

I'm interested in character here. Do characters with self-serving agendas balanced with self-sacrificing traits ring truer to life? Or do self-sacrificing agendas balanced with self-serving traits ring truer to life?

In my opinion these two... well...

Self-serving balanced with self-sacrificing... cliche.
Self-sacrificing balanced with self-serving... cliche.

Do characters forced by circumstances (events) into actions they're not prepared for but rise to the occasion by trial and error ring true to life?

Same here. "Not prepared, but forced by circumstances into actions.". Cliche. Everyone can make a choice. Good or bad choice, it's really matter. If your character is can be forced into something, that's already a 2D guided character as you're not giving even a single chance for your character to it to act on a different way.

If a complication causes a contrary rethinking of a widely accepted idea, can it ring true to life?

I prefer this one and it seems it's working well in my WIP and made my protagonist to very relatable character (This approach hooked my readers the most in the end of my WIP's Volume 1.). And this approach is also capable to eliminate the first three cliches with a swift move. With this, you don't have to force the "self-serving", the "self-sacrificing", nor the "forced by circumstances into actions". With this the character is not forced into action as the character is making his / her own decision. Your character is also not self-serving or self-sacrificing with this.

[Watcher55]

It’s difficult to respond with a definitive answer (and I’m sure you don’t expect one) because, I think, it’s better to look at the question in terms of the cast of characters.

All characters (even flat characters to an extent) should have their own baggage and internal conflicts that bear some relationship to the central conflict. A good story well told has to have the all too human battle between the flesh and the spirit. The trick is to exacerbate the conflicted traits as the story unfolds; otherwise the “happy ending” (gag) is a foregone conclusion.

I agree with Guardian to an extent but only because you want to "balance" self-sacrificing with self-serving. A little of this, a lot of that and generous measures of self doubt and unexamined enmity. It's rather ironic that writer types speak of "fleshing out" a character when what we really mean to do is give our characters guts.

[Guardian]

I agree with Guardian to an extent but only because you want to "balance" self-sacrificing with self-serving. A little of this, a lot of that and generous measures of self doubt and unexamined enmity. It's rather ironic that writer types speak of "fleshing out" a character when what we really mean to do is give our characters guts.

Yes. If Polymath would separate the two, that would already make a difference as these two are complete contradiction (Sacrifice and self-serving). But also self-sacrificing and self-serving are not necessary in a character. If your character can think, meditate on cause and effects, have a gut, that one is capable to find the right way without self-serving and even self-sacrificing (The last one is harder, but not impossible.).

Actually this problem is originating from the "character centric" worlds, where the world has no effect on the character at all, just the events (While the events are also changing the course of a world, yet usually it has an impact only on the characters.). But if the world itself also has an impact on the character and vica versa, self-sacrificing and self-serving can be eliminated. This is why I don't like the today's standards... "I care only about the people, but I don't care about the world in a story" (Well, these people are going to hate me, because my protagonist have a gut to say an honest opinion about this sort of thinking.).

[Margo]

I'm interested in character here. Do characters with self-serving agendas balanced with self-sacrificing traits ring truer to life? Or do self-sacrificing agendas balanced with self-serving traits ring truer to life?

Watch it, polymath; you're going to start owing me rent again. I love this topic, not just because it's of importance to my character-building on a regular basis. In general, I find it builds the best reader rapport if the protag fits the latter and the antag the former, with other characters falling wherever I need them. Of course, my experience in this could stem from the fact that I have themes that constantly assert themselves, expressed in protags that are struggling with a naturally self-sacrificing nature while either unaware of (or in denial of) their more self-serving traits or actively trying to embrace less selflessness.

What else about characters builds reader rapport? Do characters forced by circumstances (events) into actions they're not prepared for but rise to the occasion by trial and error ring true to life?

This is really mythic, which I personally think trumps true-to-life in fiction. I don't feel it's always a one-to-one crossover, where true-to-life feels true in a story. That being said, I can think of personal experiences I have had that meet this description perfectly. Those were the life-changing, character-building experiences. That theme resonates heavily with me in fiction. Is it true-to-life? For me, yes, but it's so archetypal that I don't give a fig if it's true-to-life.

Can rapport be built with characters who don't fit their preferred settings and nobly or self-servingly attempt to impose change, even if albeit quixotically?

Can you elaborate a little more on this one?

If a main dramatic complication forces a character to act far out of normal character from equilibrium disruption, is it sufficiently true to life for narrative arts? If a complication causes a contrary rethinking of a widely accepted idea, can it ring true to life?

If it happens in degrees instead of all at once, or if the reader can see the build-up to the break, I think this can work. James Scott Bell talks about this in PLOT AND STRUCTURE, pointing out the different layers of belief that make up a person/character. Opinions, values, beliefs, etc. He suggests the deeper the layer, the more resistant the person will be to the rethinking, requiring more build-up to the break in behavior or thinking. Again, I have personally experienced this irl.

How much Pushmi-pullyu of inequal ability rings true? More than anyone normally can bear? Less than an average normal person experiences? What about hypersensitive personalities more conscious of social hypocrisies than the average expectation of tolerance society projects? (Cultural coding conventions.)

Ohhh, wow. Hmmm. I think this one is all about details and execution. In general, I would say it requires more than normal push-pull. However, as you point out, the character might be hypersensitive. I think that can work if you prepare the audience with the depicition of the hypersensitivity. Also, keep in mind that hypersensitivity is frequently the result of trauma/stress/instabilty of a degree that a normal person couldn't handle. So it might not be a matter of less push-pull but of cumulative stressors.

Without complication life would be too easy to be interesting enough to thrive and grow and develop healthy lifeways and lifestyles. Otherwise, we'd all be eating lotuses and contemplating our navels while we languish in mediocre sameness.

[smart-ass remark - not aimed at polymath - deleted]

"May you live in interesting times." Chinese proverb. How true to life. Though we all need refuge from interesting times as well.

Proverb? I've always considered it a curse and secretly relished being cursed.

[polymath]

Can rapport be built with characters who don't fit their preferred settings and nobly or self-servingly attempt to impose change, even if albeit quixotically?

Can you elaborate a little more on this one?

I'm thinking specifically of Gustave Flaubert's Madam Bovary, where Madam has lifestyle ambitions beyond what her provincial setting can meet. Her mannerisms and goals don't suit her situation but she tries and scandal ensues.

Setting plays a role in megatropolis oriented genre, like The New Yorker's slant is by, for, and/or about denizens of primacy cities. I just don't see much struggle or coping with the setting in New Yorker fiction, more of a visionary perspective on the uniqueness of living in megatropoles versus hinterlands.

I expect the general sense of settings posing complications fits the duality complication model of the stranger comes to town or the native leaves town. More specifically the question on point is how a character might come to realize a native setting is less than desirable and engage in altering it, even if it's tilting at windmills. Setting in the sense of situation more than, per se, time or place. Galileo realizing the world is a sphere and the cosmos more profound than most minds can handle, Martin Luther nailing a proclamation to a temple door, Patrick Henry preferring death to tyrrany, and so on.
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On Guardian's and Watcher55's sense of self-serving weighted with self-sacrificing motivations and vice versa. I don't see how any character can be purely one or the other unless author surrogacy is implicated with its self-efficacy and self-idealization challenges and risks. And simple plots where there's no anagnorisis or peripetia driving character transformation for complex plots. Which goes to the question on point, how settings might cause complications and still avoid the duality model of the stranger comes to town or the native leaves town. One day waking up from sleepwalking through life and realizing a dissatisfaction with the situation (recognition-peripetia) and taking steps to alter the situation without leaving town or a catalyzing stranger comes to town character evoking the initial disequilibrium transformation.

[Margo]

Can rapport be built with characters who don't fit their preferred settings and nobly or self-servingly attempt to impose change, even if albeit quixotically?

Can you elaborate a little more on this one?

I'm thinking specifically of Gustave Flaubert's Madam Bovary, where Madam has lifestyle ambitions beyond what her provincial setting can meet. Her mannerisms and goals don't suit her situation but she tries and scandal ensues.

This is going to sound juvenile, but that's what I loved about the Disney movie version of Belle: "I want much more than this provencial life." And doing silly things like reading books and not wanting to marry the town hunk/thug/bonehead. If the mannerisms and goals that set the character apart are strengths rather than flaws or are based on understandable motivations, I think reader rapport can be established quite readily.

Setting plays a role in megatropolis oriented genre, like The New Yorker's slant is by, for, and/or about denizens of primacy cities. I just don't see much struggle or coping with the setting in New Yorker fiction, more of a visionary perspective on the uniqueness of living in megatropoles versus hinterlands.

If I didn't know better, I'd think you'd been reading over my shoulder. Because I'm working in urban fantasy right now, this is an extremely timely comment for you to make. My WIP is definitely not a celebration of setting; it's much more ambivalent and difficult and complicated than that. My character has a love-hate relationship with her town and many of the people who live there. I'm not sure I would say she is motivated to change it. She is motivated to save it, by what she would probably consider a combination of her innate nature and the circumstances of her early life, and eventually by her attachment to certain people, and ultimately by a higher understanding of the role the different types of beings play in existence.

More specifically the question on point is how a character might come to realize a native setting is less than desirable and engage in altering it, even if it's tilting at windmills.

Unfortunately, all my ideas fall into spec fic, so I have no immediate suggestion.

Which goes to the question on point, how settings might cause complications and still avoid the duality model of the stranger comes to town or the native leaves town. One day waking up from sleepwalking through life and realizing a dissatisfaction with the situation (recognition-peripetia) and taking steps to alter the situation without leaving town or a catalyzing stranger comes to town character evoking the initial disequilibrium transformation.

Must it be caused by setting? Could it be caused by event/non-event? Like a (missed) milestone, a death, a senseless crime against someone the character identifies with too closely or by a criminal the character identifies with too closely, a loss of job or relationship or some other aspect integral to the character's own understanding of identity?

Settings... Isolation with a crowd... Lack of privacy/personal or emotional space... Social pressures... The alienation of dehumanized urban life... Loss of faith in innate human goodness, paired with a need to rekindle the virtue... Sorry, all my ideas currently revolve around urban settings. I could return to my rural days, if it would be helpful. Perhaps a random idea could foster a bit of cognitive dissonance to get the wheels turning.

Is this helping at all?

[Watcher55]

On Guardian's and Watcher55's sense of self-serving weighted with self-sacrificing motivations and vice versa. I don't see how any character can be purely one or the other unless author surrogacy is implicated with its self-efficacy and self-idealization challenges and risks.

That’s the point, but neither is it usual for a character to have equal amounts – yin and yang are seldom equals, but one doesn’t exist without the other even when we’re talking about archetypes.

Which goes to the question on point, how settings might cause complications and still avoid the duality model of the stranger comes to town or the native leaves town. One day waking up from sleepwalking through life and realizing a dissatisfaction with the situation (recognition-peripetia) and taking steps to alter the situation without leaving town or a catalyzing stranger comes to town character evoking the initial disequilibrium transformation.

Setting in the sense of situation more than, per se, time or place. Galileo realizing the world is a sphere and the cosmos more profound than most minds can handle, Martin Luther nailing a proclamation to a temple door, Patrick Henry preferring death to tyrrany, and so on.

I’m not sure a certain duality should be avoided (Spectrum Alert – when the duality achieves a certain quality it can come off as naïve, trite, cliché….). I say that because it’s difficult to discuss setting when the elements you speak of (situation v. time and place) are treated as two separate elements of setting and a proper setting is both (a little of this, a lot of that…). I guess this is my left-handed way of saying that if the setting isn’t a character in and of itself the active characters have nowhere to go so it doesn’t matter if they’re selfish or not.

More specifically the question on point is how a character might come to realize a native setting is less than desirable and engage in altering it, even if it's tilting at windmills.

Pain. Thresholds that don’t stay still. Weather that’s more favourable to tares than wheat or even weather that doesn’t favour one over the other or favours neither. There needs to be a catalyst, even if it’s a seed planted and left to germinate, and the character has to respond.

Perceptions and proclivities are never simple matters of nature versus nurture. Indeed, I believe we find that the two may engage in shattering clashes but by the time everything washes out they conspire together only to find that the results are beyond the character’s intention or imagination for that matter.

[Guardian]

OI don't see how any character can be purely one or the other unless author surrogacy is implicated with its self-efficacy and self-idealization challenges and risks.

Actually I choose none of these as these ones are not necessary to create a character without self-serving or self-sacrifice attitude.

And simple plots where there's no anagnorisis or peripetia driving character transformation for complex plots.

Anagnorisis can affect the character's life, but it can be beyond the MC's control. Anagnorisis may originate from another character, from the setting or from the world itself (Or from all three together, from the world view of the MC, which is creating the anagnorisis together. Personally, I love to use this trio.). On this way the anagnorisis can be played out without self-serving and self-sacrifice. But yes, it's requiring a complex and detailed plot.

Which goes to the question on point, how settings might cause complications and still avoid the duality model of the stranger comes to town or the native leaves town. One day waking up from sleepwalking through life and realizing a dissatisfaction with the situation (recognition-peripetia) and taking steps to alter the situation without leaving town or a catalyzing stranger comes to town character evoking the initial disequilibrium transformation.

A realistic character conscience is the key. Also dissatisfaction is not the best approach in my opinion. Disappointment is better as disappointment used to create a different view, while it's shattering the previous one. And in this case you also don't have to use self-serving and self-sacrifice as this disappointment may originate from the world, from the setting, from the surrounding events or the actions of other characters. But never from the MC. And the conflict is still there as whose fault was everything? Partially the MC's fault as the MC was the one who believed in something blindly. It's a good inner conflict, where you don't have to use self-serving or self-sacrifice. And it's also realistic.

In many cases writers are creating characters where the MC has every power to change everything, they knows everything, they're faultless. But what is happening if you create a character who don't have all these powers, able to make mistakes, but also capable to take up questions (Most of the MCs can't take up questions at all, just knows everything.)? You're getting a realistic, unique and fragile character who can be related much better then any other characters.

[polymath]

Must it be caused by setting? Could it be caused by event/non-event? Like a (missed) milestone, a death, a senseless crime against someone the character identifies with too closely or by a criminal the character identifies with too closely, a loss of job or relationship or some other aspect integral to the character's own understanding of identity?

Settings... Isolation with a crowd... Lack of privacy/personal or emotional space... Social pressures... The alienation of dehumanized urban life... Loss of faith in innate human goodness, paired with a need to rekindle the virtue... Sorry, all my ideas currently revolve around urban settings. I could return to my rural days, if it would be helpful. Perhaps a random idea could foster a bit of cognitive dissonance to get the wheels turning.

Is this helping at all?

I suppose I should get into specifics. An antihero protagonist and a salt of the earth hero nemesis clash due to a setting situation. The protagonist prevails, meeting his superiors' dictates, and the nemesis dies of his self-serving nature. The protagonist is transformed by the nemesis' death, the recognition of his direct contribution to the nemesis' death. Setting, plot complication, idea, character, and event are in play. Inciting crisis, orders that go against the protagonist's principles. Tragic crisis, the hero nemesis balks when forced to go against his principles. Final crisis, the nemesis' death triggers the protagonist's reevaluation of his principles. It's a law enforcement sting so horribly wrong that the protagonist questions his outlook on his personal and professional satisfaction with his job.

[Watcher55]

Tragic crisis, the hero nemesis balks when forced to go against his principles. Final crisis, the nemesis' death triggers the protagonist's reevaluation of his principles. It's a law enforcement sting so horribly wrong that the protagonist questions his outlook on his personal and professional satisfaction with his job.

Sort of - Man vs Self vs What? THE machine, Society, Authority? What's within the pail of the characters personality/state of mind (heart) and how far is he from who he was the day before? Does he intend to destroy the machine; is so, from the inside or outside? Does he intend to blow the whistle? Can he allow himself to just quit? Will intent and action harmonize?

The answers aren't mine to give or even to be given. These are just some questions implied in the course of playing "Who are you" when I find myself being contrary with my characters. I will say that it seems your character starts dark, and no amount of light is going to change that in an instant. If anything a dark character is likely to beat a quiet retreat before doing anything.

[Guardian]

I will say that it seems your character starts dark, and no amount of light is going to change that in an instant.

Sounds unrealistic, but it's not and can be achieved. When you're creating a good vs. evil fight, you always must take up one question; what is good and what is evil? Good and evil is depending only from the POV and the moral values of the characters. When something is good from one POV, that's evil from another one. And to achieve the aforementioned character change, the MC's belief and world view must be shattered completely to make this work.

[polymath]

The protagonist starts from a place of darkness in what's otherwise a place of light. Whether it's good or evil is a matter of perspective, yet I'm going for an ambiguous opening in that regard. The protagonist believes in the agency's mission but questions the moral depravity of any and all means to an end, no matter the legality of the situation. True to life for the situation that inspired it, one where I was actually peripherally involved as a minor accessory character in the drama.

I'm working in a waterfront restaurant kitchen about to clean a ten-pound grouper, in my hand a ten-inch razor sharp fileting knife. In burst three car loads of fisheries agents pointing handguns at my head, shouting "put down the knife." The irony of the situation came to mind before I laid the knife aside and was thrown against the glass of a reach-in cooler, handcuffed, and trundled outside to an unmarked sedan. The supervisor showed up then and released me. The charges I was facing were brandishing a lethal weapon and threatening law enforcement, resisting arrest, yada, yada, yada.

The box of fish were taken away and sold to several other unwary restaurateurs by the fisherman who didn't have a license to sell. The restaurateurs, including my boss who disappeared before the agents raided the kitchen, who bought the fish got $500 tickets and notices to appear in district court. The fisherman died that winter fishing offshore alone. They found his abandoned boat a week before his body washed ashore tangled in net. Why he was selling fish for the enemy, to scape out on more serious charges and not face his third strike and federal prison time.

[Watcher55]

I can imagine the cacophony inside your brain and the exponentially greater cacophony inside your character's.

Peripetia often demands or seems to demand an immediate response, and admidst the confusion people (characters) want to jump straight from response to solution and totally bypass any sort of defining anagnorsis. First responses are usually reactions and usually do the most damage to the character himself.

The character has every reason to doubt his place/membership in the organization. He has every reason to doubt the place of his superiors in the organization; perhaps the heirarchy of the organization itself.

So many sources of tension. So many possible motives for his subsequent responses. What to destroy and what to preserve? His career, his name, the people who created the situation, the criminals they were chasing, and what about justice for the dead good guy? All of the above? I could go on but I'm sure your list is longer.

Your original question seems to imply that you want to avoid a black/white sort of duality (singular), but what you have is the potential for a whole set of clashing, if not mutually destructive, sources of tension (there must be a word for that). My advice, have fun with it and give your characters the opportunity to really muck things up.

[polymath]

Your original question seems to imply that you want to avoid a black/white sort of duality (singular), but what you have is the potential for a whole set of clashing, if not mutually destructive, sources of tension (there must be a word for that). My advice, have fun with it and give your characters the opportunity to really muck things up.

The sketch is already there, some viewpoint transitions mapped out. As usual for me, the opening is a sticking point. But this one seems pretty clear cut if I can wrap my mind around a somewhat overt but non commenting narrator and thus avoid preaching.

One of the larger challenges for this one is I live in the community it's set in. I don't want to upset anyone who can threaten my existence. They still burn unwanted people out around here. I'm intimately aware of the opposing and at times conflagrating expressions of contending yet equally valid sentiments. Negotiating the middle ground of sensitivity toward all community viewpoints is actually a personal strength and an emerging narrative choice of mine. And it trumps the challenges of the community circumstances because the dramatic premises are readymade for accomplishing that.

Conflagration is a term for interpersonal relations I know of closest to "clashing, if not mutually destructive sources of tension."

Codetermination
Cooperation
Coordination
Contention
Conflict
Confrontation
Conflagration