What To Do When You're Too Attached to a Character | Novel Writing Advice
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- Опубліковано 12 чер 2024
- Loving a character (especially the protagonist) too much can cause issues with clarity in your novel due to a lack of distance between yourself and the character. In this video I go over the signs that you have a strong attachment to your character and writing tips and tricks that you can try right now to improve your novel and overcome this potential issue.
SHOW NOTES
How can you tell if you are too close to a character:
1. You just know you love them and can't easily distance yourself.
2. Beta readers can't connect to, don't like, or don't understand your character.
3. You feel like something is missing from scenes or emotions aren't hitting the way you want them to.
4. You over justify their flaws by providing too much backstory or explanations for "bad" behaviors/actions.
Solutions/activities to try:
1. Ask beta readers specific but non-leading questions about their impressions of the character.
2. Make sure you're conveying the emotional beats of the scene (motivation behind goal, feeling about obstacle, feeling/reasoning behind their response to obstacle).
3. Give the character a trait, flaw, motivation, or belief you don't relate to.
4. Fall in love with a different/new character to help create some distance.
Writing advice videos that may provide additional help with this issue:
Scene Structure
Writing proactive scenes: • How to Write Proactive...
Writing reactive scenes: • How to Write Reactive ...
My original scene structure series: • Scene Structure Part 1...
Characterization
7 reasons readers don't love your characters: • 7 Reasons Readers Don'...
How to write a character flaw: • How to Write a Charact...
Thank you so much for watching and for your support! - Навчання та стиль
Hey guys, I know I've been gone for a long time! I just want to let you all know a little bit about what's been going on.
My house had a leak that uncovered asbestos, which resulted in me and my husband being evacuated from our house for several months. I have also been dealing with a health condition that worsened about six months ago. I'm okay now (please don't worry!), but my stamina is lower than a couple years ago.
I'm hoping to spend more time on videos for the channel, but I don't want to promise a specific upload schedule because the odds are too high that I won't be able to always follow through.
Thank you all SO much for your support of me and the channel! Let me know what you want to see next!
I'm glad you're starting to feel better!
Welcome back Ellen, we've all missed you. Get better soon.
Glad you're feeling better. Your videos are very insightful and helpful.
I'm so glad you came back!!! I wish you good luck
It's so nice to see you back. I hope you start to feel better soon😆🤗
OUR QUEEN HAS RETURNED!!!! ALL HAIL!
Write yourself as the villain, you'll have more fun that way.
So as one sees themselves or more an "if I was a villain" exaggerated form
@@robertagu5533 if you were a villain. Otherwise we'd end up with lots of villains spending all day playing Hearthstone and watching cooking videos on UA-cam.
@@Trazynn maybe Call of Duty or Scifi FanFic channels... Or in the exaggerated story form... most us probably started our own version of SPECTRE and just about brought the world to its knees so we're having to take on the Avengers, or Expendables or the CW/DC/Marvel Superhero Crew OR Movie Big screen Assassin or Secret Agent of choice that's made it their mission to stop us.
I always start with a problem that the villain has to solve, and then I give the villain traits that would make solving that problem by non-evil methods impossible. The villain’s motivations are never evil, only their methods.
Golvic that is really great advice!
Ellen's Back. Back again.
Guess who's back.
Tell a friend.
Do do dooooo!
YAAAYYY!! I'll just be happy. You take care of you.
*Bold of you to assume I'm satisfied with the characters I write*
Using Bold letters to tell your words. I like your style
I feel quite confident in my relationship with my characters. (That sounded weird) I love some of them way much, but at the same time, I have no problems hurting them and giving them flaws that are not like me at all. And I already do ask specific questions of my readers. And so far they have been very kind in pointing out things that worked/didn't work for them. Very helpful! :)
Literally what I'm going through! I have to remind myself that what I know and what the reader knows are very very different
Another issue with loving your character too much, at least in my case, is that you know every single thing about them and you want to include everything in the story. You want to explore all the aspects that make them interesting, hence the difficulty to focus on a theme. Also you want the story to give them justice, and for me it's paralysing as I end up not writing rather than writing a story that's bleak compared to its central character.
I have a character in a story I’m working on, I loved the guy so much I felt guilty for a week after I killed him.
Done this! I deleted the chapter and brought him back! 😂
She’s back!! :D
My characters are all bastards.
...
...
But I still love 'em lol.
I saw your name come up and I audibly squee'd at the screen. This has never happened before. So glad to see you back.
Yaaassss!! I'm so glad to see that you're back!! 😃
You are one of the only “writer youtubers” I listen to!! I’m so happy you’re back!!
p.s; you look so pretty in this video! :)
So good to see you back, Ellen. I'm glad you're okay. I missed you and these videos are my favorites.
That's one of my problems.... I usually 'love' my characters and so I don't ever try extreme things with them. Always play it safe...
Excellent video btw.
Good to see you in my feed again. Welcome back!
Wishing you better luck and good health in the future.
Always always good to hear from you. Thank you so much for your time and help.
Oh my goodness. You’re back. I literally searched, “Where did Ellen Brock go?”
Nothing came up. So awesome. You have a new video up.
Hope all is well.
I’m so glad you’re back! You’re an amazing writing mentor
Omg yes I'm so happy you're back! No one on YT gives as good, factual, useful tips as you
Been a while, welcome back Mi'lady!
This is hard advice but quite true. Some of my characters I like better than my friends. (Don't tell my friends)
Great to see you again. I've never seen anyone cover this topic. Thanks for covering it. :)
edit: a way to celebrate might be a livestream. :)
I would distinguish between "loving too much" and "knowing too much". "Loving" happens when you project who you are or who you want to be on a character to too great extent. And one of the undesired consequences of this (apart from those you mentioned) is that you become unwilling to put the character through any actual hardship or unwilling to let the character make mistakes and suffer for it.
"Knowing" happens simply when a character gets under your skin - I don't think it's necessary to love them. It's also not exclusively limited to characters: it can happen with a setting or even a scene. Sometimes an idea is just so clear, obvious in your mind you forget to actually describe it for those who don't have access to your head (so everybody else).
Oh, and it's good to have you back :)
I can't understate how often I've failed to describe a setting because I forgot the audience didn't already know it.
Good timing, just started a manuscript version 2.0 of an idea I've had for some time. One trick I use to balance my feelings towards characters is making sure that "good" types have at least one quality I dislike, or even hate, and "bad" types have at least one quality I respect or perhaps even love, and no one character is based on me or anyone I care about in real life (or hate). The most important part for me though, is to make sure that no character is "good" or "bad" to begin with, at least not if you look more deeply. Right now, I don't really have a favorite among my characters, which helps me a great deal. Great advice, as usual! Thank you!
Woah! Well hello again!
I was so excited to seeing a new video of yours pop up! Welcome back
So glad to see you back again. :-)
I unbonded myself from my main character that was too much of a Mary Sue by downgrading him to a supporting character, and introducing a new Main Character. this way I can give the character a few books before he is "allowed" to be a POV. Thus far, it's worked out for the better.
After years of "yesnomaybe" I finally started plotting my first book and might even turn it into a series of 3.
I really appreciate your videos, you really seem to know what you're talking about and I already grabbed some tipps and tricks that will (hopefully) make my life as an aspiring author easier… :)
Thank you & plz keep up the good videos!
It's great to see you back!! 😁
Great to have you back!
It's nice to see and hear you again, Ellen. Another great advice, thank you.
THANKS FOR COMING BACK! As spot on as ever
Missed you and your videos, Ellen. So glad you’re back. Don’t push yourself too hard.
So glad to have you back
So happy to see a video from you again! This was helpful! Thank you so much! You are SO inspiring and talented at this!
Yes!!! You are back and just in time as I conclude my second draft!!!
Good to see you again, EllenBrockNovelEditor!
Distinguishing what's in your head from what's on the page. Yes! That's a problem that also happens when people write technical documentation. Books exist to transport what's in your head to the head of the reader, and if you leave things out, the story in their heads will be incomplete.
One problem I've seen is that people write a character that they mean to be unsympathetic, but they end up being too likable. So they tack on a character flaw. Bad eating habits. Body odour. And it ends up looking like I've just drawn a moustache on your face to make you less pretty. You really need to design in these character flaws from the start.
I don't mind my characters being arseholes now and then. I particularly enjoyed setting up one of my characters to be the most perfect creature to ever grace the world with the imprint of her feet. And then you switch POV to another character and suddenly she's a stuck up airheaded bimbo.
You do need to have a love for your characters, but that doesn't mean you have to be gentle with them.
Ohhh I've missed your critiques and advice!! Thank you so much. This was perfectly timed for what I've been problem solving the past 3 weeks. Thank you!
This...makes...sooo much sense. Thank you Ellen! Great to see you back. I hope you continue feeling better.
It’s always great to have new videos from you, on whatever terms! I follow a few writing channels but yours I click on first when I see them. I love this topic, how it balances the emotional and the practical aspects of writing. I recently learned a valuable lesson on this very topic, and went into a recent project intending to be deeply mean to my characters no matter how much I love them, which totally paid off.
So great to see you again! Take care of yourself and have fun. We'll take whatever you can give.
SO GLAD YOURE BACK
Elleeen!! Sooo happy to see you again!! You can't imagine! I need AND apreciate your wise advise so much!
Love from Mx
Glad to see you are back producing content (and to hear you are better health-wise!) Welcome back :D
WELCOME BACK! I am so happy to hear that you will be making more videos! 😀👍🎉🥂
YAY!!!! IM SO GLAD YOU'RE BACK!!! I DON'T THINK YOU REALISE HOW AMAZING YOUR CHANNEL IS! Thanks for returning 💖
Glad to see you back. I hope you get better.
Welcome back. Really helpful vid.
It's so nice you are back making videos! Nice to hear you again and great to know you are doing alright! Thank you!
Welcome back, Ellen! Instead of searching for your videos all the time to make sure I don't miss one, I've decided to subscribe. I hope you soon reach 100,000 subscribers. Oh, well. Gotta get back to writing my novel. I want to finish it in the next two months. Thanks for the advice.
💗🙏🏻 I love your originality, honesty, & the way you explain/teach. Most of Authortube seem to be parrots mimicking each other with subjects that have no depth. You’re a gem.
It's good to see you making videos again. I hope you will do it more regularly.
Welcome back! Great vid :D
Welcome back! You were missed!
More than happy to see you again Ellen! I was wondering where you went. Only the best your way Ellen...!
It would be fun to have a live celebration when you get to 100,000, and we can all celebrate with you! Thank you so much for all of your efforts in spreading your knowledge to writers! Your channel has truly been a great help to me. I'm praying you feel 100%, and it's nice to have you back! Blessings, Jen Lowry
Great video and tips, thank you. I definitely relate, especially with my MC, Lucy, and probably more so, her younger sister, Sarah. I think it's because those two characters have so many of my own traits and experiences, and also because I've "known" them for so long. Always love your videos. 😃💝
thanks for the in-depth advice! Looking forward to the next topic; I have both problems: characters who are too much like me, so I don’t show their motives enough, and characters I can’t relate to at all. It’s difficult to strike the right balance between putting enough information on the page so that the character’s personality is clear, and over doing it and making them into a caricature. I think it’s the thing I struggle with most.
_Thank you_ for being less narcisstic than most UA-camrs in this category (or alltogether) and more condensed when it comes to the informations. You're clear about what you want to say without repeating it over and over again - and you often have examples to help understand what you're on to. Also, thank you for using a great mic. Really, I usually enjoy your videos alltogether.
Wish you the best of luck considering the house and your health.
Ellen!!! 😭♥️ My day just got way better!
Yeeees! Been hoping you'd come back!
Such insightful, relevant and practical advice in every single video. It's always an original take, and specific without being overwhelming. Head and shoulders above all the other channels!
As for video ideas, I thought the blog post last year with critiques of unpublished openings was fascinating - both in terms of how it reads to an editor, and how an editor structures feedback. I wonder if this could be adapted to a video format?
Also, I would like to hear your thoughts on prose and writer's voice
[such as how genre affects prose, pros & cons of different kinds of prose]
I missed you so much! I love your videos and they have helped me a lot 💖 I hope you find the time and motivation to post more often 🥰
Thank you so much for talking about this. I've read so many books that just fell flat. Mind, I think part of that is the popularity of advice to make writing very plain and non-descriptive, which makes a lot of writers write scenes and dialogue like screenwriters rather than novelists. But I think a big part is simply that the writers have a feel for the characters and scene that just doesn't make it to the page.
Love the listed synopses. So very helpful.
This is what I need right now. Thank you!
Good to have you back,.
Thank you again for these amazing advices and hope things get better for you.
It's good to have you back.
Aaaahhhhh!!!! She’s back!!! ❤️
Welcome back! We missed you!
These are great tips. I’ve had this problem with a project. Something that helped me was to try to type my characters with the enneagram. They can fall into multiple types of course, but that just let me see them more at a distance. Likewise, it’s cool to type yourself. Then you can understand what is essential to that individual that others who aren’t like them may not understand. It’s like having an emotional map. Good not to take each type too literally, too; after all, we are all a mix of many.
This made my day! Great as always :)
The premise of this is a great thing to point out, one which I don't believe many people will become aware of on their own. I became aware of the issue of what is on the page versus in my head mostly BECAUSE I love my main character so much and I wanted others to see him the same way, so I started to step outside myself and really READ what I had written like I didn't know anything. Still working on this all the time, because you can never really know how someone else will think, but you have to be aware of this issue first before you ever have a prayer of conveying what you think about a character in a way others can understand. I am known by everyone who reads my stuff as great at characterization in particular, to the point that I'm inadvertently characterizing even objects and places just as much as people, haha, but I had to practice writing, listen to critique, and do a lot of introspection on my POV as much as my characters to reach this point. I learned this on my own by analyzing my writing and feeling like my fav character was not coming across as much as he should. I had to practice seeing my characters from without, but it was SO worth it. Getting feedback is also super important, because you're ultimately blindfolded without it. And you do really need to listen to what people are saying, because if you just get defensive you might be tanking your beloved character's chances. You don't have to change the character, you need to change how you convey them. You're doing your characters a disservice if you don't learn to tell whether you're doing them justice on the page.
Holy macaroni, welcome back. Sorry for your troubles but I’m glad things are looking up now.
Look who's back! We missed you! ❤️
You're alive! And...Oh my god yes! This is exactly my problem! 😂❤️
Great to have you back! How about a livestream to celebrate 100k?
never have i ever felt so called out by a writing advice video....
Very interesting take on this. As a board game designer we have a very similar problem, if not the exact same one. And that is when it comes to the rules. As a designer you have al the minute things and exceptions and things like that in your head. But it can be very easy to miss including them in the rules. To solve that problem in game design we have something called "blind play-test". And that is when you give someone that have have never played the game the game and rules, let them play the game according to how they interpret the rules. That way you as a designer can observe and see if they "miss" something. And more often then not this is because that something is not there. =)
I will do this now: switch love ones, add a trait I don’t relate with and find out why each character in each scene wants what they want. Thank you.
I love the examples of the questions for the beta readers! Will try them!
Welcome back! I hope you stay well. If you have to take another break for your health... do it! Although I appreciate everything you share with us, your health has to be paramount.
Sorry to hear about your house and the disruption, and the health issue. Hope its all back to normal soon.
YES
YOU'RE BACK
Yesss. Great video. 🔥
Glad you're back and I hope your health improves! Any advice on what to do when you can't find a good beta reader? I keep finding people but they never get back to me. Seems like people aren't too interested in beta reading anymore, as it was much easier ten years ago to find one who'd follow through with a good partnership. :'(
Ellen be gone so long she come back with a new hairstyle each time
this is a very interesting subject, i find it especially interesting when (13:00) you elaborate on the fact that identifying "too much" to a character makes us lack of perspective on him and not bring insight into it
Liked your video and all the great advice - as always! I have to fight this all the time. Something that helps me is that my books has multiple protagonists, so I have to "share the luv". Another tip that one of my professors used to say is to let bad things happen to your characters.
I noticed that your next video will be about not connecting to your characters. My advice would be to get to know them by letting your protagonist get to know them. Write a scene between this character and the protagonist. Give this character a piece of backstory that connects strongly to you but don't write it down - hint at it instead. But be careful. If you're like me, a random extra could land a minor role in your book :) ~Alysha Stroud
3 days and still no dislikes on the video, much deserved.
Welcome Back 💕
I'm not quite sure, if this helps somebody, but I tend to either love my characters very much or I can't connect to them. If I love a character, it doesn't help me to go work with another one right away, because I tend to give them the same traits as the loved one had, leading up to a point where the new story gets stuck, because character and story don't work together anymore. What helps me a lot is to take one of my loved ones (there are a couple of my characters where this happens regulary, and they are not even the same type of person ^^) and put them into a situation away from the main story. Something to either deepen their character even more or cut something important off from them. Just sitting there, watching their reaction. Maybe even doing a cross over work by putting to of my favourites together in a new environment. Sometimes the surprise over new traits or reactions helps a lot. Sometimes I doesn't, but still I would recommend working with the beloved character, if nothing else works for you. Just in a different way then before.
What I found really intersting, thou, is that you said, one of the signs is the feeling something's off with the character in one scene. I have this feeling so often, but mostly with underdeveloped characters. And then with two boys I really like. I always feel like they don't belong into the story (which is funny, because one's the protagonist and the story evolved around him as some kind of role play). Maybe it's a combination of being under developed and to close to myself?
Welcome back!! :-)
I entered this video thinking it'll tell me what to do with my "I have this character to which im emotionally attached to and quite literally fell in love with it, yet I know that they're fictional and I really really know how to distinguish reality from fiction but I still feel like they're the only reason I can keep myself together"... And then I realized this apparently only happens to me
YOU'RE BACK!
@:Ellen Brock: Before I discovered your channel, I never thought I could improve my story-telling using Harry Potter & The Hunger Games saga. I'm not a great wanna-be-writer but I sure did improved each time I watched one of your videos about writing advices recently; I watch & self-learn a lot about story-telling and I have to admit your channel is the first-one to teach me very useful things about improving myself on writings. I'm glad I discovered some weeks ago your channel because your advices are, like, really helpful. So I'm glad you're making new videos so I can send my thanks to you and your hard work for teaching artist-wannabe like me really useful tips. Thanks a lot for your videos and keep up the great work. From France with thankfulness. =D
omg welcome back
I think a good quick test is can you do something horribly cruel to your character and make it stick with actual negative consequences for the character. You don't necessarily have to do it in your story (except in how so much of interesting stories is authors being terrible to their main characters), but if the very thought of doing something like that to the character is so repellant that you can't imagine doing it, then you probably need distance.
elcidbob wow I feel dragged, thank you for this.
@@avawilliams5827 don't thank me. That's stolen straight from Vonnegut's rule 6:
writerblue.com/2010/06/kurt-vonneguts-8-rules-for-writing-fiction/