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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23894
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23894
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Your character can be boring, but your story shouldn't be.

Here's the golden ideal: every line of prose and every line of dialogue should _serve a purpose._ If somebody is saying a lot of boring stuff, most of that stuff doesn't serve any purpose - and should be avoided in your final draft.

But, there's a difference between _being bored by a character_, vs. _being entertained by a character being boring_. It's just a question of _who_ is getting bored - boring other characters in the story is fine; boring the reader is not.

Here's some typical purposes of demonstrating a character being boring:

- **To establish character.** Being boring, talkative, or chatty is part of who the character is; giving him a few characteristic lines helps you bring that character to life.
- **For humor.** A talkative character can often offer comic relief, by going off on tangents, by hyperfocusing on some minor detail, or another dozen ways.
- **To ridicule the character.** Sometimes you're deliberately mocking the character's talkative nature. `Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit / And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes / I will be brief,` [says _Hamlet_'s Polonius](http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/brevity-soul-wit), and his inability to say things simply and straightforwardly is uproarious.
- **For others to be affected by it.** Sometimes, the point is that _other_ characters are bored, or exhausted, or amused, or engrossed. In these cases, it's much less important to report everything the talkative character says; instead you can gloss over the content, and focus on other characters' reactions.

So, in brief, whenever you're thinking, "OK, this character's going to go on forever now" -- consider _how_ you want to portray that, and what purpose you want that to serve. Sometimes, you want the text. Sometimes you just want to write `And then Malcolm went on for an hour about rutabagas, and we all nodded along politely.`

In general, don't worry about it too much in the first draft; recognizing "boring areas" and places where readers might drift off is better suited for later edits - it's _much_ easier to take a meandering bit of text and chop it down to something quick and snappy, than it is to write everything quick and snappy on the first go.

Original score: 6