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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48000
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48000
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

A character has to have an arc and be seen to move along that arc. You can't show the reader the same thing they have seen before, you have to show them development -- which may mean development of the character, but more often means development of the situation in which the character finds themselves. But development of the situation has to mean development of the character's response to the situation -- because if the character's response does not change then, as far as the character's arc is concerned, we are not moving.

It really isn't about what the character's characteristics are. Literature provides us with characters of every stripe and variation. They will get boring if they don't have an arc and if they don't move along that arc. They will remain interesting as long as there is development occurring.

Literature really obeys a few pretty simple laws that operate pretty much without regard to subject matter. The challenge of writing is to put convincing flesh on a familiar set of bones. There are a few basic rules about how to be convincing, and they too have very little to do with specific subject matter. But the rules of how to be convincing are far from informing the whole of the art. In the end it comes down to your powers of observation and your ability to find just the right words and sequence of words to show what you have seen.

A how-weird-can-I-be approach to literature is not going to get you anywhere -- not because being weird is problem -- lots of literature is very very weird -- but because worrying about weirdness takes your focus off the basics: the foundations of story and the perceptive observation and description of the human condition.

Original score: 5