EDIT: If you like this journal entry, check out The Sarcastic Guide to Writing ebook www.amazon.com/The-Sarcastic-G… for exclusive content on world-building, character, and dialogue!

Sorry for the delay; I attended the Austin GDC ... whoof. Still tired.

1.  Mediate your character’s emotional responses. I see this a lot, and it reads like bipolar disorder.  The character exalts in their laughter, achieving tears of mirth, and then in two sentences manages to burst into the other kind of tears.  The bad kind.  Conversely, there’s the character who doesn’t care about anything, even kittens.  KITTENS.  Whether they’re having a gun shoved in their face or confessing their undying love, they do it with the kind of “meh” Keanu Reeves would be jealous of.  Just like in acting, I prefer subtlety to my character’s emotions, and automaton are in reality very, very creepy.  I think my particularly favorite mistake is when the character has an overblown reaction to something mild, like, say, their toast burning, but barely bat an eyelid when something like nuclear war occurs or they find out werewolves are real.  More characters come across to me as sociopaths or dysfunctional rejects than the sympathetic protagonists they’re supposed to be.  I suspect this happens a lot because most new writers are teenagers or just coming out of their teens, and thereby prioritize within the same spectrum of emotion as a teen would.  As an example, I point to my favorite literary trainwreck: Eragon, walking among the blood-soaked dead after a battle, idly picks up a tooth and bounces it in his palm.  Yes, that’s right,  surrounded by the bodies of his comrades-in-arms, the stench of death, and the unspeakable horrors of war, Eragon picks up a body part/memento of war and treats it like a throwaway trinket.  As blood soaks through his boots.  What.  The. Heck.  (I also really like the part where he cries over killing a bunny, too, but I feel that one’s been referenced enough.)  He could fall to one knee and weep, or scream at the sky, or, I don’t know, have any other reaction associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and come out of it better than he did.  Look at your character’s priorities when confronted with things.  Just because you’d freak out over your toast being burned doesn’t mean they would.  And just because you don’t want them to break down and “look weak” doesn’t mean they won’t suffer a moment of weakness.

2.  Characters don’t announce how they feel. In the words of the Robot Devil, “You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel!  That makes me feel angry!”  This is probably the most egregious mistake after having your character react in an overblown fashion (sometimes arm in arm with it, like “I am now GOIN’ CRAZEH!”) Some of the best declarations of love in both literature and cinema don’t even involve the three words being uttered aloud.  This little rule goes along with the “show; don’t tell” thing.  Your character doesn’t say “I am so pissed off at you right now”; she stalks around tight-lipped, throwing stuff and refusing to talk.  If you really think about it, how often do you ever announce how you feel?  Especially if it’s in the negative?  Heck, most of us need therapists to remind us “Use ‘I feel’ statements; it’s less stabby that way.” This doesn’t just apply to dialogue; you as the author can’t say “Angela felt angry” without sounding kinda lame.  This is why writing emotion can be so difficult, and why scripts that break this rule usually make lousy movies.  When emotion influences action, that’s key.  Action is character, after all.  Your character performs sad actions when he is sad.  Much, much easier said than done, but that’s the idealism you should be shooting for.

3.  Priorities influence emotion. In terms of terrible character, Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments had god-awful character prioritization.  I mean, just god-awful.  I couldn’t believe the characters were sniping at each other over high-school level crap when they were supposed to be saving the world. And I mean stuff like “I don’t like you nerd; as a prank I’m going to leave you in a party of vampires to get turned into a rat, ha ha!”  “Hey, Jew boy!  I know your being turned into a vampire technically condemns your soul according to your beliefs, but A) I am SO not able to cope without you, B )I am SO not getting blamed for your death, and C) we’re totally even now even though your death was my fault.”  “If I can’t have my boyfriend I will just DIE; screw the rest of the world!”  The list goes on.  (And really, it just served as a way for the writer to remind us that these kids weren’t really saving anything, they were just dressing up and playing Underworld.)  The entire time I was reading the series I found myself screaming ”Why are they acting like this!?”.  Mostly because the world building had established a society raised on warfare and soldier-esque brotherhood, with individuals supposed to be living in a time of active war.  And the characterization of teenagers far too willing to abandon their comrades and their common sense grated against said world-building.  Really bad.  These guys were killing werewolves and vampires and demons on a regular basis and still managed to act like spoiled high school kids?  That’s like saying an 18-year-old manning the trenches in WW2 would have the same priorities he had in high school after shooting someone.  It just wouldn’t happen! If a character cares about saving his companions (or, you know, the world), his emotions over that are going to be pretty strong.  Anything else, not so much.  It’s impossible to have a character care about everything, even coelacanths (not that that stops the Mary Sue writers), and it’s stupid to have a character prioritize something that has nothing to do with their established story goals or stakes.  Notice I didn’t say they can’t have emotions about it, but if it’s not a priority they can’t emote over it too much without exhausting themselves and the reader.

4.  Death IS a big deal. This one gets its own category.  Seriously.  I’m amazed at the number of heroes who kill without hesitation, doubt, or reservations, who sleep like babies afterwards, and who become so wrapped up in their own sense of smug self-righteousness they could trade notes with history’s greatest dictators.  Death is treated as no big deal; I mean, it’s just DEATH, right? I hate seeing characters excuse themselves with things like “It was kill or be killed” or “I did it to survive/protect my family, etc.”  None of that means they wouldn’t be disturbed by the idea, no matter their justification.  If you think I’m treating death too heavily, talk to any veteran of any war.  I can probably guarantee you that the one thing they don’t like to talk about is the killing part of war.  And especially as a reader of fantasy, it bugs me when people act like because it’s low-technology peasant warfare, people would be okay with it.  Sure, the past was a lot harsher, and dying happened all the time.  That doesn’t mean those people didn’t grieve, sorrow, or feel sick over it.   (Where do you think all those rituals involving death came from?)  Some might make the argument that modern media has desensitized people to the concept of violence and death; I call bullshit on that the moment little Grand Theft Auto gamer attends his mama’s funeral.  Even soldiers, who are trained to dehumanize the enemy in order to kill them, suffer from confusion, anger, grief, and depression as a result of killing.  So, yeah, I think that elven warriors might feel bad over killing orcs, even when the orcs are “the bad guys.”  Hell, there are places where Hitler’s forces fell that now have stone monuments saying “Hey, it sucks you had to die here so far from home, but we’re all friends now.”  Within the Hero’s Journey itself, there’s the “Resurrection” step, when the hero dies (in some way, usually metaphorically or spiritually) or “tastes of death” and is reborn as someone new.  Without that pivotal moment, the most important of its kind in the Hero’s Journey, the story stagnates. So, yeah.  Death is a real big deal.  Examining what could drive your hero to kill is a story in and of itself.  Examine what death and dying do to the psyche; don’t just have your hero frolicking through walls of blood without blinking.  If you do, you’re in Eragon territory, arm-in-arm with Wolverine, kick-lining with all the other heroic sociopaths out there.  (Of course, if that’s your intent ...)

5.  Dialogue should convey emotion by itself. This one’s hard not to write about without shuddering, because it’s a rule so ignored and betrayed you may as well imagine it as a little match girl. If someone is shouting and angry, you can bet the sentence reads like this: “Damn it all to hell!” he shouted angrily.  We as the reader, if we are half as discerning as we smugly reassure ourselves we are, can probably discern that this fellow is angry by his dialogue alone. And yet, many authors insist upon making sure we get it.  The crowning tragedy of this, that I know if, is Eragon yet again, with the infamous ”Sorry,” Brom apologized..  Ring!  Ring!  It’s the Department of Redundancy Department calling, sir!  I’m harsher than most, but I firmly believe that “said” should be the only dialogue tag used, except in very rare circumstances.  If someone is shouting, even an exclamation point can get it across without using “he shouted” (or for that matter, any tag at all.)  Most readers’s eyes skip over “said” anyway; our eyes snag on any other word.  It’s less streamlined to not use  said”, in a very physical sense.  Good writers don’t need anything else.  Many new writers, feeling like they have to be unique, play the “let’s use a new word every time” game.  So a casual conversation makes use of things like “exclaimed”, “declared, “ ”expostulated”, and my particular favorite especially in old writing, “ejaculated”.  (Seriously, it was used like that.)  Authors can repeat themselves in lots of other places besides dialogue, but since dialogue is such a character-centric thing it smacks harder.  Dialogue is the character’s emotion brought to life; it is action just as relevant as any that obeys the “character is action” rule.  Listening to how people talk is one of the best ways to get good dialogue, especially when they’re experiencing strong emotion.