So I read a blog from Quintessential Editor a few days ago in which we discussed character or conflict. He and I may (I’m actually not sure) disagree on what makes a book great. I’ll vote character every time, and I have my reasons, but the blog inspired me to offer my view on what turns out to be how I evaluate characters.
I love Writing Excuses. It’s a great podcast, and they did a podcast a few years ago (back when I had the luxury of listening every week) that helped me understand why I like books. I’ve said it a few times. I like sympathetic, proactive characters. The podcast to which I’m referring is the one on character sliders. In it, they discuss how to evaluate characters by Sympathy, Competency, and Proactivity.
I’ll let you listen to the podcast for the explanation because they’re awesome, hugely successful authors, and I’m an Indie guy trying to find my way in the world. I will make one argument.
Sanderson explains that Sympathy is the “how likable a character is.” He’s my Yoda in every regard, but I don’t know that’s true. I think Sympathy (at least to me) is how strongly I feel about the character. Whatever the emotion, if I feel it strongly, I’m drawn to the character. The formula works regardless, but I see sympathy as “strength of emotional reaction” and not strictly “likable.”
What I thought I could add or build from this wonderful tool was how to use it when writing a book. I don’t see this as a character development tool myself. Rather, I try to anticipate how readers will see the character. I’m editing Caught still, so I’d like to use Sal. In the previous draft, he was proactive and sympathetic.
My editor and I disagreed on his arc. What I wish I’d argued then is that he wasn’t actually very competent. He tried several times and several ways to do something before he gained more power. His argument, in the interest of being fair, was that Sal struggled and failed so many times, and never reacted to those failures.
I kept this in mind while revising. I kept in in mind while writing for the other characters as well. I want my readers to say two things when they read my books. “I (feel strongly) about his characters” and “they’re always moving.” I hope they hate the characters I want them to hate, and I hope they love the characters I mean for them to love, but as long as they feel strongly, I feel I’ve succeeded.
So how do you do this? Well, I’m sure there’s a lot of ways, but this is my own spin. At each major plot point (for me, this is when I check my outline), look at your character and see how the plot point might have effected each of these traits. Every time a character fails, he or she seems less competent. Some fans hate incompetent characters. I’m actually not one of them.
Case study: Naruto is a moron. He’s a goof, who’s just winging it. He can’t do a single normal jutsu and really only has the one major trick. But look at how hard he works! Look at how much he cares about his comrades? Look at how he struggles to maintain his bonds. In fact, each time he wins, it’s usually DESPITE his competence. Still, if he NEVER learned anything, he’d eventually get boring. So at certain points, he becomes ever so much less stupid. This is how we see his progression as a character. Don’t mistake progression as moving forward.
Case study: Rand al’Thor is one of my favorite characters ever. In fact, I’d like to compare him to Ichigo from Bleach. I feel Rand works more because there’s more progression. Ichigo gets more powerful. He’s competent, proactive and sympathetic, and he never really changes. Rand becomes all the more compelling because as he becomes more powerful (and we’ll have to discuss something soon), he becomes more isolated and less sympathetic. So you see, he devolves in sympathy as he evolves in power.
Is power a slider? For me it is. Because competence, to me, is the character’s success rate. But there are several characters who win a lot, but still don’t feel very powerful. The first that comes to mind is Ender Wiggin. He’s incredibly sympathetic, competent, and proactive. But none of that matters because he’s supposed to fight an alien race that the human race has feared for generations. Power is a factor in a lot of things, and conflict can be the gauge by which you measure it. So why do I consider it a slider? Because it can be used as a source of conflict in itself, not just a resolution to conflict.
Now that I’ve done a few case studies, let’s turn that microscope on myself. While writing Bob, I was very concerned about the first act because the conflict is subtle. Most reviews regard the first act as the best, which makes me feel good I didn’t cut it from the book. In the first act, Bob is sympathetic and proactive. His proactivity is what causes the conflict. Police notice him, and now he has to evade them. He’s not very competent. He doesn’t know anything about his job. He doesn’t know how to avoid police. He’s not even very good at covering his tracks. This leads to the climax of part one.
When I got to Part 2, I checked up on Bob’s sliders. Sympathy 100% Proactivity 100% Competence: 30% (I’m probably being nice). Power 50%. This might surprise people. While Bob talks about how “useless” his powers are, he’s still comparatively more powerful than most of the characters in Part 1. In Part 2, I introduce Grimm. Now he’s very competent, very proactive. How sympathetic is he? I HOPE readers say they hate him, but I can’t pretend to know. There’s hardly any feedback on him though, so that leads me to believe I miscalculated here. So he’s not sympathetic at all. (otherwise, readers would have said something about him by now). I can learn from this. But what he DOES do, is make Bob seem LESS powerful. That also makes him seem LESS competent. So the progress for Bob is actually devolving and not evolving.
In Part 3, I make Bob more competent. I do this by showing him learn. I had to bring in the “mentor” archetype. I had to give Bob a few wins. This made it so when he got to the final conflict, he looked like he stood a chance.
That’s how I use the sliders. If I ever felt like my sympathy or proactivity values were slipping, I adjusted for it. I encourage authors to do these checks. When you hand the book to beta readers, ask them to send a chapter by chapter evaluation using whatever sliders you use to evaluate the character, then compare those to your own assessment. If they’re the same, I’d say you’re doing it right. If they’re different, that’s when it’s time to find out what you’re missing.
I’ve never really cared much for competent characters. They bore me. Oh there are a lot of characters that I love that are ALSO competent, but for my money, if a character doesn’t make me feel and isn’t doing anything, I hate the story. That doesn’t mean EVERYONE will. Know your genre.
That leads me to my last point. The Mary Sue character. Corey would be awesome and tell you where that term came from, I just learned it an moved on. (The difference between a gardner and an architect if I’ve ever seen one). A Mary Sue is a character that is the most compelling, most powerful, most proactive, most competent character ever. Dear God, do I hate those characters. I argue that if a character is too powerful and too competent, the sympathy bar naturally slides down for me. It’s a risk writers take. But here’s my twist:
Mary Sues don’t happen when all the bars are maxed; they happen when all the bars are equal.
I get this from photography. I picked up that wonderful skill in the Navy, and I’ll love it for the rest of my life. In terms of light, if you have equal values of red, blue, and green, you get gray. You can have 20% of each, or 100% of each. (Zero..well..then you don’t have any color, so that’s black, which, according to Batman is a very, very, very, dark gray). I find characters feel like Mary Sues when all values are equal, no matter those values.
Character study: Rey. She’s not that sympathetic. Really. She’s just out there in the desert chilling. You LEARN to care for her, but that’s not the first hour of the movie I saw. She’s competent, but everyone but me remembers how she got captured (like a chump) and messed up the doors (like a fool) when they were first aboard the Falcon. If I evaluate Rey right after meeting Han, I’d say she’d measure out at: Sympathy 10% Competence 10% Power 10% and Proactivity 10%. Remember, Finn is the one who gets her to move. She wanted to go home through the first half of the movie.
Her arc SEEMS Suish (trademark M.L.S. Weech) because she processes equally across all sliders throughout the movie. She gains more power and competence. This makes her more proactive and sympathetic. I love the movie. I don’t mind Rey, but I don’t love her either, because she essentially sat around the desert until someone forced her to move, and even then she didn’t do much until she got captured. Watch the movie, let me know if you think I’m wrong.
So that’s it. Try it on your book. Toss me a few character studies. Let’s make a game of it. Until then, thanks for reading.
Matt
One reference for how to adjust sympathy is 
One of my betas for Journals hates Richard. When she told me why, I smiled, and said, “Sorry, but that’s exactly what I wanted you to feel.” The degree to which readers hate Richard is one thing, but if they hate him for the same reason my beta hated him, I did my job right. Characters can’t be completely rage worthy any more than they can be completely sympathetic. The masters (who in my opinion are George R.R. Martin and Peter V. Brett) can make you hate a character and then a book later, make you at least understand them. This particular ability allows you to have an extra arch with your characters.
Those characters are unique, but they can get boring quickly. I’ve failed in my life, so I look for characters who have flaws, but are generally decent folk. One of the more common compliments I get for Journals is Bob. He’s a good, white-hat, guy. He has his slumps, but he’s consistently kind and compassionate, and that makes him sympathetic when he’s faced with tragedy. Others don’t like him because he’s too nice. I think the world is just about done with antiheroes, then again, maybe not. I think it’s an archetype like any other. Use tools for a reason.
The Warded Man/Arlen from 
ke to start this story out by telling you about my senior year in high school. I promise, this is relevant. I don’t know about you all, but my algebra class had a rubric which accounted for showing your math. This infuriated me. I’d get the answer correct, but lose a point because I didn’t demonstrate how I got there.
The first book I ever finished writing was discovery written. I wrote a chapter a day for a few months and finished a book. I made it up as I went. I knew what my ending was, and I had a few general ideas, but I just sat down and typed. I’ve mentioned before that book never worked, but while numerous drafts are a consequence of discovery writing, the technique isn’t a bad one. I was just so inexperienced and raw, I didn’t know what to do.
This is what I tend to do now. I develop my characters. I plot their progress. I do this by typing a summary of their through line of the story. If I hit a scene I really like or just want to flesh some things out, I do. If my pace starts to slow down, I just summarize what’s going on and move forward. I’ve written whole chapters that way. Once all my characters are done and their through lines prepped, I tie them together in an overall outline. Again, as I copy and paste these plots together, I let the 17-year-old me come to all the conclusions he wants.
My fingers still fly across the keypad. I don’t stop for anything. Inevitably, I come to a new chapter, a new character, or pretty much anything that needs description. Description is the molasses in my swimming pool. I get better with every book, but inevitably, I get frustrated, or just flat out bored. So what do I do? I use parenthetical symbols.
I’ve found that really works for me. It took just about three years to write my second book. (That first book I mentioned, I wrote it 21 times through a 15-year period). This new system allows me to write about one a year. It still takes a hot minute to edit and make them ready to publish, but not nearly as long as Journals took me.
I saw this 
Whilst wandering the Earth in search of more skills, I came upon a scroll. I don’t know how it came to be under a rock in a cave I didn’t realize I’d need to sleep in until the snow grew so thick I couldn’t see, nor do I understand why I bothered to glance at it before I burned said paper for much-desired warmth. The important thing is I read it.
I re-read the word over and over. Was there more? Nothing. Who would waste so much paper for a single, five-letter word? The excitement I felt when I saw the title was replaced by the need for self-preservation. My body was shaking from the cold at this point and my fingers were likely to become individually wrapped popsicles.
“You gonna hold me all day, or do you mean to do something?”
“I still don’t have any ideas.”
Frustrated, I stabbed the pen onto the scroll and started writing a story about an argumentative quill destined to help an aspiring author create the greatest story ever told.
I’d decided to be a writer, and I realized all I needed to be so was to write. I started out as a discovery writer. I just made crap up and wrote until it made sense to me. I kept going until I’d finished my first book. It was awful. The description was lacking. The setting made no sense. The plot was trite.
I joined the Navy and learned how to be a journalist. I saw a bit of the world. I got distracted, but I eventually recommitted to what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a writer, so I wrote. I tried to save that first book. I literally tried 21 times to make that book something ready to be published. It’s still not. So I wrote a new book. I joined a writer’s group. Those words came more and more easily to me. The more I wrote, the more I wrote. The more times I typed “the end,” the more times I started a new book.
Everyone with a dream has that moment of calling. It’s almost never some obvious magical moment in a cave with a magical, talking quill. It’s hardly ever some wise old traveler coming to change your life. The real world isn’t that kind. The real world lets you do, whatever it is you want to do.
I don’t care what you write. Just write. I don’t care if it’s good; that’s what editing is for. I don’t care if no one likes it; write what you like. Just write. It doesn’t have to be a thousand words. It can be a block of time or a smaller number of words. But every day you write, you’ll find it easier to write. I promise! Every day you write, you’ll find you’ve written more and more. I promise!
So a while back, I posted my blog about 
Big or Small: My second convention was Awesome Con. Another author told me it was a bad choice. You see, that convention is huge, and the table price was higher because of it. My table selection wasn’t smart (I PROMISE I’ll get there), but I wouldn’t trade that convention for anything. I sold about 10% of the books I’ve sold so far at that first event. Maybe that’s not good for most, but there’s a few reasons for that.
How Many Books to Bring: I get a lot of varying opinions here. I made the mistake of buying a BUNCH of books, thinking I’d sell out at my first event. It didn’t work out for me. I sell about thirty books an event. That’s on the low side. I mentioned one reason above, the other reason is the price per book. I made a lot of mistakes in publishing Bob, that cover price is one I’m literally still paying for. I didn’t pick it. I sell it on my website and at conventions at the biggest discount I can. The next convention I go to, I’ll have 
Have a Pitch: You better be ready to talk to people. I have what I call an elevator pitch and then a small series of tidbits that helps. One thing I do is something I learned when I heard an author speak a while back. I forget what she calls it, but I call it the blending technique. I take two things that are similar to my book. I tell people the book is “Supernatural meets Dead Like Me.”
The Gretzky Approach: A person not spoken to is a sale not made. I’m confident I have a pretty good feel for people. So if a guy walks in with an F-U tattoo on his forehead just for me, I leave him (or her) alone. I’m not there to jump in people’s face, and they’re not there to be accosted. But I do say hello to EVERY person who walks by my booth. I do offer them whatever I have to give, and I do ask them, “Can I tell you about my book?” Boy do I love it when that beautiful cover of mine draws someone over. That thing does half my work for me. But at the end of the day, you have to be approachable. Saying hello and BEING personable helps.
Steal Ideas: I saw one author create a display. She offered to autograph that for people who bought the ebook from her QR Code reader. I did it, and it does work. That also did a LOT to help me reduce the pain of that cover price. The e-version of my book is every bit as entertaining, and I make about the same profit. This gives them the book, gives you a reader, and let’s them have something you can sign. I think everyone wins. That’s an idea I stole from someone I saw selling well at an earlier convention.
Get Pictures: Oh do I suck at this, but I mean to get better. Getting pictures and posting them on social media really does a lot to legitimize your presence. The help I mentioned above would be awesome for that. Whatever you do though, get pictures and post them. (NOTE: all kidding with Corey aside, make sure you inform the customer what you’re taking it for and what you intend to do with it. They have some rights. You do too, but save yourself a lot of pain and just talk to people, especially if they’ve already bought your book.)
Tomorrow is Sept. 1, and the Summer Indie Book Awards are scheduled to open voting. If you sign up 
The poll is being run through 
I want people to like my stories way more than I want my stories to sell. Don’t get me wrong, I’d much rather have a million sales with just as many positive reviews from happy readers who liked my book. It’s ridiculous to think EVERYONE who reads my book will love it, but I’m proud to say most of the people who’ve read Journals at least like my book. Heck, most of them even love it. That’s worth a lot in and of itself.
Now for the really important part. Let’s talk about awards. I can not begin to express how competitive I am. If there is a human being out there who likes winning more than me, I don’t think I’ve met the individual yet. The more I want to win, the more ridiculous I get. But winning for the sake of winning is altogether meaningless.
I don’t know if you’re aware of the Hugo Awards, but year after year it seems there is more and more controversy surrounding what should be the most respected award of its kind. This is heartbreaking to me. I LOVE the Hugos. I’ve read the first four, and every Hugo winner since 2010. I’ve voted twice. This is because I only vote in categories where I’ve read every book nominated. I have favorite authors, but I don’t vote for my favorite author; I vote for the story I think best encompasses what I feel the Hugo represents. Some years, I luck out and have time to read them all; some years, I don’t.
In the Navy, I was a pretty decently decorated and recognized mass communication specialist. The biggest honor of my career was frocking (translation: I got to put his new rank on his collar) on of my former students to petty officer second class. (Hi Scott!). This is closely followed by the opportunity to put pins (Um…cool Navy medals that mean they know a lot of stuff) on the two young men I deployed to Afghanistan with. In fact, everything I brag the most about was how hard I worked to help others earn promotion and recognition. I want to be a part of something great wherever I go. The Slush Brain is an AMAZING group of equally AMAZING authors.
So instead of rallying for votes. I’m rallying for readers. Read these books. Read one of them. Read ten. Whatever book you vote for, buy the other books from that same author. I’m honored to be a part of the indie author community, and I want others to see how wonderful (found another adjective) their work is too. Support SIBA by liking their page, reading what nominated books you have the time to read, and voting, not for the person you like the most, but for the book you like the most.
I sent it to whatever slush pile I could get it to. They all said no or ignored me. In some of my old notes, I came across Balticon 2014 (I think…the years blend together). I was speaking to one of the guests, whose name I will not mention because I refuse to use other people to sell my work, especially without their consent. He told me about a few other options. He told me that self publishing was a path I could choose. He told me there are several successful self-published authors. To say that conversation was memorable is an epic understatement. Most importantly, it made me fell like if I believed in my work, I could stand behind it.
One: I’m a writer. I’ve written 1,000 words a day (give or take) since I was 26 years old (11 years now). I didn’t get paid for one of those days, and I don’t care. God put me on earth to write. He didn’t promise me sales or awards or anything. I feel happy when I write. I feel at peace. Even as I write this, I’m smiling, because I’m doing what I’m meant to do. Sure, I’d like to be well paid for that one day, but I won’t stop regardless.
M.L.S. Weech 