[kingnothing]

this may sound a little odd but i was wondering what you fellow malazans thought about how to describe the way SE writes his characters development? Well not really writes but the way he structures it. It's definately not the traditional fantasy story arcs that's for sure. Major characters die. Gods rise and fall. It's all so human. Other stuff like the internal monologues, dwelling on themes or situations are heavily indepth. I'm just giving examples, simple ones.

it'd be great to hear other's thoughts on this.


P.S it's for an assignment at uni haha

[Ain't_It_Just_]

He always seems to provide some background for the characters, even if they don't hang around for very long. For example-we know about Koryk's half-blood origins, and Deadsmell's job prior to the army and being visited by Hood.

[kingnothing]

He does that alot with characters who are about to die. I was just reading RG and there was quite a few instances like that. Basically outlining a character who is just as human and 3 dimensional as the main characters but then in an instant their life is cut short.
I'll have to keep analysing his techniques.

[Ribald]

I am not sure what aspect of character development you are looking at but from the examples you mention it might help to compare Erikson's writing to that of historical fiction and Epic fiction (like the Iliad). I have always seen his writing as exploring a history, albeit a fantasy history. Due to his need to make the series 'realistic' or using Stableford's term of verisimilitude, Erikson attempts to portray 'real' people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. The shifting narrative perspective allows the reader to negotiate the plot and access different aspects of characters to come to light. Rather than simply describe a character or tell the reader 'this character is good', Erikson allows the characters actions and thoughts to reveal who and what they are.

An excellent example is the character of Anomander Rake in GotM. Ignoring the rest of the books for a minute, and taking on GotM look at how Rake is portrayed. Initially he is described as almost a traditional Dark Lord like Sauron. As a reader we can understand this because the narrative perspective rests with the Malazan forces and Rake is protecting Pale and thus opposing them. Erikson has the Malazan characters demonize and pejoratively describe Rake, a mysterious figure they know little about and fear. Their fear and apprehension is then turned into aggression and an attempt to reduce Rake to something less than human (and by human I mean sentient being). They describe him as a bogieman or evil presence. But when the narrative moves to Darujistan the reader gains access to scenes containing Rake. He becomes less like a stereotypical fantasy villain and more human. His conversations with the Alchemist reveal him to be a fallible but noble figure. His pride and arrogance are discernible, but so too is his deep sense of responsibility and nobility. So as a reader we can distance ourselves from the skewed perspective of Rake offered by the Malazan military and re-evaluate Rake from a more intimate perspective. Yet it is rare that Erikson allows you into the mind of one of the central powerful figures, preferring to show you various interactions and exterior perspectives. Thus the reader constructs the character and chooses which exterior perspectives to give weight too. Because GotM begins with a Malazan point of view, it is hard to see them as anything other than the traditional fantasy heroes, yet when the narrative shifts to Darujistan we can see them as imperialist invaders and blood thirsty conquerors. That does not negate the role of many of the malazan characters as heroes, Erikson simply makes it clear that no one side is truly good and another truly evil, all is dependent on perspective.


Feel free to pm me about this if you want to discuss it further.

[kingnothing]

thanks ribald that's great.
I agree with the fact that SE is exploring a history and creating real characters set against fantastical circumstances. It's sort of a paradox in a way. Since you understand it isn't real, the dragons and coming back from the dead a um dead give away but the characters and the way they're portrayed make it real. Or as real as could be imagined.

[Happy Shaman]

I like to think of his characterization as very organic. For the most part, characters are not simply laid out for you, SE grows them in front of you. No character enters the story and says, "Hello, I'm Whiskeyjack, I'm a sergeant, but not really. I really should have been emperor and despite looking like a gruff, infantryman, I'm actually a master swordsmen. Oh, and I also worked for Hood a ways back." He's characters feel far more real, because of the time SE has US invest in them.

I think that SE knows that a good writer has to be able to connect his story to his readers and that the best way to do so, is with real character that we as readers can sympathize with (Okay, that's no revalation, I'm just saying that SE is really really, ridiculously good at it)

[kingnothing]

Brilliantly said Happy Shaman. And you know what I thought was a great comparison to the soldiers of the malazan armies? Band of Brothers. That's the way they should be portrayed.

[Happy Shaman]

Thanks kingnothing, I haven't seen band of brothers yet, but it's on my list

[worry]

 Happy Shaman, on 13 March 2010 - 12:34 PM, said:

I like to think of his characterization as very organic. For the most part, characters are not simply laid out for you, SE grows them in front of you. No character enters the story and says, "Hello, I'm Whiskeyjack, I'm a sergeant, but not really. I really should have been emperor and despite looking like a gruff, infantryman, I'm actually a master swordsmen. Oh, and I also worked for Hood a ways back." He's characters feel far more real, because of the time SE has US invest in them.

I think that SE knows that a good writer has to be able to connect his story to his readers and that the best way to do so, is with real character that we as readers can sympathize with (Okay, that's no revalation, I'm just saying that SE is really really, ridiculously good at it)

I agree, and I would therefore add that it's also in a sense collaborative, with the reader. Not only does he make the characters "real", he trusts his readers to be able to add input from their own knowledge base about people. I would suggest that the more one relies on broad types, stereotypes, and/or prejudices in the real world, the less they will understand or get something out of SE's populations. For instance, if one insists on thinking of Native Americans in broad, homogeneous strokes then one is less likely to grasp the "point" of SE's introduction of so many cultures in a single continent, or any given set of adjacent but divergent cultures. So he's paying a compliment of trust to his readers that they'll "get it", so to speak. I guess I'm generalizing here too a little, but I think limited worldviews lend themselves to dissatisfaction with the MBotF.

[worry]

And that is in line with Ribald's point too. SE also plays with what we already know from fantasy fiction as well as its roots in mythology, folk tales, epics, classical lit, and history. So we should be comparing Rake to Sauron, and then later perhaps to the elves. But eventually we realize just how uniquely he and everyone else is shaped both by history and by current events. He doesn't avoid mythologizing utterly, but he understand how and why it's done. So we get to see many of the shaping events and people, and then their ramifications down the line. And so we understand characters in terms of their motivations. We get personality, but we get a lot of what goes into informing that personality too, so that gives real weight to everything we know about each character.

So essentially he knows the tropes, he gives us the benefit of the doubt that we know the tropes, and he knows how to weave through them or weave around them when appropriate, with the ultimate aim of injecting quasi-realistic characters into fantastical situations and settings. I think a good example is how he handles dragons. We know talking dragons are generally wise but selfish, and they know their station is several magnitudes above humans. And more bestial dragons are the ultimate weapon, if someone has the capacity to harness their power and set them loose on enemies. And we've seen some pretty strong writers playing with these tropes in inventive ways (George Martin and Robin Hobb, for instance). But nothing really comes close to collapsing the tropes as the Eleint and Soletaken dragons, who only occasionally graze our previous information on what a dragon is supposed to be. And he thinks out the who what where when why and how of them all, or at least hints that those things do exist. They've taken part in all that has become this world's mythology, but they're also real beings with individual personalities, goals, and motivations.

I guess to sum up, SE backs up his characters on micro and macro levels, with history and culture and family and personality and all else. so their development is truly organic as Happy Shaman said. He trusts the reader to understand how development works on all these levels, and invites us to compare and contrast all this to the stories we've already heard.

[Happy Shaman]

Awesomely said worrywort! Both post SE, more then any writer that I've read, makes all of his character's feel real and I think a big reason why is because the characters in the MBotF are wonderfully flawed. And the more powerful the character, it seems, the more flawed that they are. Look at Kallor; He's immortal and can never be bested in battle...but he's got way more then one screw loose. Never have I seen a cast of characters so flawed before, but these character flaws that SE uses only ever seem to make the characters more endearing to the reader. Because, like them, we too are flawed and not only can we compare and contrast, like worrywort said, with other stories, we can easily compare and contrast them with real life individuals, ones we know, or even those folk we've heard about in history.

[Chiggerflea]

Erikson's approach to character has been eloquently summed up by previous posters.

Would also like to add that while traditional storytelling is character-centric (growth, Hero's Journey, etc.), and while TMBOTF does have examples of characters who embark upon character journeys (Crokus, Karsa), the focus is more on events. That's not to say that (unlike ICE, *shudder*), Erikson doesn't know how to write characters. He's pretty amazing at this, in an artfully efficient way. I find that his characters are more used to reveal a broader insight into the world's cultures, social attitudes, themes, and of course, as fodder for kick-ass scenes convergence.