Character Icons

Dream,

Great idea for a thread! 

What about icons that are overdone. Like my coffee drinkers. :-) 

I think Michael, our yogurt eating hero, believes that yogurt is a superfood...protein, calcium, etc. He's also always on the go, and yogurt is a quick meal.

OH, here's one that I think is cute. The little kid on The Middle (with Patricia Heaton) He repeats portions of conversations in a whisper. We watch the show and my entire family sits and waits for that kid to do that. We're easily entertained.

I had quite a few readers comment after my first book that I must love coffee.  Uh, yeah?  But if it's that obvious, it really is overdone, LOL.  Then again, meeting for coffee and various coffee houses are such an entrenched part of our culture now.

Would you say insisting on fresh-roasted beans is a quirk?  LOL.  (my husband says it is...an expensive one!!)

How does our conversation always end up to be about coffee??  But as long as we're talking about it.  NCIS lovers would know that Gibbs always has a cup of coffee in his hand.  One of the other characters even mentioned that he runs on caffeine. 

Oh--here's another.  Brenda Lee from The Closer.  I love how she has chocolate hidden everywhere--in her desk, the bedside table, her purse.  When she's stressed, she goes digging for the chocolate!  That's a character quirk, but it also says something about her.

Shirlee, I think you're right about the coffee and chocolate being quirks.  Quirks can tell a lot about a character, like I think what drives Brenda Lee to the chocolate is her impulsivity.  She has to squash it on the job (though she's not always successful and that leads to conflict) but reaching for the chocolate is one way of managing that stressor.

When I think of character icons (which is my own term, btw, someone else might use it completely differently), it's more a symbol of what the character is learning.  For example in Moving Target, both characters had held on to these cheap metal rings that they'd gotten as teenagers.  The rings re-occur in several different scenes, but when the H and h finally put them on again as adults, they have a very different meaning for them then because of the characters' journey.  Does that make sense?

So I do think we're talking about two different things with the quirks and the "icons" but they are similar.  And I do think that the character quirks can either be in direct correlation with their archetype or be a foil for it.  

Steph

Sorry. I just completely misunderstood what the thread was about. I'm all for discussing character icons. A lot of my characters drive old cars and most of my heroines live in old houses. I'm not sure what that says about them. Maybe that they value tradition?

Have no idea if it's a "real" term or not.  I think of an icon as something that represents the character--who they are and who they are growing to be.  Your character that collected figurines of dogs is a perfect example, Brenda.  She's afraid of dogs, but she's also afraid of other things.  Lacey is definitely into control.  She can control her response to the figurines whereas a real dog is unpredictable.  As her character grows through the book and she learns to deal with things differently, her response to a real dog changes too.  The dog figurines are a symbol of that change in Lacey's character.

Now, back to Michael Weston from Burn Notice, what would it mean if he suddenly looked down at that yogurt cup that he holds between himself and Fiona and looked at her and then threw the cup of yogurt out the window??

Margaret, I LOVE Monk!  Wouldn't it be hard to write a character with SO many quirks??  The thing I think that so totally represents his character and what's underneath all the quirks is the way he is with Christmas present that his wife bought him the year she died.  He won't open it, but he holds it every year and looks at it, almost like he's afraid if he opens it, he'll lose her forever.  It makes me want to cry thinking about it--it's so dear.

Steph

Oh, I love MONK, too.  Steph, I don't think of the things you're talking about as icons as much as I call them symbols.  I use a fair amount here and there -- it was in reading Maggie Osborne that I finally realized what she was doing.  One of her historicals had an impoverished Calamity Jane kind of character who was awarded a beat-up old silver spoon by some grateful miners who she had nursed back to health when no one else would help them. That spoon was all they had of value and it symbolized her character. When she married a wealthy man (lots of details missing here, but he was forced to marry her) he did not think her beat-up old spoon was worthy of a place on the mantel with his expensive momentoes.  Only at the end, when he came to see her and love her, did he put the spoon back on the mantel.  That spoon told the whole story and formed part of the arc of the story.  I am a firm believer in making the inner conflict extenal through some of these things.  Glad to know you're thinking that way, too. I did a talk/discussion on this at our local RWA and they all went crazy about Indiana Jone's hat being a symbol for him (I haven't followed the movies. so just passing that along as a more contemporary example).

Very interesting conversation! I think these quirks can be used to make characters more memorable--and fun. And I love the use of symbolism. You've all given great examples!

Another character who stands out to me is Castle. He has a very distinctive personality.

Margaret 

Frasier's dad's chair. It symbolizes his old life, his last hold on independence...but also a way to bug Frasier.

I loved that Frasier's dad plopped that ugly chair right in the middle of Frasier's fancy apartment.  And even when they weren't talking about it, that chair was in the scene. 

Castle is an interesting character, Margaret.  I love the play between him and his daughter and mom.

I'm starting to think I've watched a lot of TV--I've seen everything we've talked about.  Maybe I need an intervention.

Steph

Janet,

That's exactly it, without explaining, we all know what that chair represents!

brenda

My personal icon is looking at the caller id, but never answering the phone. 

 I love reading this discussion!  What an interesting topic.

So if we were to continue this conversation next week on another writing topic, what would y'all want to talk about? 

Archetypes was Shirlee's idea.  That might be fun...

Sadly, I don't watch enough t.v. or movies to follow the conversation!

Yep, I'm with you, Shirlee. Love a warrior!

I don't know if it's an archetype -- but I like a Reluctant Hero -- gets me everytime.

Someone gave a workshop on archetypes at a romance conference. I can't remember who or which one, but I remember she listed hero archetypes. I remember the charmer, the bad boy, the best friend, the warrior (which I mentioned before) and the chief. I know there were more, but I can't remember them.

Dream got me in here! I love talking about archetypes!

Actually, the best book I've found is 45 Master Characters by Victoria Lynn Schmidt. I know Tami Cowden (I think) has a book on archetypes, but I like how Victoria describes them better, and also makes them very easy to understand. She also has an extra archetype that can be helpful depending on your story.

I also like how she talks about the Hero and Heroine's journeys, which I personally find helpful for romance.

I think the downfall of archetypes is that it's often hard to turn an archetype on its head so that you don't write a cliche character. I wrote an Amazon who had already been raped in my first Sushi book, for example, which is different from other Amazons in fiction.

Camy