nuance in your writing

[wisteria]

we all know that nuance is like, being subtle and stuff. how do you incorporate it in your writing? Your characters? your development and plots?

to me, I think contradictions are a great way to establish nuance in a character. for example, do many people want fit and model-like bodies? Yeah-- but do those same people workout everyday and eat healthy? Nah.

So like that's one example of nuance to me-- contradictions in characters. what are some of your favorite ways to implement nuance with your writing?

[ArenaSnow]

I consider it a balance between telling plenty about a scene while leaving many specifics of thought to mystery. Telling a lot, but not everything, leaving certain things to mystery and/or curiosity. When you do not reveal every aspect of a character's thinking, and merely leave core tidbits to implication, there's plenty of room to add nuances.

I'm sure others will come up with far more insightful inputs than this >.>

[Dion]

@Rockatiel I am not sure what you mean by a nuanced character? Can you clarify a bit?

[wisteria]

@Rockatiel I am not sure what you mean by a nuanced character? Can you clarify a bit?

@Odin

character nuance, to my understanding, is like the difference between, say, a walking stereotype and a character that is more real. the subtle actions or things about your character which make them different, either from similar characters that are like them or the archetype they are derived from.

nuance is a lot easier to see in movies than writing, imo, because in movies you can see people's tone of voice, the prosody of their words, their hand gestures, stuff like that. so even characters built on a similar archetype will seem completely different. in writing, it can be a little wordy describing all these little traits every paragraph, so then you have to go to the main part of a character-- the conflict, their personality. but then how do you go about explaining these subtle differences without making your character too confusing, or worse, not make sense? or, what are your favorite things/concepts to use for making a character nuanced?

I'd say it's about the same definition for plot too.

hope that made sense lol