Dynamic Characters- How to create personalities that keep readers captivated

by Nancy Kress

  In The Great Gatsby, Daisy's daughter Pammy is just such a secondary character. She affects the plot in that she certainly would have complicated any decision Daisy might have made about Gatsby, had Gatsby lived. In addition, Daisy delivers one of her key speeches to Nick on the subject of the child's birth and the painful circumstances surrounding it. Yet the ending of the novel doesn't account for Pammy—never even mentions her. And readers don't notice the omission. Pammy is an ordinary little girl of her class, and it's assumed she goes on living the life that implies, even though her mother and father are both responsible for manslaughter.

  Finally, Gatsby abounds with minor characters, some colorful and some not: Myrtle's sister Catherine, the ''boarder'' Klipspringer, the reporter checking out the rumors around Gatsby, Michaelis, the McKees. They are all furniture, there to facilitate the doings of the main characters.

  It's not, of course, possible for us to know exactly what was in F. Scott Fitzgerald's mind as he wrote Wolfsheim, Jordan, Klipspringer, Daisy and Pammy. However, it's not hard to deduce that he must have had a pretty clear idea of what would happen to Daisy, Tom, Gatsby and Myrtle—otherwise he wouldn't have had a book. Perhaps he knew their fates before he wrote even the first word of the novel.

  Perhaps their fates became clear to him part way through the writing. Or perhaps he wrote a first draft, exclaimed at the end of it, ''Good Lord! Wilson shoots Gatsby!'' and wrote that.

  It doesn't matter. There are all sorts of ways to arrive at the end of a first draft. But sometimes (often) that's just the beginning.

  FIXING PLOT PROBLEMS THROUGH SECONDARY CHARACTERS

  After the first draft is finished, most writers feel a flush of triumph. Then they reread the manuscript.

  At this point, nearly every writer will find at least some loose ends unraveling during or after the climax. Some common problems:

  • Characters will be unaccounted for. (Whatever happened to Good Old George?)

  • Actions you need for your climax seem, on second reading, undermotivated. Why are these people doing these things?

  • Some situations aren't as plausible as you would like. How can you make them feel more inevitable?

  • The climax occurs too abruptly. You need more and/or better foreshadowing.

  • A few sections of the book seem a little thin. Not enough action, or not enough character development, or not enough tension.

  • A key scene reads, alas, too much like a cliche.

  • A subplot doesn't feel closely enough tied to the main story line.

  What to do about these problems? Work backward, through your secondary characters. Secondary characters are usually more easily revised than are primary ones. It is a major undertaking to strengthen plot holes by changing your protagonist from Irish to Vietnamese, from a plumber to an engineer, from thirty to sixty, from cheerful to bitter and devious. But it's not nearly as difficult to change her cousin. The cousin appears in only three scenes. And you hadn't imagined an entire history and personality for him anyway. Thus, it's not so difficult to alter him to whatever your evolving plot requires him to be.

  But aren't the problems bulleted above traceable not to secondary characters, but to major ones? Can you solve such major plot difficulties without major changes in your protagonists? Actually, yes, sometimes you can. Let's look again at each problem.

  PROBLEM NUMBER ONE: CHARACTERS UNACCOUNTED FOR

  Let's say you've finished a first draft and you're actually pretty pleased with the last three chapters. All the forces you've been setting up have come together effectively at the climax, and a complex plot has been brought to a satisfactory conclusion. However, one problem remains. One of the main characters cannot, for plot reasons, be present in the climactic scene. He must be elsewhere. Following the climax are only two more short scenes, both of which read very well, but he's not in those scenes either. And you don't want to add him, because he's supposed to be two thousand miles away, and there's no good reason to bring him, at this late date, to the location of the climax. Neither do you want to add a third scene after the climax; the book feels emotionally right just as it is, and another scene would only dilute the effect. Still, this missing character was important and colorful; readers are going to want to know how he ended up. What to do?

  Use a secondary character.

  This secondary character—we'll call her Pamela—can be the means to let the reader know what happened to the unaccounted-for main character (George). Pamela can receive a phone call from George. Or a birthday card, with a scrawled bit of news in it. Or see George's name in the newspaper. Or she can have a conversation about George with another character. Each of these can be brief—so brief they don't require another scene. Yet they will satisfy the readers' desire to know whatever happened to good old George.

  But what if Pamela doesn't know George—and neither does anybody else present at the end of the book, when you're doing your wrap-up? That's where you plot backward with minor characters. Change Pamela's life so that she does know George. It's not hard to do; she's not that fully developed, and not in very many scenes anyway. So decide that Pamela and George are cousins, or ex-spouses, or in the same work field, or from the same town, or whatever. Then go back and plant that in a few earlier scenes—it's not hard. When the second-last scene rolls around and Pamela tells Justin that she received a gloomy note from George (Can you believe it, under these circumstances! George could be gloomy about winning the lottery, but then he was always like that even when we were kids), it will feel natural. And you the writer will have accounted for George.

  Mystery writers do this often to account for suspects who turn out not to have committed the crime after all. Claudia Bishop, for example, in her book A Taste for Murder, has as a suspect a boorish businessman staying at the scene of the crime, an upscale inn. One of the two amateur sleuths suspects him. But he's not the killer, and he leaves the inn before the end of the novel. To account for his fate, Bishop ends the book with a restaurant review he wrote of the inn. He was actually a food writer traveling incognito. Had the cook known, she would have cooked much better for him! The tiny incident is funny, brief enough to not slow down the book's ending, and satisfying in accounting for someone physically not present at the novel's end.

  PROBLEM NUMBER TWO: ACTIONS YOU NEED FOR YOUR CLIMAX ARE UNDERMOTIVATED

  This problem is common: At the book's climax, a major character (Mike) is required to take a sudden decisive action. This action surprises everyone. The problem is, it also surprises you. You didn't anticipate that Mike would be doing this at the climax, and as a result you've never shown him to be decisive. In fact, he comes across as a sort of wimp. How can you better set up Mike as capable of this plot development?

  Again, look to your secondary characters.

  Obviously, Mike has a decisive side that comes out only in certain kinds of situations, and just as obviously, the other major characters have never seen Mike operate in those situations (or they wouldn't be so surprised at the climax). But you need to let us see this side of Mike, to prepare us to accept his change. To do this, consider carefully each of your secondary characters. Which ones might be altered so they have dealings with Mike, either in story time or in the past? Which ones could become his cousin, or exspouse, or business partner, or fellow expatriate of Tiny Falls, Iowa, or whatever? Again, secondary characters are easier to alter than Mike is. He's too important and complete to reimagine from scratch. Instead, reimagine a few of the secondary characters so that they have plausible reasons to see Mike's decisive side, and go back and insert those scenes as necessary. Then Mike's action at the climax will seem in character—and you won't have to rewrite major chunks of the book for that to happen.

  PROBLEM NUMBER THREE: SOME SITUATIONS AREN'T AS PLAUSIBLE AS YOU WOULD LIKE

  The third problem is not that the characters are violating what you've shown us, but that the situation itself does not feel inevitable. It may not even feel possible.

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p; In some cases, of course, this is just the result of a bad story. Too many coincidences, too far-fetched a premise, lapses in story logic. Nothing can save a truly dumb plot. But in other cases, concentrating on the characterization of secondary personae can help an astonishing amount.

  Let's take an example with a truly far-out premise: Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives. In this best-seller, the climax comes when the protagonist and point-of-view character, Joanna, discovers that the women in the town of Stepford are being systematically killed and replaced by look-alike robots more submissive to their husbands. Not a very likely idea. Yet Levin makes Joanna—and us—believe it by concentrating throughout the novel on his secondary characters. Without realizing the significance of the information, we learn that many men in Joanna's new neighborhood work in high-tech areas. We see a robotics expert, a computer voice-recognition researcher, a graphic artist, a doctor skilled in skin grafts. We are shown that these men are self-centered and ruthless. None of these men is a major character, and none is fully developed. But the backgrounds and sketchy personalities that the author does give these secondary characters are what make a silly plot seem horrifying and plausible (at least until we finish the novel).

  Nothing will rescue an unworkable plot. But if yours is passable (though flawed), try strengthening the flawed areas by giving your secondary characters lives that enhance the plausibility of what happens to the protagonists.

  PROBLEM NUMBER FOUR: YOU NEED MORE AND/OR BETTER FORESHADOWING

  In the fourth problem, the climax of the book doesn't seem implausible. Upon reflection, the reader can see how such an event could come about. But so could a couple of other possible endings, given the plot that has gone before. So why did it happen this way, instead of that way? It seems the author has just arbitrarily chosen one of any number of possible endings, because she found it convenient.

  What you need to do in this case is strengthen the feeling of inevitability: Yes, the story had to end this way. You do this by going back and inserting more scenes earlier in the book. These additional scenes have the purpose of foreshadowing the outcome, making it seem like the most logical one. In other words, you are loading the dice, adding weight to one face of the falling cube, so that the number you want will end up staring the observer in the face.

  You do this—surprise!—by building additional scenes around your secondary characters.

  This makes sense, if you think about it. The main plotline is already set. What you want is not to alter that main plot, but to nudge it here and there in a given direction. You want to close off certain possible actions, make others easier for your protagonist. Secondary characters are born to nudge, close off and facilitate.

  Suppose, for instance, that your main character is trying to make her way in seventeenth-century England by her wits, beauty and unscrupulous willingness to do whatever is necessary to advance herself. This is the situation in Kathleen Winsor's perennially popular romance, Forever Amber. Amber St. Clare rises to be mistress to King Charles II, but cannot win the one man she ever really loved. After she rises as high as possible, Amber then is shown beginning her inevitable descent into obscurity (unscrupulous courtesans always seem to end up miserable or alone: Consider Mata Hari, Mary Anne Clarke and Gennifer Flowers). In order for this descent to occur, more prosperous pathways must be cut off from Amber.

  She can't, for instance, just return to the king, or find another bewitched rich lover, or be allowed to go on trysting with her beloved Bruce Carlton every few years, or retire in wealthy dignity with her illegitimate son. Any of those endings would not provide a satisfying retribution for Amber's appalling behavior, which has pretty much included breaking all ten commandments.

  Instead, author Winsor uses secondary characters to close off all possible ways in which Amber might have escaped a climax of humiliation and despair.

  Another mistress of the king, a minor character, cuts Amber off from renewed royal mistresshood by threatening to leave him if he ever sleeps again with Amber. That path is closed.

  Another secondary character, a duke with his own reasons to dislike Amber, arranges for her to be tricked into leaving the country, far from anyplace she could easily acquire another titled keeper.

  The author creates another secondary character to marry Bruce. His new wife is a gentle woman he does not want to hurt; this closes off the possibility that Amber will win her lifelong struggle to keep Bruce for herself.

  She can't retire with her son because yet another secondary character persuaded her years ago to let Bruce adopt the boy.

  All these secondary characters exist only fully enough to do their jobs of making Amber's fate seem inevitable. That's all the existence they need.

  What secondary characters could you use, or alter, or create to do the same for your plot?

  PROBLEM NUMBER FIVE:

  SOME SECTIONS OF THE BOOK SEEM THIN

  Parts of the novel don't have enough action, or enough character development, or enough tension. Yet you need those scenes for plot development.

  This is perhaps where interesting secondary characters are the most use of all. Like a magician's patter and hand-waving, they can entertain the audience while the illusion is prepared for unveiling.

  Charles Dickens was the master of this technique. We could find examples in any of his novels; let's take David Copperfield. The first part of the book consists of David's childhood, allowing Dickens the time he needs to explore his protagonist's character and set him up for the major adult choices he will eventually have to make. While this childhood is progressing, David is necessarily more acted upon than acting. Yet the book never seems passive or preachy or even unrelievedly earnest, because the secondary characters whom David encounters, and who shape his personality, are such a fascinating and colorful lot. The improvident Mr. Micawber, the charming and coldblooded Steerforth, little Emily, Aunt Betsey and her enemy donkeys, the faithful Ham—all entertain us mightily. That they are also serving important plot purposes recedes into the background; we're too absorbed in their interesting eccentricities. What might have been a relatively thin section of the book, mere setup for what comes later, instead takes on richness and fascination.

  None of us is Charles Dickens. But we can still look hard at our secondary characters, considering whether they couldn't be given an expanded role in those thin sections of our books. Can they have crises of their own, choices of their own, successes of their own? Can these crises and successes be used not only to interest readers but also to deepen our sense of the protagonist and his world?

  If so, plot backward to make your secondary characters do whatever will add to the book as a whole. That's what they're there for.

  PROBLEM NUMBER SIX: A KEY SCENE READS TOO MUCH LIKE A CLICHE

  A nineteenth-century Western horseman rides sadly out of town forever. A woman divorced against her choice squares her shoulders and just decides to get on with her life. A detective discovers that he himself is being set up for the crime he's supposed to be solving. A leader is trapped into turning on a loyal lieutenant.

  You have to have this scene in the book, but even as you type it, you're wincing because it seems like such well-trodden ground. Well, maybe it is. But even if the protagonists and situation are overly familiar, secondary characters can still add freshness. Take, for instance, that last cliche (leader trapped, etc.), and then add a plot familiar for over half a century: the legend of King Arthur. Old, old stuff.

  But not the way T.H. White reworked the story in his wonderful novel The Once and Future King. The incidents are from the fifteenth-century work by Sir Thomas Malory, but the tone is pure twentieth century: rueful, funny, humanly sad rather than heroically tragic, touching. And much of that tone is derived from the secondary characters.

  Here is the scene in which the leader, King Arthur, is being trapped into declaring war on his loyal lieutenant and best friend, Sir Lancelot. Present are knights Gawaine, Gareth, Gaheris and Agravaine, plus Mordred. The latter
two persuade Arthur that, under the new laws of justice that the king himself has devised, the queen must be tried for treason if she is discovered to be guilty of adultery with Lancelot:

  Gareth threw himself on his knee.

  ''It has nothing to do with us!''

  Gawaine, lumbering to one knee more slowly, joined him on the floor.

  ''Sir, I came ben hoping to control my brothers, but they willna listen. I dinna wish to hear what they may say.''

  Gaheris was the last to kneel.

  ''We want to go before they speak!''

  Arthur came into the room and lifted Gawaine gently. . . .

  Agravaine smiled.

  ''We don't know much about the new law,'' he said smoothly, ''but we thought that when an assertion could be proved, in one of these new law-courts of yours, then the need for personal combat did not arise. Of course, we may be wrong.''

  ''Trial by Jury,'' observed Mordred contemptuously, ''is that what you call it? Some pie-powder affair.''

  Agravaine, exulting in his cold mind, thought: ''Hoist with his own petard!'' . . . ''So you will go on the hunting party, Uncle Arthur, and we have permission to break into the Queen's room, if Lancelot is there?''

  The elation in his voice was so indecent that even Mordred was disgusted. The king stood, pulling his gown around him, as if for warmth.

  "We will go.''

  ''And you will not tell them beforehand?'' The man's voice tripped over itself with excitement. ''You will not warn them after we have made the accusation? It would not be fair!''

  ''Fair?'' he asked.

  He looked at them from an immense distance, seeming to weigh truth, justice, evil, and the affairs of men.

  Note that Arthur's reactions are downplayed, presented as mild, even dispassionate. All the color comes from the wildly contrasting emotions of the secondary characters: Gawaine's anguished shame over his brother's behavior, Gaheris's and Gareth's passionate refusal to be involved, Agravaine's cruel glee, Mordred's contempt. The situation is old—leader is trapped into turning on a loyal lieutenant—but the scene is fresh and original because of the fresh and original secondary characters.