Dynamic Characters- How to create personalities that keep readers captivated

by Nancy Kress

  ''That's our answer.'' Deedee had turned. "We can go right around the outside. Don't waste time with that door, Rick. Come on! We're down to twenty-one minutes.''

  She led the way, zooming at maximum suit speed for the open entrance of the mine loading chamber. Rick, close behind, did the calculation. They had to make their way right around CM-2 to almost the opposite side of the planetoid. Say, three kilometers. If they could average ten per hour, they would do it. If not. . . .

  All Rick could think of was that early this morning he

  had made Deedee sit down and eat breakfast when she was hyped up and raring to go. If they were too late now, it was his fault.

  Rick's improved attitude toward women leads to a reciprocal genuine liking between him and Deedee. And out of that change comes an understanding of how bad his old enemy, Vido Valdez, must feel when Vido's girlfriend flunks out of the program and is sent back to Earth. This empathy ends the feud between Rick and Vido. It's new behavior for Rick:

  Rick hesitated again. He wasn't sure what he had to say would please Vido, but he knew he had to say it. "Vido, it wasn't you. I talked to Monkey a long time that day before you came along. When it comes to math, she just doesn't get it. Not at all. I could have taught her every day, so could you, and it wouldn't have made any difference. She'd never have passed that theory final in a hundred years. She just didn't seem able to get the basic ideas. You know her a lot better than me. Surely you saw that?''

  ''I thought it was me. I thought I wasn't explaining right.'' ''It wasn't you. It was Monkey. I'm really sorry, Vido.'' Rick finally reached out and patted the other's shoulder, knowing it was something no sixteen-year-old male did to another male in his old school without risking mockery. But the hell with that, things were different in space.

  By the end of the novel, Rick's actions have changed considerably. In response to the pressures on him, he has become more responsible, more sensitive, more trustworthy and much more hardworking. All of which has been dramatized—not merely talked about—by the authors.

  VALIDATION: JIGGER TAIT SAYS IT'S SO

  Validation is whatever the author does to let us know that this character change is real and permanent; the character will not revert to his old behavior the next time the wind changes directions. You can do this in several ways.

  • Show the character engaging in concrete action(s) that clearly demonstrate that the change is now an entrenched part of his

  behavior (this is the most common method).

  • Show the character making future plans that reflect his change(s).

  • Show another person accepting the character as genuinely changed.

  • Show the character resisting old temptations.

  • Show the character leaving his old haunts to start over, differently, elsewhere.

  • Repeat a version of the first scene, with the character acting much differently this second time around.

  Sheffield and Pournelle combine three methods of validation: the third, fifth and sixth.

  Rick Luban's changes are validated by his training instructor, Jigger Tait. Throughout the novel, Jigger Tait's judgment has been established as sound, so we can believe his evaluation.

  "You may wonder what the hell all this is about,'' Jigger began, even before the door was closed. ''I'll get to the point right away, Rick. I want to talk about your future.... I want to ask you to consider a career with Security.''

  The idea caught Rick totally unprepared. ''Security?'' He stared at Jigger. ''Why me?''

  ''I think—and Gina and Barney agree—you probably have a talent for it.''

  We understand that Jigger, a member of Security himself, is offering high praise—and an objective confirmation of how much Rick has changed from the cynical wise guy he was in chapter one.

  In addition, we see Rick preparing for his next post with Vanguard Mining: packing his things, applying for special expeditions, and we understand that he is going forward, not backward, with what he's learned. His preparations for the future validate that he intends to continue those new behaviors that make that future possible.

  Finally, the novel employs a truncated version of the sixth method of validation, in which a version of the first scene is repeated to show the character acting much differently this time. Sheffield and Pournelle don't actually repeat the entire first scene (the prank in the high school). Instead, they show Jigger telling Rick that the entire education system must change radically, and that eventually recruits from the more effective private training programs, such as Vanguard, will need to be the means for change. Young-looking recruits will need to ''infiltrate the education system, and either transform it or destroy the whole mess.'' The book ends this way:

  "We need older people, like Turkey Gossage and Coral Wogan—they've both volunteered—but we also need younger people, too, like me and Gina and—''

  ''No. Absolutely no. I'm not interested.'' Rick backed toward the door. ''I don't want to talk about it any more.''

  ... Rick closed the door and entered the second chamber of the airlock. He went through, but at the inner hatch he paused and stood motionless for a long time. He had not thought about Mr. Hamel for months, until today; but suddenly his mind was full of their final meeting, the small stooped figure sitting on the bench in the fading light of late afternoon. He heard again that dry, dusty voice: Not an easy job, but a worthwhile one. The most rewarding jobs are always the most difficult ones.

  Could that be true? On Earth, in space, everywhere?

  Maybe, but not for Rick Luban. Not tomorrow, not ever. And certainly not today, with Deedee waiting for him.

  He moved to operate the hatch.

  Beyond it, the party was getting into its stride. From where Rick was standing the sound coming through the closed door was no more than a confused hubbub, like the first distant swell of a revolution.

  The book ends with the implication that there will be a revolution in education on Earth, and that Rick will indeed (despite his current teenage denial) be a part of it. He will go back to his old high school, or one like it. And, as an agent of the revolution, he will behave much differently this second time around than he did when the novel's first scene unfolded. This final scene sets the stage for a possible sequel. It also validates that what has happened to Rick is permanent and real.

  More introspective characters may give us more direct reinforcement of what they've learned, through either dialogue or thoughts.

  Here are three famous examples of novel-end soliloquies that validate a genuine change in attitude:

  He realized that he had deceived himself; it was no self-sacrifice that had driven him to think of marrying, but a desire for a wife and home and love; and now that it all seemed to slip through his fingers he was seized with despair. He wanted that more than anything in the world. What did he care for Spain and its cities, Cordova, Toledo, Leon; what to him were the pagodas of Burmah and the lagoons of South Sea islands? America was here and now. It seemed to him that all his life he had followed the ideals that other people, by their words and their writings, had instilled in him, and never the desires of his own heart . . . had he not seen that the simplest pattern, that in which a man was born, worked, married, had children, and died, was likewise the most perfect? It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.

  —Philip Carey, in W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage

  Now Catherine would die. That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off-base they killed you. or they killed you gratuitously, like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.

  —Frederick Henry, in Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms

  I felt a little peculiar around the children. For one thing, they were grown. And I see they think me and
Nettie and Shug and Albert and Samuel and Harpo and Sofia and Jack and Odessa real old and don't know much what's going on. But I don't think us feel old at all. And us so happy. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt.

  —Celie, in Alice Walker's The Color Purple

  Rick Luban is not nearly as eloquent as Philip, Lieutenant Henry or Celie (he is, after all, only sixteen). But he is just as changed.

  SUMMARY: DESTINY ON AN ASTEROID

  This is anonymous, and very old:

  Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes destiny.

  Although probably written to apply to real people rather than fictional ones, the verse nonetheless encapsulates everything in this chapter:

  • Like Rick Luban, your character should demonstrate qualities that foreshadow change (thoughts and/or words).

  • He should be pressured by story events into behaving differently (actions, which make up plot).

  • The new behavior should be validated for us so we know it is now part of him (character).

  • And then he can go on, a changed man, to his destiny.

  A few months ago my local newspaper reported the story of a drunk driver who accidentally hit the car of his own fiancee, killing her. He was convicted of manslaughter. The sentence was reduced to probation, however, when the dead woman's family pleaded for leniency.

  Another news story described the divorce proceedings of a man who moved across the country to a city where he knew no one and accidentally married his long-lost half sister.

  If a beginning writer puts either of these events into fiction, someone will say, ''Oh, come on now! I don't believe that!'' And then the writer will say, ''But it really happened!'' Which, unfortunately, is no defense at all.

  Fiction is not about what really happened. It's about what seems so real that it's happening now, as you read the story. Real life is sometimes capricious, occasionally mysterious, once in a while totally inexplicable, nearly always messy. Fiction, on the other hand, has the task of making the capricious, the mysterious, the inexplicable and the messy into something much more coherent. It gives shape and meaning to events that in real life may have none, thereby satisfying a deep human hunger for order. Fiction patterns life for us.

  Does that mean that you can't base fiction on real events? Not at all. In chapter eight, we considered ways to adapt real people to fiction. In this chapter, we'll do the same for real plots. Three general guidelines follow.

  ''ANYTHING BUT THE FACTS, MA'AM''

  The most important rule is this: Don't stick to the facts.

  Fact, as we established above, is different from fiction. It's messier. The facts might be that the man who moved across country really didn't know anyone in the new city, really did meet his half sister purely by chance and really did marry her in total ignorance. But you aren't bound by the facts (no, not even if they happened to you). Instead, create nonfacts that will make a better story.

  Perhaps the relocated man knew that his father had once lived in this new city, a long time ago. His father, once a champion pool player and now dead, deserted the family when the boy was four. There was another woman. He finds himself hanging around pool halls, half resentful, trying to learn about the life his father must have led here. He meets a girl, herself a champion pool player. Her father taught her. The clues are there, but he can't put them together—or won't.

  What have you gained here? Quite a lot. You've transformed a random coincidence into a story of submerged longing and painfully buried memory. Your augmentation of the facts has given the entire chain of incidents both pattern and meaning.

  An important note: In recommending that you play fast and loose with the facts, I'm talking about writing fiction, not about writing dramatic journalism. When Shana Alexander, to take one superb example, writes about a real-life murder of a rich man by his own grandson (Nutcracker), she's not composing a novel. Nutcracker also tries to find pattern and meaning in what at first appears to be an inexplicable act of violence—but the book is not fiction. It's journalism and, as such, must stick to what really happened.

  You don't. Add, drop and invent events as necessary. Treat reality like clay, not stone.

  WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT?

  The most important thing you can invent is motives for all the major characters in your borrowed story. In real life, we sometimes don't know why other people behave as they do. In fiction, motives lay the foundation for reader acceptance of everything else. The characters may not understand themselves, but the reader should understand them, at least enough to sense that even the most demented has consistent demons driving him in consistent ways.

  Consider an example. Judith Rossner based her famous novel Looking for Mr. Goodbar on an actual 1973 murder in Manhattan. Katherine Cleary, a young schoolteacher devoted to her small pupils, was brutally killed in her own apartment by a man she'd picked up in a bar. Journalists ferreted out many facts about the victim, the murderer and the circumstances (one comprehensive treatment is Lacey Fosburgh's Closing Time). But when Rossner wrote her novel, she ignored or changed many of these facts, and she spent no more than a few pages on the movements of the killer. Instead, she built coherent patterns of behavior that showed readers how a pretty, educated young woman from a good Irish Catholic family could put herself in such a situation. Rossner concentrated on her character's motives.

  Note the plural of that word. The schoolteacher, here named Theresa Dunn, is not merely a victim; she's the complicated yet understandable protagonist that good fiction requires. She arrives at that seedy bar, ready for sex with a thug she doesn't know, because of everything that has happened to her throughout her whole life. Rossner uses her novel to show us what drives Theresa.

  At least two motives are factual. Both real-life Katherine Cleary and fictional Theresa Dunn have spines deformed by polio, which leaves them feeling less than perfect. And both are rather isolated individuals, without close friendships.

  To these facts, however, Rossner adds other motives for Theresa Dunn. Journalist Fosburgh tells us that ''little is known of Katherine Cleary's childhood.'' This doesn't stop Rossner. She invents for Theresa a brother killed in Vietnam, a gorgeous older sister to whom Theresa could never measure up and a contented younger sister who marries early and happily. In college, Theresa is callously rejected by a married professor after a four-year affair she believes is true love. Rossner also throws in a burning desire in Theresa to escape repeating her mother's life, which Theresa sees as made burdensome by marriage and family, including Theresa's own long illness:

  Still, if you weren't careful, you could end up with a house in New Jersey and six screaming kids. Or maybe five, and one who was too sick to scream and just lay in the bed and stared at you.

  Terrified of domesticity and the ''nice'' men who lead one into it, hating her own body, feeling inferior always to her sisters, Theresa grows into a woman who feels she doesn't deserve to be loved, and who even needs to be roughed up in order to feel sexual desire. By the time she picks up her killer in an Upper West Side bar, we understand all her tragic motives for being there. Not because those motives were true of her real-life counterpart, Katherine Cleary, but because Rossner has concentrated throughout her novel on showing us Theresa's acting out of the demons she herself refuses to recognize.

  What does all this mean to you? That if you're going to base your story on real-life incidents, first ask yourself the following questions:

  • What does my character think about these events? Why?

  • What does my character feel about these events? Why?

  • What formed his thoughts and feelings?

  • How can I dramatize his motives clearly to my readers?

  • What facts do I need to change to make those motives even stronger?

  The answers will transform opaque life into illuminating fiction
.

  I WAS ON THE VERY EDGE OF MY SEAT!

  Fiction must not only be illuminating, it should also be exciting. This is where tension comes in. Tension is the other great transformer of life into art.

  Tension means that the pressure in a situation mounts and mounts, until finally there's a climactic scene where the pressure in some way explodes. We all know that in real life, it doesn't always work that way. In real life, a given difficult situation might wax and wane, instead of building steadily. A climactic explosion might come with no advance warning. Or it might build and build—and then suddenly collapse into nothingness, like a hurricane that bypasses a town at the last minute. Or it might just wind down slowly, with no real climax at all.

  Fiction, however, demands a pattern of mounting tension. Thus, if you are shaping real-life events into fiction, you must rearrange them into the kind of pattern we discussed in the last two chapters—a pattern that puts ever increasing pressure on your protagonist.

  To see how this works, let's return to Looking for Mr. Goodbar. The factual Katherine Cleary was killed by a bar pickup in a situation no different from her other bar pickups. She had been doing this for several years, and that night offered no more significance for her than any other—until the man killed her. But that random pattern doesn't satisfy the needs of fiction for mounting pressure or significant choices.

  So Judith Rossner rearranged events to provide pressure and choice, starting at the very beginning of the novel. We see how deeply Theresa is emotionally involved with her first lover, an older professor. We see her choices of men worsen steadily, as she despises herself more and also feels more need to despise them. Theresa's fall into danger has a clear trajectory, lower and lower.

  Another pattern is provided by Rossner's inventing a serious suitor for Theresa. Katherine Cleary had no decent boyfriend in her life. But Rossner gives Theresa a decent man, James, who wants to marry her. James finds out about Theresa's sexual activities with rough strangers and gives her a choice: them or him. He issues his ultimatum on the very night she's killed. In fact, it's this choice that sends Theresa out to Mr. Goodbar. She just can't deal with the pressure.