Dynamic Characters- How to create personalities that keep readers captivated

by Nancy Kress

  Threads are supposed to be woven the whole length of warp or woof, not just abruptly unravel halfway.

  However—and here's the critical point—not all patterns are equally tightly woven. Your theme gains or loses credibility partly on the basis of the weave you create.

  Let me explain. In commercial fiction, especially, everything in the book usually contributes directly to the plot. Objects that receive more than a mention or two, secondary characters, symbols, events—all eventually relate to the main plot, in a clear pattern that can be satisfying because it imposes order on life. Such fiction pleases us at least partly because it says to us that life contains patterns, order, design. It all adds up.

  But all of us know, in our heart of hearts, that life doesn't really add up so neatly. A real person's day (or week, or year) includes hundreds of small things unrelated in any pleasing, orderly way. Real life is messily patterned, if it's patterned at all. Aunt Mary's shoplifting occurs right in the middle of a daughter's illness, a cousin's wedding, a business triumph, a lawn-care crisis, and it's unrelated to any of them. It's not a pattern, it's a distraction. Real life is disorderly.

  As a result, fiction that is too neatly patterned will not feel real. When everything in a story works out exactly, and each detail we saw has a neat place in the overall scheme, we may enjoy the story but we don't really believe it. It has a sterile, manufactured feel.

  Some writers—especially ''literary'' writers—compensate for this by including elements that are connected indirectly, often thematically, but not directly woven into the main plot. Anne Tyler is especially good at this. Her novel The Accidental Tourist, to take just one example, abounds with subplots and digressions connected only loosely to the main plot of Macon's romances. One such recurring element is Macon's sister Rose's cooking. Rose cooks casseroles, desserts, a turkey, in some detail. All of this could have been left out, but it serves several purposes. It deepens our understanding of Macon's background. It creates thematic design; much of the book concerns how people nurture each other (or don't). And—more relevant to this discussion—it gives the book the feel of the multidistraction that is real life.

  However, fiction in which there is no order whatsoever—in which things just seem to happen without connection or thematic implica-tion—isn't satisfying either. Why should it be? It may look like life, but we want something more from fiction. We already have life.

  The result is that every writer walks a tightrope between arranging the elements of his story in too tight a pattern and too loose a pattern. Too tight, and the novel feels contrived. Too loose, and it feels pointless. And, to complicate matters even more, different kinds of fiction define too tight and too loose in different ways. Romance novels usually require tight patterning; literary stories may allow very loose design.

  This is one way to look at theme. Theme is how much order, how stringently, you've imposed on your fictional universe. It's also what kind of order: happy, malevolent, despairing, random, hidden-but-there, etc. What do you want your fictional world to say about the real world?

  PUT THE ENGINE IN REVERSE: GOING FROM THEME TO PLOT

  The reader's perception, of course, is that plot comes first, and theme emerges from it. Some writers find that they don't know their themes until they've finished the first draft (I am one). They then rewrite with an eye toward balancing on that tightrope: not too contrived, not too rambling, does what I'm observing about the world below my rope actually add up to anything? Other writers pay attention to these things as they write the first draft. Either way, an awareness of the macro-and microlevels of theme can provide one more tool for thinking about what you should write, as well as how.

  Suppose, for instance, you know you're writing a traditional kind of book, in which a major point is that people who hold fast to their ethical convictions ultimately end up happier than those who sell out. You've created a large cast of characters to illustrate this. Some are ethical, others merely expedient. Knowing the pattern you want to weave, you can help yourself plot by asking such questions as:

  • What challenges might my ethical people have to face?

  • What values will this call on them to live up to? At what cost?

  • Will they immediately do the right thing, or will they thrash around for a while, trying to evade the problem? How will they try to accomplish this? Why won't it work?

  • What price will they eventually pay for their ethics? How can I dramatize that?

  • What will they gain? How can I dramatize that?

  • How do my unethical people meet the same challenges?

  • What will they gain? How can I dramatize that?

  • What price will they eventually pay for their lack of ethics? How can I dramatize that?

  Answering such questions should certainly help you get a firmer grip on both characters and plot.

  If thinking about theme in this way is helpful, do it. If not, then skip this particular approach and concentrate on others that you do find congenial. There are all kinds of ways to think about plot and characters; use whichever ones ignite that creative spark for you.

  SUMMARY: WAS THAT WHAT YOU MEANT?

  • Every work of fiction has a theme, if theme is taken to mean an implied view of the world.

  • Theme is created from your choice of plot and characters (the ''what'' of your book) and the novel's tone (the ''how'').

  • One difference between commercial and literary fiction is that in commercial fiction, almost everything relates to the main plot (a ''tightly woven'' worldview). In literary fiction, subplots, characters and incidents may relate only to theme (a ''loosely woven'' worldview).

  • If you know your theme before you begin the first or second drafts, you can use it to clarify the purpose of existing plot incidents and/or to generate additional incidents.

  Carol Burnett used to do a very funny skit on her old television show. The skit had several versions. There was always a writer (Burnett), typing away at a story, changing her mind often about the plot. (In despair, Jane jumped over the side of the rowboat—No. Jane gazed at the water, thinking about jumping—No. Jane shuddered and closed her eyes, unable to look at the water for fear she might give in to the temptation to jump—No.) At each change, the writer would pull the paper out of the typewriter, wad it up and toss it on the floor. And at each change the character (also Burnett), who existed on the other half of a split TV screen, would dutifully carry out the new version of the action: jumping into the water, climbing back into the boat (dripping

  wet), gazing at the pond's surface, not gazing at the pond's surface____

  Finally, at the end of the skit, the harassed and bedeviled character would step out of her frame and attack the writer who was causing her all this messy vacillation.

  To people who are not writers, the Burnett skit was funny. To writers, it was utterly hilarious, in the way that only truth can be utterly hilarious. Oh, yes, yes! I've been there! Yes!

  Characters do come alive to their creators. Writers do come to know their characters, to feel for them and with them, to experience their breathing presences. Purely fictional people take on solidity and substance, distracting us during dinner and cluttering up our study when we're supposed to be doing accounts. Don't take my word alone for this. Listen to the following writers, as diverse a group as possible in every other way, but united in this:

  Your characters must become as real to you as your neigh-bors—if they are not real to you, it's for damned sure they will not be real to your neighbors. If they are real to you, you will be able to see the world through their eyes in addition to your own.

  —Tom Clancy

  I suppose I am a born novelist, for the things I imagine are more vital and vivid to me than the things I remember.

  —Ellen Glasgow

  Usually if I just let the characters take over, I do better than if I sit down and calculate and try to plot the thing . . . this thing happens, where the characters take over and you
almost want to look behind you to see who's writing your story.

  —Joseph Wambaugh

  The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero.

  —Mary McCarthy

  But ideas run away with every writer, and it's amazing how you can start out with something and find yourself grappling with a minor character and you never intended to do so.

  —James Michener

  Characters, if imagined well, are people. And people, as everyone knows, can be ornery.

  THE CHARACTER WITH A MIND OF HER OWN

  So what do you do when your characters start to drive the story, instead of the other way around?

  Sit back and go along for the ride.

  More specifically, explore along with your wandering characters. If a scene you never intended to write occurs to you, and keeps occurring to you . . . write it. Even if it seems to wrench the book in a different direction. It will take only a day or two (scenes that nag at you that powerfully usually write very fast). If you don't like it, you can always discard it. If you do like it, and if you keep an open mind while writing the scene, it may suggest all kinds of marvelous directions, subplots or complexities that will enhance your novel.

  If a character keeps wanting to do something very much out of character, try to analyze why. Is it because the action is required by the plot? In that case, you need to either rethink the basic characterization or rethink the plot.

  Or, is it because the character has another side you hadn't realized? An internal contradiction, an intriguing complexity. Different facets of his personality show themselves at different times. In that case, write a scene or two of this value-added character and see if you want to change who he really is. Depending on how much of the book you've written, this may mean a lot of revising. It may also be worth it.

  If the character seems a little flat, you can even induce the Carol Burnett phenomenon deliberately. Hold a dialogue with your protagonist. Set him down and play interrogator about your mutual plot:

  • What did you do in the last scene?

  • Why did you do it?

  • What is your perception of how things are going?

  • What are you pleased with so far in this plot? What are you disgruntled with?

  • What would you like to see happen next? What will you do if you don't get your way? To whom will you do it?

  • What will you do if I do give you what you want? What's it worth to you?

  • What are your current feelings about the action so far? About the other people sharing the action?

  • Where were you on the night of the crucial last event? Where do you think you'll be for the next major event? How do you feel about that?

  • What don't the others know about you? Go on, tell me, you can trust me. Tell me in your own words.

  If this exercise seems silly to you, don't do it. Which brings me to an important caveat for this whole chapter:

  DIFFERENT-STROKES DEPARTMENT, LITERARY DIVISION

  Some authors say their characters never ''run away with them.'' Such writers invent the characters to fit the plot, period, and the characters behave as they were invented to do. These writers find the whole idea of out-of-control characters something between hilarious and irritating. As writer Connie Willis has said, "I control the characters. How could it be otherwise? These people don't even exist!''

  If this is your approach, fine. Whatever works is valid. Ignore the preceding part of this chapter and carry on as you choose: plot first, characters designed to carry it out. And don't worry about it.

  FAVORITE CHARACTERS: MOM ALWAYS LIKED YOU BEST

  No matter which kind of writer you are, however, you will probably at some point develop personal feelings about your characters. You may like some, dislike others. You may fall in love with one of them. You may become obsessed with one, or more. Ayn Rand, to take an extreme example, become so involved with the characters of Atlas Shrugged that when the very long book was finally finished, she spent the next several months just reading it over and over, unwilling to be separated from the world she had created.

  In this vein, how you feel about your creations leads to an important question: Is it true that the closer and more attached you are to your characters, the more effective and real they will seem to your readers?

  No. In fact, the opposite is often true. Characters you don't love or identify with may come across as more real than your favorites.

  If you think about it, this makes sense. It's always easier to describe someone standing a short distance away, rather than someone pressed tightly against you. You can see more. And when the person is, say, a suspicious-seeming neighbor rather than a beloved child, you are more likely to observe more accurately, instead of seeing only what you wish to see. Love can be very blind.

  Including love for one's characters. In Atlas Shrugged, for example, the hero, John Galt, is a blurry and ultimately not very interesting figure. A number of critics have commented that he seems more a walking ideology, in which Ayn Rand was passionately interested, than a real human being. Rand did much better in creating characters whom she did not like so much: Lillian Rearden, Jim Taggart.

  Similarly, Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis succeeded in Dodsworth far better with his character of an unlikable wife than with her foil and successor. Fran Dodsworth is vividly, achingly real in all her spirited selfishness. Edith Cortright is an idealized blur.

  What does all this mean? That you must stand apart from even your most cherished characters, so that you can see them more accurately. Admire your heroes, but hold yourself back from the kind of dazzled love that blurs perspective. You're a writer, not an acolyte.

  UNFAVORITE CHARACTERS:

  YOU'RE A TERRIBLE WASTE OF PRINTER INK

  For some writers, however, the opposite is true. They dislike some characters so much that dislike, not love, erases perspective.

  Stephen Vincent Benet warned a young writer about this decades ago. In 1935 Benet, a generous mentor, wrote to fledgling novelist George Abbe:

  Parts of the book are real and moving—certain parts and certain characters, to me, very unreal. The office, for instance, seems to me overdone and fantastic. Your personal dislike for it and its people gets in the way of your representing it to the reader. . . . The office people, in the main, don't live—they are dummies set up to be knocked down.

  Nothing has changed since 1935. Writers still sometimes fail to see that even horrible people are people: human beings with their own complexities, motivations, desires, fears, loves and—yes—virtues. Be sure you are not letting your distaste for some characters prevent you from making them vivid. Ask yourself the same kinds of questions about dreary types (see chapter fourteen) as about interesting ones, so that you don't end up making them blurry cliches.

  REVISING CHARACTERS:

  WHEN SOMEONE ELSE WANTS TO PLAY GOD

  In one sense, this entire book has been about revising both characters and plot: thinking about them more deeply, changing them throughout the story, changing your ideas about them as the writing progresses. However, all this revision has been assumed to be the writer's idea. What about when the revision suggestions come from the out-side—as, for instance, from an editor?

  Many writers are particularly sensitive about editorial requests about characters. Such writers will unresistingly reconsider plot, objectively weigh questions of pace or setting, amiably consider cutting out exposition or adding scenes to clarify. But touch their characters and all hell breaks loose. My offspring! My living and breathing child! How dare you suggest I amputate his limb, decrease his precocity, change the color of his eyes!

  This attitude is self-defeating. Your protagonist may indeed lie at the very heart of your novel (indeed, he'd better). But that does not mean that revving him up (or damping him down) won't result in a stronger and more believable character—and a stronger and more believable novel. It may be that in tha
t perilous passage from the person in your head to the person on the page, something has been lost in the translation. A second opinion on characterization should be considered with the same thoughtful care as other editorial criticism.

  on the other hand, your editor's suggestions may amount not to a clearer translation but to an entirely different text. If she wants revisions that profoundly change the nature of main characters, there is no way you can write them without also profoundly altering the book itself. Your aging police captain trying desperately to hide a hearing loss cannot become a gruff journalist in the prime of his career. Not without eviscerating the plot. Unless this strikes you as the most interesting idea you've ever heard, resist. An editor may be much more knowledgeable than you about fiction, but you are still the creator of this particular piece of fiction. You're the writer.

  Will such an attitude lose you a sale? Maybe. Only you can judge what price is worth sticking by your original character. Although you might suggest to the editor that you keep the police captain as he is, and write a different book about the gruff journalist.

  POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS: YOUR CHARACTER ON THE SHIFTING SANDS OF SOCIAL PERCEPTION

  There's one other important emotional relationship that you the writer may have with one of your own major characters, and it's an uneasy relationship: political incorrectness.

  You are Jewish, and you've written an insecure, materialistic Jew— as did Philip Roth.

  You're female, and you've written a scheming, man-exploiting, other-woman-disdaining bitch, the worst nightmare of male chauvinists in divorce court.

  You're religious, but your religious protagonist is hypocritical and self-serving.

  Your first name is Mohammed, and you never want to see the words Arab and terrorist as an automatic coupling—but your international terrorist cartel includes at least one Arab.