Dynamic Characters- How to create personalities that keep readers captivated

by Nancy Kress

  Fussily, busybodily, cunningly, he had risen again while he talked. I groped under the chest trying at the same time to

  keep an eye on him. All of a sudden I noticed that he had noticed that I did not seem to have noticed Chum protruding from beneath the other corner of the chest. We fell to wrestling again. We rolled all over the floor, in each other's arms, like two huge helpless children. He was naked and goatish under his robe, and I felt suffocated as he rolled over me. I rolled over him. We rolled over me. They rolled over him. We rolled over us.

  To make a fight look ridiculous, you can't do better than to begin declining the fighting verbs in the middle of the action.

  If, however, you don't want your fight to appear ridiculous, refrain from both witty exposition and wisecracking dialogue.

  Fights are exciting. When your characters' conflict explodes into violence, make it necessary, detailed, accurate, plausible and (perhaps) surprising. Readers will gladly pay for ringside tickets.

  SUMMARY: CHARACTERS AND VIOLENCE

  • Keep violence necessary to the plot and consistent with the characters.

  • Write fight scenes in more detail than you think you need.

  • Be accurate about weapons, martial techniques and bodily injuries.

  • For flamboyant, action-oriented fiction, write flamboyant and surprising fight scenes.

  • Put wisecracks in fight scenes only if you're willing to undermine the seriousness of both plot and character.

  No man is an island. Neither is any story.

  That sounds very poetic (at least, John Donne thought so), but in writing terms, what does it mean? It means that every story with more than one character in it is actually more than one story. N characters = n stories. This fact is well known to policemen, judges and parents of nine-year-olds. (''So what's your side of what happened between you and your brother?'') There are two (or more) versions of every story.

  As a writer, however, you usually get to fully tell only one version, no matter how many other characters you've invented or how well you understand their plots. Which one do you choose?

  It depends. Often the writer chooses the first version that occurs to him. But that may actually not be the most interesting version. The purpose of this chapter is to get you to widen your sense of the possibilities. Before you choose aversion to write, consider how many are available, what each has to offer and what effect each will have on the reader. Your key to all this is—surprise!—characterization. More specifically, the key is making a careful, cool survey of the options.

  CASTING DECISION NUMBER ONE: WHO STARS?

  It's easy to understand that many versions exist of any given story. A wedding, for instance, appears quite different to the bride (who's pregnant), the groom (who's secretly in love with someone else), the father of the bride (on the verge of bankruptcy), the maid of honor (the groom's true beloved), the groom's grandmother (sentimental and misty-eyed), the groom's sister (enjoying the party) and the photographer (just doing a job). The star is whoever's actions and reactions you, the writer, choose to focus on. Whose story do you want it to be?

  There is no single right answer.

  Lately, for example, a sort of cottage industry has sprung up around retelling famous stories from a point of view different from the original. Valerie Martin wrote Mary Reilly, which gives us the tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from the viewpoint of Dr. Jekyll's housemaid. Joan Aiken wrote Jane Fairfax, an account of how the events of Jane Austen's Emma looked to secondary character Jane Fairfax. Editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have published four collections of retold fairy tales, in which such classics as ''Cinderella,'' ''Thumbelina'' and ''The Frog Prince'' are retold through the eyes of an ugly stepsister, the tiny girl's foster mother, and the frog himself. (The collections are called Snow White, Blood Red; Black Thorn, White Rose; Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears; and Black Swan, White Raven.) Each variation makes a secondary character into the star. Each is an interesting story in its own right.

  So if anyone can be the star of your story, how do you choose? The same way casting directors do: by auditioning all the aspirants.

  Suppose, for instance, that your novel is about race relations in an inner-city high school. The five major characters will be a white junior named Mary; the black senior with whom she has a romance (Darryl); the Hispanic principal who used to be a math teacher and is groping his way through his first administrative position (Mr. Chavez); a black student teacher (Tish Sullivan); and a young white security guard (Mike) newly hired by the district and only a few years older than Mary and Darryl. Whose story should it be?

  • It might be Mary's book. She's naive, good-hearted, too romantic for her own good. This could be a novel about how the contemporary world destroys innocence.

  • It might be Darryl's book. He's torn between Mary and pressure from a militant group of brothers to not date white girls. He also has a mother he's helping to support, a cop gunning for him and a scholarship to Princeton—which scares him a lot. This could be a novel about making good choices before you're old enough to understand their consequences.

  • It might be Mr. Chavez's book. He was a great teacher but a terrible administrator. This might be a novel about an educational system that values everything but good teaching.

  • It might be Tish Sullivan's book. She attended this high school four years ago; there's nothing the students can try that she hasn't already seen. Tough, realistic, unsentimental, she's far more effective than her supervising teacher—who resents her for that. This could be a novel about generational clashes.

  • It could be Mike's novel. He didn't finish high school himself, and is one confused and angry young man. When the security firm he works for wins the contract to implement a new program to control school violence, Mike is assigned to hall patrol. It's a dangerous position for someone so young and furious himself. This could be a novel about power and its tragic misuses.

  All potentially interesting characters—and interesting stories! Before you choose, consider another important decision.

  CASTING DECISION NUMBER TWO: WHO NARRATES?

  Usually, the protagonist and the narrator will be identical. That is, whoever is the star of the story will also be the person through whose eyes we view the action (the POV character). Usually—but not necessarily. It's also possible to have one character be the real star of the story, while a different, secondary character narrates the events. Some famous examples:

  • To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. This is the story of Atticus Finch, small-town Southern lawyer, fighting for justice against the forces of bigotry. But the story is narrated in the first person by his eight-year-old daughter, Scout.

  • The Moon and Sixpence, by W. Somerset Maugham, is his take on the life of painter Paul Gauguin (''Charles Strickland''). The narrator, however, is not Strickland but an acquaintance of his who functions as a detached observer throughout the novel.

  • Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier. Rebecca, the dead aristocratic beauty, is the star and focal point. We view her story through the eyes of her successor, a young and awkward second wife.

  • The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's Jay Gatsby's story, as narrated by his next-door neighbor, Nick Carraway.

  This approach (like everything else in writing) comes with both advantages and disadvantages. A disadvantage is that we will experience the star's story secondhand and, hence, not as viscerally or completely. Although sometimes, of course, that's the effect you want. In that case, splitting the roles of actor and explainer can be very effective indeed.

  It lets the star remain mysterious, shadowy at first, his history revealed only in stages (Rebecca, The Great Gatsby). It can add an intimate voice for moral judgment when that quality is missing in the star (The Moon and Sixpence, Rebecca). It can present a story through eyes more innocent than those of the main participants, thus compelling readers to also see it freshly (To Kill a Mockingbird).

  So where does that leave us
? Each of the five major characters in our high-school novel could be not only the star but the narrator. This yields twenty-five possible ways to write the novel; see the chart on page 179.

  From the chart, can you see how varying the protagonist and the POV character could lead to an entirely different approach to the novel? Different incidents, different slants, different book.

  So which one would you want to write?

  Maybe you already know. One combination or another may have leaped out at you. If not, you can provoke your dozing Muse by applying a few key questions to each combination:

  • Does this protagonist interest me, as a person? Why?

  • What might this person want?

  • What might stand in the way of his getting it?

  • What could go wrong with this situation?

  • Who could end up a winner or a loser here?

  If none of those questions spark plot ideas for any one of the twenty-five combinations . . . then give up. You were not meant to write this book. Start over with another idea and another chart.

  CASTING DECISION NUMBER THREE: WHERE DO WE FILM THE STAR FROM?

  As if we didn't already have a wealth of choices—a cornucopia, a treasury—each of the twenty-five possibilities is actually two possibilities. You could write the story in the first person or in the third person. If you choose first person, you record the story in your narrator's words, through her eyes. You gain intimate opportunities for the narrator to editorialize on her views of the action.

  If you choose third person, you situate your camera outside both narrator and protagonist. You gain increased license to describe character and action from the outside, in your POV.

  To get a feel for the difference, consider these two possible opening paragraphs:

  The first time I saw Tish Sullivan, I thought she was hot. 'Course, I didn't know then that she was a student teacher. I thought she was just one of the black kids, standing there in her short skirt with them long legs in black tights. I didn't know then that the scowl on her face wasn't no tough-kid cool. I didn't know she was twenty-six, and a ex-sergeant. I didn't know she was smart as a mean whip. I didn't know nothing.

  —Tish Sullivan's story, narrated by Mike the security guard, in first person

  The first time Mike Oldham saw Tish Sullivan, he thought she was another student. Another black girl, prettier than most, but with the same set scowl that broadcast, Don't mess with me. Mike didn't pay too much attention to Tish, no more than a cursory male glance. He had other things on his mind. It was his first day on the job, and already, after twenty-two minutes, he was in trouble. How the shit did trouble turn up so fast?

  —Tish Sullivan's story, narrated by Mike the security guard, in third person

  Diction changes, distance changes, what you the writer can tell and show us changes. Which do you prefer? Either one could make a good novel.

  Total possibilities: fifty. Fifty different emphases, fifty different slants about race and education. All generated by your choice of protagonist, narrator and viewpoint—all of which are, of course, character choices. And—here's the main point—from those character choices will flow fifty different sets of plot incidents, depending on who's the star and who's the camera lens.

  Look again at the outline for your novel. How many novels do you really have in front of you? And which one do you really want to write? The choice is yours.

  SUMMARY: HOW VIEWPOINT CONNECTS CHARACTER AND PLOT

  • Nearly any character can be the star of any story.

  • Nearly any character can narrate any story.

  • Choosing different stars and different narrators will lead to a different choice of plot incidents.

  • To generate the plot that excites you the most, consider several possible combinations of star and narrator. What incidents does each suggest?

  In the last chapter, we discussed your protagonist and your point-of-view character as if they were the only two people in your book. This is, of course, untrue. You also have all those secondary characters, antagonists and spear carriers. What can they do for your story? And how do you tie their characterization to the book's plot?

  By working backward. You figure out what the climax will be, and then you provide everybody else but main players with just enough characterization to end up wherever you want.

  This needs explanation. Didn't I already spend all of part one detailing how a writer starts with a complex character and gets to plot? How can I then say that sometimes you should start instead with plot and fill in only enough characterization to serve the needs of that plot?

  Because you have to limit the amount of characterization that you give your secondary characters. If you don't, if you try to make every single person in the book full and rounded and contradictory, your novel will fail. It will do so for three reasons:

  • The book will be too long. It takes sheer wordage to adequately develop full, round characters. If you try to do this for not only the key characters but also the protagonist's boss, his wife's best friend and the waitress at their favorite restaurant, the book will have to go on for volumes. Which might not be too bad except:

  • The book will be too slow. The details that build character do not usually move as fast as those of plot. If they're details of background, events that have happened before the story begins (sometimes called backfill), they're even slower. Developing all your players will cause the story to creep forward at a glacial pace, and everyone will become chilled and stop reading.

  • The book will be muddy. In real life, everyone is complicated. Each person on the planet (all five billion of us) is the complex center of his or her own life story, which also features important secondary characters, people with third or fourth billing and bit players. But fiction is not real life. Fiction traces patterns through the infinitely complicated morass of real life. The patterns may be simple or complex, but they are always simpler and more clear-cut than real life (more on this in chapter twenty-four). You must highlight what's important to your book's particular pattern, and downplay the rest. You do this by concentrating on the stories of your protagonists—one, or two, or at most a handful—and demoting everyone else to permanent bit-player status, without fully developed characterizations that might detract from your main story line.

  SHE'S SECONDARY BUT SHE'S CERTAINLY COLORFUL

  So where does that leave us? With four categories of characters:

  • Main characters, who will be fully developed, with backgrounds and contradictions and the capacity for change (whether or not they actually do change). Often (but not always) they are POV characters.

  • Secondary characters who, although not fully developed, are nonetheless more than briefly animated pieces of plot furniture. The readers know, or can guess, something about their lives beyond the events of the plot. However, these people don't change during the novel and don't give any indication that they could. They come in two versions: ''ordinary folk'' types, undeveloped in part because they already seem like familiar and comfortable friends, and:

  • Colorful secondary individuals who may be fascinating to read about, but who nonetheless offer more arresting quirks than deep characterization.

  • Bit players, who appear once or twice and essentially are furniture.

  It's important to note that these categories may overlap somewhat. The reason I'm trying to set them up, despite their slipperiness, is that I think different categories benefit from different approaches by you, the writer—especially at the climax of your book.

  Let's get some clarification here from a specific example. We need a well-known novel with familiar characters. Once more we'll call on F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic, The Great Gatsby.

  Main characters are the narrator, Nick Carraway, who changes as a result of the novel events, deciding to break up with girlfriend Jordan Baker and return to his native Midwest. Also major, although they don't change, are Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan and Tom Buchanan. For all four, the aut
hor gives us details of growing up, of current beliefs only peripheral to the plot (such as Tom's racism) and of complexities and contradictions of personality (Daisy is torn between her romanticism and her hardheaded need for money to support a lifestyle she knows she will never abandon for love).

  Colorful secondary characters include Jordan Baker, the society beauty who cheats at golf; Myrtle, Tom's mistress; and Wolfsheim, the mobster. We get no background for these people, but each appears in more than one scene, each is essential to the plot and each is flashy and memorable. Jordan is scornful, beautiful and dishonest—all flashy qualities. Myrtle is pretentious, comic, and pathetic, with her too-elaborate dresses and her disdain for her temporary servants. She makes a memorable figure. And Wolfsheim—it would be hard to imagine a flashier figure, nose hairs ''quivering tragically,'' cuff links of human molars, illegal ''gonnections'' offered without discretion.

  I stress the colorfulness of these characters because, as a general guideline, the more colorful you make a secondary character, the greater your obligation to account for him at the end of the book. The reason is simple: Readers will remember colorful characters. Remember, and wonder what became of them. If the answers are never provided, readers are likely to feel cheated.

  Thus, Fitzgerald accounts for Jordan and Wolfsheim, even though neither accounting is essential to the main plot (Myrtle, whose fate is essential, is of course dead). Nick goes to Wolfsheim's office to urge him to go to Gatsby's funeral. Wolfsheim refuses, and we get a clear glimpse of what will happen to him: more endless shady deals, just as if Gatsby had never lived and died. Similarly, we see from Nick's last scene with Jordan (the third-last scene in the book) that she will just go on dating her various beaux until one of the romances turns into a convenient marriage—but not with Nick.

  In contrast, less colorful secondary characters often don't have to be accounted for at a book's end. The reader may not even remember that they existed, even though they appeared in more than one scene. Or, the reader may just assume that since this character was presented as ordinary and unremarkable, that's what he'll go on being, and such a fate doesn't need accounting for.