The Fire in Fiction

by Donald Maass

  Will Cooper is clearly a man of wisdom. His days have been long. He has experienced much. More than that, he has lived a unique life that was remarkable in its breadth and reach. In his final days, Cooper pays a visit to the Warm Springs Hotel:

  A prominent family from down in the smothering part of the state had come up to the mountains to enjoy our cool climate. The father was a slight acquaintance of mine, and the son was a recently elected member of the state house. The father was young enough to be my child. They found me sitting on the gallery, reading the most recent number of a periodical—The North American Review to be specific, for I have been a subscriber over a span of time encompassing parts of eight decades.

  The father shook my hand and turned to his boy. He said, Son, I want you to meet someone. I'm sure you will find him interesting. He was a senator and a colonel in the War. And, most romantically, white chief of the Indians. He made and lost and made again several fortunes in business and land and railroad speculation. When I was a boy, he was a hero. I dreamed of being half the man he was.

  Something about the edge to his tone when he said the words chief, colonel, and senator rubbed me the wrong way. It suggested something ironic in those hon-orifics, which, beyond the general irony of everything, there is not. I nearly said, Hell, I'm twice the man you are now, despite our difference in age, so things didn't work out so bright for your condescending hopes. And, by the way, what other than our disparity of age confers upon you the right to talk about me as if I'm not present? But I held my tongue. I don't care. People can say whatever they want to about me when I've passed. And they can inflect whatever tone they care to use in the telling.

  The son said, He's not Cooper, is he?

  The passage above accomplishes several things at once. It quickly sketches in for us the broad outline of Cooper's life: it's backstory, yes, but in service of the friction between Cooper and the condescending man speaking about him as if he isn't there. Cooper's irritability over how he's spoken of shows a spark of dignity, which right away

  is tempered by restraint. Step by step, Frazier is building this dying man's strength.

  Most telling of all, though, is the son's awed surprise at finding himself in the presence of the legendary Will Cooper. That is impact. It's key is not the great man himself but the people around him. They, in a sense, make him great.

  Have you ever been in the presence of someone who awed you? My eyes boggled upon meeting the American poet Robert Lowell in a London pub. Shaking the hand of Ray Bradbury at a publishing party in New York, I found myself unable to speak. I once delivered a contract to Isaac Asimov at his West Side apartment and blathered like a fan boy. (Asimov was amused.) I remember each occasion with vivid clarity. Each time I felt small yet lifted and inspired by the great writers before me.

  Is your protagonist great? In establishing her at the outset, it is important to look not toward what she will do later in the story but the impact she has on others now. Her actions will speak, I have no doubt; but who in your hero's circle already has respect, feels awe, so that we can feel it too?

  PROTAGONISTS VS. HEROES

  Who is at the center of your novel, a protagonist or a hero? Is he merely the subject of the story, or a real human being with extraordinary qualities? I hope it is the latter. Every protagonist can be a hero, even from the opening pages. Indeed, that quality is essential if readers are to tag along with your main character for hundreds of pages more.

  It does not matter whether your intent is to portray someone real or someone heroic. To make either type matter to your readers, you need only find in your real human being what is strong, and in your strong human being what is real. Even greatness can be signaled from the outset.

  How do you find the strong or human qualities in your protagonist? What will be most effective to portray? The answer to those questions lies in you, the author. What is forgivably human to you? What stirs your respect? That is where to start.

  Next, when will you show the readers those qualities in your hero? Later on? That is too late. Too many manuscripts begin at a distance from their protagonists, as if opening with a long shot like in a movie. That's a shame. Why keep readers at arm's length?

  Novels are unique among art forms in their intimacy. They can take us inside a character's heart and mind right away. And that is where your readers want to be. Go there immediately. And when you do, show us what your hero is made of. If you accomplish that, then the job of winning us over is done.

  Now comes the fun part: spinning a story that won't let us go.

  The heroes of popular series are memorable, but quick: Who's the most unforgettable sidekick in contemporary fiction? Takes some thought, doesn't it? Dr. Watson comes easily to mind; perhaps also Sancho Panza or Paul Drake? After that it's easier to think of sidekicks from movies or comic books.

  Same question for femmes fatales. Not so easy, is it? Conjuring up the names of Brigid O'Shaughnessy in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon (1930) or Carmen Sternwood in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (1939) tests the depth of your trivia knowledge. Maybe you thought of Justine in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet (19571960)? Points to you—but what about contemporary fiction? Do you recall the name of Lyra Belacqua's mother in Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass (1995)? (It's Mrs. Coulter.) Other femmes fatales?

  We could issue the same challenge with respect to the great villains of contemporary literature. After Hannibal Lecter, who is there?

  Come to that, how many secondary characters of any type stick in your mind from the fiction you've read in the last year? Do you read chic lit? Have you ever felt that the gaggle of sassy girlfriends in one is pretty much the same as in the rest? How about killers and assassins? Do many of them seem to you stamped from the same mold? How about children? Do precocious kids in novels make you want to gag?

  If so, you see my point. Secondary characters in published fiction often are weak.

  Supporting players in manuscripts submitted to my agency are too often forgettable, as well. They walk on and walk off, making no particular impression. What wasted opportunities, in my opinion, especially when you consider that secondary characters aren't born, they're built. So, how can you construct a secondary character whom readers will never forget?

  SPECIAL

  Suppose you want a character to be special. You want this character to have stature, allure, or a significant history with your protagonist. How is that effect achieved? A look at examples of some contemporary femmes fatales may help us out.

  James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia (1987) probably is the finest noir novel of our time. It's the rich, dark, complex, and highly layered story of a 1940s Los Angeles police detective, Bucky Bleichert, who becomes obsessed with a murder victim, Elizabeth Short, nicknamed the Black Dahlia by the press. Her murder was grisly, the torture beforehand gruesome, and the cast of suspects a roster of corruption. Central to the story, however, is Bucky's fixation on the Black Dahlia. She was beautiful in life, and highly promiscuous, but why is Bucky haunted by this victim over any other?

  That, in a way, is the eternal problem of making a character singular. Is there any description of beauty so effective that it would make anyone swoon? Is there a sexual allure that can seduce everyone who opens a book? Do you believe that a crusty cop would really care about a bad news babe?

  Making a character uniquely compelling for all readers is pretty much impossible. As readers, we are all too different. What is beautiful, seductive, and dangerous for me may well be laughable to you. What is possible is to make momentous the effect of one character upon another. As with greatness, creating a feeling that a character is special is a matter of measuring her impact. The Black Dahlia opens with Bucky Bleichert looking back after the case has closed:

  I never knew her in life. She exists for me through others, in evidence the ways of her death drove them. Working backward, seeing only facts, I reconstructed her as a sad little girl and a whore, at best a could-have-been—a tag that m
ight equally apply to me. I wish I could have granted her an anonymous end, relegated her to a few terse words on a homicide dick's summary report, carbon to the coroner's office, more paperwork to take her to potter's field. The only thing wrong with the wish is that she wouldn't have wanted it that way. As brutal as the facts were, she would have wanted all of them known. And since I owe her a great deal and am the only one who does know her entire story, I have undertaken the writing of this memoir.

  What in that paragraph conveys the impact the Black Dahlia has had on Bucky? Is it the elevated tone of his prose? His regret? The Dahlia's refusal to stay small, a "could-have-been"? I believe that it's the simple words "I owe her a great deal." Bucky is in debt to a dead girl. That debt is intriguing by itself but also makes the Dahlia special to Bucky.

  Russell Banks's The Reserve (2008) is set in a private community for the rich, the "Reserve" of the title, in the Adirondack Mountains in the 1930s. Jordan Groves, a local artist with leftist leanings, falls under the spell of Vanessa Cole, the twice-divorced daughter of a respected brain surgeon and his society wife. Vanessa has secrets and a dangerous side, but at first Jordan is dazzled. As he lands his seaplane at her family's lakeside compound and sees her for the second time, his fascination with her is apparent:

  He shut off the motor and sat there for a few seconds and watched Vanessa. She was in a group of perhaps ten people, but he saw no one else. She wore a calf-length black skirt and a dark gray silk blouse with billowing sleeves and over her broad shoulders a black crocheted shawl, and she looked even more beautiful to

  Jordan today than when he'd seen her yesterday in the fading, late-afternoon sunlight standing alone by the shore of the Second Lake. She had on bright red, almost scarlet lipstick, and mascara, and though she was pale and her face full of sorrow, she was luminous to him, enveloped by a light that seemed to emanate from inside her. He did not think that he had ever seen a woman with a visible field of light surrounding her like that, a gleaming halo wrapped around her entire body.

  What is it that makes Vanessa beautiful? Her black skirt, dark gray silk blouse, and red lipstick? Her black crocheted shawl? Crochet? Um, that doesn't scream siren to me. No, rather it is the aura of light that Jordan sees surrounding her. Would you or I see it? Maybe, maybe not. But Jordan sees it, and his perception is what counts.

  Jodi Picoult is a best-selling author and a spinner of morality tales for our time. Her knack for provocative premises is enviable. The Pact (1998) revolves around a suicide pact between a teenage boyfriend and girlfriend—Chris Harte and Emily Gold, lifelong next-door neighbors—that goes wrong. Emily's suicide (via gunshot) succeeds. Chris does not go through with it and lives.

  For many authors that would be enough tragedy to occasion an aftermath novel, the survivors taking us on yet one more journey of healing and self-discovery. Picoult is a more masterful plotter, though. Doubt about what really happened grows. Eventually Chris is arrested for Emily's murder. Picoult teases out the evidence, swinging our suspicions this way and that, until finally Chris takes the stand and reveals his true feelings about Emily:

  "Do you know," Chris said softly, "what it's like to love someone so much, that you can't see yourself without picturing her? Or what it's like to touch someone, and feel like you've come home?" He made a fist, and rested it in the palm of his other hand. "What we had wasn't about sex, or about being with someone just to show off what you've got, the way it was for other kids our age. We were, well, meant to be together. Some people spend their whole lives looking for that one person," he said. "I was lucky enough to have her all along."

  Picoult has a tough job in The Pact. For plot reasons she must withhold from us for most of the novel the truth of what really happened. Finally it comes out: Chris procured the suicide gun and helped Emily hold it to her head. He did this because he cared profoundly about her. She wanted suicide, he hoped to talk her out of it, but in the end he helped her because it was the only thing that would relieve her pain.

  That, anyway, is what Picoult wants both the jury and her readers to swallow. We have to, for the jury is going to find Chris not guilty. That's quite a trick. For it to work, Chris has to sway us with a heartfelt declaration of love. Picoult's passage above does the job; at any rate, it did for many readers. To my eye it's clear that for Chris, Emily was special.

  Who have been the special people in your life, the ones whose presence looms larger, whose friendships are fundamental, who are indelibly part of your personal story? You have such people in your life, I'm sure. Me too. How is it, then, that protagonists in many manuscripts seem to live in blissful isolation, self-sufficient, wholly self-made, and dependent on no one? Who are these people? They are not real. Consequently they are also unreal for readers. If they are to keep us deeply involved for several hundred pages, protagonists need a personal history.

  Who in your story has special stature? Is there an influential teacher, a spouse, a past love, a friend of long standing, a wizard at math, an egotistical-but-gifted auto mechanic? Is there a character in your story who could be given such elevated importance? It isn't that difficult to do. Explore the effect that this paragon has on your protagonist, then find a meaningful moment for that effect to be expressed.

  Singular human beings may be rare in life, but this is fiction. You can build them as needed. Who knows? You might even construct for yourself a whole new incarnation of the femme fatale.

  ORDINARY

  Who are the people in your life whom you take for granted, the ones who are always there, reliable, rock steady? Your family? Your co-workers? Your Starbucks barista? When was the last time you really spent time thinking about them, deep down contemplating who they are and what makes them go?

  If it's been a while, you can be forgiven. We've all got a lot to deal with. Part of the gift of steady people in your life is precisely that they are steady. You don't have to worry about them. That's fine in life, but in fiction, characters who remain unexamined will be forgettable, even bland.

  To see what I mean, let's look at some outstanding sidekicks in recent novels.

  Dean Koontz is our indisputable ruler of supernatural and paranoid thrillers. In recent successes like Life Expectancy (2004), The Husband (2006), and The Good Guy (2007), Koontz's paranoid plotting has equaled that of masters like Cornell Woolrich (1903-1968) and Philip K. Dick (1928-1982). It isn't only ordinary men whom Koontz torments, either. In his series of novels featuring southern California short-order cook Odd Thomas, the supernatural plays a big part.

  Odd Thomas is perfectly ordinary, except that the dead talk to him. Unfortunately, they usually want something too; frequently revenge. In Odd Thomas (2003), a stranger comes to Thomas's town of Pico Mundo. Thomas dubs him "Fungus Man" and suspects something's amiss. It is. In Fungus Man's house, Thomas detects the presence of hundreds of bodachs, pain-eating spirits whose presence signals a coming catastrophe.

  Many writers would make Odd Thomas a loner. Koontz, though, has a knack for countering our expectations. Thus, Thomas has friends, albeit strange ones like Little Ozzie, a 400-pound man with six fingers on his left hand. Thomas also has a girlfriend. Now, what kind of girlfriend would you give a guy who chats with the recently deceased? Koontz wants to keep the tone of the novel light, so he goes for kooky.

  Kooky?

  Thomas's girlfriend, Stormy Llewellyn, is introduced buying her and Thomas ice cream cones (coconut cherry chocolate chunk flavor) from the ice cream parlor where she works:

  Her uniform included pink shoes, white socks, a hot-pink skirt, a matching pink-and-white blouse, and a perky pink cap. With her Mediterranean complexion, jet-black hair, and mysterious dark eyes, she looked like a sultry espionage agent who had gone undercover as a hospital candy striper.

  Sensing my thoughts, as usual, she sat beside me on the bench and said, "When I have my own shop, the employees won't have to wear stupid uniforms."

  "I think you look adorable."

  "I look like a goth
Gidget."

  Stormy gave one of the cones to me, and for a minute or two we sat in silence, watching shoppers stroll past, enjoying our ice cream.

  "Under the hamburger and bacon grease," she said, "I can still smell the peach shampoo."

  "I'm an olfactory delight."

  "Maybe one day when I have my own shop, we can work together and smell the same."

  "The ice-cream business doesn't move me. I love to fry."

  "I guess it's true," she said.

  "What?"

  "Opposites attract."

  Contrast is the operating principle in creating sidekicks. What distinguishes Koontz, in my mind, is that he doesn't go for the obvious. The obvious contrast to Thomas would be his philosophical opposite: a skeptic or scientific type, say, or perhaps someone who deals with the dead in a practical way, like a funeral parlor director. Thomas's opposite would be serious and goal-driven, unlike lackadaisical Thomas. Their relationship would not be easy but instead knotty.

  Instead, Stormy works at an ice cream parlor. An orphan, she has been Thomas's girlfriend since the age of sixteen. Now twenty, her ambition is to own her own ice cream place by twenty-four. She believes she and Thomas are soul mates. (They have a gypsy's fortune telling card that says so.) She teases him and won't have sex with him. She believes in delayed gratification and wants their first time to be pure.

  The classic series pattern would be to establish conflicts in their relationship and play them out book after book. In Odd Thomas, the first in the series, Stormy dies. (Since Thomas talks to the dead, though, that is not the end of their relationship.)

  The point here is that Koontz plays against what we expect. A diametrically opposite Stormy would have been sufficient for his story. The kooky, sweet, innocent-yet-self-aware Stormy that we get is both more endearing and more interesting. Why? Because this Stormy keeps us off balance.