How to Develop

by Jerry Dunne

  So we have one little formula for our mining technique:

  Theme = plot-driven universal human flaw(s) of single character arising out of character attitude (just like with our fable).

  Then we have: action emerges from the flaw(s), which gives rise to conflict and irony rises out of conflict.

  In short we want to find: theme (plot-driven universal human flaw(s) of single character arising out of character attitude) + action (off the theme (flaw)) + conflict (off the action) + irony (off the conflict).

  THE HISTORICAL EXAMPLE

  Remember our essay is now our main source literature that we use to gain inspiration and guidance for our short story or stories. Obviously, we bear all this in mind when planning and writing it. The essay concentrates on weaving an historical account around the single actor with strong plot-driven character flaws. The account can cover years or merely hours and will likely include other characters that play a very prominent role in the overall drama. In fact, the main character around which we will write our essay does not even feature directly in our historical short story. Another character acts as the protagonist.

  SUMMARY

  In our essay, we are going to examine some big character flaws of Charles 1 (King of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1625 until his execution in 1649). His trial and execution came about after years of bitter civil war in which the King was resoundingly defeated on the battlefield but in defeat refused to see what everyone else saw as the logical conclusion of defeat: that he must learn to compromise and share power with Parliament and become a different sort of king. But his arrogant, conceited and duplicitous nature meant this would be an impossibility to achieve. At first very few people imagined that regicide (king killing) was a viable alternative (it was something that English people saw as a sin), or even putting the King on trial at all, but eventually certain factions within the Army and Parliament began to view the King as a dangerous warmonger. Oliver Cromwell, who was eventually an influential force in bringing the King to trial, was one of those to sign his death warrant.

  THE ESSAY: THE PLOT-DRIVEN CHARACTER FLAWS OF CHARLES 1

  The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a conflict between Parliamentarians (Roundheads) and Royalists (Cavaliers). Charles 1 believed strongly in the divine rights of kings: it was the duty of Parliament to bend to the king’s will and not the other way round. In the years leading up to the War, Charles squabbled with Parliament over many issues, but especially over ones concerning religion and taxation. In the process, he made enemies with some of the Kingdom’s most powerful men. Things deteriorated to such a point between the King and Parliament that by 1642 he began an attempt to raise an army to fight Parliament for control of the nation.

  The Parliamentarians won the decisive battles, but found peace a much more difficult affair. It was one thing to defeat the King, but quite another to know how to handle him in the political aftermath of war. Overwhelmingly, the Parliamentarians were not republicans, and had sworn to restore the King. Indeed, very few people could conceive of a regime that was not based on monarchy. The King, at one point, even after his defeat to Parliamentary commanders, shocked them by bragging, ‘You cannot do without me! You will fall to ruin if I do not sustain you’. The assumption amongst everyone was that any negotiated peace settlement would naturally include the King and the King himself was very well aware of this.

  No one had imagined that the King might continuously refuse to make concessions in spite of his comprehensive defeat, because it seemed only logical that as a consequence of defeat he would have to make concessions and become a different sort of king. But Charles’s arrogance and conceit and his sense of the divine right of kings meant that he would never negotiate in good faith with Parliament.

  Cromwell, an intensely religious puritan, and already a Member of Parliament, rose to great prominence in the War as one of the main commanders of the New Model Army, on the Parliamentarian side. He played an important role in the defeat of the Royalist forces, believing that God was guiding his victories. After the war, he was one of the chief Parliamentarian negotiators. He was no intellectual or political thinker and, beside the Bible, read few books. Yet, Cromwell was not one-dimensional. He was not just a ‘godly thinker’. He also believed in Providence, was a ‘soul-searcher’ and a conservative gentleman of his day, which meant that the idea of regicide would have been seen by him as a terrible sin (the murder of God’s own anointed monarch) under any normal set of circumstances; as, indeed, by everyone else, too, in seventeenth-century England.

  Even by the summer of 1647, Cromwell would never have imagined putting the King on trial, never mind putting him on trial for execution, even though Charles refused to negotiate any form of settlement with Parliament to restrain his exercise of power. Loyalty to the King was so deep seated that a state of mind and feeling existed even in Parliament that if the King made wrong decisions then they were wrong mostly because he was badly advised. Yet, certain events were soon to set off a dramatic shift of perspective in the minds of people like Cromwell.

  The King’s refusal to negotiate with Parliament damaged Cromwell’s reputation with the soldiery of the New Model Army. They had grown impatient and disillusioned with him and other superior officers, believing their superiors might be negotiating secretly with the King and ignoring their plight for regular pay and indemnity against prosecution for war crimes. They also wondered why they had bothered to risk their lives fighting at all when most Parliamentarians wanted to restore the King without any major democratic or religious reforms. The Army’s widespread grievances also undermined discipline and a sense of optimism that the nation’s political problems would eventually be settled.

  Both Cromwell and most of the Army understood that something had to give. Now Cromwell began to think of the King differently, more as a ‘man of blood’, a man not so much unlike other men. Yet, despite this radical shift of attitude he was still in part a conservative and this aspect of his personality held his thoughts in check. He did not suddenly think of doing away with the King. He still preferred to wait and see where God would lead him and his allies.

  But when in December 1647, the King signed an ‘Engagement’ with his Scottish allies that threatened further war in England, attitudes in the Army took a big leap forward. The soldiers reasoned that God had brought them more war because they had missed the obvious: that trying to negotiate with the King was pointless. Cromwell believed that those who wanted this new war were below contempt. Most of the Army resolved to bring the King to justice for what he had done, whereas only a minority had made any such demand six months earlier.

  Despite Charles’s weakened position and the Army’s growing impatience with him, he still refused to make any concessions. Throughout the whole Civil War period, his duplicitous nature had become only too obvious to the Parliamentarians who had patiently attempted to negotiate with him. His reputation as a man incapable of keeping his word had now grown widespread. Eventually, he created so much mistrust that his enemies turned toward the thought of his death.

  Cromwell had no desire to kill the King and his decision to back the regicide was not made lightly. He must also have been aware of the King’s immense popularity amongst the people. In the end, godly reasoning, the guiding light of the Bible, God’s providence, influence from his comrades in the Army and, of course, the King’s uncompromising character pushed Cromwell toward his final decision. Now he saw the king’s execution as a ‘cruel necessity.’ This was in marked contrast to his attitude in the summer of 1647.

  Others who participated in the trial and execution of the King in 1649 did not take the decision lightly either. They knew that by putting the monarch to death they risked not only the possibility of their own deaths but political turmoil for the country. But they believed that Charles was simply too dangerous a man with whom to build any sort of lasting settlement and that the re-establishment of government was impossible as long as he remained alive. It was simpler just to rem
ove him.

  Parliament charged Charles as ‘a tyrant, traitor, murderer and a public and implacable enemy of the Commonwealth of England’. If their intention was to use the threat of execution to bully the king into submission then they had made a great error. Charles still refused to submit to their will or make any concessions to Parliament. To the bitter end, he refused to answer the charges against him, stating that he did not recognize the court and asking by what authority the court had to try him. He told them that the powers of the monarchy were not his to give away and that it was in fact his duty to God to protect them.

  But the court found Charles guilty as charged. On 29th of January 1649, fifty-nine signed the King’s death warrant. Eighteen were Army officers, including Cromwell. The following day the King was executed.

  *

  Throughout his life, Charles had failed to grasp an important fact about his duty as a monarch. The English had a strong belief that the king should follow the rules and govern as laid down by law. In turn, they willingly submitted to royal authority. But Charles 1 was incapable of understanding this mutual exchange between subject and ruler and this ultimately drove his fundamentally obedient subjects to make demands never before made of the monarchy.

  At the end of the first war, Charles had told the Parliamentarian factions that they could not manage without him. Now the Army and its allies were about to find out how difficult it would be to run a country without a king as the head of state. Until the return of his exiled son, a succession of weak governments, following on from poorly thought-out coups, some ad hoc in nature, struggled to gain any legitimacy in the eyes of the people. Those who had fought against the Crown in the War had never had in mind a republican constitution, and none could now create anything remotely like one.

  Charles’s boldest enemies understood that Charles was a ‘man of blood’, but perhaps they failed to understand completely that there was much more to the Crown than this ‘man of blood’. The nation at large not only understood it but felt it deeply in their hearts, their religious convictions and in their traditions, many of which the puritans had tried to eradicate. In the end, Cromwell and the Army had managed to influence each other into justifying regicide, yet it is probable that this small group of religious and political ideologues had no real understanding of the deep and long-lasting effects that their calculated act, based on and inspired greatly by their own deeply-held convictions, would have on those subjects of the King outside of their small, self-selected circle. English opinion certainly did not share the Army’s opinion. In fact, the regicide was condemned by Royalists and the great majority of Parliamentarians alike.

  Charles stood for a world that Cromwell and the Army could only hold back through physical force. But there was much more to the monarchy than royal power. The monarchy represented a sense of the mystical and the divine that had been passed on from one blood generation to the other. Even higher status people believed that the King could cure them of scrofula with his touch, a power that had been given to him by the Almighty. The spiritual world of the monarchy seemed unconquerable and remained so after the King’s death. And yet, perhaps ironically, even though Charles played up to this sense of the mystique and he played up to it well, perhaps he, too, did not fully understand the spiritual power of the monarchy. If he had done so, would he not have acted with much deeper courage and confidence rather than with arrogance and conceit? Would he not have understood that power ultimately rests on compromise (as it always does) with those who loved and respected him the most – his subjects? Could he not have made concessions and become a different sort of king? As a consequence of his actions over the period of the War and the subsequent peace, had not Charles himself, much more so than Cromwell, attempted to make the monarch look like this ‘man of blood’?

  ANALYSING THE ESSAY

  Now let’s see if we can pick out our relevant storytelling elements from the essay.

  Although the character flaws of the King pushed the historical plot overall, and our focused theme in the essay is set around his flaws, we have also dwelt on the character of Cromwell. If the King had been a different man, one much more willing to compromise right from early on, Cromwell would never have risen to such a position of historical prominence. So, even though we will set our story around Cromwell, the King’s character flaws are of paramount importance here because without them history would have taken a different turn. In the story, we have Cromwell as our protagonist versus the King (in absentia) and the institutional and spiritual concepts of monarchy as our antagonist.

  The character information in the essay acts as a focal point for the most poignant plot-related aspects of the main characters. We may still have many more notes about the King or Cromwell elsewhere, while also making an ongoing study of the historical texts.

  The essay’s conflict revolves around the consequences of the King’s attitude to his role of king and toward Parliament on the one hand and on the other hand the consequences of Cromwell and his Parliamentarian and military supporters’ attitude toward the King’s attitude of the role of king and Parliament. We emphasized the struggle of the Parliamentarian side to come to terms with the idea of the King as a ‘man of blood’ and punish him accordingly.

  Here is the physical plot in the abstract: A and B war against each other, and A defeats B. But B won’t settle with A for a peace settlement because B remains backed up by the power of C (the monarchy). Eventually A executes B for his intransigence. C is weakened.

  The psychological or emotional plot amounts to this: A and B war against each other out of conviction. B loses. But B won’t ever settle for any compromise with A as B believes he has right on his side based on the moral superiority of C (the monarchy). Eventually and reluctantly, A executes B believing he is too much of a danger left alive. C remains undiminished as a psychological phenomenon.

  Of course, the Civil War took place in many settings. Our story concerns Cromwell signing Charles’s death warrant. We can have our setting in a building of stone and shadow where physical description will aid in the dramatization of Cromwell’s thoughts and feelings.

  Where is the irony in our essay? In some respects Charles was right: ‘You cannot do without me! You will fall to ruin if I do not sustain you’. Cromwell and Parliament struggled to keep the country stable after his execution. But, in other respects, Charles was wrong to believe that they couldn’t do without him. It was the monarchy the country couldn’t do without and not the individual. They couldn’t function effectively without the monarchy, but they also couldn’t function effectively with its present representative. The King simply failed to see himself as separate from the monarchy as others eventually perceived him. He also did not understand that his limited power as a personality would eventually undermine the power of the monarchy.

  As usual, the twist is linked in with the irony.

  Our characters are real and complex and involved in civil war, religion and politics, so, of course, we have drama as the conflict is fuelled heavily by their moral choices. What is the right thing to do? What is the law? What is God’s desire? Cromwell never stopped asking himself questions like these. The king’s morality revolved around the fact that he thought those who had defeated him and brought him to trial had no legitimate, moral or divine authority to do so. He, too, invoked God and the law to criticize his enemies.

  We see clearly the King’s character flaws, or theme, that we chose to build the essay around and upon which the whole episode is driven. The King’s arrogance, indifference to his changed circumstances, lack of respect for his enemies and inability to compromise in any way, demeaned himself in his enemy’s eyes and sowed the seeds of his own destruction. The theme could be condensed to something like the following: the most powerful individual is never as important as their office. Indeed, this is a moral we can take from the essay as in a fable. But, of course, the essay offers us other themes, too. We also have the historical theme of regicide (king killing), and if we said th
at the essay shows us that the power of an individual king is never as important as his office, then we have another historical theme. However, the theme of our short story will revolve around Cromwell’s complex feelings regarding the monarchy.

  THE PHYSICAL ANCHOR

  One other really useful thing we can add to our mining technique to help us focus in on a strong short story idea from the complexity of the historical narrative is a physical anchor. We are looking for an object from amongst the huge number of historical props. It might be a sword, a dagger, a guillotine, a document, a handkerchief, a book, a letter, a painting, a horse, a body, a ring, a tool or instrument, a jacket, even a diseased potato; any physical thing around which the story can be woven.

  From the essay, we can see that the whole episode culminated around the dramatic and tense aspects of the trial. This might certainly be a good place to set the story; a place where Cromwell might at last be confronted with the stark consequences of his anti-monarchic actions and where the greatest doubt might be raised in his mind as to whether he had taken the best road in his dealings with the King. But even if we were to use the trial as a spur for Cromwell exploring his thoughts and feelings, we would still need to focus on something more specific than the trial in general on which to hang our work. The trial itself is too big. What part of the trial? And why that part and no other? What specifically about the trial would we concentrate on? What do we want to say? What do we want to do with the story?

  We want to show how deeply involved Cromwell was in the trial and execution of the king and we want to show it in a single and poignant moment of time. But in order to do this, we have no need to focus on the trial at all. We can instead focus on a physical anchor much smaller and far more tangible. If we examine the king’s death warrant, we see that Cromwell’s signature is third on it (check online). Our physical anchor will not be the death warrant itself, but something even more specific. It will be Cromwell’s signature on the death warrant. His signature is the equivalent of leaving a set of fingerprints at the scene of a crime. The emotional focus of the story will be on Cromwell’s doubts regarding the act of regicide and by weaving this focus around his signature (our physical anchor) it will help keep our whole story tightly focused.