Yes, in books, theater and movies, we’ve all encountered those “sensitive,” feelgood moments — scenes that are seemingly absent any edge or conflict. But examine the better ones closely and you’ll find levels, nuances, of tension that may surprise you.
And if, after closer inspection you can’t find any, it’s because they did it wrong.
Okay, here’s an example of a small edge: One of your characters — a young man — is a job-seeker, sitting across the desk from a woman who’s interviewing him. And he’s dying for a cigarette. And the woman’s pack of cigarettes is right there on the desk. But it would be bad form for the young man to ask for one, so he tries to communicate his desire via body language, or a look, in hope of communicating his desire non-verbally so that the woman will offer it to him. Now — perhaps she doesn’t “get” his message, or she misreads it, assumes he’s coming on to her. Or she gets it, but ignores the silent communication — maybe because she finds it offensive, or because it augments her power in the situation. Whatever you make of it, that’s conflict — in what might otherwise be a pretty mundane situation.
And it doesn’t mean that there can’t be other levels of conflict, about other matters, going on in the same scene, either underlying, or in addition to the conflict cited above. Problems that each character brought with them that day, or in that life. Moreover, all of the scene’s edges may be, like the cigarette business, subtextual — never dealt with on the surface, in actual words or overt action. But — it may cost the applicant a job he wants badly. Who knows? Maybe the woman left the cigarettes there as a test. Maybe she doesn’t like men who smoke. Or she does, is sexually attracted to them, but she wants to find out how forceful this one is; will he or won’t he ask? In any case, it lends the moment, and that relationship, an extra dimension — an entertaining source of tension. Further, you may have no use for it beyond that scene.
But thinking that way, creating such situations — or better, allowing them to occur — will, I guarantee, bring a kind of life — and energy — to your writing that’ll make it unique.
Attitudes and Conditions
In writing for series TV, where we have to create a lot of stories, the number of characters we must conjure up is almost exponential. And while most of them won’t reappear beyond one or, at most several episodes, on the better-written shows we try to give them more than one or two dimensions — if only to see where the characters can take us. And one of the ways we start is by letting them have attitudes.
Think about the most interesting people you know. The ones that really stand out. They’re not bland. They don’t fade into the wallpaper. They are vivid. They challenge. They’re the ones with attitudes.
Sometimes, attitudes can be abrasive, a source of irritation to others. That’s the model that comes to mind. But it isn’t necessarily true. As in someone who simply has an interesting perspective (read: unusual — or off-the-wall) on life — a unique, or at least fresh point-ofview. Or, the attitude is a product of a nose-zit, or the stock market, defensiveness-turned-aggressive, or some minor wrong-side-of-thebed problem. Commonly, an attitude will manifest itself in strong opinions. Positive or negative. You know the type. Emphatic — usually verbal — about their likes and dislikes.
Usually verbal, but not always. As in the young woman whose “statement” is to become obese in order to spite an image-fixated parent. That’s an example of self-defeating, self-punishing behavior — which is a lot more generically common — and human — and therefore recognizable to your audience — than being direct about expressing one’s disagreements with others.
For a fiction writer, such behavior can be a useful — and unexpected — way of dramatizing conflict. Maybe neither of the parties understand it for what it is. Maybe a third party attempts to clarify it for one or both of them — and the explanation is heatedly rejected...
“Opinionated” people may often be intimidating because of their attitudes. Individuals whose outlooks and strong beliefs clash with — or bully into submission — those of others who may be less sure of themselves or are perhaps more staid — or repressed. People who argue, who are passionate about their opinions. Even about topics that may seem minor to you or to me. About movies, books, sports, a political or philosophical point, or about race, abortion, color schemes, religion, fashion, guns, or neatness.
Now, think about the motivation for such passions. What do they say about the people who embrace them — or are captives of them?
Maybe, as with neatness, or anal-retentiveness, it’s anxiety, which can manifest itself in odd, but at the least, characteristic behavior.
Or, perhaps the attitude is one that your character is unaware of, such as being a control freak. Or obsessive-compulsive. Rigidity. Self-righteousness. Intellectual snobbery.
A common variant is the attitude that signifies displacement of emotions. One of the traditional house-numbers about individuals who are deeply politically “involved” — AKA activists — is that they often tend not to have lives of their own — their passions are expended on the abstraction of, say, concern for the masses, rather than on personal relationships with their spouses, their children, or others that might be close to them.
A generalization? Certainly.
Oversimple? Arguably.
Valid? Again, often enough that audiences can identify, can recognize themselves or someone they’ve known. It rings true.
Like so many common traits, attitudes, or conditions, these are a few jumping-off points for creating rounded, fascinating characters. From there, where you take it is what will make your writing your own.
Give one or more of your characters that kind of baggage, and then explore its source. See what happens, how it brings them to life — and animates the others, causing reactions, making them defensive or aggressive or resentful. Giving them stuff to argue with — or about.
And don’t be afraid to give your protagonist an attitude that may be irritating to others in your cast, and even to part of your audience.
If it becomes too abrasive, too edgy, you can always moderate it, dial it down. Short of creating a lead-character that people will out-and-out hate, it is not nearly as important that audiences love everything about him or her as it is essential that they believe them, are fascinated by them, care about them enough that they stay with your story to find out what becomes of them. Literature is full of such protagonists, leading men and women who are as exasperating as they are captivating.
And with good reason. It’s difficult to imagine anything duller than a flawless, goody two-shoes central character. Unless you’re writing allegory (which I don’t recommend) or satire, “Nice” puts us to sleep.
There are physical or mental conditions, which can be especially useful for walk-on, single-appearance characters, but can work for leading roles as well. Common conditions are allergies, a cold, hay fever, asthma, a sore foot or back or other part. A headache can work for you, or an eye infection. Or depression. A broken arm or sprained ankle can turn out to be a valuable problem, both in terms of pain and/or a resulting psychological state, but also as a physical hindrance, limiting the character’s ability to, say, climb, or run or walk, or write. But be wary of these — they can easily come off as plot conveniences. And therefore, an audience turnoff.
All of which goes to your overall casting of your show, of your story. Your character-mix.
The TV Series Character-Mix
A brief description of the way that many of us approach the creation of a television series offers some further insights — and a kind of matrix — for how you might go about developing the cast of characters for your novel, screenplay or short story. And it should provide some reinforcement about this business of conflict.
One of the goals in conceiving a television series is that you want to create a vehicle that will run for five to seven years, because you will then have produced enough episodes (ideally 100 or more) to make an attractive package for the rerun market. That’s w
here the creator and the studio or network producing the show earn serious profits — and the writers, directors and actors receive substantial residual, or “back-end” payments. Therefore, the creator must design a set of core-characters, usually four or five, or occasionally a few more, all of whom the mass audience will like, and care about sufficiently to invite them into their living rooms every week for at least five years.
To do that, the writer must model these characters so that each one of them is, with varying levels of intensity, in running conflict with all of the other characters.
That’s right — all of them.
Certainly, most of us can recall plays, films and/or novels that contain similarly constructed casts of characters, from comedies to bodice-rippers, potboilers, all the way to epics and the classics. Most TV soaps are excellent examples. But the part that’s truly unique to prime-time series television is that these ongoing conflicts must be strong enough, pointed enough, to last for five years — yet — not severe enough, not acrimonious enough, for the characters’ differences to blow them apart, to cause them to walk away from each other and never speak again.
Or worse, for one of them to murder another whose contract has two years to run.
Ongoing conflicts that are rarely, if ever, resolved.
Fundamentally conflicting characters.
While that’s the challenge in creating the character-mix for a TV series, in your novel, play, screenplay, or short story you have the freedom to make some of the conflicts large enough to alienate the characters.
Similarly, in laying out anything shorter than a TV series, you don’t necessarily have to worry about being so open-ended, sustaining your ensemble conflicts for its entire length. In your stories, in all likelihood, some of your characters can and will make their peace with each other, resolving their differences through growth or confrontation — or death — violent or otherwise.
But — the basic approach is a good one. Again, it’s part of the mindset.
Look for the heat.
And it’s also true that many of the choices you’ll make for your mix will — and should — be calculated to take you and your story where you want it to go. Combinations of characters/conflicts that most effectively help you make whatever point, arrive at whatever outcome, you’re aiming for.
But again — it is a way to think, one that will help give your work unity, vitality. What I’m trying to emphasize is that when you’ve devised, say, a pair of characters who will interact in your piece, and you see that they have no obvious differences of opinion or lifestyle or attitude — where there is no apparent edge between them — find one. Or more.
Again, and as mentioned in the section about Attitudes (page 79), these differences need not be major. Or even rational. And they certainly don’t have to be larger-than-life, a little of which — in fiction — can easily go too far. Edges that can provide wonderful conflict are often no more than those little, irritating traits that annoy the hell out of people. Think about your own relationships, about someone you know, or have met, who on some even totally insignificant level aggravates you:
The person who’s constantly negative, a downer, the glasshalf-empty type.
Or the control nut — and by the way, control comes in various shapes and guises. Stuttering, for instance, is often a control thing, a way of demanding “Shut up and listen to me.”
And then there are controlling mothers, fathers — and children — and exhibitionists and more...
An egoist who invariably turns the conversation toward himself.
The self-important type who half-listens to what you’re saying, his eyes — and attention — irritatingly on someone or something else.
The cleanliness freak.
The individual who repeats what you’ve just said.
Tics like these can add fascinating dimension to your characters — because they are so human. And because such idiosyncrasies tell us so much more about the characters (both offenders and offendees) than do physical descriptions or self-explaining monologues. And, their edges will give you moments, and even entire scenes and subplots.
Additionally, while it doesn’t require a degree in psychology, it’ll help if you think through, and understand, the underlying causes of such tics. You’ll be surprised by how often giving one of your players such an external, possibly even superficial trait, and then delving beneath the surface, researching the root-cause of such behavior, will lead you to riches of characterization. Simple example: The above-cited person who repeats your words. On a one-dimensional level, it’s good for a gag — an eccentricity, the causes of which aren’t worth analyzing. But on another, it’s a symptom of a very angst-ridden, probably massively insecure individual — whose anxieties, when manifested in other ways — can be useful for you elsewhere in your story. In my own writing, I think of the process as digging another level deeper, and then another.
The movies written and directed by Woody Allen can provide you with almost all of the examples of beautifully drawn neurotic behavior you’ll ever need. A cautionary note, however: I’m not suggesting that you hang one or more of the above on all — or even many — of your characters. As with bizarrely over-the-top quirks, even such minor stuff can easily be overdone.
But selected and applied with care, saddling characters you create with such baggage, such dimension, is one of the keys to becoming a solid fiction writer, a powerful entertainer.
Naming Your Characters
Names are crucial, more I think, to the writer than to the readers, who’re going to bring their own associations to the piece — people they might know who carry the same name as a fictional character. We writers need to be comfortable that this one really is, really feels like, a “Gregory,” or that one a “Jennifer.” Sometimes, in mid-story, as a character grows, I’ll realize that a name I’ve assigned is no longer appropriate. I also find on occasion that, as with dialogue, a character will reject the name I’ve chosen; he may have seemed to be a “Matthew” when I began my story, but partway through, he tells me he’s a “David,” or whatever. And of course, thanks to the computer, such changes are at any point a breeze.
In naming your characters, as with most other aspects of writing, unless you’re doing satire, it’s a good idea to avoid the obvious.
But for me, it’s equally essential that my characters’ names are not too similar. I might find for instance that I have a tendency to give too many of my females names that end with an E sound: Kerry, Leslie, Jenny, etc. Easily fixed.
Another guidepost I’ve employed in TV writing that becomes easier to look out for, thanks to the computer, is that of avoiding multiple names that begin with the same letter (or first two letters) or sound. When I name my characters, I list them by hand on a card or sheet of paper, and then program them into my word-processor so that, along with other boilerplate items such as repeated place-names, each has a one-or-two-letter code. Examples: f=Fran, fw=Fran Wilman, np=Northport, and so on. And, per “Fran,” I will then generally avoid naming a male character Frank, or even Fred.
One more hint I was given early in my career by a tough, no-nonsense producer is that heroes — particularly males — should always have names containing a “kuh” sound, as in Chuck, Kurt, Mark, Victor, Rex, etc., or, if not in their first names, certainly in their surnames. The idea is that it sounds rugged, harder more assertive than, say, Dale, Alan, or William. To support the premise, this producer cited such successful star leading men as Steve McQueen, Sean Connery, Gary Cooper, Michael Douglas, Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, etc.
Arguably worth considering, but — it’s yet another breakable rule, notable violations of which include Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn, Mel Gibson, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando or Robert Redford. Or in mystery fiction, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe or Perry Mason.
What all of those names do seem to share, however, is a kind of boldness, or at least some quality of catchiness, rhythm or poetry that makes them memorable. Which brings to mind Margaret
Mitchell’s classic Civil War novel, Gone With the Wind, with its contrasting major male protagonists: Ashley Wilkes and Rhett Butler. Those names could hardly be exchanged, so synonymous are they with the type of character to whom they were attached, the first refined-sensitive, the latter dashing and confident. And then there were the fiery Scarlett O’Hara and her gentle, very appropriately-named cousin, Melanie. Ms. Mitchell knew how to choose names that fit her characters as well as they fit the time and locale of her story. It’s difficult to imagine a serious modern-day character named Rhett. Or Scarlett.
Give ‘em Secrets
Secrets are a wonderful source of conflict. Character A is concealing something, and Character B is angered or at least resentful at being out of the loop — or is for whatever reason determined to discover or expose the secret. Conflict. And the secret(s) need not be major. Thomas Berger’s wonderful comic novel, Sneaky People, is an excellent example of the mileage — and fun — that can be wrung from people with soiled laundry — the gag being that every character in his story was concealing something, from an adulterous affair to a criminal record to the mousy housewife/mother earning extra spending money by furtively authoring pornographic novels.
Characters with secrets — or those who live lies — are far more fascinating to your audience than those who are completely out front. Can lies and/or concealment be abused by writers? Yes. As with the too-often used Withheld Information story, described in some detail in the section on Plot Conveniences (page 137).
But written well, even small secrets will at least contribute to holding onto your audience.
This is especially true of heroes. Often, the less the audience knows about them, the better — as in the mysterious title-character, Shane (Scr. A.B. Guthrie, Jr., from Jack Schaefer’s novel — Dir. George Stevens) — or Rick, in Casablanca. Or almost any character portrayed on screen by the almost awesomely enigmatic Steve McQueen. But you, the writer, should have a handle on who he or she is, what the secrets are.
Fiction Writing Demystified Page 10