Fiction Writing Demystified

by Thomas B. Sawyer

  Try flipping the card. The hooker who, when push comes to shove is really a greedy, selfish pain-in-the-ass. The seemingly good-hearted cop who is really a closet sadist, or has a less-extreme weakness or compulsion such as a gambling problem, or he becomes ill at the sight of blood, or dead people. I once knew an NYPD detective who had to transfer out of Homicide for that reason, a gag I’ve used once or twice in my writing. Or — his wife batters him. The goal is to make at least some aspect(s) of your characters seem new. Make them less predictable.

  As said, and said again, all this is really about entertaining. About fascinating, and then holding, your audience.

  Making All of Your Characters Count

  Back to minor characters, and how to make them vital: think about the problems this one’s having at home, at work, the insult that one may have suffered earlier in the day. She’s late with the rent, or he has a blister on a toe, or constipation. A condition. It can be a backache, depression, a chronic cough. It can be hay fever, causing him to sneeze, and the major character who encounters him is a germ freak. Or it’s her allergy to the cat-hairs on the major character’s sleeve. Or defensiveness about some real-or-imagined personal defect — fat thighs, receding hairline, crooked nose.

  When you start thinking that way, your minor characters — and their scenes — will instantly become more interesting, taking on — at the very least — color, and as a bonus, giving the moments an entertaining dynamic beyond whatever plot-advancing requirement caused you to write the transaction in the first place.

  Suppose for instance that a scene, a story-point that you need to play, places your protagonist at a magazine stand so that — for plot-purposes — he can happen to notice a person or an event. So, rather than simply having him standing there, you decide to have him purchase a pack of cigarettes. Not, in itself, very interesting. Now, suppose that the store cashier is irritable — or has hives, or a migraine — because she’s anticipating that when she gets home, her mother-inlaw will have arrived for a three-week stay in her tiny apartment. Suddenly, your protagonist’s interaction with her can become a challenge, entertaining. Distracting. So that, when he finally notices what your story requires him to notice, when your scene finally pays off, you will have gotten there in an interesting way — with or without going into the details of her malaise. What’s important is that you’ve taken the time to imagine them.

  Making the ordinary extraordinary is a large part of what good writing is all about.

  The point, however redundant, is key: don’t “toss off” your most minor characters because they merely serve a necessary function in your story, or only appear for a moment. If a character “makes the cut” and ends up in your manuscript, make use of him or her.

  Write them fascinating. Write them theatrical. Write them bigger than life. Possibly funny, or with hang-ups — or both. Pattern them after people with whom you’ve interacted — the clerk at your local food market, the person who cuts your hair, the driver of the UPS truck in your area. You’ll discover that they lend invaluable texture and excitement to your story, making your scenes — and your writing — special.

  Can your writing have too much of this kind of color? Sure.

  How will you know? When your supporting characters begin stealing scenes from your protagonists. When the scenes start to be about them, rather than what they should be about.

  Some Characterization House-Numbers

  The following are a few common, outward, obvious traits — some of their side effects — and some general, writer-useful below-the-surface reasons for them. Several of the characteristics, and their causes, will overlap, or mirror some already mentioned, or to be touched on further along. The list is in no way complete, but it will, I hope, provide a few jumping-off places — and spark an idea or two.

  Anger

  Very often, anger results from depression or sadness, causing the person to lash out — or sometimes, lash inward (with many such troubled individuals it goes in both directions), as in self-punishment — from overeating to drug-use to nail-biting (which is — literally — chewing on oneself), all the way to committing anti-social acts and/or screwing up valued relationships.

  In creating your angry character, or any other type, ask yourself what those symptoms may be about. Where did they start? Knowing the answers will give you all sorts of dimension to play with, telling you how they’ll react in various situations. And — it’ll make your characters and your writing exponentially more interesting.

  If it’s sadness causing the anger — what’s the source? It might be loss of a loved one, or of one’s abilities, or livelihood. Unrealized ambition. Or it could be some imagined slight. Because with People, we’re not necessarily talking rational behavior. Much of the time, quite the opposite.

  But valid or not — sensible or not — there are always reasons — which total out to grist for the fiction writer.

  Similarly, illness, either chronic or periodic (as in the Common Cold) can result from anger-turned-inward, as well as from self-pity, or as a plea for attention and/or love. Resentment brought on by jealousy, for instance.

  Self-pity is another manifestation and/or cause of anger. Again, feeling sorry for oneself is a form of resentment — the have-not, the loser (really or imagined).

  Passive-Aggressive

  Previously, I touched on passive-aggressive behavior. A way of venting anger, it’s an amazingly common trait in a culture such as ours, which frowns on expressing “unseemly” emotions. Basically, it is the acting-out of suppressed anger — through some sort of punishing behavior toward another — without admitting one’s anger to that party — and often without admitting it to one’s self. The hostile action(s) may be obvious, even physical, or sneaky — so simple or minor that it might be regarded (and even excused) as “thoughtlessness.”

  It isn’t.

  An interesting variant is the individual who’s playing a game in which only he or she knows the rules — or that it’s a game in the first place — who then becomes angry at another person for unknowingly violating the rules.

  Then there’s the person who, say, repeatedly violates the ethics of a particular relationship — without admitting, or even recognizing — having done so.

  Passive-aggression can be essentially defined as a confrontation-avoiding (sometimes convolutedly indirect) expression of anger. It’s also a very toxic, non-healthy way. Which probably describes at least several of your friends or relatives (not you, of course).

  Again, a fascinating, human hang-up.

  Control

  We’ve all encountered people who need to manipulate others. Why?

  How about paranoia? An inability to trust. Mostly, it’s fear.

  Of failure, for example. If, in a collaborative venture, an individual can’t trust others, it follows that he’ll be unwilling to delegate responsibility.

  But in terms of relationships, control can also provide a way of minimizing risk. A way of obtaining repeated confirmation that another person really cares.

  Which goes to various forms of resistance to change. In Luddite behavior, for instance, an individual might refuse to keep up with modern means of communication (fax, Email, celphone, answering machine, etc.). That’s a form of control — of telling others that if they wish to maintain the relationship, they have to go that extra mile and put up with those — or other — annoying quirks. In simple, it’s about testing others’ love.

  Such a character is not going to be happy in situations that don’t allow for much control. From communal activities such as parties to — say — being a passenger. People who need tranquilizers in order to fly on a commercial airline often have control issues.

  A sidebar: for this, or almost any other unconscious trait, the person will likely have constructed an elaborate explanation for it — which will usually be at least 90% self-deluding.

  Good material.

  Hunger for Approval

  Often, the person who tells lies does so
as a way of winning praise. As does the character who may be terrified of failure, or is otherwise massively insecure. It’s an interesting kind of desperation. There’s also an element of control, of manipulation, with such people. Commonly they are trying to manage the impression they make on others. They also tend to be rigid, intolerant and/or judgmental.

  Another way of winning approval is through excessive loyalty. The individual ignoring his or her own requirements in favor of others, even to the point of inflicting self-harm, sometimes demonstrates this.

  This last also applies to the martyr-complex, which frequently drives the

  Caretaker

  The character who’s convinced he’s indispensable. Or selfless. Consider that word. Selfless. Without self. A character who gives up identity. The earth mother. The super-responsible person. The one who looks for, and then helps “victims.” This includes co-dependency, and also goes to fear of abandonment and/or rejection.

  These, by the way, are not necessarily “bad” people. But they are interesting — in ways that folks who have it together are not. In no small part because the former contain elements of unbalance — of edge. Looked at differently, just plain folks who are conventional, well-integrated members of society are not especially attention-grabbing as fictional characters because they’re so straight — because they lack inner conflict — which generally fuels outer conflict. They are absent the problems that add up to drama.

  Unless we, as writers, dig to find them.

  Because in the real world — as in well written fiction — there is always something fascinating going on beneath even the most placid surface.

  Low Self-Esteem

  This can manifest itself in fear of failure or rejection, as well as in an obsessive need for self-perfection, often a product of feeling inadequate. Sexual promiscuity is another possible result of disrespecting oneself. It can be, for male or female, a way of buying approval — as well as — in many cases — repeated reassurance of one’s low self-worth (as in: How good can I be if nobody will commit to me?). Lack of self-esteem can also cause a person to withdraw, either by becoming non-assertive or, sometimes, isolated. Commonly, it shows up in fear of authority figures. And guilt.

  Psychopaths and Sociopaths

  Crazies. Occasionally useful as characters, as mentioned previously I personally find them to be of limited interest and use because they are so difficult to relate to. Certainly, psychopaths have value as — say — serial killers, firebugs, or other unreasoning forces, but because of their insidiousness, their almost symbolic, cartoon-like evil-without-redeeming-qualities, their stories tend to be unsatisfying except for their potential in battle-of-wits adventures with your hero. They’re uninteresting for the same reasons that psychologists and psychiatrists shun them — they’re incurable. Incapable of change. Thus, written with honesty, their stories offer little or no possibility of redemptive arcs.

  Unless, of course, the writer — or your protagonist — can find a way to use such a character’s antisocial behavior to achieve a desired goal.

  Sociopaths, who are similarly incurable, offer somewhat broader potential for the fiction writer, partly because they’re such dependable sources of conflict for your other, less seriously flawed characters. Classically, the sociopath, or pathological liar, is a physically attractive person who is unable to tell the truth, incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. Usually charming, in most cases such individuals were/are overprotected by parents who may also have a severely limited grasp on reality. The one with whom I was acquainted was, the closest I have ever been to what might be described as “truly evil,” in that he was unreachable by me in terms of getting him to acknowledge, or even comprehend his dishonesty. Such characters are rarely dealt with in any but horror fiction, probably because the outcome of their stories is usually a downer that, in America anyway, is not terribly commercial.

  On the plus side, sociopaths’ almost sure-fire penchant for disrupting the lives of others, for triggering strong reactions, makes them useful as secondary bad guys, though their inability to look into themselves renders them — like their more lethal counterparts — less attractive as first-line heavies.

  The 1941 thriller movie, Suspicion (Scr. Samson Raphaelson, Joan Harrison, Alma Reville, from Frances Iles’ novel, Before the Fact — Dir. Alfred Hitchcock), is an interesting exception, one of the few non-fright films to feature such a character. In it, Cary Grant played a totally disarming liar who may or may not have been a serial killer. Hitchcock intended to end the film with Grant about to murder his co-star, Joan Fontaine — a daring, and audience-upsetting climax. Instead, the studio — and the movie “code” of that era — forced a “happy,” and ultimately false ending to this otherwise superb film, telling us that Grant was innocent, really a nice guy, really in love with Fontaine.

  Similarly, for Murder, She Wrote it occurred to me that it would be intriguing to pit the series protagonist, Jessica Fletcher, against such an individual. The earlier-referenced pathological liar with whom I’d been involved became, once I’d put some distance between him and myself, an interesting model for me, challenging to bring off as a fictional character. For my script, I posited my liar as an otherwise attractive young woman whose dishonesty has damaged, infuriated and alienated Jessica. The young woman then becomes a dead-bang murder-suspect whose innocence Jessica reluctantly-butout-of-her-sense-of-justice tries to prove. I thought it would be interesting to see Jessica torn between her animus and her belief in doing the right thing. I cite this not only as an instance of stealing a story from my own experience, but also as a near-definitive sample of the what-if? school of brainstorming.

  The resulting episode, Dead to Rights, turned out rather well, affording several “fireworks” scenes for Angela Lansbury. The downside for me, ironically, was in the dictates of commercial television — the requirement for a feelgood, ultimately dishonest ending (as in Suspicion). In this case, our liar, cleared of the murder (Jessica having unmasked the real killer), sees the error of her ways, is regretful about her lying, and has entered therapy, presumably enroute to a cure.

  Win some, lose some.

  I sympathized with Hitchcock. And though, truth be told, because of its “darkness,” its usually single dimension, psychopathology and/or the supernatural are for me not all that appealing as story material, it continues to be wonderful, immensely popular grist for storytellers, from Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) to Bram Stoker to Thomas Harris, Anne Rice and many others.

  The foregoing are a few of the many character traits — and some of their underlying causes — that are out there, all around us, as well as in ourselves, all of them fuel for our work as fiction writers. Types our audiences will connect with, because in those characters they’ll recognize themselves or others.

  But — those attributes and their causes can — and ought to be regarded as just a start. Especially if you’re designing a major character. Because then, you as the writer should try for still another dimension, and another.

  One way is by asking yourself what such a character “gets” from the trait. Because all of it, each of these very human quirks and tics are part of a transaction. A trade-off.

  It may be that if an individual is angry at others, it’s about blaming them for personal problems — thus getting rid of responsibility for his or her situation. Same with blaming “the system.” Martyrdom is often a method of winning the love or admiration of others. As, frequently, is charity. Sadness, a way of buying sympathy and attention.

  And on it goes. It’s about thinking your characters through. About not settling for stereotypes. And yes, looked at another way, damned if it isn’t about conflict. In the foregoing cases, largely internal.

  By now it may have hit you that with the exception of sociopaths and psychopaths none of these problems suggest their owners are “crazy.” Odd, maybe. Colorful, potentially. Distinctive, hopefully. Though obviously various psychopathologies will include one or more of such traits
— carried to extremes — the focus here is on the creation of everyday, imperfect characters. The kinds of people most of us write about, most of the time.

  The Really Hard Part — Or — What Should Be The Hardest Part: Introducing Your Characters to Your Audience

  Okay, you’ve done the work, given your character-mix a lot of thought, created some great, fascinating, complex, conflicted-andconflicting individuals — and you’re beginning to know them. Now comes what I regard as one of the most critical parts of the writing process — of good writing. The First Meeting between your audience and each of your characters.

  Again, a lesson that travels well from television writing to other forms: the need to hit precisely the right note the first time I show a character to my guy with the beer-and-clicker in his hands.

  For me, one of the toughest parts of writing is in the choices I make for how to introduce my characters. If it’s easy for you, you’re probably far too talented and/or experienced to be bothering with this book.

  Or — you’re kidding yourself.

  For starters, in the best-of-all-worlds, I try to introduce my characters in situations that show them doing whatever it is they do. An attorney should if possible be serving in that capacity when first we see him or her. A cop likewise (particularly a plainclothes cop). Or a doctor. Or a teacher. Or auto mechanic. Why? Partly of course, it’s about first-impressions, but the best thing about catching them at a time when they’re practicing their trade is that you don’t have to have them, or someone else in your piece, talk about it.

  It’s not always possible to write it that way, but in TV and film (and it definitely carries over to narrative) the house-number (which, as with much that’s in this book, bears repeating — and will be repeated) is don’t tell it — show it.