Creating Characters: How to Build Story People

by Swain, Dwight V.

  2. Inadequate research

  Here we’re talking about things important to the story that Writer should know. Why? Because if he doesn’t, readers quite possibly will. Author’s failure to know them automatically raises the thought in Reader’s mind, “This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about—so why should I bother to read him?” Again, belief has been shattered. When you don’t know the difference between a rifle and shotgun, or organdy and tulle, it’s a mark against you.

  We’ve already talked about the business of research in terms of the technical, not-so-trivial trivia writers too often slight—the revolvers with safeties, etchings versus woodcuts, the nature of a geode. But failure to do adequate research goes beyond that, and I do mean into the realm of character.

  This most often involves matters of attitude. Too often, we assume that all people—and all characters—feel and think as we do, and that simply isn’t so.

  For example, how is a frontier mother supposed to feel about hostile Indians? A contemporary business man about unions? A retiree with three small rental houses about subsidized housing? What turn of mind led young girls to become Charles Manson groupies or biker mamas?

  The key to answering all these questions is, of course, research. Is it worth while? Yes. The perfect example is a fragment in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Huck has disguised himself as a girl. But a woman penetrates the ruse instantly because Huck clamps his legs together when she tosses him a lump of lead to throw at a rat. A girl wouldn’t have done so, because a lifetime of wearing skirts would have conditioned her to spread her knees to catch a thrown object.

  How did Twain find the basis for this bit? Obviously, he did research—kept his eyes open for incidents he could use in his writing.

  3. Telling

  Versus showing, that is.

  Showing brings belief. Telling doesn’t.

  At least, not necessarily.

  Take the case of the woman who says to you, in regard to a neighbor, “She’s no better than she should be.” Perhaps she elaborates with stories of Neighbor’s sexual misconduct.

  Do you believe her? Maybe. Or maybe not.

  On the other hand, you’re walking through the park tonight and take a short-cut. Off to one side, partially concealed in a clump of bushes, lies the woman you’ve been told about. She’s locked in a steamy embrace with a man.

  Do you believe your eyes, what you yourself are seeing?

  Yes. You simply can’t deny that kind of visual evidence.

  The same principle applies when I claim I can levitate myself—rise from my chair and move through the air this way and that. If I tell you about it, you may nod politely, but you’re hardly likely to believe me. But if I demonstrate by actually performing the feat, you’re forced to accept the truth of my statement.

  Same for opening a vault a la Jimmy Valentine, “feeling” the combination with my super-sensitive fingers. Or reading someone’s mind by pure power of will. Or talking up my derring-do as a soldier or scholar or explorer versus having a diploma or display of medals hanging on the wall, or showing you a scrapbook full of clips of my exploits.

  Do learn to write your stories in terms of such proof. Show things happening; don’t just tell about them.

  4. M/R gaps

  A story is made up of a succession of scenes and sequels, units of confrontation/conflict and units of transition/decision. In general, action and development within a scene is continuous. It consists of a series of motivations and reactions (M/R): first a stimulus from outside the viewpoint character, then the viewpoint character’s response—in character—to that stimulus . . . which brings on another motivating stimulus from the person or circumstance being confronted . . . which calls forth another reaction . . . and so on, as when someone speaks to you; you answer; the other person responds to your answer; which leads to you speaking again, making yet another remark . . . until the scene, the confrontation, is ended. (I’m oversimplifying here. For a more detailed development, see my Techniques of the Selling Writer.)

  Thing is, a scene, a unit of conflict, is made up of a continuous series of these stimulus/response or motivation/reaction units. It’s what gives your readers the feeling they’re living through the experience.

  If you don’t follow this pattern of development, however, if you allow spots to creep in where a motivation doesn’t lead to a reaction, or a reaction flashes on sans motivation, you jar your reader, gamble with his suspension of disbelief.

  I call these breaks, these holes where motivation isn’t linked to reaction, gaps in the M/R stairway, because a scene’s development very well may be compared with a flight of steps—each motivation a riser, each reaction a tread. Leave out either a riser or a tread and Reader is likely to stumble or fall where his sense of continuity and building tension are concerned.

  Let your reader be thrown off balance too many times, and she may decide that something’s wrong with your story, even though she can’t say what.

  Thus, if Hero slaps Heroine and she gives no indication of it, or if a character touches a hot stove but doesn’t respond by jerking back, your story people aren’t behaving realistically. Increasingly, readers have difficulty believing them.

  In sequels, units of transition and decision between scenes, action isn’t necessarily continuous. A character may wander around for hours or days, take care of incidental business while brooding about a problem and trying to decide what to do. But in scenes, the units of confrontation/conflict where action is continuous, gaps in the M/R stairway can really shatter a story. Watch out for them.

  5. Planting

  We’ve talked about planting before. But since the lack of it can be a major cause of reader disbelief, it warrants a bit further attention here.

  To plant something means to stick that something into your story early in the game because you know you’re going to need it later. Case in point: Hero is going to need a gun with which to shoot Villain or hold him at bay. So, you plant a gun—that is, reveal its presence to your readers—in a desk drawer within the first few pages and let someone on your hero’s side—the heroine, perhaps—be aware of it. You don’t make an issue of it, you understand; you simply make it obvious that it’s there.

  Now, story nears climax. Villain holds Hero at bay with some lethal weapon. Heroine stands off to one side, next to the desk, well-nigh petrified with fear. Hero charges Villain and is appropriately clobbered. Villain raises his weapon to finish groggy hero off. Whereupon, the realization that Hero’s about to die shatters Heroine’s paralysis. She claws open the drawer that holds the gun and fires at Villain. Because she lacks experience with firearms, she misses. But the crash of the gunshot distracts Villain momentarily. In that moment, Hero regains his feet and knocks Villain cold. Clinch and close.

  (Why does Heroine miss? Because in the past, reader anticipation ordinarily demanded that Hero should, by his own valor, triumph. Heroine was expected to be gentle, passive, hapless, and hopeless. Is this a sexist handling? Yes. In many of today’s stories, Heroine would be a crack shot, drop Villain in his tracks, and be the final victor. You plan your climax to fit your market.)

  Must all planting be so obvious? No. You can be as crude or subtle as your story and your editor permit.

  Further, planting is by no means limited to objects. You can—and should—also plant character traits, as in the example from Fat Tuesday, above. A character who kicks dogs and pulls the wings off flies seldom proves to be the hero. And when Heroine spends the money she’s saved for a wedding dress to buy an air conditioner or smoke detector for the impoverished old lady next door, readers will tend to think well of her.

  Abilities, too, need to be planted. If someone must ferret out what’s wrong with a broken-down pickup, establish him as a mechanically minded car buff earlier. Training as a nurse sets up a woman to take over at the scene of an accident. A hairdresser is likely to be able to detect dyed tresses. An accountant will look at doctored books with more insight than wil
l a layman.

  Closely related to this is the ability of a character to note significant details, and the key word here is “significant.” Take a priest who, despite vows of poverty, drives a flashy sports car. This is significant only if it indicates an aspect of the priest’s character or is a plant to explain his contacts or such. It is not significant if he only drives it temporarily because it was donated and he can’t sell it for the cost of a plain four-door sedan. Same for a skeleton hanging on a rack in Heroine’s bedroom or her mother’s fondness for a patent medicine that contains 40 percent alcohol. If these details don’t contribute to the plot they’re not significant and shouldn’t be mentioned.

  Note, too, that plant to a large degree means show. It’s hard to plant something that can’t be seen or heard or whatever. (In print fiction you certainly may plant an odor, for instance, or a taste. Since you’re in a character’s head, you may report anything Character experiences.)

  When you plant something, however, bear in mind that you’re obligated to pay off said plant. If you make a thing of the gun in the drawer, readers will expect someone to use it later. Same for love letters, emerald necklaces, the fragrance of roses, or a bad disposition.

  6. Distaste/denial

  How much realism is acceptable in a story where your characters’ behavior is concerned? And will too much tend to aggravate readers sufficiently as to shatter their suspension of disbelief? It’s something to consider.

  In a book I read recently, a character was shown helping to put an elderly invalid “on the pot.” I found it integral to the story and totally inoffensive. An acquaintance, however, did not. “Disgusting” and “revolting” were the mildest terms she used to describe the bit, and I wondered what dimension her vocabulary would reach were she to read some of the passages in Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs.

  In the same way, some readers may be bothered by a scene in which a diabetic character takes an insulin shot. If you include rape or attack details in a story, you take a chance. Bloody descriptions of accidents or surgery or war are verboten to some readers. Same for death and desolation. Howard Fast’s description of the final fate of his subject’s bones in the biographical novel Citizen Tom Paine haunted me for months. (The bones were lost forever in England when a mountebank couldn’t get a permit to exhibit them for pay.)

  This problem isn’t limited to the written word. Toulouse-Lautrec’s painting that depicts two whores waiting in line for medical inspection is distressing to many viewers. Hogarth’s engravings of The Rake’s Progress still draw adverse reactions.

  The issue is, of course, the audience. Judy Blume was condemned because her writings for young people dealt realistically with situations—divorce and family and adolescent problems—that disturbed adults. Though S. E. Hinton won awards with books like The Outsiders, whose characters are slum Chicano adolescents, many parents felt they had no place on their children’s school reading lists. The people in romance novels, horror stories, and mysteries upset many readers to the point that they reject all such. And Frederic Wertham received national publicity for his outrage at the gorier comic books, in one of which characters used a severed head as a baseball.

  This in no way means that I’m suggesting you self-censor your work. But you should at least be aware that some characters and actions can be distasteful to some readers. These individuals show their displeasure by walking wide around or refusing to read your epics, as is their right. So consider it a possible factor where disbelief is concerned.

  7. Non-likable characters

  Readers and editors can reject—refuse to believe—your story if they don’t find at least one of your characters likable.

  To put it another way, readers and editors are strong for stories with a positive emotional orientation.

  Such an orientation means that, in the old Hollywood phrase, readers have “someone to cheer for.”

  “Who do we cheer for?” really means, “What character do we want to see win?”

  The character readers want to see win has three basic traits.

  1. The character is striving to attain something.

  That is, he or she is goal-oriented, purpose-oriented. So, in striving, the character can win or lose. This gives you, in story terms, suspense.

  2. The character is today-slanted.

  That is, he fits in with current reality as your readers know it.

  We’ve already talked about the importance of zeroing in on the standards and behavior patterns of your readers. Here I’ll only add that it can be difficult to keep on top of things in a society whose mores and standards are continually in a state of flux. Mass audiences today may not accept a woman who sacrifices a blossoming career in order to stroke her husband’s ego by staying home and canning food “just like Mother used to make”—because that’s not society as they know it. And I doubt that a pro-drug epic like Easy Rider would find financial backing today. In a phrase, times have changed.

  3. The character does not contradict readers’ feelings or their basic beliefs.

  In other words, despite all changes, the right and wrong issue remains important. Most readers, most of the time, prefer to stand on the side of the angels rather than of Satan. It’s difficult for them to cheer for someone who outrages their sense of what’s good and what’s bad, or whose behavior and beliefs are on a different track from theirs.

  Thus, by and large, it upsets most readers to be asked to cheer for—that is, identify positively with—rapists or serial killers, or abusive husbands or spendthrift wives or belligerently nasty children.

  This means that ordinarily the character they do cheer for, male or female, will be one who thinks and acts in a manner that reflects the standards and mores of that group of readers for whom your work is destined.

  Not that this is likely to be easy to determine in a society as complex and ever-shifting as ours. Nor will the character you develop necessarily be admirable or even likable in the accepted sense. But he will be a person readers can understand and empathize with in his striving, and he’ll fit into the world they know, and in the final clutch at least he’ll stand for the right thing as he sees it . . . show the “climax potential” we talked about in Chapter 10.

  Which will make him a likable character indeed in the broadest, most meaningful sense. I urge you to search him out and build him. Believe me, it will pay off.

  So much for at least seven of the reasons why readers may fail to believe your stories. But be that as it may, and whatever the incidental hazards, a writer by his nature wants to write. That makes characters ever so much his business—and his salvation. We’ll talk about it in our final chapter, “The Search for Zest.”

  17

  THE SEARCH FOR ZEST

  How do you maintain your cutting edge as a writer?

  You draw on the stimulus of story people.

  A friend who’s a highly successful author of historical novels tells me that the actual writing of his books leaves him cold. What locks him to the craft is that it gives him an excuse to do research—to explore new areas of knowledge for intriguing facts and twists.

  I suggest that you apply a variation of the same principle to your work in building characters. That is, that you scan and explore and analyze people every chance you get. Where you used simply to dismiss some people as not worth getting to know, now you observe and probe and try to understand. Instead of avoiding an obnoxious man or woman, ask yourself, “What makes a person act this way?” Look for details—how a person continually rubs fingers together, bares teeth, tries to glower into your eyes, whatever. Every encounter is grist for your character mill if you see it as, one way or another, fascinating.

  Why? Because character study very probably is your best way to escape the fatigue and boredom that endless hours of writing often bring.

  Thing is, there’s an infinity of people to draw on for your stories. Each one is different. Don’t hesitate to study them. Take it upon yourself to find something fresh a
nd new in each and every person. Rationalize to the farthest limits of your imagination.

  Believe me, the process will excite you. And out of that excitement will come production.

  People read fiction for feeling. Whether they know it or not, they grope for stimuli that move them.

  The thing in fiction that gives them this stimulation is emotion projected through characters—story people.

  Characters become readers’ friends. Looking back over the infinity of memorable stories I’ve read, I can remember the people, but seldom the adventures. Sherlock Holmes and Travis McGee both have stayed with me. So have Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara, Sam Spade, Moll Flanders and Fanny Hill, D’Artagnan and Oliver Twist, Ivanhoe, Fagan, Shylock, Destry, Shane, Blind Pew, Long John Silver, Perry Mason, Tarzan, and Don Camillo.

  For you as a writer, concentrating on routine cardboard characters is the kiss of death. Why? Because you get tired of stereotyped story people, people with reactions so predictable that they put you to sleep before you even set them down.

  You can’t afford that. The secret to avoiding it is to deal with each member of your cast as a unique and special individual who intrigues you. Only thus can you maintain your own interest and enthusiasm.

  This is true even when you’re writing of series characters, so common in the mystery field. There you may grow weary of the continuing protagonist, so you gain your zest from the subsidiary figures introduced in each new story. These people are individual and unique. They have new, fresh problems. The central character, the continuing protagonist with whom you’re bored, in effect serves as a hired gun who fights the others’ battles for them. While we thrill to the way he handles it, the new individual, the new threat or puzzle, provides a focus for our interest.