Don't Speed Date Your Characters

I'm back! I can't believe I haven't posted since July. As you could probably tell by my mid-summer lament, I didn't meet my goal of finishing my rewrite by the end of summer. It was too difficult to concentrate on my kids and my work at the same time. When given the choice my kids will always come first. I put away my laptop for the rest of the summer, forgave myself for not meeting my deadline, and spent my time playing games and having water fights instead.

Now that school's back in session, I'm right back on schedule. I'm nearly finished rewriting 2/3 of the book. My new goal for completion is the end of October.

So, where were we?

A while back, I promised a post about getting to know your characters. That seems like a good place to start.

Sometimes when writers talk about getting to know their characters, we treat the exercise like speed dating. We sit down and knock off a list of traits in the span of a few minutes. To show you what I mean, I'm going to set a timer for two minutes and come up with a character from scratch. Ready, set, go...

Character Name: Krista Mahoney

-Female
-22 years old
-Short brown hair, bangs
-Blue eyes
-Small build, sometimes mistaken for a teen
-Crooked smile
-Wears bulky clothes she can "hide" in
-Parents are divorced, one brother
-Dropped out of college after one semester
-Likes cats
-Works at an ice cream shop
-Shy
-Has no significant other
-Likes to read mysteries
-Eats a tuna sandwich every day for lunch
-Crawls under the bed during thunderstorms

Okay for two minutes work, I guess. Notice the kind of details I came up with--most of them are superficial. She's a little compelling but a bit of a stereotype. Could I write a story about her? Sure, but I don't have much to work with.

This list, dear blog reader, would not be enough information to know if you wanted to date someone in the real world, let alone spend time with them in a fictional one. A person or a character, is more than just a list of traits and likes/dislikes. Rather than just quickly sketching out the basics, getting to know your character should be more like those long, all night phone calls with a new crush; where you don't want to hang up so you ask every conceivable question that comes to mind. To truly know your character, to fall in love (which is a necessity for good writing!) you need to take some time and dig deeper. You need to know the answer to the following questions:

-What does this character want above all else?
-What is she willing to do to get it?
-What is she willing to lose?
-What does she need?
-How are her wants and needs in conflict with one another?
-What does she value most?
-What is her major weakness?
-How does she hide this weakness?
-What in her past makes her this way?
-What, internally, is getting in the way of her getting the goal?
-What, externally, is getting in the way of her getting the goal?
-What event causes her to change?
-How does she change?

Let's apply the above questions to Krista and see what happens.

-Krista wants to feel safe and secure.
-In order to feel secure, she is willing to avoid anything that involves risk.
-She is willing to sacrifice friendships and romance in order to avoid being hurt.
-What she really needs is to come out of her shell.
-Coming out of her shell will put her at risk of having her heart broken.
-Above all else, she values a peaceful, quiet life.
-Her biggest weakness is not allowing herself to trust others.
-She hides this weakness by avoiding social situations.
-She's this way because her parents divorced when she was ten. Her older brother, her closest confidant, sided with her father in the divorce and left to go live with him. Krista could never understand why her brother took her father's side. She felt betrayed. She lost both her father and her brother/best friend at the same time.
-Internally, she's unable to reach her goal of security because she's afraid to risk having her heart broken.
-Externally, she's unable to reach her goal of security because she lives alone and has a job that allows her to work in isolation (instead of an ice cream shop, maybe she's an artist?)
-The event that causes her to change is her work forces her to be in contact with a client/patron/philanthropist. If she refuses to contact this person, she will lose her livelihood. The person she is forced to deal with is unpredictable and difficult and keeps her on her toes.
-Krista changes by gaining confidence in herself. She realizes that even when she's involved in events  (or with people) she can't control, she is resourceful enough to handle the unknown and come out fine. With a little experience under her belt, she is now equipped to take bigger risks in her life.

I spent about 30 minutes on the above. Still not a huge time investment, but there's a lot more meat to work with here than on the previous list. Better questions yield better answers. The answers to these questions even suggest the outline of a story. 

You could make a list of character traits even before you start writing a story, but where this exercise becomes most powerful is when you use it on the characters in a story you've already started, especially a story that has stalled. Often when we're stuck it's because we have yet to make some crucial decisions about what our characters want. Take what you already know about your character and use it to answer the questions. Spend time thinking through their motivations. As if by magic, new plot ideas may suggest themselves and you'll be able to move forward.

Are you stuck on a story? Give this exercise a try. Let me know how it works for you.

Getting Unstuck

I've spent the last few weeks moving forward with my stuck manuscript. I'm usually a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of writer, but since the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results I decided to try a new approach. Instead of just diving in with the umpteenth rewrite, I took a step back and did a little planning--something I almost never do.
I can't believe how much of a difference this approach has made.

Sometimes you have to do a 180 to get a fresh perspective. Do you have a stuck manuscript? Here are a few ideas to help you get back on track. They really worked for me.

Immerse Yourself in Other People's Words.  The best way to get inspiration is to read, read, read. Read classics, read contemporary authors, read non-fiction and poetry. Learn from others. I'll truly never understand writers who don't like to read or who say they avoid reading when they're working (What? You're not working all the time?).  I know I'm reading a great book when it makes me want to run to my computer and write. I love this quote from Lisa See: "Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river." Amen.

Share Your Work With a Trusted Reader. When you don't know how to move forward with a piece, it's often a good idea to get a fresh perspective from someone who is an avid reader in your particular genre. He doesn't even have to have mad editorial skills to be helpful--the reader's reaction alone can be informative. Which scenes or characters stand out for him? What themes is he picking up? What piqued his attention? Where did it wane?

Write Out a Sketch of Each Character. How well do you know your characters? The more specific you get about each character the easier it's going to be to get to the heart of the story. Knowing your character goes far beyond superficial details. Even though I had a complete manuscript with well-developed characters I still sat down and wrote out everything I knew about them. What I discovered is that throughout the manuscript my characters' motivations and wants were a little cloudier than I thought. It's not enough to know what they're feeling--you have to know what's at stake for them and what they're willing to lose. I'll have more specifics on this in a future post.

Make an Outline. Most writers belong in one of two camps--outliners and wingers. Some need to plan out the entire plot in advance, while others--like me--follow wherever the characters  take them. I've been a longtime proponent of winging it, believing in Robert Frost's assertion "no surprises in the writer, no surprises in the reader" but I'm changing my tune a little bit. I've realized that part of the reason why my story wasn't working was that I'd failed to make some key decisions. The plot was chugging along, but since I didn't know my characters as well as I should have, their actions weren't specific enough. To remedy this problem, I went through the entire manuscript and wrote a summary of what needed to be accomplished in each scene. I also wrote summaries for scenes that appeared to be missing. As I did this, the story became much more focused. Now, as I'm rewriting, I'm able to approach each work day in a more relaxed way because I've already decided what each scene needs.

Keep the Momentum Going by Setting Goals. When you feel ready to tackle your rewrite, set a deadline and tell others about it to hold yourself accountable. I've chosen August 31st as my deadline (with you , dear blog reader, as my witness). In order to stay on track, I've divided the number of days until my deadline by the number of chapters. I need to edit a chapter every three days in order to keep on track. I have written each chapter deadline on my calendar so I know where I stand. Currently, I'm three days ahead of schedule--yay me!

Write Every Day. Until now, I've given myself weekends off. I'll probably go back to that schedule eventually, but right now I can't imagine letting a day go by without doing a little editing. It's been tough with summer break and the kids being home. I have to steal my writing time any way I can. The confidence I'm feeling right now is a brittle, fragile thing. I can't afford to let myself get stuck again.


What do you do to get unstuck?

Try A Little Tenderness

A few posts back I discussed the issue of character likeability and whether a writer is obligated to create likeable characters. For the most part my answer is no, with one caveat: it is usually in the best interest of the story to make an unlikeable character sympathetic, particularly if he is immoral. As I mentioned earlier, giving immoral characters a sympathetic turn is one of the great hallmarks of skilled writing—especially when a writer convinces a reader to set aside his own moral code to root for the bad guy.

How is this done?

Character detail and depth are key, but the real secret is that an author must have a genuine affection for each of her characters. She must love them like her own children, mourning their failures and cheering on their successes, no matter how nefarious the goal. When everyone hates her character, the author has to be the one who says, “I know he did a bad thing, but give him a chance—he really is a good boy.”

It may seem like a stretch to expect a writer to be in love with murderers and thugs and all sorts of despicable personalities, but most writers understand that every character has their own point of view and a story worth telling. Better writing explores the nuances of moral ambiguity, gives voice to the voiceless, stirs compassion where normally there would be none.

In order to evoke sympathy, it’s not necessary to psychoanalyze and delve deeply into the past, though backstory can certainly help. Often, all you need to do to get a reader on your side is to show a little weakness. For example, in my novel, THE GREATEST MAN IN CEDAR HOLE, the main character, Francis is bullied by his oldest sister, Jackie. There is very little to like about Jackie—she is mean, emotionally stunted, greedy, and frequently uses threats and force to get her way. When I was writing the story, I knew that no one would really care for Jackie, but I still wanted to gently plead her case because she had been shaped by neglect, insecurity, and self-loathing. Despite her behavior, I knew that she wasn’t all bad.

To show her vulnerability, I constructed a scene between Jackie and her mother, Franny Pinkham. Franny tells Jackie (who is in her early twenties) that it’s high time she moved out and looked for a place of her own. Jackie does not take the news well, and in her typical fashion tries to run out of the kitchen. Franny blocks her, but Jackie plows through and ends up accidentally pushing her mother. Franny hits her head on the counter and falls to the floor. The head wound is small, but there is enough blood to make it look bad.

Given Jackie’s past insensitivities, it would not have been entirely unexpected for Jackie to leave her mother there on the floor, but really, only a sociopath would leave their mother alone and bleeding. This scene was a perfect opportunity to show Jackie’s fumbling humanity. Instead of running, she sinks to the floor and cradles her mother’s head in her lap. She still isn’t quite capable of an apology—at first she blames her mother for falling, then she says it’s an accident—but Jackie’s sudden gentleness shows the reader that she is truly sorry. Jackie becomes even more vulnerable when she says, “What do I do? I don’t know what to do.” It’s a refrain that refers not only to the urgency of the moment, but to the uncertainty of her future.

Action movie characters are often humanized by a love interest or friendship. While most of the time the hero’s actions are criminal, the audience will cut him some slack when they discover that he was once deeply in love or a very loyal friend. Usually, the love interest or the friend has been killed and our hero is a loner once again. Because he is capable of love, he becomes human in our eyes. The moral code is realigned toward this loss, and while we may or may not agree with how he handles his thirst for vengeance we can at least understand his motivation. He has now become a sympathetic character.

Character Likeability

When a reader is unable to connect to a story, a common reason is that he finds the characters unlikeable. Even if he enjoys the writing style and the plot, if he dislikes a character enough the entire book becomes unbearable to read. Scan through enough Amazon reviews and you’ll find numerous rants along this vein.

Which begs the question: Is a writer obligated to create likeable characters?

Before we can answer the question we have to define what it means to be unlikeable, because to different readers it means different things. If by unlikeable the reader means merely irritating, the answer is maybe. In general, I would say that liking or not liking a fictional character is subjective and the author is entitled to her creation. However, if enough readers find the character too unpalatable to spend any time with, the author ought to take note and consider toning it down a bit.

If by unlikeable the reader means morally repugnant, I would say that no, the author is absolutely not required to change her character. My feelings about this are along the same lines as the use of profanity in literature—in order to examine life’s big questions, sometimes it’s important to go to the dark side. The greatest conflict in the universe is good vs. evil; to ignore that fact by populating a book with only nice characters is absurd.

However, even if a reader is willing to accept that an immoral character is worthy of her attention, he may still find the character unlikeable if he is unsympathetic. Once again, the writer is not required to change the character’s moral code for the sake of the reader, but I do feel that she has an obligation to evoke a little sympathy in the reader or at least give the reader some understanding into the character’s motivations. Giving immoral characters a sympathetic turn is one of the great hallmarks of skilled writing—especially when a writer convinces a reader to set aside his own moral code just long enough to root for the bad guy.

A character need not be immoral to be unsympathetic. Sometimes his motivations are simply obscured; the reader will then find his actions puzzling and illogical. Without the transparency of motivation, the reader may find difficulty connecting with the character.

Next Time: The Secret to Creating Sympathetic Characters

Separating Life and Art

There’s a woman at M.J. Rose’s blog, Buzz, Balls, & Hype, who’s afraid her creativity has gotten out of control. Her vivid imagination compels her to project scenarios onto real-life events until they are blown way out of proportion, leaving her anxious and emotionally drained. In essence, she has trouble separating her personal life from creative life.

This woman’s plight reminded me of a story I heard many years ago about a certain famous singer/performance artist who also had trouble separating real life from art. The artist’s teenage son was in the hospital, critically ill, and according to the story (if it is to be believed), the artist brought in a tape player to record the sounds of his respirator, which she thought would make a good addition to the piece she was working on.

The artist’s story is an appalling example of the inability to separate work from reality, and yet, who among us hasn’t done the same thing to a lesser degree? We all mine our lives and relationships for creative material, whether consciously or unconsciously. Likewise, I would venture to say that most of us are also like the woman in the first example, who let her imagination run amok in real life. It’s no coincidence that there are high rates of hypochondria, depression, and addiction among creative people.

Mining for material and creative projection are two sides of the same coin. Perhaps we mine the lives of the ones we love because we don’t trust our ability to come up with interesting material on our own. Likewise, we dream up terrifying scenarios when reality isn’t quite as interesting as our fiction. Both are rooted in fear.

Such habits are destructive to our art and to our lives. It is important to make a clear distinction between work and reality, making certain that they don’t mix. That means refusing to see our family and friends as potential characters, even when their stories seem more outrageous than fiction. It also means being present in our relationships and not allowing ourselves to take mental notes of our conversations with others for use later. It’s fine to be inspired by the people and events in our lives, but reality ought to be used only as a jumping off point and not a direct source of material.

Some writers believe that there is nothing more important than the work; that finding “truth” is paramount, even at the expense of others. I would argue that nothing is more important than how we treat other people. If our work suffers because we refuse to exploit others, then so be it.

Second Fiddles

Paula Margulies over at The Writer’s Edge has an interesting blog entry entitled, “When Writers Let Lesser Characters Rule.” In it, she discusses why some writers create minor characters that are more colorful and interesting than their protagonists. Her theory is that writers do this on purpose because they fear quirkiness will render their main characters unsympathetic.

As someone who has repeatedly encountered this problem with her own writing, I was relieved to hear that others have the same challenge. I’d also like to add a few thoughts on the subject.

First off, I’m not convinced that keeping a protagonist dull is a conscious act. Often, a main character is the moral center of the story—he’s the “straight man”, if you will. The voice of reason will always need a counterpoint to keep things interesting, and that’s where the minor characters come in. Those characters have much more freedom because their actions do not affect the moral backbone of the story in the same way that the protagonist’s does.

I also think developing minor characters at the expense of the lead is a form of procrastination. It’s much more fun to focus on subplots and incidental characters than to confront the terrifying meat of your story. When there’s less at stake, it’s easier to be open and experimental, to let the characters be themselves, even if we don’t agree with their decisions. But those poor protagonists—they are our firstborns. We hold them to a higher, stricter standard. The whole story hinges on their success or failure. Oh! The pressure!

So what’s the remedy? Kick ‘em out of the house.

When a minor character starts sparkling so much she threatens to outsparkle the protagonist, it might mean that the story really belongs to her. When this happens, you have to toss the main character out and change your focus. I know, it’s painful, but I’ve had to do this repeatedly—in fact, it’s something I actually count on happening whenever I start a story. Once you get over disowning your protagonist, you’ll be secretly happy you did because you’ll realize that he wasn’t so much fun anyway, and that you really enjoyed writing about the minor character more. Run with it.

And if tossing out a character is more than you can bear, save him for your next story. Better yet, turn him into a minor character—maybe that’ll give him a little personality.

Characters Have Opinions, Too

As I’ve been detailing over the past few days, several parameters have to be in place before I can begin writing. First I develop characters, then I come up with a premise—not a plot, per se, but more of a situation that requires action.

I’ve discovered that once I’ve found my premise, it’s helpful to decide what my characters’ opinions are of the situation and of each other. No one should be ambivalent. Each character should have strong feelings one way or another about every other character, even if they cross paths only briefly. I think it’s fun to have a character make an offhand comment about another character they barely know. It gives fuller perspectives of the characters and can be very revealing.

Ideally, the characters won’t all love each other, or else there will be no tension. Sometimes it’s helpful to draw a circle, with each character being a point on the circle, then draw a series of lines connecting everyone to everyone else. On the lines, write a few words to explains how that character feels toward the other one. Don’t worry about getting it right the first time—as you’re writing, it’s very likely that your story will require a character to feel differently than he does. What’s more important is that you start somewhere.

What’s great about this web of relationships is that it will begin to define your characters’ motivations. If you are clear about how they feel, you’ll know what they will or will not do. Then, as their motivations prompt them to action, the chess game begins. Every action will prompt reaction in the other characters—which will spur them to action, and so on. Heck, once you get going, this stuff will practically write itself.

Tomorrow, the final piece that makes everything fall into place.

What Do You Stand For?

This being an election year, there’s a great deal of talk about platforms. We all want to know what the candidates stand for. Platforms, however, need not be limited to Presidential candidates or politics.

Have you ever thought about what you stand for as a writer? As a human being? I’m not talking issues or ideology. I’m talking about the intersection of passion and talent, the place where your particular point of view gives your work energy and direction. As artists, we can’t be all things to all people and expect to have any kind of impact. We must carefully choose what is most important to us and make that the focus of our work.

For example, I love to cook. Several years ago I decided that even though I wasn’t cut out for a career in the culinary arts, I would make it part of my personal platform to feed people. That means I cook for friends, family, and any neighbors who might be going through a rough patch. I’ve cooked for a homeless shelter and donate regularly to the local food bank. Basically, if someone needs help and it happens to be food-related, I’m on it. It’s not just because I enjoy feeding others—there have been plenty of occasions when finding the time to cook for others has been a sacrifice—but because it’s something that’s important to me.

As a writer, I’m still discovering my platform. One thing that is important to me, however, is the concept of compassion. I once saw an interview with Meryl Streep on Inside the Actors Studio where she said that acting gives voice to people who may otherwise go unheard. The same is true, of course, for fiction. We live in age where people are so hyper-critical of each other, that to give readers an opportunity to step into the shoes of someone different from themselves and view them with a tender eye seems to me like a worthy pursuit. To that end, I keep compassion in mind when I develop my characters, trying to make them at least sympathetic even when they are unlovable.

That's Why They Call It Fiction

I love this article in today’s Guardian by Linda Grant about the public’s need to believe that all fictional stories are somewhat based in fact. I understand her aggravation—though I don’t feel it quite so acutely—when readers automatically assume that ‘writing what you know’ means directly lifting stories from your own life.

At every reading I’ve ever been to, someone always asks the author “Where do you get your ideas?” This is often a thinly veiled way of asking, “Is the story true?” or “Are these characters based on real people?” I recently spoke to a reader who lived close to my hometown. She said she enjoyed the characters in my book, but because she didn’t live in my hometown she, in her words, “wasn’t able to connect the dots,” which I took to mean that she wasn’t able to figure out who I was writing about. Afterward, I started wondering if people in my hometown were also trying to “connect the dots”, and if so, how horrifying that would be. I have no interest in exposing the secrets of people I know or dressing them up to be unrecognizable. Just because I grew up in a small town and wrote a book about a small town, doesn’t make my work any less fictional.

There's no question that life informs a writer's work, but fiction writers are not interested in documenting their experiences. If we were, we would write memoirs or essays instead or simply become journalists. What we love is the act of creation, not disguise.