Fun Friday–What Gender Is Your Writing?
How well do you write in the male and female viewpoints?
“Inspired by an article and a test in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses a simplified version of an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author.”
The Gender Genie will test a 500+ word sample of your prose (longer is better) and tell you whether it has been written by a male or female.
So I entered the first three pages of William’s opening scene in Ransome’s Honor:
Words: 632
Female Score: 563
Male Score: 647
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Yay! The voice of William’s viewpoint is masculine!
Let’s try the first three pages of Julia’s opening scene:
Words: 636
Female Score: 963
Male Score: 714
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
Apparently in Julia’s viewpoint, I’ve used both masculine and feminine words with higer points values, as the total scores are higher, but I’m pretty proud of the fact that a computer has confirmed that I’m on track with really getting inside my characters’ heads in this story. It’s also good to see that my word choice apparently changes when I switch viewpoints, resulting in the difference in total scores.
How does your writing come out? Are your hero’s scenes too feminine? Read over the list of “Masculine Keywords” the Gender Genie gives along with your score. Can you incorporate more of those words and fewer of the “Feminine Keywords”? If you’ve written different genres, try comparing scenes from each. What do you learn about your writing?
I’ve got a bunch of stuff at home to try out on this thing this weekend!
Point of View–Semantics & Book List
On yesterday’s post, Jennifer raised a very interesting debate: Point of View versus Viewpoint. Is there a difference in the two terms? To what are we referring with each?
Naturally, I went straight for the dictionary. According to the American Heritage Dictionary:
Viewpoint: A position from which something is observed or considered; a point of view.
Point of View: A manner of viewing things; an attitude. A position from which something is observed or considered, a standpoint. The attitude or outlook of a narrator or character in a piece of literature, a movie, or another form of art.
While Jennifer’s designations of viewpoint as being in a specific character’s head and point of view as being the narrative style chosen for the book are wonderfuly descriptive and tend to make the topic a bit clearer, according to the dictionary—as well as the publishing industry at large—the terms can be used interchangeably.
And the truth of the matter is that most books on writing, writing-related magazines, instructors, professors, seminars, workshops, and blogs about writing are going to use POV almost exclusively when talking about either the narrative style (first-person POV) or the idea of being inside the head of only one character (William’s POV/Julia’s POV). Viewpoint is not a word I’ve really heard bandied about much. In compiling the book list, I noticed it in a few titles—and it looks like they’re using it with the same meaning as we usually see point of view used.
For the sake of this discussion, let’s use viewpoint when talking about being inside a character’s head and point of view to describe the narrative style. Will that help clarify things for everyone?
Book List:
I will say right off the top that I have not read all of these books, but in researching them (mostly using the “search inside” feature on Amazon), here are some books that will help give a deeper understanding of POV/Viewpoint:
- Stein on Writing by Sol Stein (chapter: “Choosing a Point of View”). (Are you surprised? I mean, really, come on. He should be paying me half of his royalties on this title by now!)
- How to Grow a Novel: The Most Common Mistakes Writers Make and How to Overcome Them by Sol Stein, which includes a chapter, “Getting Intimate with the Reader: Advanced Point of View.”
- Mastering Point of View by Sherri Szeman
- Characters & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card (Elements of Fiction series)
- How Fiction Works: The Last Word on Writing Fiction, from Basics to the Fine Points by Oakley Hall (chapter: “Authority/Point of View,” which includes good examples of author-intrusion-style POV)
- Write Great Fiction: Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress (Elements of Fiction series)
In the last post, I know I said “next time” we’d get into the nitty-gritty of what each of the different POV styles are, and I promise, the next post about POV will start getting down and dirty with persons, omniscience, and tense. So just hang in there!
Point of View–How Important Is It?
“If all but one of the instruments on a surgeon’s tray had been sterilized, that exception would be a danger to the patient. It can be said that one slip of point of view by a writer can hurt a story badly, and several slips can be fatal.”
~Sol Stein
(Stein on Writing, 129)
What is point of view, anyway?
Point of view is the vehicle through which a reader experiences the story. When you tell someone about the idiot who cut you off in traffic, you are telling the story through a First Person Limited point of view—you’re using “I” and “me” to refer to the character (yourself), and though you may conjecture at the thoughts of anyone else involved, you cannot actually know what was going on inside his or her head. (And this paragraph is an example of second-person POV.)
“So what I told you was true . . . from a certain point of view. . . .
You’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”
~Obi Wan Kenobi
Return of the Jedi
Point of view, as Master Kenobi so cryptically and frustratingly pointed out, is the perspective we bring to what we experience. If I go through the exact same experience with someone else, and then each of us is questioned separately about it, whoever is hearing the stories is going to hear different details. I am a sight-oriented person, so I may give a lot of information about the visual details. If the person with me is a sound-oriented person, they’re going to give more description of the sounds . . . each of us tells the story from our own point of view. This is what makes us unique individuals. This is what we want to give to our readers—a unique, individual perspective on the story that’s going on.
“Nothing’s beautiful from every point of view.”
~Horace
Have you ever noticed when you’re writing “as” one character, your words come out differently than when you’re writing “as” another character? Part of this is the personalizing process you went through in your character development. But you’ll find as you get deeper into your characters’ heads, as you let them start talking, the story really does start to be told from the character’s point of view and not from yours.
“He’s a real Nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody.
Doesn’t have a point of view,
Knows not where he’s going to . . .”
~John Lennon
Establish POV Immediately
Point of view needs to be established in the very first chapter of your book. If you are going to write in first person, obviously, you start out with a first sentence/paragraph told using “I” and “me” pronouns. Yes, some first person narrative can be written without using those pronouns, but you don’t want to use a more omniscient tone (i.e., telling about someone else right off the bat without personalizing it to the character who’s seeing/thinking it) and then suddenly throw the reader into first person. If you are going to write in third person/omniscient, make sure you establish a pattern in the very first few paragraphs—or as soon as you have more than one character. Using an unseen narrator helps in establishing this POV. If you are going to write in third person/limited, give the character at least five or six pages (about 2,000 words) before switching to another POV . . . then make the POV change very clear—with a double-carriage-return blank space or with some kind of physical divider such as * * * or ### centered in the blank space between the scenes.
Whatever you chose, DO NOT SWITCH BETWEEN STYLES, as it will come across as inexperience and a lack of knowledge of writing craft. Although some new writers have done it and been published, most experts, editors, agents, etc., strongly recommend against mixing first- and third-person or having more than one first-person narrator in a story, unless it is absolutely vital and the story can be told no other way. Of course, if you’re Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, or Danielle Steel, you can pretty much do whatever you want to (as people are buying the books for the name on the cover, not the craft of the story between the pages).
“I think you have to have a real point of view that’s your own.
You have to tell it your way.”
~Mary Ellen Mark
Give Third Person/Limited a Try
Give your characters a chance to tell it their way. I used to write third person/omniscient. I loved being able to hop from head to head to head within a scene, to see how each and every character reacted to a situation, to know what they were thinking at any given time—sometimes even within a sentence. Non-writing folks aren’t usually bothered by head-hopping as much as writers are. They’re used to it. We all grew up reading head-hopping novels. But the industry standard has swung, for third-person, anyway, to LIMITED POV. That means seeing/experiencing the action through only one character’s eyes/thoughts. That means camping out for a full scene in the head of just one character. That means getting to know your characters MUCH better than you may with omniscient/head-hopping POV.
After my first writers’ conference in 2001 where I really learned what POV was and that limited is what publishers were looking for, I started forcing myself to write in limited POV. And I discovered I love it. I now prefer writing in limited POV. Not knowing what every character is thinking raises the conflict and tension of every scene. It’s easier to keep secrets from the reader until the right time to reveal them. It’s easier to generate misunderstandings and conflict in relationships between characters that are believable, because the reader isn’t given the chance to see things from both perspectives—they’re only seeing the truth . . . “from a certain point of view.” Even if you don’t stick with it as your POV of choice, you will learn a lot about how to write descriptively—because you will only be able to describe other characters’ thoughts by their facial expression, tone of voice, body language, etc., that the POV character can experience. It’s a great craft-strengthening exercise.
What POV do you typically write in? Have you ever tried writing more than one style of POV (i.e., first- and third-person) within the same story? How did that work out for you? What are some examples of stuff you’ve read where you really liked or disliked the POV the author chose? How would you have done it differently?
Next time, we’ll start getting into some of the nitty-gritty of the different POV styles . . . pros/cons, strengths/weaknesses.
Point of View–Whose Story Is This?
For the last week, we’ve been focusing on characters. Hopefully, you’ve picked up a few tips and have spent some time getting to know your character(s) better and learning more about the story they’re trying to tell you.
Before deciding on first- or third-person (or even second), limited or omniscient, present or past tense, the most important thing to figure out is WHOSE STORY IS THIS?
In a typical romance, there are two POV characters: the hero and the heroine. In chick lit, there is only one: the chick telling her own story. In a mystery, you may have only one: the detective/sleuth; or you may have several: the detective, a red-herring character (make the reader think he’s the villain), the actual villain, a victim (alive or dead, if you’re including supernatural elements). In general, historical, sci-fi, and fantasy fiction, there are most likely going to be multiple POV characters.
So, how do we decide who gets to have a say? Whose head we’re going to invade?
If the genre doesn’t dictate the POV (i.e., standard romance or chick lit), the first thing you must do is determine who the stakeholders in the story are. In other words, who has the most to lose and the most to gain in your story? Who has a stake in the conflict/plot? Which character(s) has the most important information to reveal to the reader? Do you want the reader to know it by being inside that character’s thoughts, or do you want the reader to find out when “all is revealed” to another character whose stake in the plot is greater?
Next, who has the most to learn/the most potential for growth? If the theme of your story is forgiveness, a POV character who has already learned how to forgive isn’t going to make for interesting reading. POV characters should be those who not only have a stake in the plot, but who also have a character arc—in other words, they’re different at the end of the story than when we first meet them at the beginning. Not all characters who change/grow are going to end up being POV characters. Some of them will remain secondary. But they have the best potential.
Finally, which characters are most compelling? Who will the reader want to know and become intimate with? Who do you as the author want to get to know and become intimate with? The characters that resonate with our readers are going to be the characters that we, as the author, fall in love with. They are going to be the ones with the deepest flaws (Scarlett O’Hara), the ones who can never seem to get ahead (Charlie Brown), or the ones who must time and again face their greatest foes/fears (Harry Potter).
When I first started writing Ransome’s Honor, I had two POV characters: William and Julia. Then Julia’s mother wanted to have her say. About seven or eight chapters in, Sir Drake burst onto the scene and barged in, telling things how he wanted them to be. These four POVs seemed to work pretty well . . . until I got to chapter sixteen and William’s younger sister arrived in Portsmouth. I suddenly realized she’s a major stakeholder in not just the first book but in the entire trilogy—I allowed her to have a POV, and immediately, the plots for the second and third books materialized in sharp detail, not just the vague idea I’d had up until then. I am now working on the second draft. Julia’s mother has switched teams and is now Sir Drake’s mother (Julia’s aunt) and because of this can become the secondary character she needs to be. Sir Drake’s POV is introduced at the end of the first chapter (the scene not only introduces him, but raises the stakes for Julia’s conflict), and Charlotte’s importance has been increased by her first POV scene (new) appearing at the end of the second chapter (introduces the idea she’s keeping a major secret from her mother and William—raising the stakes for both her and for William—and Julia in Book 2).
Have you chosen your POV characters or have they chosen you? How do you determine which characters you’re going to allow to have “stage time”? Have you ever cut a POV character completely in a revision—or added one? Have you ever written a POV character you didn’t really like?
Creating Credible Characters–What’s in a Name?
Have you ever read a book where a character’s name just doesn’t fit? Seen a movie that you enjoyed, but then when you’re trying to describe it to someone afterward, you absolutely cannot think of the character’s name? (If I may, this is one of the things that is wonderful about www.imdb.com—whenever I forget the name of an actor or character, I can always go there to look it up.)
I have written a couple of other posts about naming characters which explain my approach:
Which Comes First–the Character or the Name?
By Any Other Name . . .
Usually the character names come to me pretty easily . . . once I find the Real World Template, I can almost always immediately come up with a name that is perfect.
But like naming children, this process is different for everyone. Some people come up with the name before they even have an idea for a character or for a storyline. Some people want to live with the character a while—to really, truly know who the character is—before figuring out what the name is.
Sometimes, we name our characters one thing and halfway through our novels, they stop, throw a temper tantrum and refuse to cooperate until we change their names to something else. Or sometimes we try to change the name when we think it doesn’t fit any longer, and then the character refuses to cooperate any longer—stops talking to us or doing anything he should—until we go back to the original name.
Some of the factors to think about in naming characters:
- Time Period. Naming the heroine of a Revolutionary War-era novel “Tiffani” or “Destinee” probably isn’t a good idea, unless she’s traveled there from the 21st Century. Research historical names through geneological websites, historical documents (wedding/funeral registries, cemetery logs are great), and literature written in your time period. If you don’t want to go to that length, Biblical names work well. When I first started working on Ransome’s Honor, set in 1814 England, I sat down with my complete works of Jane Austen and made a list of every single name she uses/mentions in those books (not a very long list, I’ll tell you). I also looked at old Navy Lists for men’s names and names of ships.
- Region/Ethnicity. Certain names are necessarily going to give connotation to the region where your book is set as well as the ethnicity of the character. Javier Gonzales isn’t going to call to mind a blond-haired, blue-eyed Scandanavian man. Mandy Faye or Tammy Lynn are flags that this character has a Southern heritage. Wojciechowski or Pulaski as a last name tells us the character comes from Polish stock. Minelli, Giovanni, or Alborghetti call to mind dark hair, dark eyes, olive-toned skin and a love of pasta, fast cars, and over-bearing Mamas. In my contemporaries, set in central Louisiana, I have used surnames such as Guidry, d’Arcement, Thibodeaux, Boudreaux, and Babineaux—each time one of these names occurs, it serves as a reminder of the setting for the reader.
- Age of the Character. In a contemporary setting, someone with the name Edith or Ethel is going to immediately be thought older than a Jordyn or Heather. A great resource for making sure your character’s name is suitable for the age of your contemporary character is the Social Security Administration’s Popular Baby Name website, where you can search the top names of each year going back to 1880 (John, William, and James; Mary, Anna, and Emma) through to 2006 (Jacob, Michael, and Joshua; Emily, Emma, and Madison).
- All Alliterative Appellations. Y’all know how much I love alliteration. When naming characters in a certain story, I sometimes have a tendency to get carried away with a certain letter or sound (I have one set of characters, five best friends, whose names all end in an A.) For example, in my current Contemporary WIP, I have Major and Meredith. In the same novel, I have Maggie, who is a carry-over from another novel. I also originally had Major’s ex-girlfriend’s name starting with an M. Meredith’s mother’s name is Mairee. But as a reader, I know that having too many characters whose names all start with the same letter can be confusing, especially when they’re around the same length. When we read, we do not technically see every letter—we recognize cues, such as a capitalized first letter and length of the word. So, if you have a Jack, John, and Jake all as primary characters (whether POV or secondary) in your novel, you may want to consider changing two of them, just to give your reader’s eyes a break.
- Too Common/Too Unusual. You don’t want your reader to feel like you went with the first name you thought of—that it’s too common/too familiar to be memorable. Yet you don’t want the name to be so unusual (or so many syllables) that the reader stumbles over it—stopping to try to figure out how to pronounce it—every time they come across it on the page. Give your characters’ names different numbers of syllables: Maj-or. Mer-e-dith. Anne. Will-iam (two syllables to me, to others it might be Will-i-am). Jul-i-a. O-Har-a. Gui-dry. Wi-ther-ing-ton. Ran-some. Changing up the number of syllables keeps the names from falling into a monotonous pattern that will bore readers to death.
- Too Many Names Per Character. Most of us will have characters with a First name (“Christian” name) and a Last name (Surname). Some of these characters will have professions or civic/social positions that will add titles to their names (Captain, Sir, Lord, Mayor, Congresswoman). They also have family relationships (brother, sister, Mother, Father), and some will have marital status (wife, husband, Mrs.). Therefore, Admiral Sir Edward Witherington is: Admiral Witherington, Sir Edward, the admiral, Julia’s father, her father, and Papa. That’s six names for one character. If I were to suddenly give him a nickname halfway into the novel, the reader would have no idea to whom I’m referring. If your character is going to have a nickname or title in addition to their “normal” name (one that isn’t a natural shortening of a name, such as “Will” for “William”), you must introduce it almost immediately and you must make the decision of whether the character will use it for himself in his POV scenes, or if it’s just something his best friend calls him (only William’s best friend’s wife calls him Will, for example). I tried reading a book recently where the aristocratic male character is, in his own POV scenes, referred to by his first name, last name, title, nickname-derived-from-title, title+estate name, and so on. It was very offputting, because I had a hard time keeping up with who he was supposed to be within his own head. So if you start out using your character’s full first name in his or her first POV scene, stick with it. Or, if the character’s story-arc includes the character’s change in self image, you can slowly change from the full name to the new name, using that transition as a signpost that the character is changing how she thinks about/views herself internally.
How do I keep it all straight?
In addition to my character boards I keep in PowerPoint, where I collect as many images of the RWTs as I can find, I have started keeping a spreadsheet for each novel I work on (especially with at least two if not more projects going on at once) to keep track of both characters and settings. Keeping a written summary of the decisions you’ve made about your characters (and settings) becomes especially helpful if you’re someone who doesn’t write every day or when you come back to a first draft for the revision. That way, when your character has green eyes in chapter three and brown eyes in chapter sixteen, you can go to your “bible” to see which decision you made—and if it isn’t written down there, you can make the decision and change what needs to be changed in the draft.
So, how do you do it?
How do you name your characters? How do you keep it all straight?
Fun Friday–Underappreciated Characters
I’ve written on this blog several times about my life-long love affair with secondary characters. Between insightful casting of absolutely delightful actors and my desire for everyone to have a chance at recognition and a happy ending, I tend to fall hard for the Bellamy—the hero’s or heroine’s unlauded friend—or the guy who comes along behind the hero who cleans up his mess, or just a character in a secondary role who never garners the appreciation and attention I feel he or she deserves. So, here is my tribute to underappreciated secondary characters in movies:
10. Kate the Smithy in A Knight’s Tale. She didn’t get a romance storyline. She had to earn her keep. She had to put up with Geoffrey, Roland, and Wat. She had to fix Sir Ulrich/Will’s armor. And she is a whole lot prettier and more likeable than the actress/character in the heroine role. I don’t know that any actress other than Laura Fraser could have pulled it off. (Honorable Mention: Rufus Sewell as Count Adhemar)
9. Carl in Van Helsing. Following up his success as Faramir in Lord of the Rings, David Wenham played the monk Carl with a comic sense I never suspected he possessed. (Honorable Mention: Schuler Hensley as Frankenstein’s Monster.)
8. Suzy and Greg in Sleepless in Seattle. One of the funniest scenes in this movie is when Sam Baldwin’s friends, Suzy and Greg (played by Tom Hanks’s real-life wife, Rita Wilson, and Victor Garber) are over for dinner. Suzy cries as she explains the plot of An Affair to Remember, and Sam and Greg devolve the conversation into mocking her by comparing it to The Dirty Dozen.
7. Fran and Jet Owens from Practical Magic. Diane Wiest and Stockard Channing are not two actresses most would think of casting as sisters—but no one would think of Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as looking like sisters, either. While the two younger women got the billing and the notice for this movie, I love the humor as well as the gravitas Wiest and Channing—two stunningly brilliant actresses—brought to this movie. (Honorable Mention: Goran Visnjic as Jimmy Angelov)
6. John Clark from The Sum of All Fears. Though Willem Defoe did a creditable job in the role in Clear and Present Danger, it wasn’t until I saw Liev Schreiber bring John Clark to life that I really believed the character as presented in the books—especially Without Remorse, which I just read is in preproduction (over at IMDb), which is John Clark’s story, and one of my favorite of Clancy’s novels. The scene where Clark is standing in the rain awaiting his orders—the camera starts off behind him, with his figure silhouetted by the headlights of the cars he’s facing, then pans around to show his impassivity, his imperturbability as he stands there in the deluge showing no sign that it bothers him—is one of the best visuals in the entire film. Oh, and I have a thing for silent-but-deadly assassins. (Honorable Mention: Colm Feore as South African arms-dealer Olson)
5. Lady Claire in Timeline. I must admit that Anna Friel, the actress in this role, is the template for Julia in Ransome’s Honor. This is the first place I saw her, and I still love her in this part. The character is quite different in the book, but I love the way the filmmakers changed the storyline so that the reason Andre Marek stays behind is his love of Lady Claire—not just because he doesn’t have time to get from the drawbridge to the field.
4. Jayne Cobb from the TV series Firefly and the theatrical film Serenity—well, really, any role Adam Baldwin has played, from Captain Wilkins in The Patriot to Jack Riles on the short-lived, syndicated TV show The Cape. Yes, in part, this is because I LOVE Adam Baldwin. But he is usually in one of these secondary roles . . . the roles he chooses are usually great characters—and he’s a superb actor, which makes for a fabulous combination. The character of Jayne Cobb could have been just a typical “heavy”—gun-toting, wise-cracking tough guy with a bad temper. But in collaboration with creator Joss Whedon and the show’s writers, Adam Baldwin brought both wonderful humor and discomforting darkness to the character of Jayne. He’s a big lug who would shoot you soon as look at you, who would turn in a fugitive his captain has sworn to protect simply for the reward money—and then change his mind when he realizes the people he’s handing her over to are evil and she needs his protection. (Honorable Mentions from Firefly: Mark Sheppard as Badger and Christina Hendricks as Saffron)
3. Wedge Antilles from the original Star Wars trilogy. Wedge is the only pilot to survive the missions to destroy both Death Stars (Ep. IV and VI)—but do you see him getting a medal from Princess Leia at the end of the first movie? No. Why? Because he’s an underappreciated secondary character. He is also the only secondary character who appears in all three movies and who has his own catch-phrase (“Good shot!”). He has received a little more notice since the prequel movies came out—Denis Lawson is Ewan “Obi Wan” MacGregor’s uncle. (Honorable Mention: Caroline Blakiston as Mon Mothma.)
2. Lieutenant William Bush from the Hornblower series. Ummm . . . how many posts can I link you to here on my blog that will explain why I’m in love with this character and the actor who plays him (Paul McGann)? Actually, this is about more than just liking the actor in this role—and much of it stems from my reading Lieutenant Hornblower, the novel in which the character of William Bush is introduced . . . you see, it’s told from Bush’s point of view. In the film version (the four-hour/two-part “Mutiny” and “Retribution”), Bush has to walk a very fine line between staying on the maniacal Captain’s good side and his feeling that something must be done, such as the mutiny that eventually occurs. When the Spanish prisoners get free and start to overtake the ship, it is Bush who sounds the alarm and rouses the crew to fight back and hold the ship—and he sustains a grievous injury in the battle that ensues. (Honorable Mentions: Sean Gilder as Stiles, Paul Copley as Matthews, and Denis Lawson as Captain Foster.)
1. Éomer Éadig from The Two Towers and The Return of the King of the Lord of the Ring trilogy. This should come as no surprise to many people who know of my Karl Urban obsession. This is where the obsession started. To read more about why I’m obsessed with this character click here and read about the only fan fiction I’ve ever written. (Honorable Mentions from the LOTR trilogy: Sean Bean as Boromir, David Wenham as Faramir, Craig Parker as Haldir, and Marton Csokas as Celeborn.)
More News from MTCW
I love publicizing what my friends and fellow members of Middle Tennessee Christian Writers are up to:
Kathy Harris–Contest Finalist, New and Upcoming Publications
Creating Credible Characters–What Do You Want?
No matter how wonderfully complex and well-developed a character is, a reader isn’t going to care about them unless they can identify with what the character wants. There are many names for this: goals, motivations, objectives, desires. In Getting into Character, Brandilyn Collins wrote:
“What is your innermost Desire that will propel you through this story? . . . All of your main characters and important secondary characters should have a Desire. Conflicts between characters come into play when they are pursuing Desires that oppose one another.” (37)
In another series of posts, I have discussed conflict at length, and this is where Character and Conflict come into union with each other:
It’s Good to Be Conflicted
Conflict: Thematic vs. Actual
Conflict: Desires and Goals
Conflict: Move That Bus!
In Stein on Writing, Sol Stein describes plotting at its most basic as “putting the protagonist’s desire and the antagonist’s desire into sharp conflict . . . think of what would most thwart your protagonist’s want, then give the power to thwart that want to the antagonist” (83).
Before you can develop that conflict, you have to delve into what each character’s desire is. We have a tendency to define characters as “good guys” and “bad guys,” but when we start developing real, multi-dimensional characters, we have to move beyond these epithets into the knowledge that no one is “all good” or “all bad” (unless, of course, you’re writing fantasy or allegory with “evil” characters such as Sarumon and Orcs).
In The End of Harry Potter?, Hugo Award–winning author David Langford points out the problem with the idea of “bad guys who are just naturally bad because of their ancestry — or because they’ve been Sorted into Slytherin House” (11–12). Yes, it is easy to have characters who are just naturally bad with no redeeming qualities . . . and, frankly, sometimes that’s all the story calls for. But in the Harry Potter reference above, if everyone who is sorted into Slytherin house is naturally bad/evil, why would the house continue to exist? Why wouldn’t people sorted to that house be immediately expelled from the school because it’s a sign they’re going to turn out to be dark wizards? Later in the series, Rowling started to introduce characters who came out of Slytherin who did not turn out to be all bad (such as Horace Slughorn), but the example should serve as a warning that we must be careful about drawing characters in terms of absolutes. Perfect characters aren’t interesting. Evil characters with no redeeming qualities aren’t believable. We don’t want either of these in our writing.
Anyway, back to desires . . .
A character’s desire should be specific, but should also be universal. When we define our character’s desire/goal, it shouldn’t just be, “I need to get from point A to point B,” but the deeper, “I must get home and protect my family from those who seek to tear it apart” kind of goal that transcends time periods. (Keep asking “why?” until you get to the deepest level.) Give your character the kind of goal he is not going to give up on—the kind he will fight to the death to achieve. Reaching that goal becomes the motivating force behind everything the character thinks, says, and does. And knowing what this goal is specifically gives us the ability to set up obstacles—in the physical environment, in the character’s own inner psyche, in the antagonist—to thwart our character’s achieving that goal.
If the character meets no resistance on the path toward gaining what they most desire, there is no motivation, no story. Think about The Wizard of Oz. If Dorothy & Crew hadn’t constantly met with conflict—with the Wicked Witch trying to stop them, with the Wizard turning out not to be a wizard after all—it wouldn’t have been a very interesting story. The way I keep my characters movtivated is to make sure the character has a goal, then to set other characters and situations in opposition to that goal. If the character keeps coming up against a brick wall, or if someone or something keeps thwarting them from being able to reach their goal, the motivation to reach it grows stronger. Naturally, they cannot always fail in moving toward the desire—they must have some successes to show that this goal is ultimately achievable, if they will just persevere, hold on, keep going.
So we must ask the character:
- What is her main goal/desire?
- What will she do to attain it? (go deep here)
- What will she do when she meets resistance?
- How far will she go to achieve her goal/desire? (keep going deeper)
- What internal hindrances does she have that could keep her from achieving her goal? (Dig deeper than just fear—what is the root cause of the fear? What happened in the past to give her this fear?)
- What external hindrances could keep her from achieving her goal? (This can be the antagonist . . . or even the hero or other main character, family members, cultural restraints, geographic constraints, finances, etc.)
- Is there anything that could happen that would make her relinquish her goal? (If so, then you need to start over at the beginning, because this goal isn’t the right one.)
- Is this goal something she would sacrifice everything—her health, her wealth, her family, even her own life—to achieve? (Make her prove it by putting her in one or more of those situations.)
Creating Credible Characters–Mannerisms and Quirks
Why did Pirates of the Caribbean become such a successful film franchise? Jack Sparrow—Captain Jack Sparrow, of course. If the story had just been about a down-on-his-luck pirate whose crew had mutinied against him and who was merely trying to get his ship back, it might not have been more than just a flash in the pan. What kept us going back to see it time and again and got us to buy the DVDs? It was Johnny Depp’s inspired performance of Captain Jack Sparrow and the mannerisms and quirks he gave to the character . . . the staggering, the always wondering “why is the rum gone?”, the flirting with Elizabeth, the way he got into other characters’ faces, his trademark facial expressions, the way he runs . . . shall I continue? Never in film history has there been another character like Jack Sparrow—Captain Jack Sparrow. That’s why we love him so much.
The level of quirkiness Johnny Depp brought to that character most likely would not translate well to the written page. It works fine in the movies because they are physical gags that we quickly interpret visually and understand. But if you tried to describe his facial expressions, it would take too many words and would slow the pace of the story too much. Our characters’ mannerisms and quirks will arise out of who they are—so as you go through the personalization process with them, be looking for things that can become something unique to help define your character for the reader.
This is yet another area where the character casting process comes into play for me—the more photos/movie clips I can find of my real world templates, the easier it is for me to develop physical mannerisms for my characters. Stefan (The Best Laid Plans) slouches constantly because he’s very tall (6’6″) and is self-conscious about it (found several images of the template, Goran Visnjic where he has one shoulder dropped or is kind of hunched over, and this became a defining mannerism for the character). Anne (HEI) is rarely seen not smiling, even when things aren’t going right. This is part of her self-defense mechanism. If she’s smiling, no one will know what she’s thinking inside. In every picture of the template for Anne, the model (Emme) is smiling. But it’s a practiced expression. It’s the eyes where her real emotion and thoughts lie . . . just waiting for George to figure them out!
Sometimes, characters have developed mannerisms out of necessity. William, for example, as a captain in the Royal Navy in the early 19th century, has had to learn to hide his emotions, to tamp down his anger, to swallow back his amusement. While it is helpful in maintaining order and discipline aboard ship, it will become a major problem in his relationship with Julia. In an environment of constant movement and activity, William, when in deep contemplation or listening to his officers give their reports, stands very still, hands clasped behind his back, face expressionless. Can you imagine being comfortable expressing your feelings to someone like that?
In the same novel, in contrast to William, his best friend’s wife is constantly in motion, constantly talking, shows her excitement by reaching out and grabbing someone by the wrist and bouncing up and down on her toes. This serves as a point of comparison as William falls in love with Julia—to see her calmness compared to their mutual friend, to see how she, like him, can control her emotions, can remain still, can be silent when the occasion calls for it.
Do all quirks and mannerisms come from deep internal processes? Some yes, some no. Sometimes we just pick up on little habits/quirks because someone else around us exposed us to them. In my early 20s, I became a huge fan of Star Trek because a coworker and friend got me hooked on it—I even attended several Trek conventions with her. Now, I cannot remember the last time I watched an episode (even though they’re in reruns on G4 and the SciFi channel all the time). It was a phase, something I enjoyed for a while, but not something that was a part of who I am. But my love for movies—including science fiction and fantasy—is a part of who I am. (In fact, I was watching Lord of the Rings: Return of the King as I wrote this.) Another quirk: I write romance novels, but I can’t stand most “romantic” movies—if they’re comedies, they’re usually so silly as to be stupid, and if they’re dramas, they’re usually tearjerkers which annoy me.
In Law & Order: Criminal Intent, when the actress Kathryn Erbe was pregnant, they wrote it into the script and gave Bobby Goren (Vincent d’Onofrio) a substitute partner. In one episode, he’s sitting at a computer looking through someone’s files, with this substitute looking over his shoulder. She sighs and he starts to move, telling her that if she doesn’t like the speed at which he’s going, he’ll let her do it—Eames likes to drive so he lets her drive, if this new partner wants to scroll faster, he’ll let her do that. It served as a great insight into his character that the reason Eames is always shown driving is because she didn’t like the way he drove. Maybe it’s a control issue, or maybe he was just too slow or erratic behind the wheel and Eames didn’t feel safe, but these are the kinds of mannerisms that can pop up that can actually lead us back into the personalizing stage and give us greater understanding of our characters.
Of course, like Captain Jack Sparrow, some of our quirks are just quirks and are there for the enjoyment of the reader and the annoyance of the other characters (these work well in romantic comedies, especially).
What are some mannerisms your characters have that you aren’t sure where they come from? Have you personalized them (asked, “Why?” / “So what?”)? What are some fun quirks you have given or can give to your characters that will make them more unique, more realistic?
Ruth Anderson Joins The Bridge as Books & Literature Editor
I’m always thrilled to be able to announce the successes of my friends. Click the link to be taken to the official announcement of my good friend Ruth Anderson’s new opportunity:
KayeDacus.com 