Your characters offstage

Do you keep track of what your characters do offstage?

In many of my stories, I follow multiple people, through multiple times. I love epics, and I've always dreamed of successfully writing one. But, one of the biggest challenges to writing an epic isn't only keeping track of my characters when I'm writing about them. I also have to keep track of my characters when I'm not writing about them.

Has Veronica been away for six months while I'm writing about Markus and Sissy? Well, what has Veronica been doing?

I'm sometimes successful at keeping track of the offstage characters, but then there's the added challenge of figuring out how that time offstage has affected them emotionally. If Veronica was fuming mad at Markus before leaving for a year-long sabbatical in Zurich, is she still fuming mad when she returns? Or, has the time away made her forget her anger, or at least push it down into the pit of her belly so that she can seek her revenge more systematically?

For me, the best epic writers (ahem, Tolstoy) are able to account for offstage characters and their continued emotional journeys, even though we as readers don't experience it directly. This skill not only makes the characters seem more believable, but it also helps to make the world of your fiction more believable.

Oddly enough, the time when your character isn't on the stage is also an opportunity to develop them.

This weekend I watched The King's Speech written by David Seidler, and one of the vital details about Albert, the protagonist, was that he would make a better king than his older brother. The audience doesn't get to see exactly why Albert would make a better king, but based on the other characters' opinions of him, we assume that he has proven himself offstage.

I'm currently dealing with a similar situation in my current book. I'm trying to portray seven characters that are much wiser than I am, and to do that, I'm making claims that their wisdom has shown through during times that I don't actually write about. I support this by having other characters chime in about their wisdom, a technique that helps to support many character details.

We may jump through time to keep from having to include unimportant details that happen between important scenes, but that doesn't mean we can't make those spaces work for us.

Do you have an example of great things your characters did offstage? What do you do to keep track of it all?

Character Change, or Discovery?

I was talking recently to Domey about one of his stories, and we were discussing the idea of character change. It occurred to me that, possibly, I don't actually believe in change. I don't believe in "developing characters." I know, this flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but bear with me. This isn't a revolution; I'm not offering to throw out character arcs, but I have maybe a different way to think about character arcs.

So there's a general expectation for a lot of fiction that the protagonist will have a different worldview at the end of the story than he has at the start of the story. The protagonist will have changed. Usually in genre fiction this is couched in terms of character growth. Often in literary fiction this is couched in terms of the character learning a bitter lesson about life. Either way, external forces come to bear upon the protagonist and he seems to change.

The character in question in Domey's story was not the protagonist, but Domey still needed to find a way to justify what looked like a dramatic shift in his behavior. Which got me thinking about the idea of character change.

My current theory is that characters don't actually change. The way they are at the end of the story--the endpoint of the character arc to which we're moving--is actually no more and no less than how the character really is, already. His true self, if you will, is already there, but it is hidden or repressed somehow. The dramatic action, the primary conflict of the story, is created because the protagonist is unable to express that true self. Or, it can only be resolved once the protagonist expresses that true self.

Yeah, this sounds very much like new-age bullshit, but I think it's a useful intellectual construct. Let's attempt to illustrate what I mean by falling back upon that ancient tale of the hero's transformative journey: George Lucas' Star Wars.

Star Wars (by which I mean the original film, not any of the five awful sequels/prequels) tells the story of Luke Skywalker. Luke does not know it, but his true self is a Jedi Knight, a guy who is attuned to the primal energies of the universe and a force for good. Hey, that's pretty cool. The trouble is, Luke's true self is wrapped in layers of adolescent snottiness and annoying low self-esteem and a kind of general stupidity about life. The character arc of Star Wars is Luke learning to shut the hell up and accept that some folks are smarter and more experienced than he is and that life is about more than his desire to go fly rocket fighters. He is only able to destroy the Death Star at the end of the film (and resolve the outer dramatic arc of the story) when he listens to the disembodied voice of Sir Alec Guinness: "Let go your conscious self; trust your feelings." Luke lets the Force take over, becomes a Jedi and blows up the bad guys. The end. He has not changed at all; his behavior has changed. Luke has stopped acting like someone who he is not.

I sidestep the entire Aristotelian debate about whether action is in fact character and say that "we are what we do" is not as true as "we are why we do." Motivation is everything, and what motivates a character is her true self.

So think about that and see if it's helpful with your own stories. Let me know if you think this is a Bad Idea or just completely off-base and nutty.

How Do They Cry?

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Boo

Boo who?

Why are you crying?

The awkwardness of a crying character came up for me this weekend when I was reading one of my favorite writers and a tear trailed down his character's cheek to the pillow.

I hate it when I describe a tear running down a cheek to a pillow. I hate it when my character's tears well up. Or when my character's choke back a sob. For me, having a character cry is one of the most awkward things I have to write.

So, how do you do it if you do it? Do your characters cry?

Note added later: Check out VR Barkowski's and Michelle's comments on this too.

Too many characters in a scene? Mix and match!

If you write stories with multiple characters, chances are you've run into scenes like this:

Rudy ran up the stairs. Then Claire ran up the stairs. Then Vanessa ran up the stairs. Then Cliff ran up the stairs. Theo was sitting on his bed with his headphones on. Vanessa yelled at him, but he didn't hear. So, Rudy went over and stomped on his foot.

"Don't step on your brother's foot," Clair said.

"Well, he wouldn't listen to Vanessa," Rudy said.

Theo was wailing and holding his foot. Cliff ran downstairs to get his medical bag from his office. Vanessa was laughing, but Claire made Rudy apologize. Then, everything was okay.

No matter how well-described each character is, a scene like this can sometimes come out looking like a mess. I should know. I was just trying to juggle three characters in my novel, and I ended up keeping them in separate rooms as often as possible to avoid having to deal with it.

Now, I realize that with some organization, a scene with several different characters can turn into a masterpiece. Just remember that you can mix and match.

Match

Many times in a scene like this, characters are performing similar actions. You can group those characters and their actions together to keep from having to describe each one individually.

Instead of, Rudy ran up the stairs. Then Claire ran up the stairs. Then Vanessa ran up the stairs. Then Cliff ran up the stairs, you could write, They all ran up the stairs.

This doesn't have to stop with action. You can lump emotions together, or interactions, thereby creating microcosms inside the larger scene.

Mix

You can also mix things up to simplify them. Although this might seem a little counterintuitive at first, remember that as writers we can easily jump through time and space if it helps make our story stronger. In the scene above, I wrote out each character's actions in chronological order. But, there are other ways to write the same scene.

For example: They all ran up the stairs to where Theo was listening to his headphones. But, a moment later, Cliff ran back down to get his medical bag from his office. The children had gotten into a fight: Vanessa yelling, Rudy stepping on Theo's foot, Theo crying, until finally Claire intervened.

Here, I moved the middle events to the end of the scene so that I could unite the action of running up and down the stairs. The list of kids and their actions becomes even more hectic when they are grouped together, perhaps. But now, readers don't feel like they have to try as hard to remember who is whom. The kids become a single entity contributing to the chaos.

Another possibility might be: The kids were at it again. Theo was listening to his headphones. Vanessa and Rudy went up to pick a fight. And so, it was Claire who had to intervene while Cliff went to get his medical bag from his office.

This time, the scene is organized into more of a two-sided conflict, the kids versus the adults, instead of the five-sided conflict I originally presented. Even though there are just as many names, readers are able to keep them more or less organized in their minds.

So, if you're overwhelmed by having to juggle multiple characters in a single scene, keep in mind that you can mix and match them to make the scene more organized and more dynamic.

Question of the day:

Have you ever had to deal with a multi-character scene? What problems did you face? How did you fix them?

Note added later: See Jabez's great tip in the comments as well.

Who Is Your Protagonist When He's At Home?

Here's an amusing (if you're me, which I'll grant that in all likelihood you are not) story: About three years ago, I got the idea to write about the characters in Shakespeare's Hamlet, based on the observation that Hamlet keeps calling the Horatio character his "best friend" even though, based on the text of the play itself, there is no reason for him to think this. I thought that was interesting and I wanted to explore some ideas surrounding it. Anyway, I wrote me a novel and revised it six times and then queried some agents and found a high-profile guy all the way out in Manhattan who said he wanted to work with me on the MS. That was in March of last year. My agent has since then read two revised versions of the book, and he keeps coming back to me and saying that there is something missing, something about the protagonist that just doesn't work. The problem is that the protagonist is sort of more narrator than protagonist, and while the premise remains cool and my writing is quite fine, the second half of the narrative lacks the emotional drive it should have within the protagonist; my main character was too vague, too much a cipher. As my agent said on the phone yesterday, he could sell this book right away if he knew who the protagonist was.

I've been working for the last year to solve this problem, and I've tried all sorts of things that, frankly, haven't worked. My agent (because he kept pointing out this flaw in the book that I could not fix) has been high on my list of people to hate. And my brain kept revolving in a truly simply awful and maddening way around the question "Who is this guy?"

I kept framing the question as "What does he want and how does that affect this story?" and that, I tell you, was a huge mistake.

I was in effect treating the main character as a prop, a plot device to move the story along, and not as a character. I can tell you loads about all the supporting characters, but I could not have told you much of any substance about my protagonist until yesterday afternoon.

Now, of course, I have realized who the protagonist is and what drives him and suddenly the story has a sort of motor, a perpetual-motion machine at its heart that will drive every scene and by gum, that's a cool thing to have. My current book, "Cocke & Bull," has had that internal motor from the beginning, but that book began as a conception of the two central characters. The book my agent has did not, and I spent too much time thinking about Shakespeare's play and not enough time thinking about my protagonist.

How'd I have this breakthrough? Well, it's thanks to my agent (Thanks, Jeff! Love you! I mean that this time!), who suggested that I mentally remove Horatio (my protagonist) from the story told in the book and pretend that he never met any of the other characters and never traveled to the book's settings and lived his whole life outside of the story I've written. So in that sort of vacuum as just some guy and not the hero of any particular story, who is this guy? What's he want? What interests him? What would he do with his life if he hadn't met the Hamlet Family? My agent had a suggestion that was completely wrong, but when I thought about why it was wrong, it got me thinking about what sort of thing would be right. That line of thought sparked an idea of my own a couple hours later, and that spark turned into a flame which has overnight grown into a big roaring bonfire and I can't wait, frankly, to get back to work on this book because it all makes sense now and I keep thinking of ways to make it even cooler than it already is and that spells WIN.

So likely I'm coming late to this party, and you've all been doing this forever, but it's a really cool tool for me, to remove my characters from the story I'm writing and see who they are when they're at home, as it were. I wanted to share this epiphany and see how many of you are already thinking like this.

Also, please note that I write this on Thursday (that's yesterday via the magic of teh internets), because today (which is tomorrow as I write this) Mighty Reader and I are off at an all-day garden show where we hope to learn how to prune the fruit trees in our back yard, which trees had been ignored for years by the previous owner of our house.

Some Thoughts on First Acts

If you are basing your novel in any way on the traditional three-act structure, I think there are certain things you should think about when writing your first act. This applies to stories where the protagonist is goal-oriented and must work against some sort of active antagonist; other types of stories will require other types of structures, I'm sure.

In many of the unpublished mss I'm privileged to read, the first act isn't very strong. The ideas are there, the conflict is there, but there's just not enough of it. I don't like to hand out formulas or recipes for writing, but I do think that writers should have tools they can use (and no, I'm not prepared to distinguish between "formulas" and "tools" today), so I offer up these thoughts.

1. Your first act should end with the literary equivalent of a train wreck. What I mean by that is that you should be moving constantly toward a collision of conflicting needs and desires that results in the protagonist having to make a major life decision and consequently act upon that decision.

2. Your protagonist should have a clearly-defined goal. Often this is a wrong-headed goal based on a misunderstanding the protagonist has about the world. The train wreck at the end of the first act will leave the protagonist with a better picture of reality and possibly a new or modified goal to which he must direct his life and actions.

3. Your antagonist should have a clearly-defined goal. This isn't necessarily something Evil, but it has to set your antagonist and your protagonist on intersecting paths that will result in the above-mentioned train wreck. Generally, the train wreck leaves your antagonist stronger, and his goals won't change at all; he'll just keep moving in the direction of his goals and continue acting upon his desires and needs.

4. Your support characters should have clearly-defined goals. These are usually goals that are supported by or aligned loosely with the protagonist or the antagonist. Know which is which. Your protagonist could be allied with people who are actually working against his goals, even if not deliberately or with Evil Intent. Their lives will also be affected by the train wreck in some way. Some of them will change their goals, others won't, but all of them will continue to act to achieve their goals.

5. The story must MOVE toward the train wreck, and things have to REMAIN IN ACTION. Think of your first act as the opening of a game of chess, where each side is closing in on the other, and pieces are constantly being moved forward, some pieces captured and removed from the game as it progresses. Often the protagonist won't even know that there is another player opposite him, killing his pawns and planning to put his king in checkmate. The point is, the characters are all active and constantly moving forward.

You are, in a traditional first act of a traditional three-act structure, moving toward a point where all of these conflicting courses crash into each other with a big bang, from which the rest of the story will spin away toward the climax.

Your job is therefore to:

Keep your characters moving toward goals
Let your readers know what these goals are
Let your readers see what the conflicts are
Let your readers know what is at stake for each character
Let your reader see the train wreck coming before your protagonist sees it
Make sure all the motivations are plausible and clear

I do find myself thinking in terms of either a train wreck between locomotives racing toward each other on the same track, or a street intersection with two or more cars all speeding to a messy crash. Don't get me wrong; the pace of the story does not have to be breakneck. But you do need to set forces in opposition and have them collide.

The most effective way to do this is not, surprisingly, through plot but through character. What happens to people is not nearly as interesting as what people are trying to do. This is a very important distinction. Don't let your plot push the protagonist; have the plot result from the protagonist pushing against life. Agents, editors and, yes, readers generally aren't interested in characters who are reactive, who get pushed around by life. You might think that this sort of victimhood will make your characters sympathetic, and you may be right, but you will probably be wrong if you think that will make them compelling to readers. So think of the train wreck you'll be creating as a collision of characters and goals, not as the meeting up of plot strands, okay?

Sorry about all the italics. I got carried away.

Note: I am currently on vacation, so I won't be able to reply to any comments on this post. Hopefully Michelle and Davin can pick up the slack for me. Apologies all around. Also: someone needs to remind me at some point that I want to write about beginnings of stories, Chekhov's gun and how the two can work together to give a writer story options.

Dangling The Carrot

I have three things taped to my desk. A picture of my character from my current WIP that my friend Natalie was kind enough to draw for me, a map of what I call the ice-cream-cone diagram of my current WIP, which sadly, I cannot share on blogs, and possibly the most helpful thing of all - a Motivation Map. Without it my book would die a tragic death. Tragic, tragic, tragic.

I made this map a few weeks ago, and it has transformed the way I write. It opened a thousand doors. It revealed plot holes I never thought could exist. It gave me the opportunity to dangle carefully placed carrots in front of my characters, immediately giving my scenes more tension and direction.

This map isn't anything special at all. It's a flow chart that goes something like this:

Character Motivation + What Character Needs to Get What He Wants = Character's Main Action = Chain Reaction of Events Based on the Main Action

Seems simple enough, right? Guess again. I spent two days figuring out my character's motivations! And this is my third draft of the book - a complete rewrite this time around. You'd think I would know my character motivations, but it was surprisingly difficult. I suddenly saw why my book had major problems. As an example, here's the beginning of my main character's motivation chart. It changes sometimes. Well, lately, it's changed a lot as I shape my book into what I want. That's the beauty of mapping. It can change. All. The. Time.

Nick wants a second chance with Lilian and his daughters + Nick needs the bad guys gone and Catarina on his side in order to clear his name and ensure a new start = Nick goes to Lilian for safety = Nick gets his daughters to the inn for safety = Nick goes to Brazil to find Jeffrey and Catarina = and on and on and on

Everything's driven by Nick's main motivation. That motivation has to be clear, and it needs to stay present in every scene of the book.

It's pretty simple, really. Maybe I'm the only one who doesn't know my character motivations very well, but I'd challenge you to do this with every one of your main characters, even secondary characters. It was difficult for me to pin my character motivations into a small phrase, probably because they are complex beings with complex desires. Boiling it down feels unnatural, almost, like I'm not giving my character enough credit for his drastic actions.

My point here is that once you know that main motivation, use it. That's the carrot you use to drive the tension in your scenes. Rip the carrot away to drive your characters to the edge. So much fun.


Question For The Day: How well do you know your character motivations? Are you willing to map it out and see if you know them as well as you thought you did?


~MDA (aka Glam)