Thursday, November 7, 2019

Casting Your Stories 1: Three questions to qualify your heroes (and other characters)

Did you ever notice how often the characters you remember are the villains? I don't think this implies anything sinister about humanity. The popularity of Hannibal Lecter is not evidence that many of us long to be cannibals.

Instead, I think it plays on our curiosity, fascination with limits (freak shows and disasters), and a rejection of the safe and the mundane in fiction. The last of these is intimately related to how many writers approach their stories. They create main characters who are comfortably close to who they are. These characters often hide or minimize their flaws, do unsurprising things, and provide justifications for anything that edges toward being antisocial.

Authors protect themselves when they protect their protagonists. They let their guard down when they're dealing with villains and often can be more authentic with these characters. One trick a writer shared with me was grabbing some of the best lines from villains and seeing if they might be easily adapted to (or stolen for) the heroes. It's surprising how often and exercise like that can open up a story in later drafts. I've seen this both with my students and with my own work.

We often look to ourselves when we create viewpoint characters, but it can be more powerful to take on a bigger challenge. For important characters, especially the protagonists, I look to answer three things:

Does the character make me feel uncomfortable? One thing my sister used to do to me what I was very small was provide tours of the terrifying. It might be an abandoned house where ghosts were supposed to be or a place in the words where a murder (according to her) had taken place, or a ditch where a ravenous animal was known to slice off the limbs of little boys. While ghosts, murderers, and predators all create visceral responses, they never has the power over my imagination my sister did. Or created indelible memories. It was difficult for me then (and now) to understand who this creepy tour guide was. Those experiences created a puzzle about my sister’s identity that could not be solved. So characters that create questions that are difficult to answer but important tend to be memorable. And these characters can be the heroes of our stories if we dare to make that choice.

Does the character surprise me? In an earlier post, 50 Rude Questions, I provided examples on how to challenge and interrogate characters. Even though the questions are probing, the answers are not always revealing. Often this means that the character will never do something unexpected. Unless I have some means to take more deeply, the right tool for character vivisection, these characters do not belong my stories. At least not in major roles. But some characters give answers that suggest new questions, intrigued me, or even shock me. The more my interviews of characters make me curious or takes me in fresh directions, the more likely it is that these characters will find their ways into my stories. And, more more, it's the protagonists who speak and act in unexpected ways.

Does the character know things or experience life in ways I don't? I get excited when I learn new things. As much as "write what you know" is good and tested advice, it's valuable to create characters that require research. By definition, a story can't be predictable if there are a lot of open questions. So I tried to include characters whose histories and professions are different from my own. This is scary when those characters are protagonists or antagonists or viewpoint characters. Sometimes I have a premise that falls apart because new information proves my initial assumptions were wrong. (And the real danger is not having to put a story aside, but twisting the facts to allow the story to proceed.)

A safer route is to make these characters who are strange to me secondary within the story. That way they can liven things up without tearing things down.

Of course, these three questions assume you've found characters that could fit your premise and that are defined enough to take a closer look at. It takes a lot of preparation to build characters that lead to clear answers to these three questions. Unless… You lean on your own experiences in terms of people who interest and intrigue you… Or you are a history buff who digs into quirky people who existed in the past… Or you've heard gossip about someone you never met, where the stories hook you, but there are blanks that need to be filled in. Each of these may provide just enough to supply starting points for characters without "from scratch" work required.

Ultimately, I want to be thrilled by all my characters, including those who are the heroes. If I start out contented with a character as opposed to uneasy and excited, I'm suspicious. I want to be challenged, confused, and uncertain at times. If I'm happy with all the choices my characters make, I can’t learn anything new or experience the joy of discovery as I write. And neither can my readers.

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