Make Me Worry MORE About Your Characters

When readers are truly worried about your characters, they keep turning the pages or watching the show. I've known that for a while, but I recently stumbled across a TV series that taught me something new.

Presenting a character's vulnerabilities on many levels compels people to stick with the story.

I've long known that concern for characters requires two things: People must empathize with the characters and the characters must be at risk. For the first, stories where a character does something noble (classically, saves a cat) are common, but there are other ways to build empathy. we empathize with wronged characters, with those who have an interesting talent, and with those who are funny, according to Damon Knight. There are other approaches, but, as a general rule, people want to empathize with the protagonist unless the actions and descriptions are boring or foul. You can't do anything about boring characters, but foul ones can be saved by adding positive traits.

For some authors, creating risks, dangers, and vulnerabilities is difficult. They are comfortable with exploring flaws, and they reflexively shy away from the chance that the characters could face real suffering. I found some success in counseling writers to focus on cravings as a way to include flaws. Suffering? Some people are too kindhearted, even though they'll admit that the challenges to a character are what promote growth and change (essential to most successful commercial fiction).

The show I came across was the original, Venezuelan version of The Cleaning Lady. In a half hour, the writers got me so agitated with concern about the protagonist I had to stand up and walk around to some my nerves. What they did was expose a series of vulnerabilities in the character. Her job is in jeopardy. Her boss is a soul-crushing bully. She has a critically ill son, and depends on a somewhat feckless mother to help care for him. Because she's so poor she has to work two jobs.

For her second job, she's employed by criminals. She witnesses a murder and is forced to destroy evidence. The detective in charge of the case is clever and suspects her as an accomplice right away. The criminals who hold both her employment and her life in their hands are messy and incompetent, inviting more attention from the law.

She's vulnerable in terms of family, safety, freedom, reputation, psychological health, and life. That's a lot to worry about. The attacks kept coming and the stakes shifted through a variety of possibilities… And I couldn't stop watching. I was reminded of Breaking Bad's pilot episode, where Walter White's health, family security, and dignity were all under assault. The pilot for My So-Called Life also exposes multiple vulnerabilities, even though it is a domestic drama with no focus on murders or criminal empires.

Cruising up and down Maslow's hierarchy, it's easy to say that life makes all of us vulnerable because we all have essential needs. The job of the writer is to create enough vulnerability to make a story compelling. So, if one vulnerability doesn't do it or doesn't create enough storylines, it's a good idea to add more. Personally, I went back to some of my stories and found some that already did a good job and others that immediately benefited from exploring more ways in which the protagonist could be made more vulnerable. Though I lean toward simplicity, my new rule of thumb is to see if presenting three or more vulnerabilities early in the story can make people (reasonably) worry more about my characters. (Shorter works don't usually need more than one vulnerability, so this is for longer works.)

Balancing all of this is the power the protagonist has. In an age of super heroes, it can be helpful to consider how reducing options and undermining the strengths of a character can make things more interesting. There is a reason why the creators of Superman invented kryptonite.

A Wealth of Emotions, and One That’s Special

The music of Ashokan Farewell moved me deeply when I watched Ken Burns’s Civil War years ago. Going sideways from friend’s post of the reservoir that lent it its name, I recently listened to the music with fresh ears. It churned up powerful emotions, undiminished by time. Yearning? Maybe. Regret? A hint of that. Nostalgia? A cousin of that, but richer and more authentic.

Since storytelling is underpinned by emotions, I dug deeper. I found 300+ Emotions and Feelings, a site that offers odd and familiar emotions, defined. I discovered some intriguing ones: 

Dépaysement (French): The disorienting feeling of being an outsider.

Duende (Spanish): The mysterious power we feel when a work of art deeply moves us.

Evighed (Danish): The felt eternity of the present moment.

As well as a couple that felt close:

Aware (Japanese): The bittersweetness of a brief, fading moment of transcendent beauty.

Wabi-sabi (Japanese): A state of acceptance of the imperfections in life and appreciating them as beautiful. Appreciating the flow of life.

The nearest match was this: Mono no aware (Japanese): An empathy toward impermanence of things and both a transient gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life.

Close enough. The definition cued, George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, which gives me something of the mono no aware feeling, especially since George died. Have I experienced it outside of music? I think so. Dead Poets Society (ignoring the crowd-pleasing standing on the desks in the finale) gives me the feeling. Especially since Robin Williams died.

That led me to think about happy endings. I prefer them as a reader, an audience member, and a writer. I’ve stopped reading work from people I truly admire when they got too bleak. But this mono no aware is neither happy nor bleak. It isn’t quite tragedy (which is much too scarce in popular culture). It leans toward bittersweet.

The feeling is also persistent, surviving repeated experiences in music and stories. As much as I love The Wizard of Oz, I can’t watch it anymore because the joy at the end is just a shadow for me of what it once was. The same is true for the upbeat ending of Star Wars (A New Hope) and a dozen other former favorites. It would be an eccentric but wonderful triumph to write something with such a deep and lasting emotional impact.

Have I ever created the feeling in my work? A short story turned short script of mine, Waverly, came to mind. It was inspired by a scene that struck me deeply as a child. In the Van Johnson version of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, the unpaid Piper lures the children away from town, through a crack he creates in the mountain (at about 1hr 7 min). One disabled boy can’t keep up with the others and, when the mountain closes, is left as the only child left in Hamelin. This level of exclusion resonated with me as a child.

Though I doubt I felt mono no aware as a small child, that’s what the memory created for me over time. I think, over the years, it was transformed into a sense of loss of the younger me. The feeling (I hope) is created in Waverly. Is it possible to provide a guide to creating the feeling in prose?

This is my attempt:

• The character must lose something.
• It must be precious. The loss must leave a mark.
• Time must pass, enough so the broken character can be remade.
• The character must understand that the loss brought a gain.
• While still holding onto the melancholy of deep loss, the character must be grateful for the time before the loss, the healing, and the ability to assimilate the truth revealed.

Of course, this pattern needs to be followed sincerely. The story needs to be personal in some way. I can’t imagine conveying this emotion with out feeling it. The prose must be impeccable, creating as few distractions as possible. That kind of writing requires a lot of rewriting, and here’s something surprising. The feeling is as resilient for the writer as it is for readers and audiences.

I’m hoping I’ll become more conscious of mono no aware in life and art. And, though I still have happy endings in my future, I’ll be making more room for this special emotion.

Characters Acting and Reacting

Someone told me that the best way to remember someone is to visualize them doing something. I found it to be extremely useful as I’ve tried to recall relatives and friends who are lost or no longer part of my life. Sometimes, I get images of a gradient gardening or a friend playing catch with me or a neighbor from years ago walking his dog. But at other times, my mind simply shows people turning to face me or breaking into a smile.

No matter how complex or simple such action is, there is often a release of places, events, distinctive mannerisms, and even hearing words spoken. I use such memory mining to open up my past and deliver moments for my own amusement or to provide models for characters and situations in my stories. The process can work in reverse, too, as I conjure up scenes and am reminded of real events that have parallels.

Now, when I am deliberately creating or exploring characters, my primary approach is to interview the characters. But it's amazing how often visualizing them acting (or reacting) pays off in ways I don't expect.

Obviously, watching a character as he or she participates in the scene both provides material for what transpires and deepens my understanding of who he or she is. That's analogous to see my neighbor walk his dog. The problem is, with something that's imagined, it's necessary to look closer. 

It is amazingly easy for someone who has read a lot of books or watched a lot of television or movies to grab clichés for character action. It takes some discipline to make every scene original, even though it may feel new within the context of a story that's being composed. One of the most powerful questions to ask when a character is in motion is, have I seen this before?

It's easy to assume the details, too. Remembering something that's experienced will make unusual details stand out. Imagining those specifics can be more challenging in fiction. (One reason I like writing fantasy and science fiction is, to do it well, even the most mundane elements need to be re-examined.)

When a character is visualized turning toward me or breaking into a smile, those actions are so common, originality becomes essential to cueing the mental cascade of mannerisms, places, sounds, etc. that I get with real memories. That means there is an automatic check against drifting into clichés. The question I use when asking a character to look at me or smile is, but what’s new and authentic here?

Of course, character can come across under pressure. That's how I usually apply my questions, and it works with actions and reactions as well. Forcing an innocent character to shoplift or an evil one to share a bag lunch or almost anyone to walk through the woods at night without a flashlight can bring out quirks and flaws and hidden virtues that otherwise might go undiscovered.

More and more, I've found that characters in combination expose a lot of who they are (even if there shielding their vulnerabilities with dishonesty). But, just as actions that commonly show up in stories need to be challenged, action/reaction moments can't be accepted as they first appear in my imagination. 

There have been times when I have needed to rerun scenarios a dozen times before they felt fresh. Two characters digging a grave together might go full Sopranos cliché on me, while the action/reaction of the same two characters digging a garden might provide surprises. (This scene from All in the Family is my favorite example of two characters revealing themselves through a mundane action.) Of course, if the grave digging is under extreme stress, say with two teenagers who are strangers to each other burying the body of someone one of them accidentally killed, it could get interesting quickly.

With actions/reactions, you don't have to use two characters from the same story. You actually can introduce a stranger or a real person or a character from someone else's work. (Reminder — don't include recognizable real people or characters under copyright in your stories.) Creating such scenes may open amazing and unanticipated images and ideas.

Giving your full attention to any scenes with characters acting and reacting provides real value even if the scenes don't end up in your stories. Most people come to fiction for good characters, and creating full and authentic characters requires a real investment in the process. But there is a dividend beyond audience approval. As these characters come to life for you, the storytelling will become easier and a lot more fun.

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I'm teaching an online course, exploring The Promise of the Premise, beginning March 7.