Think like a Bird?

Once a young marsh hawk apparently considered an open garage part of the skyline and flew inside, perching on the metal rafters controlling the sliding door. Fine. Until it couldn’t escape. The woman, nature lover that she was, told the neighbors she’d free it right away. No problem.

First at the front door, then just inside, then closer to the rear, she offered the bird raw hamburger, cooked hamburger, a chicken leg, canned and dry cat food. No dice.

Still undaunted, she got a broom and gently chased the confused stranger toward the front. Over and over it flew maniacally forward, only to reclaim its original post. She became increasingly afraid—she and the hawk both. It clung, fluttering frantically, piteously opening its golden beak to emit silent cries more taxing than a howl ever could be.

The bird had done her in. Or had it? “Think like a bird,” she chided. “Think like a bird,” she barked and began searching the yard for a something natural enough to represent escape. The woman took her time arranging the branch, altering its position, attaching more sticks, setting it up to imitate exactly what it was supposed to be. And, lo, this time when the broom urged the prisoner forward, the raptor found the tree, hesitated, circling for relentless moments until its back leg briefly touched the tip of the facsimile tree and it zoomed away.

For novelists, it doesn’t matter that this woman sank to the driveway gravel and wept for some time. It matters that she thought like a bird.

Tip: Enter the mind of every living being in your novel, whether child, wizard, cat, or grandpa.

After all, if you want every character to feel real for readers, first every character must feel completely real to you. In a short story titled “The Remobilization of Jacob Horner,” John Barth wrote: “In life there are no essentially major or minor characters. To that extent, all fiction and biography, and most historiography, is a lie. Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.”

Your story or novel should have neither characters too minor for dimension, nor snapshots that reduce some players to heroes, others to reprobates or scoundrels. 

How do you think like each of your characters?

~ Explore desire.

Nothing reveals a person (or a bird) as well as a burning obsession to change the

external or internal territory.

~ Brainstorm.

Let your subconscious roam free. How are you like a goat? A chancellor? A seer?

~Cheat a bit. 

For a while, choose a hat to wear each time you switch to a different head.

~Empathize deeply.

Use your own emotions, uncomfortable or embarrassing as that perhaps seems.

“Take Your Characters to Dinner.”

Mentally interact with them outside the format of your story.

You needn’t rescue a hawk, or, before the last page, anyone else. But your readers expect that if you include one in your book, at least epiphany occurs, you penetrated that avian mind.

An Outline of Outlining for the Novelist

Outlining was never meant to emphasize A, II, or b. When novelists ignore rigorous rules about potentially punctilious patterns or parallels, they can benefit from the focus, organization, and clarity that one’s personal, idiosyncratic version of a novel outline can provide.

As K.M. Weiland puts it in Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story, “Examine your story. Where does it truly begin? Which event is the first domino in your row of dominoes? Which domino must be knocked over for the rest of the story to happen?”  Some form of outline is a useful strategy for checking such issues.

Tip: A relaxed version of an outline can aid the novelist during every stage of the process.

~ The preliminary overview.

You can save yourself time—not to mention stress—by sketching out the evolution of your protagonist’s journey. How much detail do you need? You’re the only judge. No one’s looking over your shoulder checking length or format. But do give yourself some goals.

• What are the five of six pressure points that create your protagonist’s arc?
• Where is the midpoint? In The Emotional Craft of Fiction, Don Maass calls this the moment when the protagonist can no longer turn back.
• What’s the climax of your novel?
• How does each scene advance the plot and keep the stakes high?
• For each scene/chapter, what is the primary goal of the protagonist (or perhaps antagonist)?
• Does each scene inevitably cause the subsequent one?

Though some writers consider outlining too confining, you needn’t obey your outline rigorously. The preliminary outline supports if you feel stuck and promotes a high-tension, causal movement from inciting incident to denouement. But are you on fire with new ideas? Follow them.

~ The post overview.

This is where you outline what you actually wrote, perhaps ignoring your initial outline entirely. 

• If the novel has multiple points of view, who delivers each scene?
• In what you actually composed, is there sufficient tension?
• Does each scene both build from what precedes and escalate toward what follows?

~ The optional final overview.

Personally, I had great luck outlining my post outline to make it even more compressed. For me, this third step clearly revealed how to emphasize causality, escalate tension even higher, and omit scenes that didn’t earn their keep. 

However tedious, time-consuming or unnecessary outlining might seem, it’s one of the best ways (if not, in fact, the very best) to insure that each chapter/scene fulfills not just the author’s needs, but those of your story and thus your reader. Isn’t that worth the time?

“R’s” for Writers

One could easily generate an alphabet for writers, or an alternate list of words starting, for example, with “s.” Fair enough. Today, though, “r” is the star.

~ Recurrence.

Introduce a series of symbols, character traits, facial tics, faux pas, or whatever to build intensity. Just be careful to add and develop rather than merely repeat.

~ Reflection.

A lot of important writing happens minus paper or keyboard. Mull possibilities. Have a notebook or smart phone handy to record them.

~ Repetition.

For readers, this is a dirty word—a disgustingly dirty one. Clean up by varying syntax, word choice, scene openings and closings, and so on. Redundancy is NyQuil for words.

~ Resolution.

Earn it. This means that your protagonist, antagonist, and many members of the supporting cast, face situations and decisions that necessitate growthful change. An earned ending is one you set up, ideally, in the first chapter, perhaps even within its first paragraph.

~ Resonance.

In Literary Resonance in the Art of Writing, the author suggests that 

To “resonate” literally means to bounce back and forth between two states or places. Resonate comes from the Latin word for “resound.” In sound, resonance is a prolonged response to something that caused things to vibrate. When sound reverberates, it's resonating within a bounded space, like the body of a guitar. Thunder often resonates/reverberates across an uneven landscape….Resonance in writing is something that affects us the same way. It's an aura of significance, significance beyond the otherwise insignificant event taking place.      

The novel escalates the potential for emotional and thematic connection when first, characters and events resonate with universal experience, and second, when details and description offer both literal and symbolic meaning. This can be overdone. But without experimenting, how can you know whether layering would enrich?

~ Reverberation. 

Literally, “a remote or indirect consequence of some action,” or “the repetition of a sound resulting from reflection of the sound waves” (dictionary.com) How does this relate to fiction? Strong images and plot points affect characters—and readers—long after the initial moment fades away.

~ Revisitation.

The sestina, a 13th century French poetic form, enhances meaning by changing the context each time the author revisits a complex pattern involving six words. In fiction, the parallel is motif, which reexamines the word or concept under different circumstances. The original meaning evolves, becoming more nuanced. Instead of constantly changing the palette of details, let significance percolate within the space between one mention of a lighthouse, and the next and the next, as Virginia Woolf does in the novel of that title, or Harper Lee does with mockingbirds. 

Tip: Revise to provide resolution through the recurrence that contributes resonance.

Characters with Character

We call oddball eccentrics “characters.” Yet character is also the possession of attributes, often moral, and characters are the individuals enacting a plot. Compile all these definitions, and you get—story.

Story harnesses entertainment to make morality easier to swallow. Based on that, your characters need equal parts moral fiber and zany individuality.  Those are the building blocks for making characters more “real” than real people.

In The Art of Fiction, John Gardner reminds us that “The primary subject of fiction is and has always been human emotion, values, and beliefs.”  The more your plot delivers that, then the more complex emotions your readers will experience. So you need conflict—big conflict, even the danger is exclusively psychological.

Adversity tests a character’s character. Will you answer the quest? Continue despite seemingly insurmountable odds? Earn the love, happiness, respect, honor, or victory that the antagonist mercilessly struggles to rip from you?

Robert McKee has said that the pressure the antagonist exerts brings out the best in a character. It also brings out the best in the reader, who begins wondering, “Would I fight that hard?” “Are my own struggles as weighty as those the protagonist faces?” “How can I not feel empathy for a battle of this magnitude?” How come the great human issues never change?

Your readers respond that way because of the emotional, causal, and moral nature of fiction. As Robert McKee put it in Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting:

A character is no more a human being than the Venus de Milo is a real woman. A character is a work of art, a metaphor for human nature. We relate to characters as if they were real, but they're superior to reality. Their aspects are designed to be clear and knowable; whereas our fellow humans are difficult to understand, if not enigmatic. We know characters better than we know our friends because a character is eternal and unchanging, while people shift - just when we think we understand them, we don't.

Creating characters who are metaphorical works of art is a tall order. What makes that happen?

~ Breed empathy.

Your antagonist(s) can help.

~ Emphasize resilience.

            Who loves a whiner?

~ Celebrate morality.

Life is unfair. Should fiction be?

~ Liberate your characters.

            Unless you set them free, how can they surprise you or anyone else?

Tip: Don’t just incorporate tension. Use it to reveal and build character.

Character Appeal

Like sex appeal, you can get the job done lots of ways. That’s good, because character appeal is as crucial to novels as sex appeal to budding romance. No spark? Seek electricity elsewhere.

Just as horrid breath or greasy hair swiftly drove off potential mates, certain openings send readers into the arms of another choice. These are unlovable creations:

~ The wimp.

Protagonists need to emerge, mature, grow. But a hapless, sheepish, or pathetic central character can’t engage readers long enough to watch the magic happen.

~ The grouch.

Life is full of icky people. Can’t be helped. Fiction promises to let us escape all that. Make that promise on your opening page, if not your opening paragraph.

~ The team where every member’s a loser.

Readers want to root for somebody. If every character seems boring, stereotypical, sad, terrified, or nasty, again, no matter how much one of them develops, it’s too little too late.

Jo Walton admits that, “I care more about the people in books than the people I see every day.” When fiction’s characters are well done, many of us do. How does a novelist achieve that? And right away?

ü  Defy expectations.

            The muscular hero is vulnerable, the pale princess strong and feisty. Switcheroo.

ü  Make everyone multi-dimensional.

Readers must despise something about the protagonist and applaud something about the antagonist: “You don’t really understand an antagonist until you understand why he’s a protagonist in his own version of the world.” – John Rogers

ü  Breed empathy.

When emotion is original and complex rather than simplistic and manipulative, we cheer with winners and despair with victims. Emphasize commonality: “These emotions–fear, pain, doubt–are part of the human condition. If your hero is impervious to them, it is harder to understand them and harder to imagine ourselves as them.” – Tristan Gregory

ü  Create resilient resourcefulness.

“You cannot have an effective protagonist who simply responds to events happening around him or her. Your protagonist must act, not just react.” -- Rachelle Gardner

Not easy to do. But don’t we write fiction in order to accompany dynamic characters?

Tip: Fiction follows characters, so create at least one whom readers want to follow.

The Princess inside the Dragon???

Rainer Maria Rilke had this to say about expectations, judgments, and truths:

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us, is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

Maybe you find this concept troubling even outside fiction writing, not to mention within it. But don’t visualize Walt Disnified princesses and dragons. These are metaphors, symbols to tweak however you wish. Often, though, metaphors are the best way to express the unsayable.

So which ideas does this metaphor suggest?

~ Identify the dragons in the lives of your characters.

What if the sources of terror and repugnance craved love instead of blood?  How many of those only reside within? What new insights might this generate?

~ Look beneath the surface.

Though dragon imagery shifts from culture to culture, the basic idea’s always the same. Or is it? Perhaps humans and dragons share traits in common. Why do dragons represent so many things? What does it really mean to be a dragon? A princess?

~ Refurbish.

We associate dragons not with beauty, vulnerability or tenderness, but such hideous violence that slaying one makes you a hero. When we change both image and message, readers experience both original and new versions.  How efficient is that?

~ Reveal similarities, whether in heart or history, in drama or dream.

How does the antagonist resemble the protagonist? How do both antagonist and protagonist manifest the strengths and weaknesses everyone shares?

~ Play God.

The role of Supreme Being capable of infinite wisdom and understanding suits fiction writers well. We write fiction, of course, from yearning to expose what we consider evil and good. But that yearning must remain so secret that every dragon harbors a bit of princess. Wouldn’t your readers appreciate that kind of wisdom and understanding ?  

~ Astonish.

Great plots reveal the possibility of the improbable, the morality that becomes possible because the hero makes it so. You won’t need a single dragon or princess. Just larger-than-life characters and a causal plot.

Tip: Use the metaphorical dragons and princesses surrounding us to gentle your novel’s dragons and

        fortify its princesses. 

Dialogue: Animosity or Virtuosity

Consider Nancy and Kevin. This brother and sister mostly got along, though it’s years since they’ve been close: marriage, kids, careers—they drifted. But neither Kevin nor Nancy predicted that dad’s death would endanger their relationship.

Unless you’re related to Nancy and Kevin, why would you care? Because the demise of Kevin and Nancy illustrates how dialogue works. Or doesn’t.

Kevin’s fury might launch a scene. After all, he maintained Dad’s hardware store, plus keeping his lawn mowed, snow blowed, and roof repaired. Nor was Kevin’s schedule exactly overflowing with spare time for someone else’s life.

“Your life? What about mine?” Nancy wants to know when she adds her lines to the script.  Hardly her fault that Kevin took years getting Dad’s house in shape to sell. Especially since her husband graciously took Dad into their home. Of course Dad didn’t intentionally torment every member of Nancy’s family (even Rover). But his dementia irritated, exhausted, and freaked them all. Every day. For years.

Who’s right? Nancy. And Kevin. Life has enough actual bad guys. Fiction shouldn’t. Readers must believe both stories. That promotes dilemma—the most genuine source of tension. Make dilemma drive the script characters play out when they interact.

Tip: Good dialogue comes from a forceful, credible, well- justified script for each character.

You get there not by replicating reality, but simulating it.

~ Brevity.

In the real world, Kevin and Nancy might shriek, accuse, and bellow. Or bicker twenty-nine separate times over a four-month period.  That won’t propel fiction.  Their conversations need to be short, snappy, and subtle. And two or three times beats twenty-nine.

~ Subtext.

Kevin might actually scream, “If you can’t understand what this cost me, I never want to speak to you again!” Makes sense. A bit tepid, though. Why read on, when we can predict what’s next. Besides, wouldn’t it be more fun (not to mention more accurate) to wonder if Kevin’s rage disguises hurt? There’s greater ambivalence in “I can’t believe you’d say that,” or “I don’t even recognize you.” Cliché, yes, but reflective of complex emotion. That’s how they became cliché.

~ Equality.

In real life, courts determine guilt or innocence. In fiction, everyone’s both. If you despise Nancy or Kevin so piercingly that you can’t design two defensible versions of the so-called facts, you have no business telling their story.

Want virtuoso characterization and dialogue? Handle animosity not as if it were a heat-seeking missile, but a feeling we all experience at least occasionally. Emotion is intricately complex: rage mixed with pain, greed laced with regret, righteousness tempered by anxiety about never speaking to your sibling again. Make sure all your characters can justify themselves. Because each person both believes his or her story—and doesn’t. Unless dialogue reflects that, it won’t infuse the depth, intricacy, and credibility your story deserves. Because your readers do.

Can “ugly” emotions be good?

If even Jimmy Carter admits that “I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times,” how can the rest of us escape not only lust, but wrath, greed, sloth, pride, envy, and gluttony? Regardless of how you view traditional religion, you likely disapprove of them all. Add a bit of psychology, and the list lengthens: manipulation, sadism, passive aggression, lack of empathy. Who wants to be like that? Or know someone like that? Far fewer people than the number who’d love to read about it.

Tip: Ugly emotions keep readers turning pages.

Aside from the popularity of true crime, thrillers, and mystery, everyone enjoys a good bad guy. And most of us equally enjoy a good guy who’s at least a little bad. These characters mirror the sins in our hearts, and because we recognize ourselves in that mirror, the novel’s bad guys inspire us to improve, while the good guys reassure us that nobody’s perfect. Not even in fiction.

Take betrayal. Its underpinning is a smug self-righteousness. How could you do that to me when I was so generous/thoughtful/compassionate/supportive? Like anything about fiction that’s taken too far, betrayal can build such an unpalatable character that readers simply close the book.

Yet in healthy doses, betrayal can drive a novel fast and far enough to become a classic. Javert kills himself because Jean Valjean betrays the officer’s belief in absolute justice. Madame Bovary feels betrayed by the life that first her husband, then her lover promised. Gatsby betrays his moral center for the fool’s gold glitter of Daisy; vengeance drives Ahab to betray his crew’s trust in their captain. In The Art of Fielding, the sport that Henry loves betrays him: when the ball he wields so well injures his friend. Henry, in turn, betrays his skill—by resolutely and suddenly losing it.

Dark thoughts—like betrayal—fertilize both dilemma and causality.

 ~ Causality.

 In the best novels, every event except the last arises from the one preceding and spawns the one following. Pride goeth both before a fall and the next scene; the proud character will make mistakes, possibly horrifying, and definitely instigating whatever happens next.

 ~ Dilemma.

Most of us hope to bury or at least hide our dark thoughts. We know that greed is offensive, that envy is never classy, and so on. We struggle forward. But when a character’s dark thoughts clash with the sense of right and wrong—that’s an immovable object meeting an irresistible force. In other words, it’s fiction.

This doesn’t mean that your protagonist must act on every unpalatable thought. You could leave that to the antagonist. Or not. But while complicating the protagonist with some stifled but evil impulses, don’t neglect to complicate the antagonist. As Robert McKee observed, a worthy antagonist shapes a worthy protagonist.

Worth has much to do with credibility. Do we believe in the protagonist? That external forces pressure her into earning the ending? Credibility also demands exposing the secrets most humans vault away. This exposure is both credible and intriguing. We want to know what’s in the protagonist’s vault just as intensely as we want no one to guess what’s in our own.

Emoticon versus Emotion

Here’s an irony. Many of us can’t resist decorating our emails, texts, perhaps even blogs with silly little faces that presumably capture emotion. For casual communication? No problem. But just as emoticons never summon the dynamic complexity of human response, characters aching with the agony of anguish never summon much except irritation.

Some things about story remain the same forever. It will always be true, as painter Paul Cezanne put it, that “A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.”

Yet if emotions don’t change over time, art does. Like emotions, it’s always on the move. Novel readers no longer respond favorably to blatant, oversimplified description. Charles Dickens, born about two centuries back, is still—and will always be—a great writer. But today’s novelists don’t get to remind us that “‎Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.” (Great Expectations)

That’s because, as writer and writing coach Jessica Morrell explains, “Resonance takes place when the stimuli put into our stories evoke meaning or a responsive chord in a reader.” For better or worse, certain plots and word choices no longer elicit the same “responsive chords.”

Our world has changed, and our novels along with it. In White Oleander (1999) Janet Fitch says

That was the thing about words, they were clear and specific--chair, eye, stone--but when you talked about feelings, words were too stiff, they were this and not that, they couldn't include all the meanings. In defining, they always left something out.

Labeling emotions cages them, diminishes them, makes them less than they are. That causes readers to feel less than they might. What’s a writer to do?

~ Use dialogue. Confrontations between characters—including the subtext of what they never say—both mimic some of the most intense moments in real life and reveal the motivation for character choices.

~ Capture the reactions of other characters. Response to the behavior of the protagonist or antagonist is a shrewd away to advance the plot, so long as you avoid all those abstract, oversimplified words like “sad,” “happy,” “perplexed,” and the even more painful ones like “yearning” and “ecstasy.” They have the same impact as a heaving bosom.

~ “Show” emotion through action—and not just tears, shrugging, or exiting.

~ Try symbolism. Might your character realistically compare inertia to a stone wall, with only one way through? Might your character overeat or starve? Learn boxing or sink into a stupor?

Tip: Give emotions the complexity they deserve so your readers can experience the emotions they deserve.

Could Death Really Be the Novelist’s Friend?

First, of course, no, because like everyone else, novelists hate pain, grief, and loss. But on second thought maybe yes. Don’t friends get you in touch with your primal feelings? Those that shape the fears and desires of all people, no matter the time or place?

Death might be foremost among these feelings. It terrifies us, wounds us, deranges us, and, arguably, makes us creative because there isn’t enough time, and knowing that, we yearn to leave some trace of self behind. Primal emotions are the wellspring of story, and death is foremost among those.

Tip: Genuine emotion protects you—and your readers—from sentimentality.

~ Grief is a primal emotion.

It’s universal, which means that you need some new way to transform bitterness into insight and music. Emily Dickinson wrote that “Parting is all we know of heaven/And all we need of hell.” Edna St. Vincent Millay reminds that “Time does not bring relief; you all have lied/Who told me time would ease me of my pain!”

Question.: How would your protagonist describe the emotions following death? How would your antagonist contrast—or compare—with that?

~ Fear of mortality is a primal emotion.

Since the time when humans understood that each of us would die, we’ve developed ways to try and understand, to try and cope. Your characters share this need with everyone else in the world.

Question.: How does each of your characters cope, or fail to cope, with the reality of death?

~ Mortality is a source of energy.

Some writers use time—and its finite nature—as a motivator. No one can know how many tomorrows there’ll be. Why waste today? Are you writing as much as you want to?

Question.: How do your characters view time, mortality, and death? Do these motivate them?

~ Mortality is a source of creativity.

Some believe that the reality of death inspires art—from music to sculpture to novels. Whether or not that’s true, mortality instigates a complex amalgamation of conflicting emotions—everything from betrayal and remorse to memory, gratitude, and forgiveness. Death illuminates. It clarifies. That’s a lot of raw material.

Question.: Are your characters creative? Does mortality affect that? Why or why not?

Awareness of death is part of what makes us human. So much emotion and so many emotional constellations reside there. Perhaps death inspires us to become novelists—and probably drives us to write the best fiction that we possibly can. 

Characters Are People, and People Are…

…not always appealing or intriguing. Perhaps your neighbor is intelligent, financially comfortable, and in good health, yet constantly disappointed. The weather’s always wrong. Taxes are high, jokes dumb, spirituality hollow, and politics? Don’t even start.

If Eileen’s your neighbor, what can you do? Have something on the stove? But if Eileen’s a character, you might not buy or finish the book she’s in. Eileen may be realistic, but real-life versions of her are annoying enough. Who wants to follow a character like that?

You might argue that everyone knows Eileen. Besides, by the end of the novel she grows up—quits being so disappointed and hard on herself and everyone else. Still, realistic isn’t necessarily appealing. More seriously, people change because circumstances bring out their best. But people can change only so much, just like a zebra can’t grow a giraffe’s neck just because drought destroys all the foliage below the canopy.

Tip: The potential for growth must exist in your protagonist right from the start.

That serves two purposes. First off, even in your opening lines, readers will know that Eileen whines a lot, but there’s more to her. That rouses curiosity. What will she learn—and how? Secondly, when Eileen finally performs some heroic act at your novel’s end, no one will say, “She’d never do that. I don’t believe it for a second.”

How can you make your protagonist more appealing while plotting your plot?

• Identify your protagonist’s hidden strength. Right on the first page, find a way to make this strength visible but never obvious.
• Decide how your protagonist’s hidden strength will assist or save at least two people.
• Give your protagonist a flaw or weakness that will undermine the hidden strength.
• Foreshadow a fear that will obstruct your protagonist’s progress toward morality, maturity, or both.
• Shape circumstances so the hidden strength can triumph over weakness and fear.
• Determine the climax for your protagonist’s arc. What’s the high point of whatever will change about your protagonist, and how does that hidden strength produce victory?
• List at least five life-changing events that thrust the protagonist toward the climax. The last one of these must force to protagonist to conquer that weakness and fear—magnificently.

But take any irritating version of the real “Eileen” out of your novel, unless she’s there for gentle comic relief. And give the real Eileen a cup of coffee. Maybe she has a hidden strength after all. Even if finding it won’t help your novel (and it might), it could certainly help her.

Memories: Yours, Your Characters’, and Everyone Else’s

There’s a huge disconnect between what “really” happened and the recollection of it. Unless only one person is involved, interpretations will vary. Then there’s the human tendency to intensify: everything gets bigger, smaller, worse, funnier, more dangerous, or better. Memories explain motivation, reveal character, and reflect reality. That could be a goldmine for novelists—or not.

Tip: The best backstory is brief and illuminates the conflict at hand.

But memories can be torturously untidy. In the real world people often daydream during other people’s anecdotes. That’s annoying. In a novel? It’s deadly.

So how can memories enrich your novel rather than weaken it? If you know an enormous amount about the protagonist’s (or antagonist’s) memories, you can deliver the one tiny detail that enriches the present—rather than hanging out in the past where your readers don’t want to be.

This resembles Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory. He suggested that ninety percent of what the writer knows about the character should lie beneath the surface—out of sight, but supporting the ten percent that readers see.

His theory neatly describes how you might flesh out backstory to supply the ten percent readers want. These questions might help you build your iceberg.

• What triggers the memories? A physical object? A scent? A threat?
• Do the memories change if they arrive during the day or at night?
• How does your character respond physiologically to different memories?
• Does one memory lead to an even more intriguing different one?
• Are the memories in color, or black and white?
• Do the memories involve all five senses? Could they?
• Does the memory help or hinder in the present moment?
• Does the misinterpretation of a memory make trouble for the character?
• Do the memories involve constellations like honor, betrayal, patriotism, idealism?

Flashbacks can defeat momentum for the same reason too much rumination or description can: no momentum. But memory exerts enormous pressure on human behavior. Used judiciously, that makes novels deeper, funnier, more resonant and dramatic. 

What do you remember? Use it.

Born Toxic?

Jellyfish (jellies) are. They die that way, too. Try stepping on a desiccating one, or, rather—do so at your peril. Antagonists? That’s a matter of nature and nurture, and one of crucial importance to fiction. In Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, Donald Maass reminds us that a multi-dimensional opponent is not only more intriguing, but “more dangerous.”

And as Robert McKee puts it in Story, “All other factors of talent, craft, and knowledge being equal, greatness is found in the writer’s treatment of the negative side.” Why? Because without a worthy antagonist, a protagonist has no compulsion to defeat inertia. The status quo seems less exhausting. Why not just …

Tip: The antagonist is the source of change—and growth—in the protagonist.

Two kinds of worthy antagonist can motivate your protagonist. The first is doomed. But your antagonist obviously needs greater complexity than a creature with only a nerve net. Maybe your antagonist yearns to be good, cursing the universe that makes some of its inhabitants unable to conquer their worst foibles.  These villains fill Shakespeare’s plays—because such antagonists offer credibility and inspire empathy.

As a novelist, it’s your job to make us grasp that level of pain. What would it be like to envy the impulse toward morality? Challenge yourself to understand that notion, so your readers can.

Other antagonists haven’t the slightest desire to change. They rationalize lust, greed, arrogance, or violence so skillfully that the audience wonders whether there’s something valid about those arguments. The compelling antagonist has mastered self-justification: “It’s absolutely okay for me to murder or starve or rape these people because I…”

It’s your job to complete that thought. The source is backstory, not on the page, but in your grasp of character. Which sociological and psychological factors formed this person? This requires viewing your antagonist as a person—not a creature.  Again, the answers probably come from your worst secrets. What stories do you tell to legitimize moments of selfishness or deceit? On a much uglier magnitude, the antagonist’s mind works the same way. The darkest, dirtiest parts of you long ago familiarized you with the storytelling that lets us do what we want instead of what we know we should. There’s a little antagonist in most of us.

Jellies come in hundreds of species. They’ve been around practically forever. Antagonists, born toxic or otherwise, are at least as old as Greek tragedy. Despite pollution, jellyfish still thrive. So do antagonists, every time you reveal what makes such individuals as real and complex as everyone else.

The Scope of the Story

Focusing a novel is a bit like poor Goldilocks struggling to find what’s neither too huge nor cramped but “just right.” Reviewing Scott Anderson’s biography of “Lawrence in Arabia” in “The Times Book Review,” Alex Von Tunzelmann had this to say: “Regardless of the relative historical value of these individuals, however, the multicharacter approach has the great virtue of opening up the story’s complexity.”

Few fiction readers consciously assess how much complexity they seek. But since most readers instinctively know, writers need to care. It’s the reason one likes an author or title enough to scan the opening online or in a store, yet rejects this one. The novel feels either like too much work or insufficient substance. Either boils down to “not worth my time.”

Several factors contribute to complexity. The point of view could be roving or omniscient. Maybe numerous subplots tangle up the story. Perhaps the sentences feel ridiculously short or long. The metaphors congregate like ants at a picnic. Or the cast of characters under- or over-whelms.

Tip: Use your cast of characters to give your novel “just enough” complexity.

Having too many characters resembles agonizing over who survived the aftermath of the hurricane on page one, but instead learning that little Tiffany, in room 478, has a cousin whose great-aunt passed when she was only ten, and perhaps because of that, there’s been a lot of divorce on that side of the family. In fact, Marcia, the step-daughter of the step-aunt’s fourth husband, is one of six children. Wait. Was Marcia in the storm’s path? Is she a major character? If not, why mention this?

Too many characters bloats the story badly enough to affect compassion for the characters we’re supposed to care about.

Yet a scarcity of characters builds a skewed world. In our dreams we’re often both protagonist and antagonist. In our memories or anecdotes, it’s a one-person show starring its originator. All of that’s kosher, because the goal isn’t constructing a completed story. When that’s the goal, however, you need enough characters to help the protagonist grow and change. Yet you don’t want so many characters that you blur what’s important.

How might you reach “just right”?

• Introduce characters in terms of the protagonist—and usually protagonist stress.
• Give every character a distinct voice and identity.
• Watch for arcs. Unless every minor character has one, bring out the ax.
• Use every character more than once. Cull those with bit parts.
• Merge if possible. You’ll produce one strong character instead of two weak ones.
• Assess complexity. Is this number of characters apt for the intended audience?

Characterization: Depth + Complexity = Credibility and Drama

In real life, as we get to know people they become both more predictable and more surprising. On one hand, if we say or do certain things with certain people, we can expect laughter or teasing, anger or anxiety. On the other, if we say or do exactly the same things, but in a slightly different context or during an invisible mood, we can get exactly the opposite of what we were certain we could expect.

Why would living, breathing characters be any different? They’re not. Certain elements are a given. The protagonist can’t be pathetic or erratic; the antagonist can’t be inexplicably volatile or cruel to the point of comedy. Once that’s established, understanding of character grows continuously more complex, exactly as it does with real people.

Overly consistent characters are boring. Obviously inconsistent characters are unbelievable. How do you strike that perfect balance?

·         Consider how characters are and aren’t like real people. To make this practical, start with your own novel. Are its characters like folks you know? How do they both parallel and deviate? Much more importantly, why do they parallel and deviate?

·         Use causality. If people pretend they’re secure when they’re anything but, situations that breed insecurity will always breed certain behaviors in them. Decide what these are, both generally and for your own characters in particular.  Then decide what you can use in your book, not only in situations you’ve already included but perhaps scenes you might develop.

·         Check consistency. Maybe shy Sara always responds predictably whenever a man looks at her, much less flirts with her. If your goal is getting her married, Sara still has to freak—at least somewhat—when she meets Roger, even if he will turn out to be her soul mate.

·         Mix it up. Maybe good old Roger is a wolf who turns sheepish at the sight of shy Sara. Good for him. Good for Sara. If you can convince your readers, better still. But it might be more credible if Sam goes on eyeing that long-legged blonde sunbathing in not much—even if he suspects he’s just met the woman who’ll change his life forever. And she’s not blonde.

·         Capitalize on your knowledge of human nature. The next time a friend, loved one, or stranger astonishes you with behavior at a supermarket, party, or traffic light, take note. What makes sense? What doesn’t? Most importantly, what would you need to change to make this behavior make sense to your readers? Help them feel they know your characters. Help them forget that we all already secretly realize that no one can really know anyone. That’s for life—not fiction.

Tip: The great characters—the ones who endure for centuries—are both coherent and idiosyncratic. Just like everyone else. Almost.

Vision and Voice

These two words have a tighter connection than just appealing alliteration. Here’s the thing: If you really know exactly what you want to say, you’ll have exactly the words to say it. Unsure? Any or all of the following might undermine that passage:

·         Cliché

·         “Telling”

·         Ungainly sentences

·         Imprecise language

·         Mixed metaphor

·         Repetition of words or ideas  

Happily, there’s no need to glare at your laptop, fearing that you’re stuck with this tenth-rate paragraph because the concept’s a bit woozy. Revision can rescue the words, the sentences, and the incomplete picture they never quite articulate.

These strategies help you contemplate your laptop neutrally, if not downright cheerfully.

v  Brainstorm a bit.

Jot down crazy possibilities for how to develop this moment. Something on your list might not be crazy at
all. You only need one “something.”

v  Shake things up.

Maybe you can’t write the scene because it doesn’t interest you. Turn it inside out to eliminate the

predictability problem.

v  Use the concrete world.

 “No ideas but in things,” William Carlos Williams said. He was right.

v  Eliminate something.

 The constraint of substituting for a missing character or scene or device can force an explosion of

 creativity.

v  Develop a minor character.

 “Less is usually more,” but not always, especially if a minor character resonates with either the antagonist
 or protagonist.

v  Introduce a new source of tension.

 Cornered characters are always more fun to follow, not to mention more fun for novelists to write.

v  Revise.

 Continue methodically reworking the passage until it gets clear. But revisit it, rather than staring and
staring, hoping for a solution. Remarkable how clarity generates exactly the right words.

High school teachers, including yours truly, sometimes assign separate grades for “content” and “presentation.” Here’s a secret: these supposed opposites more closely resemble a circle than divisive components.

Tip: Vision enhances voice, which enhances vision. Circles are beautiful things.

The Good Guy, the Bad Guy, and the Opening

The average novel reader wants the protagonist to offer above-average appeal—instantly. The antagonist can be more leisurely. Unless the character evokes a big, fat yawn or shrug, you have more time to build in complication. But how do you get the protagonist to compel readers right away?

·         Raise the stakes.

Make whatever the character must gain or transcend mightily important.

·         Make us believe—absolutely—in the value of those stakes.

Ideally, the stakes aren’t just personal but also moral and social.

·         Incorporate vulnerability.

Male or female, this is a hero—but one cursed with an Achilles Heel.

·         Promote empathy.

Readers care most about protagonists who remind them of themselves.

·         Give your protagonist a fighting chance.

Why risk life or limb if there’s no hope of saving the drowning baby, the dying country, the vanishing world? If your hero can hope, so can we.

Once your protagonist begins the journey of dreadful choices resulting in personal growth, you can simultaneously develop protagonist and antagonist as they impinge on each other. How do you make your bad guy terribly, terribly bad, yet not exclusively so?

·         Even the stakes.

If we already know that the antagonist must or can’t win, why read the story?

·         Share the antagonist’s version of truth and justice.

Help us believe this interpretation, however wrong it obviously seems.

·         Humanize the antagonist.

Does he contemplate murder yet always produce a Mother’s Day card? Is he your own version of “Mad Men’s” disgusting yet intriguing Don Draper?

·         Sprinkle in a smattering of backstory.

If you had as rough a deal as your antagonist, maybe you’d tell that story also?

·         Make the antagonist mirror us.

Help us see, understand, and better accept our own foibles.

           

Tip: Make your protagonist instantly appealing and your antagonist potentially complex.

To “Maass” Is a Verb

People who extol verbs, who worship them, revel in them, revere and sanctify them, get mocked. And I don’t care. For writers, and especially writers with even minimal respect for reading or writing poetry, verbs are as good as it gets. No higher honor exists.

Verbs take complex operations and succinctly snare them in a single word: Photosynthesize, reminisce, calculate, mortify, and enunciate. Instead of an entire paragraph—plus a diagram—a handful of letters crystallizes an entire process.

Now of the many wonderful writing theorists and theories out there, very few encapsulate advice in a single word. Yet in book after book, and most especially Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook and the recent Writing 21st Century Fiction: High Impact Techniques for Exceptional Storytelling, this is precisely what Don Maass accomplishes. Shouldn’t that be a verb?

To Maass: To originate so profoundly and complexly that characterization, plot, outcome, and theme become more credible, convincing, and compelling than the humdrum nature of daily life.

Tip: Teach yourself to Maass from the Maasster himself.

Are you motivated to Maass your manuscript? Here’s how to start.

·         Abandon your first plot choice. While you’re at it, discard many of the next seven or eight plot possibilities. The ninth or tenth one flirts with greatness. Follow that.

·         Unearth hidden similarity. We know painfully well why your protagonist differs from your antagonist. So forget that. How are your protagonist and antagonist practically alike in some invisible yet believable way?

·         Burst boundaries. If you’re literary, don’t just ponder what genre writing can teach you. Admit that your “opposite” can enrich your novel. Let it. Are you a genre writer? Quit dissing that highbrow stuff. Find the way it can texture your novel.

·         Surprise yourself. If you find your own writing predictable, how will your readers perceive it? Replace every obvious emotion, situation, stereotype, and problem. Dig for buried diamonds. If it’s on the surface, everyone else has already seen it.

Tip: The more difficult path is the more original one.

The Fate versus Free Will Contest

Life is so darn random. Billy Joel may claim that “Only the good die young,” but the truth is that the bad and good die haphazardly, and even more painfully, the very old or sick endure pain and the very young sometimes leave us before we can even name them. If there’s a “divine plan” here, it’s not one we can understand. Readers, however, must not only understand but applaud the moral causality driving your fiction. That comes from fate and free will intersecting instead of competing.

This is a classical concept, tracing back to Greek tragedy, which depicted terrible external forces meeting the protagonist’s own terrible tragic flaw. In Oedipus Rex, for example, he’s no more cursed by the gods than the ugliness of killing his father and marrying his mother, however unknowingly. This may seem irrelevant in our era of Facebook and reality TV. It’s not.

All great stories, regardless of period, begin with external circumstances so dire that protagonists are forced to overcome their personal shortcomings.  This doesn’t work if fate controls the whole deal. That defeats suspense. It also defeats a valiant protagonist struggle resulting in change that enlightens not only hero but audience, whether seated in amphitheater or IMax and perusing kindle or book.

Tip: Match external and internal equally.

If the hero is guaranteed triumph or doomed to misery, growth becomes impossible. If the hero can easily vanquish the politician, ex-husband, hurricane, or even asteroid, there’s no story.

Balance is difficult to maintain in every aspect of writing. Once dialogue flows, it’s easy to forget that you need narrative. When you focus on depicting setting, the plot might get away from you. The same syndrome affects plot and theme. But there maintaining equilibrium is more challenging still. Many writers let either internal or external struggle control particular scenes, if not the novel as a whole.

To avoid that, distribute power as equally as possible:

·         Give your protagonist—and antagonist—neither too much nor little opportunity.

·         Imitate reality. Why wouldn’t both protagonist and antagonist occasionally crave the path of least resistance?

·         Use obstacles to “grow” your protagonist. Every setback is an opportunity for change.

·         Change your antagonist also, into less “human” or perhaps more so.

·         Incorporate the internal during external trouble and—the reverse.

·         Seek overall balance between the trouble inside and out.

Whether you believe in fate or not, leave it out of your novel. Keep us guessing.

Deeply Different, Deeply the Same

Readers know perfectly well that passion and romance intertwine, that selfishness and generosity diverge. If, as E.B. White observed, “Writing is both mask and unveiling,” then fiction must offer something new. Obviously. But as Willa Cather observed over half a century ago, “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” What’s the poor novelist to do?

Why “mask and unveil,” of course. The secret is to “unveil” the subtle distinction between ardor and devotion and the subterranean similarity between selfishness and generosity. As your characters travel from tribulation to maturity, their struggle “masks” these truths.

It doesn’t ultimately matter if you use plot to find truths or use truths to instigate plot. But if you want your novel to have layers, texture, richness, originality—all those things we all hope our novel will have—then you need to dig deep.

If you start with your characters and plot, weigh some tough questions about the significance of those.

·         How are your protagonist and antagonist alike?

·         How could the dilemma one protagonist faces represent dilemmas that protagonists have faced independent of time or geography?

·         If the protagonist’s dilemma is personal, how would it play out in the sociopolitical sphere? If it’s sociopolitical, how could it simultaneously be personal?

·         What did your protagonist believe to be true when the journey began that proves false by the journey’s end?

If you start with theme, tackle some tough questions about the beliefs your novel expresses.

·         Develop a convincing argument against the theme you unequivocally believe with all your heart.

·         Explore how the theme would or would not change if you shifted it to another time, country, even planet.

·         Brainstorm until you find a metaphor that captures the truth of your theme.

·         Investigate why you believe this. Culture? Religion? Personal experience? Uncover at least one new reason for your belief.

Tip: Surprise us with what we never knew we knew.