Your First Novel Page 8
Here are some questions you might want to use when interviewing your characters:
• What is your earliest memory?
• What do you like best about yourself?
• When was the last time you cried?
• Have you ever come close to dying?
• Do you believe you are a good spouse?
• Do you believe you are a good parent?
• What's the last nightmare you recall having?
• Have you ever had your heart broken? • Have you ever broken another's heart?
• Have you ever stolen?
• What was the last lie you told?
• What makes you laugh?
• What do you read?
• Have you ever physically harmed another person?
• Have you ever saved someone's life?
• Do you believe in God?
• Do you pray?
• Do you have any superstitions?
• What languages do you speak?
• What sort of education did you receive?
• How well do you sleep?
• What was the last song you sang?
• When was the last time you danced?
THE "SHOW, DON'T TELL" OF WRITING CHARACTERS_
Let your characters reveal themselves to the reader with actions rather than secondhand statements. A character will be flat and forgettable if we learn about her personality traits by being told in narrative summary or by having secondary characters define the protagonist in dialogue. You don't need to say someone is obsessed with computer games if you show him ignoring the ringing phone while he plays. You don't need to tell us someone is sexually timid if you show us the way she moves her legs away from the young man who sits down beside her in the subway. We'll know that someone is angry, without being told, if we see him slam the cupboard door so hard it bounces back into the wall.
A successful character "show" is found in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol The first time Bob Crachit is free of Mr. Scrooge's presence, we don't need to be told what kind of spirit he has—the character demonstrates it perfectly.
The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no greatcoat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honor of it being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town, as hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman's bluff.
An exception to this "show, don't tell" rule is when a character makes a statement that sums up a theme or that particular character's personal philosophy. In some ways this is a "tell" rather than "show" moment, but if handled well it can be very effective. But be careful—it's easy to cross the line—if you go too far you can end up sounding trite. A minor character can make a theme statement—it's not reserved for heroes only. Even a villain can be the messenger. As Donald Maass points out in Writing the Breakout Novel:
If a [character's] conviction can be passionately and lyrically conveyed ... in a way that is both natural to the situation and understated in its poetry, the passage can become a powerful defining statement, the protagonist's declaration of purpose.
In Stephen King's The Green Mile, the black prisoner, who is accused of murder but seems to possess the power to heal, makes a very simple statement that sums up his life purpose after he invites the protagonist to join him in his cell for a few minutes.
"What do you want, John Coffey?" "Just to help."
At the opening of Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding, we learn that twelve-year-old Frankie is an outsider.
This was the summer when for a long time she had not been a member. She belonged to no club and was a member of nothing in the world. Frankie had become an unjoined person who hung around in doorways, and she was afraid.
The following statement of purpose is delivered after Frankie is accused of being jealous of her brother's impending marriage. In a feverish rant, she declares her intention to go off with the bride and groom on their honeymoon and live with them, never to return home. It sums up her suffering.
"We will have thousands of friends, thousands and thousands and thousands of friends. We will belong to so many clubs that we can't even keep track of all of them. We will be members of the whole world."
One character can also give the reader a sense of a whole group of characters, There's an example of this in the short-lived but beautifully written HBO series Carnivale. In an episode titled "Pick a Number," written by Ronald D. Moore, the snake dancer, Ruthie, speaks for the group at the funeral of Dora May, one of the company's performers, who has been murdered. The informality in Ruthie's words perfectly illustrates the unexpected relationship this group of characters has with heaven. She doesn't beg or make excuses—she prays with the intimacy of someone addressing an equal, because God is one of their own.
Lord, I knew this girl. Her name was Dora May Dreyfuss. She was like kin to me and everyone standing here. You knew her, Lord. You know she had a hard life. Some of what she done you may not approve of. Some of what she done you may call sin. But she was a good girl, Lord. And we loved her. And we want you to welcome her into your arms. And we know you will.
CHARACTER AND PLOT_
If you are creating characters from scratch—not basing them on real people—think on this: What do your main character and your plot have in common? You're at the early stages here, the easiest time to mold your hero. Your protagonist's mind and heart need to be interwoven throughout the story. The hero and plot either mirror each other or contrast with each other. Somehow they must fit.
MIRRORING HERO AND PLOT
• A farm is dying and will be sold. The hero is a farmer who is old and dying.
• A marriage has become a facade and is crashing and burning. The hero is a playwright who has become cliche, and her plays are bombing.
• A kingdom is facing a battle it will probably not win because it has broken a treaty with the neighboring realm. The hero king is losing his grip on his sanity because he has broken a vow to his queen.
CONTRASTING HERO AND PLOT
• A town is succumbing to the control of conservative politics. The hero is a liberal who opens a New Age shop in town.
• A woman is killed, supposedly by a ghost. The hero is her brother, who investigates the death but does not believe in the supernatural.
• A plane makes an emergency landing in a swamp, where it is disabled and starting to sink. The hero is an obsessive-compulsive accountant who can't swim.
Look at your storyline and your protagonist's main desire or fear. Whether they mirror or contrast with each other, list how the two can work together or against one another to heighten tension.
RECOMMENDED READING
Writing the Breakout Novel, by Donald Maass. Here's a great book for learning how to develop your protagonist into an unforgettable character.
The Writer's Guide to Character Traits, by Dr. Linda N. Edelstein. This book offers an intriguing list of personality types from the mild to the wild, including specific behaviors and their corresponding influences.
The Writer's Guide to Writing Your Screenplay, by Cynthia Whitcomb. Although this book is about screenwriting, it is great for novelists, especially the section on character evolution.
CHAPTER FIVE:
making your story vivid
DIALOGUE_
Once you have characters, they will start having conversations. Dialogue is the term for this verbal communication. It sounds simple, but dialogue needs to be well written and in balance with the story in order to work well. Too much or too little dialogue can damage your novel. At a writers conference I once attended, an editor on a literary panel confessed that she and her colleagues had a practice of flipping through the pages of manuscripts in their slush piles to look for the white space on the page made by dialogue. If there was too much white page, or not enough, they wouldn't even bother to read the first sentence of the novel before rejecting it.
SCENE VS. SUMMARY
In your storytelling some pieces of the plot will be scenes, the little dramas that you invite the reader into, and some pieces will be summary or reflection. When you let the reader into the room to watch a pair of lovers argue and then step back to tell us that afterward they slept in separate rooms and both tossed and turned until dawn, you have followed a scene with summary. When you let the reader into the courtroom for the protagonist's statement on the witness stand and follow it with half a page comparing the justice system to the fall of the Roman Empire, you have followed a scene with reflection. In the former you're giving the reader a shortened version of action, and in the latter you're stepping out of the action and making a philosophical, poetic, or psychological observation. In both cases, passages with dialogue alternate with passages that have none.
As an example, look at the simple tale of Cinderella. Meeting the prince at the ball requires a scene with dialogue, but getting Cinderella back to her cottage after midnight can be summarized. In Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell writes the scene in which Scarlett tells Ashley that she loves him using nothing but dialogue, but the next two weeks, during which Scarlett prepares to marry Charles, she summarizes.
In Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk goes from a dialogue scene in which a realtor is trying to sell a haunted house over the phone, to a reflective passage lamenting the limitations of linear time on storytelling. And in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, dialogue in which the protagonist's employer informs her of Rebecca's death is followed by reflection on first love.
"An appalling tragedy," she was saying, "the papers were full of it of course. They say he never talks about it, never mentions her name. She was drowned you know, in a bay near Manderley ..."
I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.
If you find that your tendency is to write lots of dialogue, review your plot and summarize some less dynamic scenes, or pull back from an important scene and let the narrator reflect. If you find you are summarizing most
of the plot with no dialogue, find important story points and make scenes out of them. Let the reader in for an intimate look.
DISTILLING CONVERSATIONS
Some people think that great dialogue must be a chain of clever remarks, an unending witty banter. Others think that great dialogue must be patterned after everyday speech, and you'd better get on a city bus and start recording everyday people's conversations word for word. But the truth is, great dialogue is a combination of the two. It has to sound natural but also be more potent than everyday language. What you need to do is listen for the natural voice of your characters, decide what they need to communicate, and distill these two elements into a concise conversation.
What does your character sound like? Is he a man of few words or is he verbose? Does your hero mask her meaning in polite flattery or is she straightforward? Is your villain formal or casual? Is the sidekick an optimist or a pessimist? Nervous? Stoic? If your main character has a very specific speech problem—for instance, if he puts together words in a very unusual way as one who is suffering from Alzheimer's—you'll need to do specific research, but otherwise you will probably be able to determine your characters' voices easily. You created them. Get out some paper and let them talk to you. Practice writing a diary entry from each main character's point of view to make sure you can hear them in your head.
From when and where do your characters come? Is your protagonist a 1920s baseball player from New York? Is your villain a 1960s biker from Texas? One trick to developing an ear for your characters is to read novels and rent movies with the locations and time settings of your novel. (Be wary, though—some books and movies are more accurate than others.) You can also find period slang dictionaries that might help you make your characters sound genuine.
Once you know how your characters talk, sketch out what needs to be communicated in your scene and then do not have them say it that way. You want your characters to say something that means what you sketch out in the outline, but you don't want to just put quotation marks around those words and phrases. You have to distill the meaning and put it in character first.
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, BY HARPER LEE OUTLINE OF WHAT NEEDS TO BE SAID
Jem should reprimand his sister, Scout, for picking on a boy smaller than her because that goes against the school yard code. Scout should complain that the boy, Walter, might be smaller than her, but he's older and so should know better. She should complain to Jem that Walter got her in trouble that day with the new schoolteacher. Scout's furious with Walter because she feels it was his fault that she was embarrassed in front of the entire class. The teacher said Scout was "starting off on the wrong foot." All this humiliation was Walter's fault.
UNDISTILLED VERSION
"Stop it, Scout," Jem reprimanded me. "Don't pick on Walter. He's smaller than you. That's not how we do things in the school yard."
"He may be smaller than me, but he's older," I complained. "He should know better. Walter got me in trouble with the new teacher." I was furious. "He embarrassed me in front of the entire class. The teacher told me I was getting off on the wrong foot, and it's all Walter's fault."
DISTILLED/PUBLISHED VERSION
'You're bigger'n he is," [Jem] said.
"He's as old as you, nearly," I said. "He made me start off on the wrong foot."
THE PRINCESS BRIDE, BY WILLIAM GOLDMAN OUTLINE OF WHAT NEEDS TO BE SAID
One of three kidnappers needs to get the prince's betrothed to stop her horse so they can capture her. She should agree to listen. The leader should make up some lie about who they are—something believable for two men and a giant. He should make them sound unthreatening and harmless, perhaps even in need of help themselves. He should sound reassuring. And once they've gotten close enough to lay hands on her, they should drop the pretense.
UNDISTILLED VERSION
"Stop your horse, please!" the Sicilian cried, blocking her way. "But don't be scared. We're just harmless circus performers." They seemed unthreatening so she stopped.
"We're lost and we need help," he said. "Be reassured, we won't hurt you." He stepped close enough to grab her reins. "Aha! Now it's you who needs help!" he laughed.
DISTILLED/PUBLISHED VERSION
"A word?" the Sicilian said, raising his arms. His smile was more angelic than his face.
Buttercup halted. "Speak."
"We are but poor circus performers," the Sicilian explained. "It is dark and we are lost. We were told there was a village nearby that might enjoy our skills."
'You were misinformed," Buttercup told him. "There is no one, not for many miles."
"Then there will be no one to hear you scream," the Sicilian said, and he jumped with frightening agility toward her face.
SAYING "SAID"
When you write a play, teleplay, or movie script, you indicate who is speaking a line of dialogue by printing the character's name before the words, and it is clear to the audience who is speaking because the actors are seen and heard. But in a novel you need to make it clear for the reader who is saying what. The most common tool for this task is the word said.
"The cat's on fire," said Zoey.
Adam said, "Hand me that seltzer bottle."
To make your dialogue roll tripplingly off the tongue, you don't want to put in too many saids or too few. Putting said after every spoken line is too much, but if you don't include enough direction you might confuse the reader as to who is speaking.
If only two people are talking together, and there is little description of action in between, you can go for several rallies of dialogue without repeati
ng who said what.
"You're home early," said Yuri. "Am I?" said Belle. "Where's your coat?" "I must've left it at the office." "Dinner's not ready yet." "I'm too tired to eat anyway."
It's easy to keep track of who said what here partly because the dialogue goes in an ABABAB pattern, and partly because one person has just returned home and the content of her dialogue reaffirms this. Here's a situation in which there are four characters present.
The man and his bodyguard helped Claire and Denise out of the cab. "Where are we?" she said.
He handed her the envelope and said, 'You told us you lived here."
Because there are two males and two females, it's difficult to tell which he or she is speaking.
Here's an example in which the number of exchanges, especially when broken with action, confuses the identity of the speakers.
"Take that back," he said.
She smiled and said, "Fat chance." "Then I won't tell you my secret." "As if I cared."
The food arrived, two lobsters and two bibs. "Why do we always come here?" "We?"
By now it's impossible to tell if the last line was his or hers. After the plates of food arrived, there should have been a said to get us back on track.
You can use other words for said—replied, answered, called, but don't use weird replacements. Unless you are writing humor, and you're good at it, do
not have characters chortle or bellow. Never have them opine or orate. Unless you're as brilliant as P.G. Wodehouse, you'd be safer with a plain said.
Literal Substitutes
Screamed, cried, shouted, yelled, called, whispered, hissed, and laughed can work well if they are used literally. If a character screams a word, such as her child's name, because she sees him about to run in front of a car, it might work. But if a character is simply annoyed at another character and screams, "I told you before, I can do it myself!" it will probably come across as bad writing. Remember to be frugal with said substitutes. Don't overuse them or you'll slow down the story.