Getting Into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn From Actors (19 page)

There’s not much left within her by now. She is empty and beaten and bruised. Somehow she pulls to her feet. She faces the front door, waiting, standing stiffly, breath ragged and makeup smeared.

Her husband opens the front door and eases into the room, carrying a dozen red roses. Seeing her expression, he stops in his tracks. Then, meekly, he holds the roses out to her. “I bought these for you.”

Two hours ago she would have accepted them with tears in her eyes. Now she can only glare at him. No calls, not even a flimsy excuse for being late. He’s been with
her
, hasn’t he. That woman. While she, his wife, waited and watched and cried.

He takes a step closer and offers the roses.

Pure hate surges through her. With a violent sweep of her arm, she knocks the roses to the floor.

Any doubts this woman loves her husband?

When I relate this scene in teaching at writers conferences, it’s interesting to watch the faces, especially of the female students. They’re right with me. When the husband presents the roses, they shake their heads. Their expressions are anything but friendly. And when the wife flings the roses onto the floor, they’re smugly satisfied. “Good for her!” These women
get
it. This scene feels real, human—even though, in the course of a couple hours, a woman goes from loving her husband to hating him. Now, of course that hate won’t last. Because she does still love him, despite the fact that he’s a jerk. (That love may just fade in time if he doesn’t turn himself around.) But at the moment she flings down the roses, she does truly
hate
him. Why? How can this happen in the course of a few hours?

If you pull the scene apart you’ll see all the “colors” of this woman’s love for her husband. The scene begins with her
anticipation
and
hope
. When he’s late she has to
cling more forcefully to that hope
. She
comforts
herself, thinking everything will be all right. As time passes
worry
sets in. Then
fear
.
Hope disappears
as she can no longer lie to herself.
Failure
overwhelms her.
Grief
brings tears.
Exhaustion
follows. Then
anger
, which brings
renewed strength
. In her rage—
denial
of her grief. Then she’s
again exhausted
. At this point she’s too tired to feel anything, even when she sees her husband’s car turn into the driveway. At sight of the roses she feels
astonishment
that he thinks a measly bunch of roses will make up for what he’s done to her.
Jealousy
follows.
Betrayal. Intense grief
. And finally,
hatred.

A couple things to note in this scene. First, notice the back and forth flow of emotions. One morphs into another, then goes away, then comes back again. At times numerous emotions are present at once. This is the way emotions work. It’s human nature.

Second, note the toll that these emotions take on the woman’s body. Strength ebbs—and yet a surge of some new emotion (here it’s anger) brings another burst of temporary energy.

Third, the level of each emotion is determined by the level of the one before it. Over the entire scene the level builds. But this happens one step at a time, each emotion providing the motivation and foundation for the one that comes after it.

The above scene is an example of an
emotion
building to its opposite. Now let me tell you a real-life scene that shows a
trait
moving to its opposite.

Years ago I was driving in town when the school crosswalk lady held up her sign to stop me. I’ll call her Ann. She was at that intersection every school day, doing her job. Ann loved those kids. Always had a kind word and a smile. She knew many of them by name. She was friendly and sweet and caring.

A small boy, about seven years old, stood at the edge of the street, waiting to cross. When I stopped she waved him to come on.

The boy began crossing directly across my path on the other side of the intersection, with Ann between us. Then I noticed a pickup truck on the intersecting road to my left. Coming fast. Preparing to make a turn toward where the boy was crossing. Obviously the driver wasn’t paying attention and didn’t see Ann or the child.

Ann was facing the boy as he crossed, but at the sound of the approaching engine, she whipped around. The truck kept coming. Ann thrust her sign higher in the air. Waved it around.

The truck kept coming.

Time slowed, the seconds stretching. Ann waved more frantically, the boy kept crossing, and the truck closed in. Ann never moved. If that truck didn’t stop, it would have to run her over before it reached the boy. I watched her profile pale. My own face felt drained of color.

At the last moment the truck skidded to a stop.

After a second or two I could breathe again. Wow, that was close.

Ann remained rooted to the spot. Slowly her arm came down. Intense relief flooded her face.

Then came the anger.

She yelled
at the driver. “What’s
wrong
with you? You could have
killed
that kid!” She kept yelling as the driver, a young man, mouthed
I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
The apologies didn’t do it for Ann. She raged on—until the young man raised his hands—
okay, okay, enough already.

At that moment Ann remembered the boy. After all,
he
was the reason she’d almost lost her life. She whirled around to make sure he was safely on the other side.

The boy stood frozen in the middle of the road, glaze-eyed and petrified. A deer in headlights.

Now. I ask you—what did kind, caring Ann do?

She
yelled
at him, that’s what. Waved her arms, too. “
What
are you
doing
? Get
out
of the
road!”

The boy blinked—and turned to run for the sidewalk. Once there he kept running toward home.

That was the moment in which Ann could relax. The truck had stopped, she was alive, and the boy was safe. She dropped her chin and sucked in air. Gathered herself.

Then she turned around, moved out of the intersection, and gestured for the young man in the truck to drive on. Her gesture was none too gentle.

The entire event couldn’t have taken more than ten seconds.

I submit to you that in those ten seconds I saw more of Ann’s love for the kids—in her very anger toward one of them—than I’ve ever seen before. If Ann were a character in your novel, fifteen scenes of her directing traffic and smiling at the kids could not equal the intensity of these ten seconds.

Now, if this scene was the first time we met Ann in a story, we’d think she was pretty hot-tempered. But placing it midway through the book, after showing us Ann’s caring trait scene after scene, could really pack a punch. The one thing Ann thought she would never do—she did. And when you think about it, her actions still arose from her trait of caring. But she showed that caring in a very different way.

Can you see what I’m talking about from these two scenes? I know “Coloring Passions” can sound pretty theoretical.
This
is how they play out in the real world. Just as love can reveal itself through hate, given the right circumstances, so joy can reveal itself through sorrow, courage through fear, trust through doubt. The trick is to create the scene, or a series of scenes, that allows your character this opposite’s natural unfolding. Like the pearl necklace against a black dress, your character will be deepened and enhanced when you do.

To sum up so far, in Coloring Passions we present the passion’s components and perhaps even an opposite of the trait or emotion. But how do we introduce these varied colors in a logical, believable way?

Part III: Find the Passion’s Growth

A passion’s growth can apply to individual scenes and your novel as a whole. In our scene about the woman and her cheating husband, we saw a natural progression in the colors of her emotion between love and hate. If you were to actually write that scene in a novel you’d need to portray that progression to its fullest.

I want to emphasize here my earlier point about how the intensity of one emotion leads to the next. Look at the crosswalk lady’s scene as an example. The intensity of Ann’s original trait of
caring
lead to an equal intensity of her
staunch protection
at the moment of danger. The imminent danger lead to the intensity of her
fear.
As the danger increased, her
fear
(and
resolve)
increased. The woman likely saw her life flash before her eyes. The intensity of that fear lead to an equal intensity in her
relief
when the truck stopped. The
relief
lead to her level of
anger
. That anger was at a pitch when she was yelling at the driver. It was so high that when she whipped around and saw the frightened boy she’d protected with her life—
it couldn’t yet dissipate.
There hadn’t been adequate time for that anger to subside. And so, in that moment, her anger spilled out at the boy.

This progression of emotion within a scene holds true for the novel as a whole. If your character is fearful at the beginning of your story, and by the end has found courage, we need to see this process and all its varied colors in a natural order that accurately represents life. Too often authors make their characters turn suddenly at the end of the story in order to give it a positive ending. If the character was prejudiced all his life, suddenly he’s not. If he was a liar, now he’s truthful. This is not the nature of human passions. To believe a change from fear to courage, a reader must see from the outset a tiny bead here and there of potential bravery. These may be almost imperceptible, but they will be present. Then, slowly, more “bravery” beads are added as the “fearful” beads decrease in number. A little more, and a little more, until the shade of the entire necklace begins to change. What’s more, somewhere along the way the color of each individual “courage” bead intensifies. Then perhaps a few “fearful” beads are added back in, and the shade becomes difficult to determine. (As the saying goes, “Two steps forward, one step back.”) Then more “courage” beads are returned, and still more and more added until finally the change is complete.

These changes won’t occur at an even pace throughout your book. Certain key events will prompt the addition of numerous beads at once, whether the positive ones of courage or the setbacks of returning fear. The crisis and climax of your story may involve a major change for your character. Readers expect that. But they will only believe such change when they’ve seen the natural progression of the colors that must precede it.

And what is fiction about if not the true portrayal of human emotions? That is our goal as authors. It’s what makes a character and a novel believable—and memorable.

A Side Note About Anger

Anger is an emotion we’re all too familiar with. So familiar, in fact, that we novelists can fall into terrible habits in depicting it. Just as love isn’t all smiles and dreamy eyes, anger isn’t all clenched fists and yelling.

A truth I’ve discovered about anger: it’s a secondary emotion. It always springs from something else. And the emotions it springs from can vary wildly—such as disappointment, betrayal, fear, even relief.
Relief?
Absolutely. You saw that in Ann’s story. Or—take a frantic mother who’s lost her small child in a store. What does she do when that child comes out of a hiding place? She will clutch the child to her chest in overwhelming relief. Then after a few moments—she shakes him. “
Don’t
you ever do that again!” Why is she mad, and with such intensity? Her son is back and safe. It’s over. Well, maybe not. The situation is over, but her emotions haven’t caught up yet. Back up the chain of her feelings. She’s so
mad
because she was so
relieved
because she was so
petrified
because she so desperately
loves
her son.

So—when you approach a scene in which your character will be angry, don’t focus on the anger itself. If you do, the character’s gestures and expressions may well end up being stereotypical. Focus instead on each emotion that leads up to it. Then when the anger comes—as in the scene of the married woman, the crosswalk lady, or this mother of a young child—the anger is likely to have built naturally and believably.

Study Samples

FROM:
Les Miserables
(classic), by Victor Hugo.