writing the heart of your story (10 page)

Now, maybe you’re even more confused. But, think. We want themes that are universal, that people all over can relate to. There are no unique new themes that are universal to all. And human behavior is such that it behaves for the most part in a logical way. So, of course if Jacob feels hurt by his father and has father issues, he’s not going to believe God loves him. And we all swear we will never turn out like our parents but . . .

It’s not a cop-out to give your characters predictable motivational behavior. These things work and make sense because they’re believable. If I had set Jacob set up so that his core need and fears were in contradiction or unrelated to the lie he believes and the hurt he’s suffered that has created his persona, I’m not going to have a believable character.

Does this make sense? If his core need is to get his father’s approval, but his greatest fear is falling off high places, and the lie he believes is he’s the smartest human ever born, he’s going to come across as a lunatic in need of a nifty straightjacket. Which is fine if the theme of my novel revolves around insanity.

So don’t randomly give your characters attitudes, behavior, and beliefs. Make sure everything they do, say, and feel is grounded in who they are and what life experiences they’ve had. Focus more on the internal qualities rather than the external, superficial ones.

In the next chapter we’ll look into some other ideas using additional character-developing techniques I utilize in planning my novels.

Think about
. . . spending some time mulling over your characters and these three essential components to their personalities. Spend more time thinking about their inner motivation instead of their outward attributes. Think of some hurt in their past that will serve the plot and premise of your story in the best way.

Chapter 14: The Clash of Characters

“I just love real characters. They're not pretentious, and every emotion is on the surface . . . their likes, their dislikes, their loves, their hates, their passions.”

~film director David O. Russell

We discussed how you can take an ordinary character and make him fascinating by developing those three essential components to their personalities: his core need, his greatest fear, and the lie he tells himself based on the wound he received early in life. I showed how my character Jacob in my novel
Intended for Harm
was all about father issues, and that tied in with my main theme. I pretty much had that as a basic idea when I started planning. (You’ll notice I usually use the word planning as opposed to plotting. It’s not because I’m against plotting, but I want to de-emphasize that structuring and growing you novel is not all about plot. Plot is important, but a plot with no heart, as I’ve mentioned, is just a plot.)

But then I had eight other main characters (POV characters) to develop, as well as a small handful of secondary characters. Since my secondary characters only had some bit roles, albeit essential to the story, I didn’t spend as much time going into these three main elements of their personalities. I still made them rich characters, and I suppose if I thought about it for a few minutes, I could easily come up with their needs, fears, and lies as well. I think I do this now so subconsciously with all my characters that it comes out as I write. However, I’m talking minor characters that pop up in a scene or two. But for all other characters that are integral to your story, you will want to spend time thinking about these things.

Jacob marries Leah while he’s at college. She gets a little wild, and pushes him into marriage, then pops out four kids, one after the other (she suffers from postpartum depression and is only happy when pregnant). Eight years later, she runs off with a rock band and abandons her family. So, I had to create these four children, since I knew the reader was going to watch them grow up for the next thirty or so years. That put somewhat of a burden on me to get a good understanding of family dynamics. Jacob ends up with six kids (he has two more after he marries Rachel), and each of those kids needed to be not just different but believable.

Have a Reason for Each Characteristic

Now, I could have come up with a nice diverse list of personality traits (maybe even grabbing some random characteristics from the Meyers-Briggs formula) and doled them out for variety, but I did not want to do that. Instead, I thought long about how Reuben, the firstborn, would have felt. What is the big hurt he experiences? When he’s seven years old, his mother leaves him. He’s the firstborn and oldest, so I gave him firstborn qualities. Firstborn children often feel they have to be grown-up. They can be serious and overly responsible. Maybe not always, but setting Reuben up to have those tendencies is believable. So what lie does he believe? That it’s his fault his mother left (very typical), and if he had been a better son, she wouldn’t have left.

Starting with this, I envisioned Reuben as a sweet child but a burden to his dad (Jacob did not want Leah to get pregnant), which is something he senses. I also decided, then, to make the next child, Simon, be Leah’s favorite. That exacerbates Reuben’s low sense of self-worth and the lie he believes. If he sees how much his mom loves Simon, he believes more deeply that he’s a nothing. This then becomes a repeat of Jacob and his father—a son wishing to please his dad but feeling he’s failed. Hence, I tied in with my overarching theme. Reuben’s core need, of course, is to have his father love him, and by the time he’s an adult, the two of them have worked through some of this and there’s healing there. But I made it a rocky road the whole way.

Now, Simon has other issues. He’s been the loved child of the bunch, so when his mom bolts when he’s five, he’s furious. I made him a hot-tempered, volatile personality. The lie he believes is that women are evil and traitorous. He’s so hurt and angry, he goes through life distrusting women. When his father remarries, Simon wages war with Rachel, the new “mom,” for years. His greatest need is to have his real mother’s love again, so when he’s eighteen and he seeks Leah out, you can only imagine what happens when his long-awaited dream explodes in his face.

Now Watch Them Clash

Now, when I put Reuben and Simon together in scenes as they grow up together, you can see how their issues will underlie their interaction. You can picture the arguments as Reuben tries to dutifully be a better son to his new mother, whereas Simon tries to sabotage her inclusion in the family every way he can. Your characters will clash if their core needs, fears, and lies threaten one another.

Then I have four other children, four other intense sets of dynamics introduced. If you recall the Bible story, Joseph is Jacob’s favorite, and because Joseph outwardly receives such favoritism, Jacob’s brothers all hate him. By the time he graduates high school, they are after him with murderous intent and drug him and throw him off a freeway overpass hoping to kill him. Joseph is a bit arrogant and gifted, which makes showing him favoritism all the more easy for Jacob. Not only that, he’s the love child between Jacob and his new wife, and it’s expected that merged families will foment some conflict and resentment between integrated siblings. All these dynamics are typical, which helps make the motivation and actions of my characters not only believable but relatable.

I hope by sharing this process with you I’m giving you ideas on how to grow and nurture your characters into deep, compelling ones. You need to have your themes in mind, and then work from your protagonist outward. You want to think about having traits that are common or expected to some extent, like Reuben’s firstborn issues. You don’t have to have them, but they offer a great framework to work within. Again, think universality.

Think about
. . . taking two or three of your characters that you’ve worked on developing (and now have those three components well entrenched) and look at the dynamics between them. How can you make their core needs clash? How can their lies trigger a reaction in the others?

Chapter 15: Character Arcs

“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied

by drawbacks and discomforts.”

~author Arnold Bennett

I’ve never quite understood the use of the word arc when talking about plot and character. I keep picturing a big boat in a very heavy rainstorm. But seriously, even the image of an arc (shaped like a rainbow—which brings us back to the other ark . . . hmm) confuses me. For if you are creating a character arc showing some sort of progression of a character’s inner growth through your novel as a bow that goes up and then comes down, it feels to me as if the character didn’t go anywhere. They end up on the same line or plane. So I have trouble using that term.

A Journey, Not an Arc

However, I am concerned with character growth, and it’s a big, essential part of your story to take your protagonist on a journey of the heart that starts in one place and ends up in another. Just as a literal journey can take us to new places where we see new things, so, too, a character taken on an inner journey should end up seeing new things about herself. (I have an easier time talking about this growth process in terms of journey instead of geometry terms; I wasn’t all that great in math). So here’s another thing I find helpful when creating characters and working out the growth they’re going to experience by the end of the book.

Persona to Essence

Remember how I discussed in previous chapters the way the character will start in his persona (the face he presents the world) and eventually discover and embrace his true essence? I’ve critiqued manuscripts in which the character has a set view of the world, and in one scene, because of a few things someone says to him, he completely changes and becomes a new man.

That’s just not believable, people. Having your character change as events affect him happens over time. We all know how hard it is to change even one irritating habit. Our spouses have possibly been nagging us for decades about something annoying we do, and though we really mean to change, we find it so hard to do so. We are often dogmatic in our beliefs, and even passionate regarding the sports teams we cheer on—sometimes randomly chosen. But if someone tries to get us to switch loyalties . . . Enough said.

Once you have your basic plot all worked out, you can parallel it with your character’s inner journey. This ties in with the MDQ we went over earlier, and, if you recall, your character has to not only arrive at his plot goal by the end of the book, he has to arrive at his spiritual goal as well, and that implies inner change—gradual change.

I use large charts and create something akin to a Gantt chart (a timeline, basically) for my plot. I often do so with my characters. In fact, for Intended for Harm I made a big chart with each character on a timeline with the vertical lines denoting years (I had to cover forty years) and the horizontal lines for the characters. This chart was specifically for the character journey, the spiritual MDQ process (yes, all your main characters should grow and change). Post-It notes work great on large charts since you can move them around, by the way. I make sure to keep them out of reach of my cats, who are great at dislodging the notes if I lay the charts flat on the table.

At the start of the timeline I have a note regarding the character’s persona at the beginning of the story. At the end I have a note about where they’ll be spiritually at the end—in their true essence, or at least indicating they’re getting there. There’s no rule that says your protagonist has to reach her goal.

Remember, the MDQ asks a question like “Will Indie Jones retrieve the Ark of the Covenant at the end of the movie?” (Hmm, another ark . . .) The answer might be no. Same with your character’s spiritual goal. She may not come into her true essence by the end of the book. But unless you want a completely postmodern hopeless ending, you’ll want to show some glimpse that she’s on her way, which often is more believable than having her fully arrive by the last page.

Change Comes in Stages

Once I have the first and last notes in place, I think of all the stages of change my character will go through. I might jot down a scene idea in a sentence stating something that happens to her or that she sees that will shift her view. Be sure to note how her view gets shifted. Remember, you have to change characters in stages, starting with their opinions and attitudes and eventually changing their core beliefs, which can sometimes take a lifetime (not for you to do this—I mean the character’s lifetime, just to be clear here). Having an idea of concrete scenes that can facilitate or instigate these gradual changes will make your character’s journey believable. Let me explain this in more detail.

Build It Gradually

It’s fine to have a character passionate about a belief or public policy or cause. And through that character you can showcase your theme. But you want to be careful that, in your desire to send a message to your readers, you don’t sound like your pontificating or pushing your moral standards on your readers. You will just sound like you have an axe to grind, and that axe will end up falling on your own head by doing that. A compelling way to get your theme across is to have a character opposed at first to the belief you want them to eventually embrace, but this has to be done gradually and believably.

There is a great sequence of steps author James Scott Bell presents in a workshop showing the order in which a character has to change for it to be believable. These are the things that change in the character over time, in this order: