Assorted Thoughts On Character Selection And Design

     When I’m in the middle of writing a novel, I seldom take the time to think about the fundamentals of the enterprise. I’ve done enough of this to have internalized those principles. However, some recent experiences have caused me to revisit a subject a lot of fledgling writers struggle over: what makes a character, particularly a Marquee character, plausible and attractive.

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     In my little tome The Storyteller’s Art, I posited a three-tier scheme for characters:

• Marquee Characters: The persons whom the story is mostly “about.”
• Supporting Cast: Persons involved with the decisions and actions of the Marquee Characters, but whose fates are of less importance.
• Spear Shakers: Persons who appear where they do in the story simply because there has to be someone in that slot; unimportant except as human stage dressing.

     Broadly, a good story will pose its Marquee characters with conflicts, non-trivial decisions to make, and above all else tests of their values. By implication, they must have values, arranged in some sort of priority scheme. The story will then compel them to confront those values and ponder what they’re willing to say, do, pay, or sacrifice to uphold them.

     The writer’s decisions from that point forward will center on manifesting and demonstrating the Marquee characters’ values through the events of the story. This makes it fairly “obvious” that character design must come first.

     No plot idea is sufficient to make a story “work” if it isn’t first matched to characters who will act out their values through it.

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     I inserted a large number of Marquee characters into Experiences:

• Neurophysiologist and businesswoman Rachel MacLachlan;
• College dean Amanda Hallstrom;
• Novelist Holly Martinowski;
• Holly’s flatmate Rowenna Walsingham;
• Holly’s “fangirl” Irene Carroll;
• Security specialists Larry and Trish Sokoloff;
• “Star-crossed lovers” Daniel Loring and Ching-nien Chen;
• And Onteora County’s Catholic pastor, Father Raymond Altomare.

     These interacted with one another and a gaggle of Supporting Cast characters of varying importance.

     Ten Marquee characters is about twice as many as even a large novel normally contains. At one point I found myself wondering whether I’d crafted an unmanageable mess for myself. I spent some time dithering over whether to “thin the herd” in the interests of keeping the story coherent. After a while I decided to tackle the challenge around the waist, as the central theme of the story – the power of the human desire for acceptance — required all of them to be depicted in its fullness. It proved to be a great deal of work, more even than Innocents had cost me, though I was ultimately pleased with the result.

     However, the price of that decision has followed me into the sequel to Experiences, tentatively titled The Wise and the Mad. Seven of the Marquee characters from the former book will appear in the latter one, along with a few new ones whose significance to the story is yet to be fully determined.

     If I weren’t already bald from “natural causes,” this would do it to me for sure.

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     It’s a blessing to have your characters “snatch the story from you:” i.e., to dictate what the course of events must be, once the setting and initial conditions have been specified. Strong characters can do that for you. Indeed, the stronger they are, the more likely it is. But you must be ready to accede to their demand for control of the story.

     I’ve mentioned this before, which prompted fantasy and science fiction writer Margaret Ball to comment as follows:

     On moderately bad days the characters storm through the ms informing me that they never said anything like the vapidities I've ascribed to them. On really bad days I'm reduced to begging the characters not to hurt me.

     I got a big chuckle out of that, largely because I’ve often felt the same way. Nor is it a condition restricted only to us two. Indeed, I’ve begun to wonder if it’s a condition that should be striven for...but I must admit that I can think of no way to bring it about, apart from making your Marquee characters as vivid as you can.

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     Another blessing, this one a bit more mixed than the one above, is to have a Supporting Cast character grab you by the lapels and shout “I deserve to be Marquee status!” That’s happened to me several times. In one case it caused the complete redesign of a novel, and the reorientation of its sequel. In the others I’ve “promoted” the assertive Supporting Cast member to Marquee status in a subsequent novel.

     Now for the “mixed” part. Apart from the eventual benefits, no writer actually enjoys rewriting. As for a large-scale redesign that forces you to discard your original outline, synopsis, and notes, let’s just say I’d rather have another root canal. But there are few assets of greater value than a character strong enough to carry a novel on his own shoulders, so one must learn to pay the price for it.

     Larry Niven, well known for his way with invented words among other things, has counseled us to “Save your typos!” It’s good advice. To that I will add: Don’t just carelessly toss off your Supporting Cast characters, expecting to use them just once. Be willing to think deeply about them. Some of them could be hiding heroic (or diabolic) stature of which you’re currently unaware.

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     If there’s any more important brief maxim than John Brunner’s Two Rules of Fiction:

1. The raw material of fiction is people.
2. The essence of story is change.

     ...I’m unacquainted with it. The most fundamental rule of all is therefore:

Story == People Changing.

     If the changes are dramatic, the story will be arresting...but that requires that the people -- the characters -- must be plausible and vividly colored. No plot, however original or convoluted, can save a story populated by pallid or implausible characters. On the occasions when I’ve gotten them right, all else has followed. On other occasions...let’s not go there, shall we?

What Makes A Novel Rereadable?

     As I’ve mentioned before, here and elsewhere, I own a lot of books: physical volumes, not eBooks, though my collection of those is growing too. At last count I found over 13,000 of the little buggers on shelves, in boxes, and stacked precipitously on assorted surfaces throughout the Fortress of Crankitude...and that was a lot of years ago.

     You could easily get the idea that I like books. And I do. Not only do I read a great deal, I find it next to impossible to give one away, even if I found it inane, insulting, or otherwise offensive. So they accumulate.

     Yet I read so much, and so swiftly, that I often lack anything to read that I haven’t yet read. Most contemporary fiction bores or otherwise displeases me. I can’t abide unoriginality, bad grammar, lack of fundamental storytelling skills, or a story that lacks moral and ethical standards. (Sarah Hoyt has called that last fault “grey goo.”) I also draw the line at “SJW preaching.” That category comprises all “stories” intended to make the reader feel bad for not being a wholly “converged” social-justice asshole warrior to whom the sole worthy purpose of a life is to harangue other people for not being equally assholian virtuous. So even though the independent-writers movement is producing fiction at a rate to boggle the imagination of a Manhattan publishing magnate, I often find myself rereading.

     Mind you, not all of those 13,000 physical volumes get reread. For one thing, a lot of them are textbooks or reference materials. You can only spend so much time on the 2018 Statistical Abstract of the United States before it’s superseded by the all-new, all-thrilling 2019 edition. The same goes for the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. So my rereading is almost entirely of novels.

     Not all novels, however much I may have enjoyed them at first acquaintance, are rereadable. I could reel off hundreds of titles of books I enjoyed – and still own – that I wouldn’t reread. So there must be some characteristic that divides the rereadable books from the ones that lack that grace. Indeed, I’d hesitate to say that there’s only one such characteristic. So let’s have a go at it.

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     The major elements of a worthy bit of fiction are:

• Plot,
• Characterization,
• Style,
• Theme.

     Those four elements are the power cells of all worthwhile fiction. There are other aspects to a novel, of course: premises, setting, its balance between narration and dialogue, dark-light pairings, and still others. But those are less likely to install a book inextricably in the reader’s memory.

     I don’t think a novel must have a complex plot to be rereadable. I’ve certainly read enough such fiction – I’ve enjoyed many a Tom Clancy-style techno-thriller, and such a novel normally has a complex plot – but I can’t think of a book I’ve reread specifically to re-experience its plot convolutions. Similarly, a striking character or set of characters isn’t by itself a reason to reread a book. Many books are animated by important themes (“eternal verities,” as Tom Kratman styles them), but once I’ve encountered them they aren’t enough by themselves to move me to reread them.

     However, there are synergies possible among a book’s plot, characterization, and themes, which strike me as evidences of exceptional auctorial insight and skill, that do cause me to come back to it. These might best be summed up under the heading of drama.

     Not many people could give you a definition of drama. Indeed, the dictionary definition raises more questions than it answers:

     drama noun: any situation or series of events having vivid, emotional, conflicting, or striking interest or results.

     But what sort of “situation or series of events” produces “vivid, emotional, conflicting, or striking interest or results” — ?

     For me this is the question that separates the truly great stories, the ones that can be reread many times over the course of one’s life, from those that are mere transient diversions and entertainments.

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     For me, drama has always emerged from a combination of the following:

1. A well-characterized protagonist with quite definite values;
2. A morally or ethically challenging situation involving events that clash with the protagonist’s values, whether or not those events were brought about deliberately by a conscious agent;
3. A high price for the resolution of that clash, which only the protagonist can pay.

     There’s conflict. There’s an emotional coupling between the protagonist and the challenge he faces. And there’s the price to be paid, which should be almost as high as the value the protagonist seeks to defend, on the grounds that nothing valuable can be cheaply purchased.

     Mind you, there’s an under-layer of necessities that shouldn’t be neglected here. They fall into the category of a fiction writer’s tools: valid methods of characterization, viewpoint management, proper use of time and place, and the effective exploitation of Supporting Cast characters. The writer must be proficient with these tools, or his fiction, no matter how potentially dramatic his conception, won’t come off. But that’s a subject for another screed.

     As I type this I’ve been thinking about the stories I’ve found most rereadable. All of them follow the outline I sketched above. Some embellish on it, for example by embedding distinct plot threads that take a whole novel to converge, or by having multiple protagonists who are all good guys but have conflicts with one another. One way or another, the elements I’ve cited are present in all of them – and I’ve returned to them several times each over the years, usually when I was in a “how on Earth can I bring this off?” quandary about one of my own stories.

     I once wrote that drama only exists when men must suffer for being good. It strikes me as a compact encapsulation of the ideas expressed above. It’s also consistent with the books to which I return repeatedly, whether for technical instruction, for characterological insight, or simply for the moral uplift from the stories they tell.

     Such books are the exact opposite of “grey goo.” In a world in which the hero is becoming an endangered species and moral and ethical distinctions are all too often blurred – sometimes by the deliberate action of persons with evil intentions – they make enduring, valued companions. Especially for a writer who repeatedly asks himself “how could I imagine that I might ever equal that achievement?”

A Present To A Despairing Writer

     As Experiences is a sequel to another novel that didn’t sell well, I knew that reviews would be hard to come by. Most reviewers are fair-minded – thank You, God – and won’t review a book whose prequel is, shall we say, “outside their experience.” (Cue the laugh track, Ed.) But look what I found under my Groundhog Day tree!

     A brilliant interweaving of storylines continues the complex issues raised in “Innocents.” Porretto’s ability to illuminate social issues with challenging sf hypotheses is the more impressive given that these books are relatively short and quite fast-paced, making them compelling reads. Many writers say less and take twice as many words to do it.

     That review is by Margaret Ball, a writer of considerable ability in her own right! I think I’ll just bask in this for a while...

The Bullies Of The "Book Community"

     There are some things that cannot be said too often. Some of them are hardly said at all.

     Have you heard about the tragedy of Amelie Zhao? If not, it’s about time:

     Amelie Wen Zhao is a Young Adult author whose debut sci-fi/fantasy novel, Blood Heir, was set for a June release from a major publisher, as part of a three-book deal. When the deal was announced a year ago, Zhao, who is just starting her career, made her excitement public....

     Well, guess what? The book, which had positive buzz ( Barnes & Noble called it one of the most anticipated YA releases of the year ), has been the subject of a massive Social Justice Warrior pile-on on social media, as Jesse Singal discussed in a tweetstorm. Very few people have even read the novel, but the mob attacked it as racist for a variety of reasons, one of them being that Zhao created a fantasy world where “oppression is blind to skin color” (this, from the press release). It’s a fantasy world, and people haven’t even read the book, but the mob was certain that Blood Heir is racist, and that its author — a young woman raised in Beijing, but now living in New York City — ought to be shut down.

     And guess what? The SJW attackers got their wish: Miss Zhao voluntarily withdrew the book from its scheduled publication.

     Amelie Zhao seems to be a perfectly sweet and decent young woman with a real storyteller’s gift – and she had achieved a lifelong dream. But her SJW attackers have destroyed that dream out of...what? A desire for “justice?” There’s some sort of “justice” in bludgeoning an innocent young woman into surrendering her achievement?

     We both know the answers, Gentle Reader.

     Larry Correia lit into Miss Zhao’s attackers with a furious and exemplary incisiveness. It’s too good to excerpt; please read it all. Not that it will have the slightest effect upon those vicious monsters, but Monster Hunter Correia is the right man to give them the shellacking they’ve earned.

     Will Miss Zhao recover from this brutalization? Possibly in the long term. But the moral of the story “should” be “obvious.”

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     I have no interest in the sort of Pub World acceptance Miss Zhao pursued and achieved. At this point I regard the conventional publishers with disdain. They’re dominated by SJW thinking. Worse, as Miss Zhao has learned the hard way, they make juicy targets for the SJW hordes.

     Indie is the way to go. With the exception of Baen Books, there are no traditional publishers with the courage God gave a cabbage. Moreover, the ongoing extinction of the brick-and-mortar bookstore in favor of Amazon and comparable outlets has reduced what a traditional publisher can offer a new writer in the way of marketing support to barely more than what a diligent indie can accomplish on his own. And not only does the indie writer retain absolute control over his book; he also gets to keep a much bigger slice of his revenues pie.

     Best of all, the indie writer is “bully-proof.” Anyone who can be shamed out of reading a book by SJW hysterics would be unlikely to read it in the first place and even less likely to enjoy it or recommend it to his friends.

     All that having been said, it remains the obligation of good men to whack the SJW bullies across the chops – preferably with a tire iron – whenever and wherever they poke their heads above the slime line. I salute Larry Correia for having done so unambiguously and thoroughly. There are other places where the job needs to be done, most notably in the ever more antisocial “social media” and in reviews at Amazon and other online outlets.

     It’s a form of support your preferred indie writers need quite as much as your dollars. Please don’t stint them.