How It's Done

     You know the old saying:

If you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance,
Baffle ‘em with bullshit!

     ...and it is so. But from time to time, the brilliance and the bullshit make a matched set. Indeed, they complement one another so well that they raise the effect to a new height. Here’s an example:

     As the dessert forks were being licked clean, a breathless Earnest Redding burst into the room and raced to the captain’s side.
     “We…I…You’ll…” he gasped.
     “Easy Earnest, catch your breath, what’s wrong?”
     “Nothing’s wrong, Captain,” he managed after taking a gulp of air. “It’s what’s right! We’ve had a breakthrough.”
     “Really?” Sera asked. “Something beyond the information I provided?”
     “Oh yes, very much so, and no. Though we wouldn’t have been able to manage it without your graviton systems and all those research studies you provided, as well.”
     “So, what is it, then?” Terrance asked, his eyes gleaming with anticipation.
     “We’ve discovered how to use the graviton emission systems that Captain Sera provided us with—emissions that work in matter repulsion and photon redirection in directional and focused beams and waves—to create a generalized and consistent suspension wave in the form of a massive halo upon which we were able to successfully place a McPherson generality focus layer tuned to a specific area of space, while altering the gravitational waves supporting it to form a hard shell of non-focused space underneath it.” He said without taking a single breath.
     “OK, I’m no slouch when it comes to physics, but you’ve gone levels beyond what I knew existed,” Tanis said.
     “It’s a stasis shield,” Sera said, feeling as though the breath had been sucked from her. “He figured out how to make a gods damned stasis shield.”

     [From Malorie Cooper’s Destiny Lost, the first volume of her Orion War series.]

     In a way, the above is about characterization. Earnest Redding, the out-of-breath figure who delivered that ultra-technical soliloquy – and don’t bother yourself about the details; it’s all the sort of ersatz physics you’ll encounter in any science fiction novel – is supposed to be a genius’s genius; say, about as smart as your humble Curmudgeon (:-). To have him rush pell-mell into a formal dinner and deliver such a statement, in an obviously high state of triumphant emotion, is absolutely characteristic of such a man / mind. It’s a beautiful example of how to use a character’s behavior to depict him as what he’s supposed to be.

     Cooper’s Orion War series is rendered in such vivid tones that one who appreciates complex plotting and good characterization can only applaud. Yes, there are legions of larger-than-life / too-good-or-bad-to-be-true characters, but the opus requires exactly such figures to navigate its vermiculations and achieve its conclusion. It’s replete with dazzling bullshit of the highest quality. Recommended!

Notes On Characterization: Learning From A Master

     I find it worthwhile to revisit old favorite books from time to time. I find it instructive to contemplate what it was about them that struck me most powerfully on my original acquaintance, and to ponder whether I feel the same after many years and writing adventures of my own. Sometimes the lessons are more powerful for having been so long delayed.

     Here’s the introductory passage of a novel that bowled me over in 1971, when I first read it. You might recognize it:

     “Pain is instructive,” Duncan Chalk wheezed.
     On crystal rungs he ascended the east wall of his office. Far on high was the burnished desk, title inlaid communicator box from which he controlled his empire. It would have been nothing for Chalk to sail up the wall on the staff of a gravitron. Yet each morning he imposed this climb on himself.
     A variety of hangers-on accompanied him. Leontes d’Amore, of the mobile chimpanzee lips; Bart Aoudad; Tom Nikolaides, notable for shoulders. And others. Yet Chalk, learning the lessons of pain once more, was the focus of the group.
     Flesh rippled and billowed on him. Within that great bulk were the white underpinnings of bone, yearning for release. Six hundred pounds of meat comprised Duncan Chalk. The vast leathery heart pumped desperately, flooding the massive limbs with life. Chalk climbed. The route zigged and backswitched up forty feet of wall to the throne at the top. Along the way blotches of thermoluminescent fungus glowed eagerly, yellow asters tipped with red, sending forth pulsations of warmth and brightness.
     Outside it was winter. Thin strands of new snow coiled in the streets. The leaden sky was just beginning to respond to the morning ionization poured into it by the great pylons of day. Chalk grunted. Chalk climbed.
     Aoudad said, “The idiot will be here in eleven minutes, sir. He’ll perform.”
     “Bores me now,” Chalk said. “I’ll see him anyway.”
     “We could try torturing him,” suggested the sly d’Amore in a feathery voice. “Perhaps then his gift of numbers would shine more brightly.”
     Chalk spat. Leontes d’Amore shrank back as though a stream of acid had come at him. The climb continued. Pale fleshy hands reached out to grasp the gleaming rods. Muscles snarled and throbbed beneath the slabs of fat. Chalk flowed up the wall, barely pausing to rest.
     The inner messages of pain dizzied and delighted him. Ordinarily he preferred to take his suffering the vicarious way, but this was morning, and the wall was his challenge. Up. Up. Toward the seat of power. He climbed, rung by rung by rung, heart protesting, intestines shifting position inside the sheath of meat, loins quivering, the very bones of him flexing and sagging with their burden.
     About him the bright-eyed jackals waited. What if he fell? It would take ten of them to lift him to the walkway again. What if the spasming heart ran away in wild fibrillation? What if he eyes glazed as they watched?
     Would they rejoice as his power bled away into the air?
     Would they know glee as his grip slipped and his iron grasp over their lives weakened?
     Of course. Of course. Chalk’s thin lips curved in a cool smile. He had the lips of a slender man, the lips of a Bedouin burned down to the bone by the sun. Why were his lips not thick and liquid?
     The sixteenth rung loomed. Chalk seized it. Sweat boiled from his pores. He hovered a moment, painstakingly shifting his weight from the ball of the left foot to the heel of the right. There was no reward and less delight in being a foot of Duncan Chalk. For an instant nearly incalculable stresses were exerted across Chalk’s right ankle. Then he eased forward, bringing his hand down across the last rung in a savage chopping motion, and his throne opened gladly to him.
     Chalk sank into the waiting seat and felt it minister to him. In the depths of the fabric the micropile hands stirred and squeezed, soothing him. Ghostly ropes of spongy wire slid into his clothes to sponge the perspiration from the valleys and mounds of his flesh. Hidden needles glided through epithelium, squirting beneficial fluids. The thunder of the overtaxed heart subsided to a steady murmur. Muscles that had been bunched and knotted with exertion went slack. Chalk smiled. The day had begun; all was well.
     Leontes d’Amore said, “It amazes me, sir, how easily you make that climb.”
     “You think I’m too fat to move?”
     “Sir, I—”
     “The fascination of what’s difficult,” said Chalk. “It spins the world on its bearings.”

     [Robert Silverberg, Thorns]

     That passage is about 750 words long. Consider the enormous amount we learn about Duncan Chalk and his associates from it:

• We learn of Chalk’s enormous bulk;
• He chooses to do something difficult, painful, and dangerous to start his day;
• He revels in the pain of the ascent to his office;
• He controls an “empire,” about which we’ll soon learn more;
• His associates are vicious jackals;
• They’re also sycophants;
• However useful he finds them, he holds them in contempt;
• Pain is exceedingly important to him.

     Though it describes only one event – Chalk’s climb to his office – the passage throbs with power. It shows the reader a creature of vast appetite, hints at his essential nature, outlines his emotional gestalt, makes clear his relationship to those around him, and underscores what’s most important of all things to him: pain.

     Duncan Chalk is a pain vampire. The suffering of others is his critical nourishment. His “empire,” an entertainment corporation, thrives by purveying curiosities and grotesqueries to a public ever hungry for more. He feeds on the agonies of his subjects as he vends them to the viewers.

     Robert Silverberg was only thirty-two years old when he wrote Thorns. At the time he was pumping out novels and stories at a rate that boggles the mind. According to some sources, he sometimes produced 10,000 words of fiction per day. He’s rumored to have released four novels in a single month, three of them under pseudonyms...and we can’t be certain we know of all the pseudonyms he’s used.

     On a good day I might manage a thousand words...much of which will later be rewritten. I’ve never produced anything as striking and evocative as the above passage from Thorns. I doubt I ever will.

---

     Thorns, an exploration of human suffering and the parasites who live on it, isn’t to everyone’s taste. Moreover, it was published at a time when science fiction was generally thought of as adventure fiction, “all rocket ships and ray guns,” unsuitable for consumption by sophisticates. It could easily have been overlooked by “traditional” science fiction readers...but it wasn’t. Its popularity resulted in a Hugo Award nomination and a second-place finish behind Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light. It was also nominated for the Nebula Award, which was won that year by Samuel R. Delany’s The Einstein Intersection.

     The success of Thorns underlines the most important aspect of effective storytelling: the importance of knowing what your reader is there for. The juvenile reader might be there for the “rocket ships and ray guns.” Indeed, that’s more often than not the case. But the adult reader is almost certainly there for an emotional experience. Such a journey is inseparable from good characterization.

     How did your Marquee characters arrive at the situations they’re in? Why are they doing what they’re doing? What’s the basis for their decisions? How do they relate to those around them? What’s their principal emotional need? What actuates them – and equally important, what inhibits or restrains them?

     The answers are your characters. Yet the ironclad rule to “show, don’t tell” commands that you reveal them without stating them baldly. You must show their characters acting and reacting, to developments and to one another. The reader’s emotional experience comes from inferring your characters’ desires, fears, convictions, and beliefs from what you put them through.

     Robert Silverberg outlined a monster in the cited passage. He gave the reader reasons to continue learning about Duncan Chalk, whose evil becomes more fascinating, and ever more vivid, as we watch him go about his business. And there were more characters to follow: Chalk’s chosen victims, mutilated spaceman Minner Burris and discarded experimental subject Lona Kelvin, from whose agonies Chalk contrives to feed.

     While the story told in Thorns is anything but pleasant, the novel is a master course in the delineation of character and its exposure through action. Few readers escape it without being deeply moved by its terrors and its pathos. It’s especially worth your time if you write.

Desires, Fears, Beliefs: Characterization At Its Base

     The political news is still all about the Mueller Report and the reactions of various talking heads, so let’s allow that to rest for today. I have a fiction topic in mind, one that a lot of fledgling writers have a great deal of trouble with.

---

     In my little tome The Storyteller’s Art, there’s an essay on “The Sin of Over-Management.” Its core thesis runs thus:

     Once you have defined your characters -- i.e., once you've given them their powers, their desires, and their constraints -- you must allow them to act in accordance with those things. Beyond that, you must permit the reader to learn about your characters from the characters themselves.

     Some of that is too obvious to require further development. For example, a character defined as a reasonably ordinary human being must not suddenly develop super powers. Alternately, a character defined ab initio as subject to an inability to face danger must not suddenly become profoundly courageous. These rules are understood by all but the idiots. (Yet one of the best known of science fiction’s progenitors, H. G. Wells, actually broke one of them in his novel The First Men in the Moon. It’s an amusing illustration of human fallibility.) But the part about characters’ desires seems not to be well appreciated.

     The most important thing about your characters is what motivates them: their desires, fears, and beliefs. A character may change in the course of a story – indeed, if none of your characters change at all you don’t have a story – but the changes must be traceable to the events he experiences and the contexts in which they occur. Moreover, he cannot jump an excessively wide gulf: to have a character morph from totally evil to totally angelic simply doesn’t work. The prudent fictioneer leaves that sort of “story” to God.

     Once you’ve defined a character, you must then allow him to act in accordance with his desires, fears, and beliefs as you’ve postulated them.

---

     Of the four indispensable elements of story, characterization is regarded by most writers as the most challenging. A writer wants his Marquee characters to be both relatable and interesting. There’s tension there. To be relatable, a character must seem familiar enough to the reader for some degree of identification. But to be interesting, that character must differ enough from the common run of Mankind to stand out, to make his decisions at least somewhat off-axis. The launching pad for all of that is motivation.

     “What people want,” from the 30,000 foot perspective, can seem fairly uniform. We want to prosper. We want to be safe. We want acceptance, admiration, and affection. And we want the sense that we’re progressing: getting better, or at least wiser, as time passes.

     But of course at the individual level the details will vary. Not everyone defines prosperity the same way. Not everyone has the same threshold value for “safe.” And so on. It’s within the details that distinguish us as individuals that characterization takes place.

     You can’t make a relatable character completely and utterly fearless. (In Joe Haldeman’s formulation, “the kind of person who would face certain death with a slightly raised eyebrow.”) Automata incapable of conceiving of their own elimination could be made fearless, but not flesh and blood humans. Neither can you make a character completely and utterly selfless. Your decisions about what he fears and to what extent, or what will cause him to sacrifice his own interests for others, are critical – and once made, they must be honored. If they’re to change, the changes must be justified by his experiences in the story.

     How is that done? Ah, it’s time for more coffee!

---

     The old maxim “Show, don’t tell” relates specifically to how your characters must be revealed to the reader. There are three channels for this:

• What your character says;
• What your character does;
• What other characters say about him.

     Those are the only valid methods. This often chafes the fledgling writer: “Why can’t I just tell the reader what Smith is all about?” Simply put, because it’s intrusive. It’s un-organic. It’s like finding an op-ed essay in the middle of a novel: What’s that doing here? It’s the writer inserting himself into the story, instead of standing back respectfully and narrating the action to us. In other words, it isn’t storytelling.

     The temptation can be strong. It’s your duty to resist. Your readers-to-be are counting on you.

---

     If you’ve done your characterization well, your character’s decisions and actions will be convincing. The reader will be able to see him as a believable person. To achieve that standard, the best of all aids is backstory.

     Backstory is “the story before the story.” Your character didn’t spring from the brow of Zeus just as the story began, did he? So he has a past you can create, just as you created him. Thereafter you can exploit it as a basis for his decisions and actions.

     Little bits of backstory will make their way into the story proper. It’s not wise to incorporate all of it, of course. But elements from “story past” can, should, and will make their way into “story present.” Here’s an example:

     “What I’m about to tell you,” Holly’s lover said, “I’ve never told anyone else. Shortly before I left for Cambridge I made some inquiries about surgery. You know the sort.”
     Holly said nothing. Rowenna sipped from her glass.
     “It wasn’t that I wanted it for myself, love. I knew I could never be a fully normal woman. But I hoped that if I could just contrive to look normal, it might mend the rift with...”
     “With your father,” Holly whispered.
     “With Sir Thomas,” Rowenna said.
     “But you didn’t go through with it. Why not, Ro?”
     “Because it would have killed me,” Rowenna said. “The surgeon said my body wouldn’t withstand the shock.”
     “Did he know you were...naturally the way you are?”
     “He did,” Rowenna said. She finished her wine and set down the glass. “He was familiar with the condition. He said I wasn’t the first futa to explore the possibility with him. He’s of the opinion that futanari are stuck as we are, that as strange as our condition is, our nervous and endocrine systems are too tightly integrated to endure serious alterations. He said he’d made inquiries among his colleagues, and that they’d left very little room for doubt.”
     I have more options than she does.
     I never would have guessed.
     Holly reached for her lover’s hand. Rowenna looked up and said “Don’t!” Holly pulled back at once.
     “You must hear the end of it,” Rowenna said. “I went to my...to Sir Thomas and begged him to listen to me. I told him what the surgeon had said. He listened, and when I’d finished he pulled out his checkbook, wrote a check for a hundred thousand pounds, and handed it to me. He said it was all the same to him. He said he wanted nothing further to do with me, that I could do whatever I pleased as long as it was far away from him.” She met Holly’s gaze once more, and Holly could see that her face was wet. “And as I had attained my majority, he ordered me to leave Norfolk and not return.”

     [From Experiences]

     Rowenna’s explanation of the rift between her and her father (Sir Thomas) is part of the justification for her extraordinarily strong bond with her lover Holly, a transwoman of the usual sort. While it has moderate importance in Experiences, it blossoms most completely in The Wise and the Mad, which I expect to release this summer.

     (There’s an interesting sidelight here: I’ve been continuously developing Rowenna through two novelettes and two novels. Much that was hidden about her in the early stories comes to light in the later ones. In that sense, backstory can become “story proper,” but great caution is required, that you not slip into “telling” rather than showing character. I may expand on this in a subsequent essay.)

     Rowenna fears to lose Holly. Her fear is founded on the most important difference between them: Holly is the way she is by choice, whereas Rowenna, a futanari, is not. Holly has the option of renouncing the changes she has imposed upon herself and going back to masculinity. Rowenna has no such option…and she fears that Holly, whom she’s known for only a short time, might exercise her option and leave her behind.

     That’s how it’s done.

---

     Desires, fears, and beliefs. Make it your mantra. They’re what move all of us out here in the “real” world. Let them move your characters as well. Don’t imagine that you can get away with instant, unjustified transitions from evil to sainthood, or cowardice to heroism. Tell the story – or rather, let your characters tell it to you.

     The rest is just typing.

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.

---

     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.

---

     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.

---

     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.

---

     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?

"Mr. Gone-Mobile"

     I’ve had a lot of fun, recently, owing to a kinda-sorta collaboration over my most recent novel, Experienced. (Yeah, yeah, I haven’t released it yet. I’m waiting for my cover artist, and I refuse to hurry her. She’s too good.) Because that interaction, conducted via email with a distant friend, was both productive and fun – it contributed materially to the final version of the novel – I thought I might extend the adventure. So here goes nothing.

     Regard the following character sketch:

     He’s in his early forties, unmarried and without children. He enjoyed enormous success in his trade, but he no longer practices it and is reluctant to talk about it. He drives around the U.S. in his motorhome, apparently unconcerned about the passage of time. He makes a point of knowing where the Catholic Churches are, and of attending Mass as often as he can.

     He’s six feet tall, weighs about a hundred eighty pounds, and is very fit. He takes pride in his appearance and his physical aptitudes, but he doesn’t brag about them. His outward presentation is unassuming: polo shirts or tees, khaki trousers or dark jeans, loafers or running shoes.

     He must have money, for he’s unconcerned by it. Now and then he takes a temporary job, but he’s never concerned about the pay. Moreover, the jobs are of every sort except office work. “I’ve had enough of that,” he was once heard to say.

     He can cook, but he eats out quite often, usually alone. His motorhome is impeccably kept and maintained. He doesn’t do much of that himself; he trusts the specialists who’ve made it their oeuvre...until they try to cheat him.

     His large motorhome contains several compartments that are unobvious to the casual observer, or even one who’s not so casual. One of them contains his firearms. A second is a walk-in refrigerator/freezer, equipped for easy sterilization. A third is large enough for two people to hide in. All of them are insulated against sound, radar, and infrared emissions.

     He’s seldom parted from his laptop computer. It’s a high-end model. He uses it both to read and to write. Now and then he’ll send an article to the op-ed section of the local paper. They’re seldom rejected.

     He likes people and makes a point of meeting the locals wherever he goes, but he’s disinclined to spend more than a week or two anywhere. There’s a lot of country to see, and he knows it could take more than a lifetime to see it all. That doesn’t keep him from becoming involved with the locals or in local affairs.

     Okay, Gentle Readers, here are my questions for you:

1. What’s his name?
2. Was he ever married?
3. Should he travel with a dog?
4. Does he have any living relatives?
5. What are his reasons for choosing a life on the road? Is a lost love one of them?
6. What white-collar trade did he practice that made him wealthy? Why did he give it up?
7. Where should his first story take him and in what sort of adventure should he involve himself there?

     Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments, or to email them to me at the address I use for the website:

morelonhouse
- at –
optonline
- dot –
net

Preconceptions

     My praise of John Ringo’s Black Tide Rising series triggered an interesting exchange with a Gentle Reader:

     GR: You enjoyed that? [Imagine a tone of distasteful stupefaction]
     FWP: Very much. Why?
     GR: It’s nothing at all like what you write.
     FWP: That’s true, but what of it?
     GR: I just can’t see anything in it that’s...you.
     FWP: You know, I can’t name even one book by someone else that’s at all close to the sort of dreck I turn out. Contemporary fantasies about an alternate Creation story? A weird Shire-like county in the middle of New York that breeds geniuses and millennial heroes? An anarchist extraterrestrial colony that runs afoul of a planetary Overmind? Christian-flavored erotica about divinely appointed priestesses of fleshly desire? Where have you ever seen anything like that, except from me?
     GR: That’s not the point. Ringo’s stuff just seems so far from your sensibility.
     FWP: But Tom Kratman’s novels aren’t? I like those a lot too, remember?
     GR: It’s just not how I think of you.
     FWP: Would it reassure you to hear me rant about novels I dislike?
     GR: Not really.

     I like competently done military fiction, whether situated in “our” world or in some science-fictional setting. But then, I like a lot of other kinds of fiction, too. I have wide tastes in all the arts, which has caused people to wonder about me for a long time: “How can someone who enjoys X like Y as well?”

     I think it stems from readers’ preconceptions.

     I write so much, and always from a libertarian-conservative Catholic Christian perspective, that I must seem pretty strongly “characterized.” But that’s an effect that arises from knowing me through only one facet: what I write. I wouldn’t doubt that other writers are perceived just as narrowly, on the grounds of what they write.

     As I’ve met a few of them, including some of the more popular ones, I can assure you all that we’re a goodly distance from our characters. We haven’t shared their adventures, either. And without naming names, I shall tell you about those who make really vivid contrasts with their fictions.

     There was one who wrote marvelous adventure fiction. “Man’s man” stuff. Before we met I envisioned him to be a real Indiana Jones type: broad shoulders, chiseled features, and a rock-hard physique. He turned out to be quite ordinary in appearance. His speech was a dual surprise: very diffident and guarded, and in a high tenor at that.

     There was another whose specialty was humor, in several genres. I assumed he had to be a convivial, life of the party sort. I could hardly imagine him without a smile. Yet he never cracked a smile in all the hours I spent in his company. When I learned about his marital history, it made a lot of sense, but only then.

     There was a third whose stories were the oddest things I’d ever encountered. His breadth of imagination made me wonder if I had any business writing at all. I hardly expected him to be the reserved, totally buttoned-down individual he proved to be. (He attended a science fiction convention in a suit and tie, and carried a briefcase wherever he went.)

     Those three have all passed away, so I’m reasonably confident they won’t mind my employing them here as examples.

     Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec cautioned us against imagining an artist from nothing but an acquaintance with his work: “The work is always so much more than the man.” That’s true some of the time, at least, but the reverse is frequently true as well. Many an artist is unwilling to present anything but his art to public scrutiny. The phenomenon of the celebrity-artist, whose movements the cameras follow and whose pronouncements on anything and everything are reported by the media, is a relatively recent development. Then again, so is the phenomenon of celebrity itself.

     If you attend fans’ conventions or writers’ conferences, you’re likely to experience the same sort of contrast between “people you know” and their real-life instantiations, who stubbornly diverge from your imaginings. It’s to be expected. We’re just not what you think. That’s a large part of why I avoid such gatherings as a matter of policy; I’d rather not be compared to the larger-than-life figures that fill the pages of my books. I would be found wanting, and badly wanting at that.

     I hope I haven’t disappointed anyone too badly.

A Safe Distance

     We’ve heard a lot about “Mary Sue” characters: i.e., characters written out of an author’s fantasy about a perfect woman (or man). The “Mary Sue” is usually a Supporting Cast character, but not always. Sometimes such a character will be cast as the protagonist.

     That can cause one of the worst of plot-construction sins: sparing your protagonist harm, difficulty, or unhappiness.

     The genesis of such a misstep is simple: having imbued his protagonist with every attribute he deems admirable or desirable, the writer falls in love with him. He wants nothing but the best for him. He contrives to have him come out on top regardless of the conflicts, and usually without even mussing his hair. Therein lies the death of drama, for:

Drama only exists when men’s virtues compel them to pay a price – i.e., when they must suffer for being good.

     I’ve edged up to the “Mary Sue” line at least twice. In one case, it crept upon me unawares; in another, it was a largely conscious act that required several varieties of corrective action. So let it be known that, though I pontificate against this particular failing, it’s from experience rather than innate wisdom.

     Alongside the excessive love of a character lies another “Mary Sue”-derived problem: the weakening of your theme. A good theme derives from what writer Tom Kratman calls “eternal verities:” the truths about right, wrong, and human nature that are written into the laws of the universe. The very best sort of plot involves people acting out those verities -- after having tried to deny and defy them. At the end of such a story (if it’s been well told), the reader feels that he’s learned a “home truth,” or at least has had one reinforced. Even if he doesn’t consciously realize it, his awareness of how people act, and how they must act to get what they want without creating chaos where order belongs, is brighter than before.

     But the “Mary Sue” protagonist is too perfect to be “people.” He cannot enact such a theme without being wrong, and seriously so, at some point in the story...which would diminish his perfection in the author’s eyes.

     This argues for the maintenance of a “safe distance” between the author and his characters.

     By that I don’t mean to say that you shouldn’t love your characters. You should, and the more ardently the better. But neither in real life nor in fiction should love demand perfection. If you’re able to dispassionately enumerate your Marquee Character’s characterological strengths and weaknesses, you’re better off than you would be if you were simply starry-eyed about him, for you can contrive to put him in situations where his weaknesses are being used against him and he cannot deploy his strengths without paying a stiff price, including the enactment of your theme.

     There’s a seeming contradiction in this. All the best fiction overflows with passion: the author’s passion for his characters, his agonies at their trials and sufferings, his regret for the prices they must pay to remain faithful to their virtues, and his determination that what is best in Man shall triumph nevertheless. But that passion must be tempered by a counterbalancing dispassion: the ruthless determination to make your hero endure the sufferings that his decisions entail.

     Yes, you’ll suffer as he suffers. You’ll leak tears at every loss he incurs and every wound he suffers. You’ll wish more than once that you’d never set your fingers to the keys.

     But Nietzsche was right about one thing, at least: “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Your vicarious trials will strengthen you by testing your convictions about how things are and how they must be. And you will become better able to produce good fiction thereby.