David’s Comments (group member since Feb 15, 2013)

David’s comments from the Ask David Corbett group.

Thank you, Kimberly. What a lovely note.

Thanks, Kimberly. Best of luck to you in your writing, and thanks for both considering my work and taking part in the discussion. Be swell:
David

First, thanks to one and all who've stopped by and either read or commented this week. I've enjoyed the back and forth, and feel very grateful you took the time to contribute.

This is my final post, and I'll be traveling at least half of the day Friday, driving from the bay area to Los Angeles for an event at the Writing Pad with TV writer Bill Rabkin and lawyer/author James Scott Bell, then workshops on Saturday and Sunday.

I wanted to wrap things up with a word on the opponent, or the villain as he's sometimes called.

To my mind, a story can withstand a pallid hero -- like Pip, Oliver Twist, Gulliver -- though that's never a wise choice. But what will really ruin a story is a cartoon opponent. The hero is measured by the conflict he overcomes, and if he's battling an unconvincing adversary, it diminishes him, undermines the story, and leaves the reader wanting more.

The great writer and teacher Oakley Hall once remarked that the greatest drama is always good versus good, and the more you can not just understand but justify and even love your opponent, the closer you can get to that ideal, and the greater the dramatic effect the story will have.

One key way to understand your opponent more deeply is to understand what he loves -- what world is he defending, what values does he cherish, who are the people he lives for, would die for? You've heard the old saw, each of us is the hero of his own narrative. Even characters who openly embrace wickedness -- like Richard III -- have a vision of the good life they want and intend to live.

Every story involves not just a battle of two characters, but a battle of values and ways of life. Before I begin writing, I always try to flesh out what those two opposing ways of life look like, smell like, taste like. Who inhabits them? Why?

Think of the villains you've particularly enjoyed. What world were they defending? What or who could you say they loved?

Don't be discouraged if I don't chime in for a few hours. I'll do my best to check in during the afternoon, Pacific time.

Thanks again, one and all. Hope to see you here at Goodreads again.

All the best,
David

D.:

Yes, there's something about being forced to interact with an animal on its level, not yours, that forces a character to deal with frustration and annoyance for sure, also responsibility -- and yes, loss. Dogs and horses, I think, hold a special place, because they've been domesticated with man in mind, and seem to know us in ways far better than we know ourselves. But crows are maddening and magical. They're smarter than they need to be, and I can seem them giving Dub all he can handle.

Oh, please don't apologize.

On this week's episode of Justified, a prisoner who killed Waylon's criminal father remarks that it's Waylon's mother who saved him, but it's his father's voice that makes him do what he does.

This speaks to the power of contradictions. We are all both what we are and what we try not to be. The great character in Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde is neither one nor the other, it's the character formed by joining them together.

One of the great lessons of characterization is to see who the character is trying not to be. And to find some way to get that shadow into your story.

I mean I could handle your buying my book. This isn't that kind of forum...

He says sadly.

I could handle that.

Well, returning to two things I've already said, one in the first posting that opened this thread, the other in the one you just quoted:

There are a lot of ways to go about this – so many they take up several chapters of the book. But they largely deal with envisioning incidents in the character’s past that involve extreme vulnerability or helplessness, emotional trauma, or surrender to happiness: moments of profound shame, guilt, pain, love, joy, pride. If not that, they reveal the particular nature of her connection to other people — her bonds of family, friendship, work, community, how and why she dresses the way she does, where she considers home, who she considers her “tribe.”

And:

The five key areas to explore are: desire, how the character behaves when her desires are frustrated, secrets, contradictions, and vulnerability. I consider those five elements the touchstones of any truly compelling characterization. Not all characters have to have all five, but desire and vulnerability are truly, inescapably essential -- and sometimes related. Wanting something makes us vulnerable, because we realize it can be denied.

So: envision and sketch out moments of profound emotional impact that create a sense of helplessness, so much so the usual ego defenses are undermined, revealing a deeper level of character. And focus particularly on yearning (also mentioned above) -- both the surface desire of the story and the deeper need or want motivating that desire, how the character responds to frustration of her desires (and thus conflict, danger, criticism, betrayal), secrets, contradictions, and vulnerability.

By contradictions I mean those elements of behavior that surprise or baffle us, given what else we know or observe of the character. Every time there's a mass killing or a scandal, there's always a headline: Friends, Family, and Neighbors Struggle to Find Answers. This capacity to be both one thing and yet also the opposite is one of the most intriguing elements of character. If your character seems gentle or kind, picture her in the throes of helpless rage. How did she get there? Why didn't she get there sooner?

Aurora:

It sounds like your writing group experience is less than optimal. But the road to publication passes through criticism. No matter how polished you consider your work, at every stage -- agent submission, publisher submission, content editing, copy editing -- you have to work with an informed reader who wants changes, and you have to consider them mindfully, with the objective of improving what's on the page. And you have to accept the humbling fact that almost everything can benefit from another look. Eudora Welty said, "Writing is rewriting." Hemingway said, "There is no great writing, just great rewriting."

Kimberly:

I think corresponding with your character could be worthwhile, but not nearly as worthwhile as her corresponding with you. I'm not being glib. I know authors who create journals for their characters, to better understand their voices, their inner life.

Personally, I need to see my character in action, struggling after something she wants, failing at it, interacting with others.

That said, voice is crucial, and it exhibits itself most vividly in attitude.

My current manuscript has an aging Airedale mix in it named Noble, and he plays a significant role in the transformations of the other characters. In his undignified dignity, he teaches the three main characters, each in a different way, about forgiveness, devotion, simplicity.

He was one of the most enjoyable characters I've ever written. And the experience made me think back to one of the most devastating reading experiences of my childhood, CALL OF THE WILD.

Few books have affected me as profoundly as that one did, with its unsentimental depiction of a family dog torn from its life and "returned" to a state of being he had never really known. I loved Buck, identified with him, and yet when he made the fateful turn at the end toward the wild I felt abandoned. I knew I couldn't, or wouldn't follow him there, and it had more than a sobering affect on me. It seemed to put my young, protected life in the crosshairs, and I felt ashamed.

I wonder how many others have had a similar experience with Buck or another animal character, a recognition of the oneness in our natures, and yet the chasm between us as well.

We can't always be the best judge of our own prose. That's the good news and the bad news. We need readers, and writers in particular need readers they can trust to give them sound, reliable, useful feedback.

Often you can't tell is a character is flat because you feel the character in a way the reader doesn't. The problem there isn't lack of development but poor execution.

But if you're having trouble conceiving the character with genuine depth, then you need to find ways to deepend your understanding of that character. I discuss a lot of ways to go about that in the book, but the five key areas to explore are: desire, how the character behaves when her desires are frustrated, secrets, contradictions, and vulnerability. I consider those five elements the touchstones of any truly compelling characterization. Not all characters have to have all five, but desire and vulnerability are truly, inescapably essential -- and sometimes related. Wanting something makes us vulnerable, because we realize it can be denied.

David

Kimberly:

Here's an interesting take on plotting that also expresses some consternation on what constitutes "character-driven" structure -- as in, how can there be any other kind?

http://janefriedman.com/2013/03/04/th...

David

DP:

Nice to see you hear good sir.

Thanks. I wish I could take credit for the term. I owe Robert Olen Butler. But yeah, once I heard him talk about it, once I read him discuss it further in FROM WHERE YOU DREAM, a light went on, for all the reasons you mention.

David

Whenever I start with the story idea, if I don't stop and think deeply about the characters, imagine why it is they make the events of the story occur -- what it is they want, why, how they came to that time and place in their lives, why they're compelled to do what the story "demands" -- I end up with a lackluster piece. The characters are vague, half-realized.

But most stories start with a story idea. It's rare when you start with a character and just start noodling and stumble on a plot. Great when it happens, but often instead you're reverse engineering your characters from the story. That's been the case overwhelmingly for me, most of the writers I know, and many of my students.

Kimberly:

Ha! Well said. But you unwittingly bring up a crucial point. Plot puppets, like many of us in our daily lives, seem like the victims of circumstances. Even a plot puppet villain, who seems to have the widest range of action, often feels robotic, in that he can't help but do the evil things he does. That's what gives the air of puppetry. Everyone's behavior is at the whim of the story (and ultimately, the writer).

I'm not sure any genuinely meaningful story isn't "character-driven." Robert McKee goes into this in STORY. He says the whole division between character and plot only applies to bad writing.

I tend to agree.

Hi, Terri. Thanks for checking in. Your book is on the way!

I think more than anything a character comes alive through what Robert Olen Butler calls yearning -- a deep-seated, inescapable desire for fulfillment, meaning, purpose. Each character conceives that yearning in her own unique way, but the fact she has it creates all the other crucial elements of her personality: her vulnerability (because to know what you want means you also recognize you could lose it), contradiction (because the likelihood of loss or denial of the thing we want forces us to hedge our bets, put our efforts into secondary ambitions, and these tear at us and push us in opposing directions), secrets (because we so often hide from ourselves the thing we want, for fear of accepting we may never have it, or because we're afraid that, if our secrets are exposed, we'll be shamed and isolated, and our dreams can then never come true).

Yearning isn't defined merely by what the character wants in the story -- reconcile with the parent, catch the criminal, climb the mountain. It's the deeper, underlying reason that those outer ambitions are important. Failing at them awakens the character to what she truly wants, and the stakes are defined by the possibility of losing it forever.

That all-emcompassing yearning is what allows the character to feel bigger than the story, for his whole life is defined, perhaps unconsciously, by the need to fulfill it.

David

In The Art of Character: Creating Memorable Characters for Fiction, Film, and TV, I point out that a lot of writers derive their characters from their story ideas. In the hands of an accomplished writer, this can prove unproblematic, but all too often, even in accomplished hands, in can result in the creation of plot puppets, not characters.

By plot puppet I mean a character that seems to have no other existence than as a cog in the wheel of the story. There seems to be little surprising about the character, and nothing that can’t be predicted on what’s required by the events that comprise the plot. And to the extent the character does surprise, it feels more the result of gratuitous plot twists than the internal needs, wants, fears, etc. of the character herself.

It’s the lack of surprise that’s deadly. If your reader can sense the character’s possibilities from the get-go, what’s the point of continuing? A plot puppet can be further elaborated, but she can’t be developed. She lacks any capacity to go beyond her function.

I therefore try to get students to think of their characters as people to whom the story happens, with lives “outside the story.” This may involve writing scenes you ultimately discard, it may mean developing story threads for the character you end up never using, but your expanded knowledge of that character will provide additional life, greater depth, and broader range of possibility than she might otherwise possess.

There are a lot of ways to go about this – so many they take up several chapters of the book. But they largely deal with envisioning incidents in the character’s past that involve extreme vulnerability or helplessness, emotional trauma, or surrender to happiness: moments of profound shame, guilt, pain, love, joy, pride. If not that, they reveal the particular nature of her connection to other people — her bonds of family, friendship, work, community, how and why she dresses the way she does, where she considers home, who she considers her “tribe.”

So, Goodreaders: What do you think? If you write, do your characters emerge from your story idea, or does your story idea emerge from the character? If you’re an avid reader, what is it about a character that renders her memorable — better yet, unforgettable?

Thanks, everyone, for joining this discussion group. Hopefully, I can keep it lively, informative, and inspiring. If not, I guess we know who you'll have to blame ...

So, I'll do my best to answer your questions wisely and wittily.

Great. Looking forward to it.
David
www.davidcorbett.com