Give Your Character Attitude

Sarah Stone and Ron Nyren in their book, Deepening Fiction, tell us that a character is a constellation of very particular traits and attitudes, and when these traits and attitudes coalesce into a harmonious whole we have the essence of that character.

There’s a particular way your character enters a room full of people, the strangers he makes ready eye contact with, and the strangers that he ignores. Ask yourself, how is your character with people from the opposite sex? Is she quick to take offense? How do you know when she’s annoyed? Does your character overeat when he’s stressed, or does he look for a fight? When her feelings are hurt, does she cry or swear up a storm? What would it take for your character to fall in love, get mad, give up hope? What makes your character laugh?

Now make that very, very particular. Using the example of what makes your character laugh, think of three people in your own life. What makes them laugh? Then ask yourself how each of them laughs?

If you’re starting to build a character, take one of these reactions and a write a paragraph or a short scene in which your character is embarrassed or busts out laughing. Write it in third person, so that you as the writer can see what your character looks like and sounds like. Then try to write the same scene in first person to discover what it feels like. Try to use as many particular and sensory details as possible. I find that if I sink my character deeply enough in a scene, she will reveal herself.

This same exercise works beautifully for rounding out an established character in your on-going project.

Diane Ackerman wrote an editorial piece in the New York Times some months ago about interpersonal neurobiology—how our brains rewire themselves based on what we think about. It’s like the quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.” And he never heard of interpersonal neurobiology. Now scientists can watch what parts of our brain light up based on stimula, and observe parallels between love and opiates, heartbreak and broken bones.

In case we thought love is a bad thing, Ms Ackerman does her best to win us over to hearts and flowers. Tests have proven that we can withstand more pain if we’re touched by a loved one. A happy marriage relieves stress, lights up the reward centers of the brain, makes a body feel safe. When two people become a couple, they add a host of new experiences: new friends, family and interests. They also have the opportunity to grow in compassion, patience and wisdom.

So yay for love! And Happy Valentine’s Day!

I believe it was Jim Frey (www.jamesnfrey.com ) who came up with the principle of maximum capacity as it applies to character building. Characters in dramatic fiction are revealed through their actions when faced with a challenge—and as a writer make certain that your characters meet challenge after challenge. If when faced with a challenge your character does not employ every resource within his power, you the writer face the risk of your reader abandoning you.

I’m a big fan of Elmore Leonard, but his novel, Cat Chaser, is a classic example of two attractive characters acting like idiots. Leonard creates a likeable motel owner, George Moran, and his soul mate, Mary de Boya. Only Mary is the wife of a super dangerous bad dude. My problem with the novel is that I believed that the bad guy was a serious, serious threat, so I didn’t understand why George and Mary took so many chances. Either the bad guy wasn’t a threat or the protagonists were idiots. I found myself holding my breath more than once, but then I gave up. It was like if you two don’t care about your personal safety, why should I?

Back to Jo Nesbo’s Headhunters (did I mention they made  the novel into a movie?) : Roger Brown was not a likeable character, but when he faced real danger, he thought of ways to elude his threat that were  both surprising and ingenious. Over the span of the novel I grew ever more sympathetic to his cause.

As you  have your characters acting at maximum capacity, remember that they must behave within the bounds of their personality. It’s unlikely that the shy accountant will vanquish her stalker in a gun battle (unless you set her up as a sharp shooter at the beginning of your story).

So give your character an obstacle and then figure out how she will overcome it. Writing a list of solutions is a great tool for coming up with surprise. Make a list of 30 possibilities. The first ten might all be cliché, and then by the grace of the Muse, you might hit gold.

Your characters need to be goal driven, they need to take action. What they don’t need is perfection. Why? Perfect is boring. Remember Melanie Hamilton in Gone with the Wind? Boring. Scarlett for all her flaws is the unforgettable character because she seems real to us, because she wants to save Tara and she’s willing to do anything. It’s dangerous creating a character like Scarlett: if she’s too unsympathetic, readers won’t follow her through an entire novel. If you feel compelled to write an unsympathetic character, give her a goal we can get behind and give us hope the character will grow into someone we can admire.

Roger in Jo Nesbo’s novel, Headhunters is an example of an unsympathetic character with a compelling goal: he’s being pursued by a super-human killer and he wants to stay alive. Why do I care? Roger, for all his faults, is a smart man and he tries with every gram of resourcefulness he can conjure to stay alive. I had to admire him.

Back to flaws: alcoholism and substance abuse has been done again and again, so if you’re willing to take my advice, think of something different. Lionel Essrog in Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn is a perfect example of a flawed character. He’s resourceful, smart, goal driven, and totally handicapped by Tourette syndrome. I loved Lionel and stole time to finish reading his story.

What’s your character’s flaw? Make a list of 50 flaws. By the thirteenth, I predict you’ll be getting into some fascinating territory. Remember, you have to live with this condition during the writing of an entire novel so make it something you’re interested in and have sympathy for.

Once you have your flawed character make sure your other characters react to the flaw. Do they poke fun at your character, do they dismiss him? How does your character react to their derision? Does he get angry? Depressed? It’s in these interactions that your characters come to life. It’s magic, it really is.

When I pick up a book I’m agreeing to live with the novel’s characters for many, many hours. More hours than I would spend at dinner with friends, at a party or a family reunion. I have to either love the characters or relate to their struggle on a deep level or I’ll toss the book because there’s a whole shelf of unread books that I’m just dying to pick up. So how does an aspiring writer create a character that a reader will follow for 300 pages?

One common mistake (the one I made through several short stories) was to write about characters that resembled me. I’m loveable, I have struggles, so why not? The problem is that like most writers I’m a bookish, conflict-adverse, passive creature. No one wants to read about me, not even my own husband. That’s because I’m a homo sapiens, and the kind of characters readers turn pages for are what Jim Frey calls homo fictus.

The homo fictus looks, thinks and feels like a homo sapiens. The reader believes the character is like him, but there are some fundamental differences. The homo fictus is active. When she’s faced with a challenge she does her very best to overcome the obstacle. No one wants to read about a character paralyzed by indecision. No one wants to read about a character victimized by their circumstances. It’s boring. It’s depressing. Don’t do it.

Homo fictus is goal-driven. Being goal-driven is the single most important quality a successful character can have, more important than being likeable. The best example I can think of is Jo Nesbo’s  wonderful novel, The Headhunters. The protagonist, Roger Brown, is a real bastard, but very early in the story he has to fight with every resource he can command to stay alive. I couldn’t help it, I wanted desperately for him to succeed. So desperately that I stole time from work to finish the book. FYI: it was worth the stolen time.

All goals are not created equal. My goal is to write ten novels before I die. I don’t believe many readers would find that compelling. Fighting for your life, saving the family farm, never going hungry again: those are goals most readers would commit to.

My new book, Betting Blind, is about a women, a female Don Juan, who preys on the lonely using computer dating sites. I’ve been researching how unsuspecting people can lose their shirts to the unscrupulous. With very little information  my Donna Juan can reach into her victims’ bank accounts, their mail, their entire e-presence.

Over dinner last weekend a friend of ours told us that computer firewalls had become obsolete. Why? It’s far more likely that our computers will be hacked through social engineering. Social engineering, as defined by Wikipedia, is the art of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information… it is typically trickery or deception for the purpose of information gathering, fraud, or computer system access.

What I find fascinating about this whole field of criminal behavior is how it’s accomplished by trickery and not by blunt force. I’m starting to get my own ideas…

I found some great examples of social engineering here: “Social Engineering: The Basics”.

Who knows what another person’s  life is really like? It’s the chief reason I love mystery. Seeing justice served is all very well, but what I’m really interested in is peering under the hood of my fellow human’s life and seeing the inner workings of an outwardly perfect life. And it’s never Norman Rockwell, baby.

Get home from December gridlock traffic, the endless shopping and errand running and curl up to a Christmas murder.

Here’s some of my favorites:
Murder for Christmas,  by Agatha Christie
The Shortest Day, by Jane Langton
Death of a Fool, by Ngaio Marsh
Mistletoe Mayhem, edited by Richard Dalby
Holmes for the Holidays, edited by Martin H Greenberg, J Lellenberg and Carol Waugh
A Rumpole Christmas, by John Mortimer
Murder for Christmas, edited by Thomas Godfrey

Check out these wonderful interviews about creativity—wonderful out-of-the-box thinking.
http://ttbook.org/book/jonah-lehrer-imagine-how-creativity-works
http://ttbook.org/book/austin-kleon-steal-artist
http://ttbook.org/book/kenneth-goldsmith-uncreative-writing

“Mirror, Mirror” is the first of two offerings this spring of the Snow White story. The second film, starring Charlize Theron, is a darker, edgier version of the old tale.

Someone on the radio, I didn’t catch her name, was speculating why Snow White is replacing the Cinderella story told, told and re-told throughout the eighties. She pointed to our youth culture and the Boomers’ obsession with health, fitness, botox, etc-you-get-the-picture. No longer do older women look older the way they did back in the old days.

I think  that the  Snow White story points to the increasing tensions between the Boomers and the Gen-Xers and Millennials. The perception is that the Boomers hold nearly all the money and the power and most of them refuse to retire leaving the youngsters asking if you want whip on your mocha. And when they DO retire they’ll bleed the social security fund dry. It’s enough to make a person give up and take a nap. Well, at  least Snow White has her youth and beauty.

Who knew that George Costanza could be so right?
According to Michael Shermer  citing Robert Trivers’s “The Folly of Fools”, liars need to practice keeping their voices in a lower register, maintaining eye contact, and controlling their gestures so that they don’t appear nervous. And liars need to think harder than truthful people to keep their story both plausible and consistent. But all of that hard work  isn’t necessary if you believe the lie.

As a fiction writer I’ve seen first-hand how my memories can be replaced by fictionalized versions as I write draft after draft of a story.