[Writerpreneur] Compelling Characters 04

CHARACTER AND CONFLICT, PART 1: You will find it impossible to separate your character from his plot problems and keep either real. Meanwhile, the reader thinks he's more interested in the character...

In using the subjective method advanced in this book, you will find it impossible to separate your character from his plot problems and keep either real.

The two go together, or the one suggests the other. However, the lay reader never quite realizes this essential dualism. He demands the tangible while looking for the intangible. You will need to know more about this problem of writing one thing but meaning another.

We are concerned in a fictional story (as distinguished from a factual story) with proving by illustration, by a parable, that proper application of the moral principle can solve a conflict of emotions. Only second are we interested in creating a vehicle, a character, to carry the load. But the reader almost always thinks he is much more interested in the character than in the problem!

Of course, that the reader is interested in his own inner self and that self’s problems. Unconsciously, and more or less completely (depending upon how well we have handled our VP work), he identifies his inner self with the inner self of the VP character. He recognizes a kindred spirit in the VP character, thus becoming part of the VP trinity — a living “Me” where author, character, and reader merge. Yes, but what persuades him to join that union and stick with it to the very end?

It is not the scant possibility that we have created our VP character to fit the reader’s physical characteristics, for there is not one chance in a thousand that we have. Perhaps one individual reader of our story will be a boy of fifteen; and the next a woman of seventy! How do we cut our physical cloth to fit both extremes? Or even achieve a usable compromise? ‘We can’t, and neither can we create a static “kindred soul” to turn the trick. What does a “kindred soul” look like and how do we know it resembles the soul of our reader, fifteen or seventy, or that he or she will like it even though it is his or her “spit’n image”?

Despite all the folk who insist that good fiction writing is objective reporting, or psychoanalysis, or something else, you know better by now. You know that the way to capture the reader and incorporate him into the VP “Me” is not by attempting the impossible, by trying to describe him statically and objectively. Instead, you do it by adopting him subjectively.

I mean, you know that misery loves company. You know men band together in adversity – cling even closer than brothers – and later fight over the loot of victory. You know that the most joyous intellectual impulse that comes to the average man occurs when he sees a brother struggling with a problem and can exclaim, “Oh, I know, I know! Let me try!”

Very well, let him try! Make him a comrade in adversity with yourself and your VP character. How? By picking a problem with which he feels he is at least familiar, something he has struggled with, something within his moral understanding.

That is the problem we are talking about, observe.

The 1 + 1 or 1 - 1 equation; the honor + love = ?; or duty + fear; or pride - miserliness; or whatever. But what about the character – that vehicle “to carry the problem”? How do you create him?

You do it in the same way that you create a story. Character gets created by conflict, and the stronger the conflict the stronger the character. Further, the stronger the character, the more eagerly your readers will pay to see him, the more readily they will identify themselves with him.

Observe how many millions who never saw South Bend, Indiana, are fanatic partisans, brothers-in-arms, of the Notre Dame football team. Or of Minnesota, or Army, Navy, or one of ,the other pigskin greats. Pit Notre Dame against Army or Minnesota or Texas, and scores of thousands will pay to watch, millions will listen – why?

Because you have achieved the epitome of interest, a mighty driving force against almost indomitable resistance. You have created a characterful struggle.

Why does a bottle of lemon soda on the shelf receive only a glance, while people show a bottle of nitroglycerin — straw-colored stuff which appears much the same — tremendous respect and attention? It is because we know there is no actual power, no conflict in the lemon soda. But nitro – that is different!

Locked in terrific struggle within that palish fluid, we know, are two tremendous antagonists, an almost inconceivably explosive force held in check by a molecular force so slightly superior that a mere careless touch on our part, even a hard look perhaps, may be enough to break the deadlock and unleash a roaring tide of destruction. Well, that is the way to create vital, dynamic, compelling characters in your story.

Make compounds that could go off. Soda-water, perhaps, with a faint pop for your weaklings, your very minor characters, but a stick of dynamite for your central character. You do not have to explode him all over the reader to prove his potency, of course. But make your main character a stick of giant and never let the reader forget it.

Further, in compounding your character, remember the particular story problem for which you are making him. You compound him, for example, of pride and love if the story problem is to be pride and love.

You make your central character fit the story problem and the story problem fit the central character. They are inseparable, unified; the character suggests the story problem, the story problem suggests the character.

You must do this in your imagination before you put character and story on paper. Remember, we are going to prove what the character is in the story itself. Do not take dull forever in the story to compound the character before the testing and the fireworks start. Just bring him in boldly labeled “Dynamite,” with the explosive ingredients, “Equal parts of pride and love,” for example, printed on the wrapper. In that way, you get for him instant respect and attention.

Alternatively, novice writers frequently create characters fully formed physically on page one, yet lacking a background or flaws, resulting in unconvincing characters. Then it is necessary to wade through page after page of dull copy, while the author grinds and mixes the ingredients which should have been completely mixed, molded, and fused as the written story began. Don’t make this mistake in your stories, ever!

Mix your powder in the laboratory of your own imagination before you move on to your blasting job location. A story that takes ten pages to compound the characters before the supreme testing starts will not sell. Don’t be guilty of such careless amateurism.

Give each one of your characters a past. Imagine this past vividly, make it real in your own mind before you start in writing the character into your story. And give the character a dominating, emotional-problem make-up. Assign a compound that will fit in with the particular use to which you intend to put the character.

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Let us illustrate this by using old Father Abraham again, for a splendid example, in our prime I + I story:

As the chapter (the “short story”) opens, we know very definitely that Abraham is an intensely religious man, in close communion with his. God. How do we know? Does the author take ten pages to describe Abraham’s nature? He definitely does not; he says, instead, in the very first sentence, that, tempting Abraham, God said to him, “Abraham!” and Abraham answered instantly, “Here I am.”

Clearly, a man promptly answering God demonstrates a close communion. A static, objective description is unnecessary. The dynamic action tells the tale. And in the very next sentence, the Lord again speaking, “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest... and offer him... for a burnt offering.”

Another essential ingredient of Abraham’s character exists; the text doesn’t describe it flatly or dully, but incorporates it into a swift, dynamic command. But let us consider what this means.

The objective description is not there. But, even had we read nothing else about Abraham, we can still picture him, can’t we? Our imagination supplies the details. Here is a man who loves his God and his family, as well. Love of the spirit, love of the flesh, and is there a one of us who does not know what this means! Inner conflict! The lusty, driving forces of the flesh forever hammering against the stern resistance of religion! Against the surging urge, an equally imperious, “Thou shalt not!” We know without being told a word more. Abraham’s character, in so far as it interests us in this story, compounds out of love of God instead of love of the flesh. And this story will deal not with the compounding of this character, but with putting him to the supreme test.

We are even told what the probable outcome will be. A man in such close communion with his God as Abraham is will probably obey his God. But the test, now – to sacrifice the supreme exemplification of his earthly life, the flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone, blood of his blood, his only beloved son, if he is to obey the Lord. What does Abraham do?

He acts in character. He does not stop to analyze or rationalize, for if he did so he would end by doing nothing at all. Instead, he does what we expect an intensely religious man to do. In good faith, he puts Isaac on the altar and starts the sacrifice.

And yet, had he not loved Isaac devotedly, had there been no conflict of emotions within him before the story starts, had he not been a bundle of contradictions, what value, what interest, in the test?

Think of a sword maker testing a blade he has just made. Bright, keen, shining, tempered, but what does he do with it? He bends it in a semicircle to see if it will break, slashes it against a heavy block to see if the edge will dull. Yet he wants it not to bend when the swordsman thrusts, he wants it not to dull when the swordsman cuts. Why does he try to bend, break, or dull it?

Because he knows the blade must combine contradictory characteristics with success. Stiffness and yet flexibility. The razor sharpness of glass, and yet not glass’s brittleness. An edge that will both cut and, when it cannot cut, still refuse to be blunted. Doesn’t this tell us something we have known all our lives and yet, perhaps, have failed to realize until this moment?

Do not hesitate for an instant to give your hero or heroine lusts of the flesh, dark passions, impulses to evil, or whatever you may call them. For these dark powers, fused with their opposites – the will of good, the moral impulses, the powers of the spirit – will do to your character what the opposite powers of fire and water do to the sword blade. The sword maker first heats his blade red hot, then quenches it in water to temper it, does he not?

Do not forget, your true story is within, not without, your central character. The real reason for bringing the sword to the testing block is not to see the sparks fly, not to enjoy the exciting spectacle of a brawny man flailing a heavy chunk of wood with a fine and expensive sword, although these, indeed, are what we see... The spectacle’s purpose: testing the blade’s internal strength, its unseen, inherent contradictions.

And the entire success or failure of the performance, whether we are to judge it as a triumph or a tragedy, hinges on performing those unseen contradictions, on whether the blade passes or fails the test.

The reason for greater rejoicing in heaven over the rescue of one lusty, repentant sinner than over ninety-nine shining saints is simply that the repentant sinner is worth more than the saints. He is steel to their pot-metal.

He has faced and fought the temptations they never knew. He has lost. Then picked himself up from the flat of his back and fought again — and won! He is a definite man, and you like that kind of character instinctively.

Then write about that kind of character and dismiss the saintly ones! Make your characters terrifically good and horribly bad all at once, allowing the good to win out after struggles, temptations, and agonies.

And yet, is there something else we need to know about writing characters and their conflicts? Yes...

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(This text was based on works by William Foster Harris, an early OU Professional Writing course instructor.)

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This excerpt is from “Forgotten Bestseller Secrets” — one of the Writerpreneur Series. You can get instant access to your digital ebook copy and all three mini-courses from that link.

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