[Writerpreneur] Compelling Characters 02

YOUR CENTRAL CHARACTER - Stories revolve around a single character - one who helps you build your story and helps the reader identify and engage personally with their problems and progress...

You are going to need to decide on a central character early on. A book needs to have one person who’s going to be the center of attention, who’s going to be the dominant factor.

Different subsidiary elements may surround that main character, especially with a generational novel where a family dynamic or dominant factor could take center stage. But anyhow, you need a central character.

And the key test you need to ask is, who do we cheer for? With whom do we empathize, root for, and wish success? And why do we cheer for him? What about his believability, appeal, and overall impact compel our support?

As I’ve covered elsewhere – for ideas, you need an angle to turn to. Here, what you need is a person who turns you on. Don’t write about the guy that doesn’t appeal to you because you’ll be in deep trouble. There’s an old song that captures it. No, you’ll remember it. Remember that song, “...standin’ on the corner watching all the girls go by?” There’s the heart of the thing right there. The process mirrors itself when writing. Look for a character who turns you on.

A third factor – situation – which I would define a little differently than just frequently presented, a situation involves time. When it’s going to take place, the period, is it contemporary? Is it the 15th century? What have you, the place are we dealing with Austin, Texas or El Paso, Texas or Montevideo, Uruguay, or what used to be Peking, China?

Once more, you go to seek the thing — find a place that captures your interest and where you see possibilities. Next, you have to have a time assigned for your book and you need a place for your book. Consider once more, are you really interested in crafting a book-length presentation set in Warsaw during the Jewish uprising and subsequent devastation? Does this intrigue you enough to replicate it?

In terms of a country town in Western Oklahoma, where a storekeeper is the central character, you want something that attracts you. And then you need circumstance.

You can define circumstance as a state of affairs your central character can’t stand. Whatever he can’t stand, there’s something or other that he’s dealing with.

He has a job; he wants to be the president of the company.

He can’t stand his present role, he’s an automobile racer and he cannot stand coming in second.

It needn’t be dramatic. Maybe he just can’t stand Susie. So he goes ahead and eventually wins Susie and then he can’t stand having to live with her – and don’t think that doesn’t happen.

You need a situation, a state of affairs, which to everybody else may be absolutely perfect, but he can’t stand it.

And the consequence of not being able to stand it and incidentally, if you ask him, he might not say that he couldn’t stand it. All he knows is he’s dissatisfied with it and he wants to change it in some manner.

This is getting a little ahead of myself, but here, but he figures out a way to change the situation. This is the basis for your story.

Reasons For Change: Wants – Wishes

So we know now as we bring character and situation together, even though they were probably never apart, we know that the character wants to change his unacceptable situation, the situation he just can’t stand. You must discover the character’s objective motivation for this transformation.

Three things matter most:

• Possession of something, whether it’s a girl or an Allie cat or a million dollars.

• Relief from something, relief from a boss. He doesn’t like relief from a wife. He can’t stand relief from a climate that has, in particular, forever having colds or allergies.

• Revenge for something. He’s been wronged, and he’ll retaliate.

Let’s briefly shift focus; motives are frequently discussed. Why someone acts is their motive; writers rarely need this, despite much discussion.

Why?

Because we don’t know why somebody wants to do something. That’s inside his head. There’s no known way that you can get inside someone’s head and find out why they want to do something. You might guess, however, I mention this: you require purpose, not motive. Because purpose is: What does character want to do? Or to put the emphasis a little different – What does he want to DO?

So here’s our man walking down the street. A house is engulfed in fire, and a baby cries. It’s obviously a hazardous proposition if he goes into that house. He raced inside, retrieved the unharmed infant, then vanished before anyone learned his identity. But the baby is safe.

The man’s purpose became obvious, understandable. He wanted to do something; he wanted to save that baby that he heard crying. We don’t know what his motive was. We can assume a motive. This person may be a humanitarian, but we lack confirmation. He might believe those attending possess wealth, thus offering a substantial reward.

Attempt this. In your novel, you’ll get into the matter of motivation. Eventually, you must determine your central character’s motivation. However, you’re addressing purpose, not motivation. And it will help you if you, when you’re planning things, ask yourself, alright, what does he wanna do?

Now that I know his destination, what does he aim to accomplish? What solution does he envision?

Now let’s depart from that. I believe I’ve thoroughly discussed it, so why does the character objectively understand this change, but subjectively? This holds primary importance. To determine their happiness, we need insight into the character’s emotions. And I’m not gonna undo that anymore now because we have already hit it pretty hard.

Character fears merit investigation. What is my character scared of? Is your hero or is your character scared of the villain? Whoever the villain may be? Is he scared of old age? Does the fear of conviction for a past crime haunt him? Is he scared he may lose his beloved person? What’s the thing?

This is really part of this entire business of danger and happiness. Something always scares a character. You need to know what it is, even if it doesn’t end up in the final book.

This largely plays out internally. To understand this person, consider their goals and especially their fears.

Now, it will also help you if you will ask yourself about the lifestyle the person leads. Most of us, shall we say, are impulse buyers in the supermarket of life. Isn’t that profound and philosophical alone? Our conversations involve purpose, goals, and various other details. Clarity eludes most. Our path is unplanned; ideas arise, we pursue them. Keep in mind that not all your people will move in a straight line. They might find something appealing, such as a new teriyaki sauce in a supermarket, and be drawn to it. And so you decide, all right, I’ll buy it. That sounds good, I’ll buy that.

Regarding lifestyle, you might recall sociologist W. I. Thomas, who came up with what he called the four wishes, which drive people. Examine each character’s primary trait and its transformation. What are the permutations, the ways they combine with others?

First one, adventure. The desire for new experience. This holds considerable importance for many, especially young people.

The second of these drives is the one towards security. Many prioritize security. An Oklahoma farm woman I know had a childhood marked by poverty. Changes have occurred over the years, partly due to the oil business and other factors. And now she has half a million dollars.

Let me share something essential for a feeling - remember, it’s a feeling, not a fact. Her net worth is a fact. Security, or lack of it, is a feeling. For her, deep insecurity kept her living as if she were still that small farm’s resident.

A third one, recognition. We’ve got adventure, security, recognition. And recognition is the drive to fame. It made in groupies who followed the rock bands the desire to associate themselves with something that made them feel big and important.

And finally, response. Response is love. Responses show others’ high regard and importance they place on you. Now this isn’t the same as fame. This matter is deeply personal. Now you’re putting together a character, you’re fairly well along in your development of your book. And so you ask yourself, what’s the driving, the primary driving force of my character? Adventure, security, recognition, or response — or a combination of them?

Of course, you find virtually no obvious cases — having decided pretty much about these things — and you need to ask yourself another question. Why doesn’t he quit? Oh, but let somebody say we’re sexist: Why doesn’t she quit? Alright, objectively, what does the person stand to gain? And we’ve already talked about possession of relief from revenge for what does he stand to lose objectively, why his life, love, freedom, treasures.

Those points are clear; however, subjective aspects hold greater weight. Everybody, all of us, every one of you has a self image. You have an unformulated, un-verbalized, undecided picture of yourselves and what you do and what you don’t do.

And pride and shame are major determinants of this. You take pride in certain things and therefore act to maintain that pride. You deem some actions too shameful to perform. You need to ask yourself, “What about my characters? Is each element crucial to the narrative? What is their private logic? What is their self-image? What is it they’re proud or ashamed of? What is the hangup that they have?” The feeling that’s so inordinately important to them they can’t let it go, even though it makes no sense in terms of logic.

Now, two last points, a quote from Alfred Hitchcock. “Audiences want to identify with a hero who wants to do something and eventually does it even though they don’t necessarily morally endorse his actions.”

And finally, the strength of your villain is the strength of your story. You’ve got to have people. The key characteristic of a villain is ruthlessness. A villain doesn’t always wear a black hat in an opera cape.

Obsessive pursuit of goals defines villains; they readily dominate others. He covets the corner office, its many windows a key attraction. His willingness to harm others for personal gain makes him a villain.

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We now have our concept, and we have our main character to root for.

Next: to get our greatest success, we need to develop an intimate link between the writer, main character, and reader...

( This text was based on works by Dwight V. Swain, 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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