44 Characters and viewpoint

What they don't realize is that repetition is rarely a problem with names - names aren't a stylistic device, they're a signpost to guide us through the story, telling us who's doing what. On those rare occasions when it really would be awkward to repeat the name, we already have a solution: the pronoun.

Sometimes amateurs play "musical names" because they're trying to

convey information with the replacement nouns:

Johnson went to the bridge. The captain barked his orders. The Annapolis

graduate wasn't going to take any nonsense from these youngsters. A sixty-

year-old has to fight to get respect in this navy, thought the grandfather of

If it's vital for us to know that Johnson is a sixty-year-old Annapolis graduate who is captain of the ship and has nine grandchildren, then tell us - but don't do it by using all these taglines instead of Johnson's name:

Johnson went to the bridge and barked his orders. He knew these youngsters didn't have much respect for a sixty-year-old like him; who cared anymore that he graduated first in his class from Annapolis? He knew that whenever he gave an order, his executive officer thought, "What's an old coot like him doing as captain of a ship? He ought to be sitting on a park bench boring people to death with pictures of his nine grandchildren."

The second version takes a little longer - but then, it conveys a lot more information and attitude as well, and you always know who Johnson is. Remember, if you lose clarity, you've lost your reader, and the consistent use of names is one of your chief tools in keeping the reader clear on what's happening in the story.

KEEPING A BIBLE

Besides names, you'll make a lot of other decisions about your characters. Some you'll make before the story begins-a lot of facts about the character's past, about things he's going to do in the story, and so on. But you'll make many other decisions as you go along. And it will help you a great deal if, from time to time, you jot down these decisions.

For instance, when you showed the character getting dressed, you had him choose a striped tie. No particular reason-it was just a detail to give reality to his morning routine. Ten pages later, though, you forgot that. You have him pull his shirt off over his head before he goes in swimming-but not a word about loosening or removing his tie. Why did you forget? Because it isn't all that important, and because you wrote the first page three days ago, and because writers forget. We're human.

Most of your readers are human, too. But they're reading the story all at once, and for them page one and page ten are minutes apart, not days.

During the shooting of a movie, there's a person whose whole job is

Making Decisions 45

making sure that if an actor's cigarette was two inches long in the establishing shot, it's also two inches long in all the close ups and reaction shots. You don't have anybody to help with that. You have to do it for yourself.

The best way is to keep a bible-a notebook (or a separate computer

file, if your computer allows you to open two files at once) in which you jot

down each decision you've made. If it's too distracting to do this while

writing, don't interrupt the flow; you can simply wait till you're through

writing for the day and take a few minutes to scan through the day's out-

putjotting down all the things you've decided. The method I find best for

me is to begin each day's work by scanning the work I did the day before,

jotting down things I've decided on papers beside the computer. This not

only helps me maintain consistency, it also gets me back into the story and

makes me think about each decision, wondering if it was right, seeing if

perhaps it makes me discover new things about the character. f

The decisions you make aren't all as trivial as the color of a character's tie, either. When I wasn't creating a bible as I went along, I once changed a character's name between chapter 5 and chapter 15. I forgot that I made him an orphan and had him telephone his mother. I've changed a minor character's race, I've changed other characters' professions, I've changed my hero's hair color, age, height, birthday-it's easy to do when a character isn't the focus of the action or when a lot of pages have intervened.

Fortunately, editors-or my wife, Kristine, who reads everything in manuscript-have caught most of these mistakes. When they have, I've had to choose which version is correct. This has forced me to rethink many decisions that I had made arbitrarily, on the spur of the moment, and I've realized that many of these decisions were careless, that with a bit more thought I could come up with something much better. I had reached up and grabbed the first idea from my stock of cliches, when on second thought I was able to come up with a better decision that enriched the story and the character and brought them to life.

Keeping a bible helps make you aware of the decisions you're making. The very fact of jotting down your decision makes you think about it again, allows you a chance to do some wondering, some questioning. Whether you do it right at the moment, at the end of the day, or the next morning, you have a chance to improve on the decision while the story is still fresh, before you have gone ten or fifty or a hundred pages beyond that moment.

Even a bible, however, won't keep you from the occasional mistake, and for every decision you realize you're making, there are hundreds or thousands of others you'll never even notice. That's all right. The idea isn't to make every single aspect of storytelling a conscious decision-then no one would ever finish writing anything. Most of your decisions will remain unconscious. But the ones you are aware of allow you to open up your story with more invention, more possibilities, more space, more people for your unconscious mind to play with.

In fiction, necessity isn't the mother of invention. It's possible to have a career without inventing very much at all. You don't have to be inventive.

46

CHARACTERS AND VIEWPOINT

But the stories that astonish us, the characters that live forever in our memories-those are the result of rich imagination, perceptive observation, rigorous interrogation, and careful decision-making.

When it comes to storytelling, invention is the mother of astonishment, delight, and truth.

PART II

CONSTRUCTING CHARACTERS

CHAPTER 5

WHAT KIND OF STORY ARE YOU TELLING?

WHEN YOU INVENT A CHARACTER, YOU DEPEND on your sense of what is important and true to make your decisions. This will continue throughout your telling of the tale-but once you start setting down words, you also have to make many decisions based on what is right for the whole story. Now it's time for these newly created characters to get to work.

THE "MICE" QUOTIENT