108 Characters and viewpoint

Packer talked serious business on the phone, but when he walked into the restaurant I knew it was all bluff. His suit was shiny and too small, too short in the sleeves; his tie didn't come within six inches of his belt. I thought of asking him the name of his tailor, but he might be smart enough to know he was being insulted, and on the off chance he was an eccentric millionaire whose mother never taught him how to dress, I decided to hold off provoking him until after he paid for lunch.

This paragraph tells you something about Packer, of course-that he dresses awkwardly. You see Packer through the narrator's eyes, and this will always color your perception of him. The narrator feels contemptuous; so will you.

At the same time, his attitude also tells you about the narrator. He judges people by their clothing-whether they're worth taking seriously, whether he even thinks they're smart. Furthermore, he decides to treat this man civilly only because of a chance that he might actually have money.

This can be a complicated game. Push the narrator's contempt for Packer far enough, and we'll come to dislike the narrator and sympathize with Packer. If that's what you want, then it's working. But if you want the reader to like the narrator, you have to make sure his attitude doesn't get too flippant, that he never descends into meanness.

Jacob was early for his appointment with Ryan's teacher; he stood by his car for a minute, looking at the place where Ryan spent his days. The Guilford Middle School looked bleak-long flat-roofed buildings of red brick, bare windows, lots of gravel and concrete. An institution.

Going inside, Jacob hit his head on the door's low-hanging hinge assembly, a nasty bump that made him stop and close his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, it was as if the blow had made him color-blind. The corridor looked black and white. No, black and grey-nothing was clean enough to be called white. Bare fluorescent lights, blank walls interrupted only by doors with painted-over windows. Now Jacob understood why the only thing that ever seemed to go on at this place was discipline. It was a prison. The teacher was a warden, and poor Ryan had six months to go on his sentence.

Where does the attitude come from? At first only a few words: "bleak," "institution." But these words, which represent Jacob's attitude toward the school, are enough to set the tone. After that, the reader knows to interpret all the description as negative.

Without the attitude, though, there would be no point in describing the school. If Jacob weren't seeing it as a bleak institution, a dirty grey prison, the description would sound pretty much like every American school built since 1950. Might as well go straight to the scene with the teacher and not waste the reader's time visualizing the school at all.

Attitude can provide the tension in the scene. Here's the same scene twice, first without much attitude, then with more:

An attractive-looking man came up to Nora's desk, glanced at her nameplate, and smiled at her. "Hi, Nora. Want some lunch?"

The Serious Character: Make Us Believe 109

"No thanks," she answered. "I'll buy it somewhere else." 4 ^g-j*-/',v-He looked confused.

"Aren't you the sandwich man? The last place I worked, they had a man who came around taking sandwich orders."

Now let's try the same opening, with attitude, and then go on, seeing how the scene develops.

He had a sharp, clean look about him, he was thin and wore clothes well, but Nora didn't like the confident way he looked down at her. As if he had a right to decide things for her. She had had bosses with that look, and they always ended up talking about her clothing and how she ought to brighten up the office by wearing something a little lower in the neckline.

His gaze dropped to the nameplate on her desk, just for a moment. Then he looked her in the eye again. "Hi, Nora. Want some lunch?" he said.

That's right, don't ask if I want lunch with you, just ask if I want lunch. If I say no, does that mean I have to sit at my desk anoj. go hungry? "No thanks," she answered. "I'll buy it somewhere else."

He looked confused. She enjoyed that.

"Aren't you the sandwich man?" she asked. "The last place I worked, they had a man who came around taking sandwich orders."

He wasn't stupid-he knew he was being put down. "I was too cocky, right?"

"Not at all. I think you were just cocky enough."

That was a mistake. She was bantering with him now, and he was the kind who thought banter was a come-on. He started into some silly story about how a guy gets nervous when he sees a beautiful woman, his genes take over and he starts to swagger and preen. "Preen?"

"Like peacocks and grouses. Put on a display. But that's not me. I'm really a sensitive guy. I make Phil Donahue look like a truck driver."

Time to put a stop to this. "You don't want to have lunch with me. I have seven children at home and three different social diseases. I also lead men on and then yell rape when they get too close. I am every nightmare you ever had about a domineering career woman. I think a man like you would call a woman like me a castrating bitch."

He didn't answer right away. Just looked at her, his smile gone cold. "No," he finally said. "That's what my mother would call you." He stood up. "You're new here. I asked you to lunch. My mistake, sorry." He walked on past her desk and out the door.

That's right, act hurt. You werejust being friendly, and I jumped all over you. But I know better than that. I've seen that smile on too many faces not to know what lies behind it and where it leads. The man I'll go to lunch with is the one who doesn't speak to me until the normal course of work brings us together, and he won't ask me to lunch until he knows my name without looking at the nameplate on my desk.

Notice how the scene shifts, increasing the tension every time. At first, Nora's attitude disposes us to see the man as an overconfident womanizer. She stereotypes him, and we share her perception. The moment he admits the stereotype, though, by saying, "Too cocky?" our sympathy changes a little. We begin to think he might be decent after all-at least

110 CHARACTERS AND VIEWPOINT

he's smart enough to know he's being put down. Then, when she doesn't pay attention to the next thing he says (we know she didn't pay attention because his dialogue isn't given in full), we begin to wonder if she isn't losing a romantic opportunity. (In reading fiction, we're always looking for romantic opportunities, and there is sexual tension in this scene, beginning from the moment she noticed that he was sharp-looking, thin, and wore clothes well.) Her speech about seven children and three social diseases is way too strong-we really lose sympathy with her.

In writing this, my first off-the-shelf follow-up was to have her reflect the audience perception at that point, and feel regret for having treated him so badly. Since that was my first response, though, I questioned it, and instead let her recognize the effect that his "hurt" attitude was designed to have, and then counter it by reflecting on what she would respond favorably to. This put her attitude in perspective, and instead of our thinking that the man wasn't so bad after all, we are now measuring him against her standard. We are fully on her side again, and though a romantic relationship with this guy is still a story possibility, we won't be disappointed if she finds somebody else.

Also, it was because I was giving her attitude that I came up with the conflict in the first place. If I had written the whole scene the way the first version began, I would never have invented the relationship that emerged. She would have had no reason to turn him down. She would still have been a stranger to me, and so she would remain a stranger to the audience.

Wasn't it because of her attitude that you took interest in her at all?

Notice that it is primarily through attitudes that we establish the meaning of relationships between people. Attitude tells us what people notice about each other, and what value they assign to what they see. Look at these brief scenes, all from Pete's point of view, all giving his attitude:

"What a day," she said.

Yeah, right. Poor dear, couldn't she find a single dress that fit right?

"What a day," she said.

She could say anything right now, and it would be music. He didn't realize how much he missed her until she came back.

"What a day," she said.

She would tell him about it. They'd have dinner, watch TV, go to bed; if she didn't talk about how tired she was, they'd have sex. It was Tuesday. Moonlighting. So they'd definitely have sex, unless it was a rerun.

"What a day," she said.

He looked at her sharply. Did she guess where he had been today? What he had done? No. She was too dull for that. An intelligent idea, even if one came along, would never get past her faded blue housedress.

You get the idea. The particular way your character responds to events lets the reader know who he is. It also helps you discover your character,

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since each bit of attitude you come up with will help you decide what your

character will do next. Attitude and motive thus become inextricably in

tertwined. The character's response to event X will provide his motive for

doing Y and Z.

THE REMEMBERED PAST

One of the things I noticed as I started working with science fiction was that so many of the main characters seemed to come out of nowhere. They had no families; they all seemed to be loners and drifters who had no roots. This is fine, within the romantic tradition; does Dirty Harry have a mother? Does Aragorn? Darcy? Natty Bumppo? Rhett Butler? There's not much evidence for it. But it doesn't matter, in romance, because the story becomes the character's past. That is, by the end of the story, you know all the things the character did earlier in the story, so that now he does have connections with other people.

To fully realize a character, however, you must give him a whole life. He has a past, an elaborate set of meaningful connections to other people: family, friends, enemies, teachers, employers.

The most obvious way to tell a character's whole life is, of course, to begin the story with her birth. This is, however, the romantic tradition again. After all, no matter whether you're writing romance or realism, you have to begin the story at exactly the point where the main character becomes interesting and unique. If you start at her birth, then she must be bigger than life from the cradle. John Irving made the title character of The World According to Garp extraordinary from the moment of conception, when his very odd mother, a nurse in a hospital, impregnated herself using the body of a serviceman with terminal brain damage. But you can't always begin your stories with such bizarre events.