22 Characters and viewpoint

Exaggeration

Notice also that as I kept insisting that nothing would stop the baby's crying, I was building the baby up to mythic proportions. It had ceased to be an ordinary baby, one that can be comprehended by the normal human mind, and had started to become the archetypal Baby, the unfathomable barbarian who emerged from the human womb but now rules the family with its whimsical, unintelligible demands; the Baby as a devil-god no sacrifice will ever satisfy.

A little exaggeration helps turn an ordinary, believable, dull person into an interesting one. A little more, and the person becomes more archetypal, but a bit less believable as an individual. Even more exaggeration, and a character becomes a cartoon, a caricature, perhaps useful for laughs or satire, but not for poignancy or real belief. Exaggerate too much, and the character becomes utterly useless: unbelievable, unrecognizable.

Do the Twist

In the story idea the class and I worked out together, we assumed that the babysitter was a responsible human being, trying to do a good job. But what if the babysitter has a racket? What if the parents always come home to find the baby crying, so they'll feel guilty for the awful time the babysitter had and pay extra?

The method here is to take an assumption about a character and give it a good sharp twist. I was conducting a thousand-ideas session at a convention in Chattanooga that happened to be attended by Gene Wolfe, the most brilliant writer of speculative fiction in the 1980s. The group had invented a fantasy character-a young king who had to abstain from all sexual activity as a kind of sacrifice; if he ever achieved any kind of sexual fulfillment, his kingdom would weaken, the magic that sustained it would slacken or fade. We had all assumed that the young king would be restive under his obligatory limitations, yearning for sex and trying to find a way to escape his guardians. But Wolfe said, "No, no, you don't understand. This young man thinks they don't restrict him enough. He's absolutely terrified that he'll accidentally slip into some form of sexual release and cause some dire consequence to his people. He'd make sure they watch him all the time."

The character the group had invented was believable, certainly-a lot of teenagers in real life expend considerable effort trying to escape sexual limitations. But Wolfe's twist led to a character no less believable, but a great deal more interesting, and from there we asked a lot of why and what result questions that made for one of the best stories ever to emerge from such a session.

The Cliche Shelf

Never let an idea pass through your mind without giving it the third degree. Shine a bright light on it. Demand that it answer your questions.

What Makes a Good Fictional Character? 23

And let your questions, again and again, be Why? What caused that? For what purpose? What's the result of that? What would happen then?

Be brutal. Don't let your idea sit there without answering. Don't believe the first answer that comes to mind, either. Chances are very good that the first answer you come up with will be a cliche. The second one, too. Keep asking the questions, trying for more answers-eventually one will come along that really comes alive for you. Or if the one that works best for you is one of the first ones you thought of, then fine, go back to it.

And then, when you think the idea isjust right, when the character is exactly what you want her to be, exaggerate an aspect of her that nobody else has ever thought of exaggerating. Or give the character a little twist. Or both.

Everybody-not just writers-has a little library of cliches, stock story elements. We all pick these up from our reading, from jokes and stories people tell us. Most of these are public cliches-events and characters that everybody has seen a lot of over the years. Some are private cliches, personal quirks or obsessions that you aren't even aware of.

When you're writing along, or outlining a story, or simply interrogating an idea that just came to you, chances are very good that when you ask one of these why and what result questions, the first answer that pops into your mind will be a cliche. It's as if, without even looking up, you reach onto that cliche shelf and pull down the first thing that comes to hand. And if you aren't paying attention, you'll settle for it, and your story will be weaker and shallower because you made do with a cheap and easy answer and didn't keep asking questions until you came up with something really good.

FROM CHARACTER TO STORY, FROM STORY TO CHARACTER

There are some specific questions that will help open up possibilities in your mind as you interrogate your ideas.