Category Archives: rubber-ducking

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Thinking about characters

A week or two ago, I decided to focus on finishing the first complete draft of the book* instead of going back and strengthening the main character. I’m trying like hell to stick to that approach, however, I’m still trying to work out the main character as I do. As he’s present in these chapters, it’s pretty much unavoidable anyhow. Plus, it gives me the opportunity to put that character though different scenarios and see what works and what doesn’t. After all, I do have an idea about how I want to revise him, even if it isn’t the current focus of my energy.

With that in mind, I’m asking myself “How does one write a compelling character?” My book does have a few fairly well done characters, so I’m pretty sure my problem isn’t that I’m terrible at writing good characters. On the whole, I think I’m doing pretty well on that score. It’s more a question of why one character is not done well, but another is.

One thing about the main character I’m struggling with is how he changes through the book. How should he grow? What is the change he undergoes? As a writer who is still really trying to master the craft, this is a pretty daunting pair of questions. Lacking the skill and experience to tackle these, I simply omitted certain personality details and worked to bring those out in later chapters. It’s not that I realized this is what was happening, if I had, I wouldn’t have done it that way. It’s only upon reflection that I’m able to see I was attempting to use omission of personality as a proxy for real change. Now, it’s not that my problem isn’t fixable, it’s just a matter of understanding what the change ought to be. The main character starts out the book avoiding his innate magical skill. By the end, he has managed to learn how to harness some of the most powerful aspects of this magic. There’s the change. I can make it big, and it’s pretty straight forward.

Another problem I had with the main character is that I started out the concept with two characters, friends and war-buddies. One of them I imagined as a free-wheeling, drinking and womanizing ruffian. The other, was more of a buttoned-up noble-born stiff. Early on in the project, I made a major change to the back-story. I gave the noble-born the ruffian’s back story and made it the beginning of the book. This was actually a break-through change for the story as a whole. It gave the thing a starting point and some conflict to ignite the larger fight. However, I made a mistake, which was that when I dropped that back-story on to the noble-born, the personality traits associated with the original character had to go with. Since I chose not to do that, I ended up with a mis-matched and incomplete personality coming through on the page.

To take this discussion further, I hit the books to see what might be learned there. I’m not talking about books on writing or writing characters, I’m talking about other fiction I’ve read and what struck me as being a particularly good example of characterization. There are a number of good examples, but my first thought was Dune. It was a book where I was blown away at how strong virtually every character was, from the very moment they walked into the scene. A good case example is Dr. Yueh. Over the course of six pages, Frank Herbert manages to introduce and draw Yueh as a tormented and unwilling participant in the Baron’s plans to utterly destroy the Atreides. What’s super interesting about this approach is that Herbert basically tells the reader what’s coming. Yueh is cursing himself for what’s coming, without directly or explicitly saying what that is. The Doctor acts and thinks in terms of the context he’s in without holding back. Nothing is muted to protect that bit of information from the reader until the writer is ready to spring it on them. Now, this is the important point. Because Herbert is not trying to hide what Yueh is up to from the reader, it allows him to more completely draw the character, highlight his anguish at being thrust into this situation.

The takeaway in this? When it comes to characters, don’t hold back.

For my situation, I think the solution is to make the main character’s evolution much more targeted, focused on the magic. He is not an uncertain person, and should not read that way. I know the context and history and so it shouldn’t be a horribly difficult task to write the character using that context as a framework. Just like the Dr. Yueh example, this will give a much more natural feel to those situations where the character reacts in a particular way, which is explained by his back story, but isn’t quite known by the reader.

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* I have to call it a book now because it’s so close to being a full draft, I couldn’t rightly call it a story. Besides, I’m planning at least two more after, and in my mind, that’s the ‘story’.

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I refuse to call it stuck

Last night I stayed up fighting with a new and totally unexpected chapter, #14. I had imagined chapter 13 going in a particular direction, but I got to the end of a sentence and realized that was the end of it. It was time for a new scene, new setup and the whole nine-yards. I wasn’t expecting to go that way. Now, I’ve got an idea of where I want this chapter to go, but it actually has to become a chapter in it’s own right instead of being the end to a chapter. I have a setting, a few highlights in my mind about what things look like, and also a notion of how it ends.
What I’m struggling with is how to escalate the situation so that the beginning of the chapter gets to the end I am aiming for. Here’s the basic situation, the main characters* have chosen to navigate around an enemy fortress using an ancient, mysterious network of caves**. The caves are, ostensibly, safe providing they don’t go too deep. I can approach this in one of two ways. The first is, I think, the ‘too easy’ approach. In this scenario, the caves are not actually safe. Not only is this an easy thing for me, the writer, it also sets up something of an impossible situation for the characters, necessitating an easy out. Another approach is to have the characters take a wrong turn. I like this idea because it continues a theme of the know-it-all character’s imperfect knowledge. Also, if stuck in a system of caves with an imperfect memory of how to get through them, you’re basically assured to take a wrong turn. This also sets up a fight and a chase which will get the characters to the end of the chapter in exactly the manner I’m planning. Hiving spit all that out, the second choice seems like the logical direction.

With that, I think I’m off. Well, after I sort out chickens and ducks, and go to a super-bowl party. On the bright side, it’s apparently warmed up from around 0F to above freezing, so that’s nice.

* There are three
** This sounds silly as I write it, actually. Not only does it sound cliche, it’s also sort of convenient. I’m sticking with it though, because I need these for later chapters/books. Perhaps the trick to making this work is to make these relevant to the story and world somehow.

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Is writing a book like building a house?

When I was working on my house, I added about 1100sq. ft., about five years ago. The first parts of the project were fairly easy in terms of planning. First a contractor came in and set the foundation, then I put in the floor joists and sub-floor of the first story, rolling straight into wall framing and sheeting. After that, I took the roof off the existing structure, and put in the floor joists and sub-floor for the second story. Once that was all in place, once again, I was framing and sheeting the walls, which was followed quickly by installation of roof trusses and roof sheathing, which led immediately to shingles. Having all that done, the real work began and the strategy started to become more about preference. Living in Alaska, I opted to focus on insulation, windows followed by interior framing, and then wiring. Normally, this would have occurred in a slightly different order, but if I wanted to continue working that was how it needed to be. Now, once I got that sorted, it was really a matter of preference.

It seems to me that this is where I’m at with my story. I’ve got a few chapters near the end to move from outline to draft, the first major revision, and polish, to the subplot, and of course I still need to go through again and really get that main character nailed down. He needs to be strong and charismatic, and he’s not there yet. I feel like where I’m at in my story is analogous to the point at which I walked into my newly dry house, and looked some 28 feet up the empty stairwell into the trusses of a hollow shell of a yet-to-be dwelling. It hit me like a physical pain back then. I have so much work to do, was my thought. I’d just spent every free moment of my summer getting it to that point and it wasn’t even half-way. I was right, the struggle went on for another 18 months. I tried to tackle things in a certain order to make life easier when I got to the next part. I’d like to approach my story in the same way. My intuition is telling me to just get the whole damn thing written, and worry about the details later, but another part of me says, don’t waste your time on the end because you don’t know all of the details that got him there yet. I suppose in the example of building a house, revision really isn’t on the table. With a book it’s just the nature of things. So, with all of that rubber-ducking and reminiscing out of the way. I’m going to commit myself to drafting out the last few chapters, leave the sub-plot revision until the end, and see if the end of the story doesn’t help me get a better sense of my main character. Is this a good strategy? No idea, never done this before. Anyhow, no I’m off for a run before the night gets away from me.