Deep Characterization
Bill Johnson
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Bill Johnson on Smashwords
Deep Characterization
Copyright © 2012 Deep Characterization by Bill Johnson
ISBN: 978-0-9673932-3-0
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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Deep Characterization
Copyright © 2012 by Bill Johnson.
All rights reserved.
Published by Blue Haven Publishing
Willamette Writers House 2108 Buck St West Linn, OR 97068
Book Design: Bill Johnson
Cover: Nancy Hill
Johnson, Bill
Deep Characterization/ by
Bill Johnson —
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. How-to 2. Story Writing
I. Title
ISBN: 978-0-9673932-3-0
Dedication
This book is dedicated to
Monty Metawa, who understands much
Deep Characterization
Deep Characterization explores the difference between characters created to act out a story for an audience and characters created to act out a writer’s internal dramas. A story written for an audience is a promise to take that audience on a story journey; a story written for the writer’s own needs is a promise to transport him or her to the fulfillment of personal needs. For example, some writers create stories out of a need to be acknowledged. Writers who are emotionally numb can create stories to experience deep feeling.
This new work is meant to help writers who have been ‘stuck’ at a certain level of storytelling without understanding why.
Deep Characterization is part of a longer work, A Story is a Promise and the Spirit of Storytelling, also available on Smashwords.
Table of Contents
Writing About a Stuck Main Character
Beginning a Novel with a Wounded Main Character
Writing About a Wounded Psyche
Resources
Deep Characterization
When I developed the a story is a promise concepts, I thought that if I could teach people the mechanics of telling a story, their writing would improve. Some writers improved; others didn’t. As I worked with writers who had been taking writing workshops for twenty years (not just my classes and workshops) and still struggled to understand the mechanics of storytelling, I began to question why.
I saw many problems fell into particular categories. First novels were often written around main characters who are stuck, emotionally numb, unable to express intimate feelings, too conflicted or wounded to act, or diffuse.
I came to recognize writers were creating characters who are extensions of the writer’s inner dramas. A storyteller who feels “stuck” in life creates a main character who mirrors that state. Emotionally numb authors create emotionally numb main characters. Writers with issues around intimacy create characters unable to express or feel love. Wounded writers create wounded characters who can only react, not act. Writers who want to appear complex create characters who are diffuse. Writers with a need to be acknowledged create story worlds where they are listened to and acknowledged.
I came to see that the promise of this kind of storytelling is internal; it is meant to transport the storyteller, not the storyteller’s audience, to a place where the storyteller can process his or her feelings, or rearrange events and outcomes to meet his or her needs. The “stuck” storyteller can experience what it feels like to be free; the numb author can experience a moment of deep feeling through a character who finally achieves an ability to feel; the character unable to love can find themselves able to feel and express love.
Generally only on the last page, last paragraph of a novel. Which makes that last page, last paragraph the real beginning of a story about a dramatic character making choices versus a passive character reacting to the writer’s choices.
A story meant for an audience generally needs characters who pass through a range of feelings as they confront and overcome plot obstacles that block them from getting what they want. Other characters experience powerful illuminations about life on their story journeys. Stories we tell ourselves need only help us rearrange the events of a bad day to a desired outcome. Stories we tell ourselves can have characters who are symbolic to us—father, mother, spouse, ex-girlfriend, boss, in-laws—but have no meaning to an audience. We “get even”, “get justice,” “get what we deserve” through these characters, experience love, experience revenge; we are champions and heroes on our inner stages, but that means nothing to an audience. They have their own inner stages on which to tell their own stories.
Stories we tell ourselves are a promise to ourselves.
To help writers learn the mechanics of telling a story meant for an audience, I realized I would need to understand how the symbolic characters who act on these inner stages become stand-ins for story characters.
In my first attempt to teach this concept, it just happened I met four young women at a writer’s conference who were all in the same critique group. When I set out some of the character types I’d developed and asked each young woman to think about and then talk about what character types from their personal life informed their writing, each young woman gave an answer, and the other three all immediately responded, “no, that isn’t it at all, it is really X.”
When each of the young women spoke, the others all had the same response: “the issue that informs her writing isn’t X, it’s Y”.
That’s when I recognized the underlying problem some writers wrestle with is that they transport story characters from their inner stage to a public stage where these characters are supposed to be performing for an audience. But those characters often keep their backs to the audience while they perform for their creators, their real audience.
That’s why I call this process of recognizing the difference between personal storytelling and characterization and telling a story to an audience deep characterization.
To help writers learn the mechanics of telling a story meant for an audience versus fulfilling an internal story promise, I realized I would need to understand how these various inner characters complicate a writer’s attempts to tell a story. For example, what inner promise is fulfilled for the emotionally numb author who creates emotionally numb characters? One answer: that writing about an emotionally numb character allows an author to experience feeling through the situations a story character is placed in.
The meek will inherit the earth, in the guise of Rambo or Bambi, at least in a perfect fantasy.
As I began to talk to emotionally numb authors, I came to see that such writers created minor characters who embodied the feelings the writers were able to express. For example, the writer’s anger, guilt, and judgmental feelings. The minor characters who embodied these powerful feelings were quite lively and dramatically focused; they came to life because they were driven by their singular feelings. As characters, they hit pure, powerful notes. They often dragged or bullied the emotionally numb, passive main character through a novel, screenplay, or play.
If you’re doing that, you have company; I do it. Sometimes I have to write a story, see that I’m venting over an old relationship or, in the words of a friend, I’m putting things in a story that I should have left in a therapist’s office. Then I start over. I’m not suggesting that writers not use their personal life and issues as fuel, just to recognize what happens when this process takes over and leaves no fuel to “move” an audience.
Yes, powerful minor characters can “move” an audience, but when the central character of a story is diffuse, powerful minor characters simply highlight the main structural flaw and weakness of a story.
My goal here is to help people who have dedicated themselves to leaning the craft of storytelling but have found themselves ‘stuck’ at a level that traditional classes have not helped them transcend.
I’m not exploring how these issues affect writers from a distance. I have to deal with them in my own writing.
We share this journey.
Character Types
I’m going to set out the inner character types in this chapter. You’ll notice on occasion I offer the same advice. For example, I suggest people write beside each paragraph what a story character is feeling, and how his or her feelings change because of what’s happening in a scene. Or, that the writer think of him or herself as an actor playing their main character.
One aspect to this problem of writers learning the craft of storytelling is the intense focus on solutions. Many new writers want quick answers to the question of how to write a good novel, play, or screenplay. They want answers on how to write good dialogue, gripping scenes, stronger characters, and build powerful plots. I came to see that as long as some writers are endlessly in a quest for solutions, it can mask the real, underlying problem, that writers are unaware of this process of overlying their needs and issues over their main characters.
Therefore, when I set out what some of the most common of these character types are, my main advice to writers will be to stop and think about what they are doing. Are you creating these characters to use as vehicles to vent? To process your feelings? Deal with your anxieties? To turn your failed dreams into fictional truths? Avenge personal defeats?
In my case, the answer is yes. Then I try and move on and write a story.
Now, the character types.
The Wounded Writer
The wounded writer creates a main character who is too wounded to act. This type of main character gets dragged through the story by minor characters. Since most stories are advanced by active characters, wounded characters kill the drama of a story. These main characters become the least interesting character, because they are the least able to act to shape a story’s course and outcome.
Suggestions: Give a story’s main character a positive goal, something he or she is willing to act to gain in spite of obstacles. If you can’t stop yourself from creating a wounded main character, try making your wounded character a friend of the main character, a parent, a spouse, a lover. Or, if your main character is wounded, allow the audience to share his or her feelings (or ideas) as the character acts to shape the outcome of a story in spite of his or her wound.
Examples of stories with wounded main characters who act:
Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy, is a novel about a wounded character who only finds healing when he acts to save his sister.
Tell No One, by Hank Coben, is about a man who believes something in him died when his wife and soul-mate was murdered. When he discovers she’s alive, he is compelled to find out what happened.
Funeral for Horses, by Catherine Ryan Hyde, is about an emotionally scared young woman who goes in search of a missing brother.
What popular novels or movies do you recall about wounded characters? Successful stories can teach you how to make your wounded character active.
Something to consider: If you feel you’ve been victimized by life, are you recreating that mind-set in your main character? If you’re trying to write popular fiction, readers who feel victimized by life generally prefer to identify with powerful, determined characters.
The Martyr
These storytellers have sacrificed or subsumed their desire to write to take care of the needs of others. One way martyrs deal with this disappointment is to become numb. Martyrs tend to create main characters who are also emotionally numb. Because stories are often journeys of feeling for readers, story characters who are numb aren’t accessible to a story’s audience. Things happen to them, but they have no visible, emotional response.
Suggestions: Accept that you’ve experienced creative disappointments in life and get in touch with those feelings. Then allow your main characters to have their own feelings, disappointments, hopes, and dreams.
Some writers might have a personality that is so defined by the martyr role, it’s difficult for them to not express it. I suggest such writers recognize that they might need to write a story that expresses that feeling, then move on and write another story that doesn’t go down this path. I find in writing short plays that I often have to write two plays; one that vents my feelings and overrides my original story idea, plot, and characters, then a second play that is a story with characters and a plot not connected to my inner drama.
Examples of stories told with active characters who martyr themselves:
Silkwood, starring Meryl Streep. She plays a woman working at a nuclear plant who sacrifices herself to save others.
Norma Rae, starring Sally Field, is about a wife and mother working in a mill in the South who makes great sacrifices to get her fellow workers the protection of a union.
The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty, has a priest who sacrifices himself to save a young girl possessed by a demon.
Something to consider:
Think of yourself as an actor on a stage playing a character. As an actor, what would you need to do to express to the audience what your character is feeling? As an actor, what would you need to do to express what your character wants, and what they are doing to get what they want? The goal here is to make the character and his or her feelings and dramatic goals accessible to a story’s audience.
The Unacknowledged Writer
These writers can shove main characters aside at key moments to expound on their beliefs or ideas. In life, these writers might not feel recognized for their ideas, so they create a world full of characters who become their audience. For these authors, a main character is often a vehicle for the authors to expound on their ideas.
Minor characters tend to be under described, because they function as an audience for the main character, while “bad” people are very detailed because they are people the author wants to get back at for not listening. Such characters are often the barbarians at the gates, very dramatic folk. Their deaths are often graphic and detailed. This organized violence can be a safety valve for unacknowledged writers who feel stuck in life.
Suggestions: To understand how to incorporate ideas into stories, read writing books about theme and story (The Art of Dramatic Writing, by Lajos Egri).
Learn the difference between a story that is an explanation or exposition of your beliefs (a lecture aimed at your audience), and a story that acts out a belief (Moby-Dick, for example, demonstrates how a good cause becomes evil).
If you have a strong desire to express yourself, consider finding an outlet to express your ideas, a web blog or journal, for example. Or, just accept that you’re creating a story world to explore ideas that interest you and have fun sharing your work with others with similar interests.
Something to consider: Exploring the downside of being too acknowledged. For example, Samuel Clemens was known all over the world as Mark Twain. People everywhere loved Mark Twain. Very few people cared about Samuel Clemens, or Norma Jeane Mortenson (Marilyn Monroe), or Reginald Kenneth Dwight (Elton John).
Examples of main characters who are unacknowledged:
The Ambassadors, by Henry James, features a provincial American who wants to test himself in the cultured airs of Europe. He discovers he doesn’t want to return home to a more circumscribed life.
Rambo, starring Sylvestor Stallone, is about a returning Vietnam war vet who feels his sacrifices and the sacrifices of other vets have been ignored.
Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis, features an energetic, cultured young woman who moves to a small town with her new husband and finds her sense of identity worn away by small town values and norms.
Everything’s Under Control