Creating Characters: How to Build Story People (15 page)

So much for Chauncey. Even if you find him disgusting or dis
tasteful, one thing’s for certain, I guarantee you. You won’t forget him!

How do you create a memorable character? Focus, it seems to me, is the key factor.
Your
focus.

That is, you select some unique aspect of body, mind, background, or personality in your story person, then emphasize it. Build it up. Exaggerate it. Make it striking and colorful enough that
you
remember it, the way you remember Nero Wolfe’s weight or Quasimodo’s hump or Auntie Mame’s wild spontaneity or Mr. Spock’s lack of emotion or Pollyanna’s optimism and tendency to find good in everything.

Then, in the words of Lester Dent, creator of Doc Savage, wave those tags! Bring them in over and over again, so that your readers have no opportunity to forget them and the character they represent. Whereupon, before you know it, you just may have created a striking, memorable story person.

One final item: The examples I’ve chosen above are super-broadbrush, wildly exaggerated where many markets are concerned. I’ve picked them intentionally in order to make my point. I assume, however, that you have judgment enough to temper the concept to fit your own tastes and story.

Whatever your story, your readers will need some kind of orientation point, some place from which to watch the action. In other words, a
point
of view.

Ordinarily that “point” is in a character—a viewpoint character. Or, as I used to put it, “Whose skin are we in?” Through whose eyes are we seeing or experiencing the story?

In choosing this character, you limit yourself to presenting your story as he experiences it. That is to say, he can watch what other story people do, but he can’t see himself.

He will, however, know anything you want your readers to know about his own state of mind:

“Damn you, Jack Dalton!” he choked. But that was as far as he dared go. Dalton’s hand already was on the gun. One wrong move on his own part and he’d be dead.

You want to show Character in action from the outside? Then
switch to another viewpoint character—an observer, like Doctor Watson worshipfully watching Sherlock Holmes perform his miracles of deduction. Here’s what Dalton sees:

Slade’s face turned scarlet. His nostrils flared. He bared his teeth in a savage, death’s-head grin.

Only from the outside can we see the color of Slade’s face, or the flaring of his nostrils, or the death’s-head grin.

This can be very effective, but by and large it’s limited in emotional intensity. And the interpretation of what’s happening is strictly Observer’s, and not necessarily correct. Looking at Character from the outside, readers won’t know what he thinks or feels or sees save as it’s translated into appearance or action. Is he angry? You can’t say so, because you’re
outside
him and therefore don’t know what he’s feeling or thinking unless he turns red in the face, clenches his fists, and cries, “Damn you, Jack Dalton!” or equivalent. And even then you can’t be sure the feeling he exhibits isn’t faked.

A third alternative is to jump around in the story like a frog on a hot griddle. One moment, the presentation may be objective, with the author reporting, interpreting, explaining. The next, quite possibly, it hops in and out of the hearts and minds of an assortment of characters when it suits the author’s whim.

This is what’s known as
author omniscient
viewpoint.

Here, an example from John D. MacDonald’s
Please Write for Details,
a general novel rather than his usual suspense:

They were the girls of Texas, Mary Jane—twenty, Bitsy, nineteen, leggy and brown and arrogant and derisive of everything in the world including themselves. They wore very short shorts and very narrow halters and, at stops during the trip down, had come dangerously close to causing a civil riot and insurrection.

This, of course, is reporting that is objective in form, but that is actually ever so subjective because it involves selection and interpretation of details to the author’s taste.

There’s more of this alleged objective approach, a great deal more, in which MacDonald explains and
the book’s other characters on a variety of levels. But eventually he goes
inside
—that is, into the viewpoint of—a character, Miles Drummond.

Miles trotted out to the dining room after it was dark to look at the tables and worry about the seating.

I emphasize the
worry
because it’s a feeling and only Miles can know that it exists. Which means that, temporarily at least, we’re in Miles’s viewpoint.

Later,

. . . The light filled the room with eerie shadows and left the high ceiling in darkness. He got a chair and removed the shades and then stepped back to look it over. It was worse without the shades. He replaced them. The place settings distressed him. He liked things to be very nice. He hoped that the light was so dim that they would not notice the dozen breeds and brands of glasses, silver and china, or the dim stains and mends and worn spots in the tableclothes . . .

And so on. Further, this is more than just description. The things Miles notices and the way he reacts to them characterize him, make him very much an individual human being with tastes and standards and feelings.

As the story progresses, we move into other viewpoints:

John Kemp felt unduly pleased that the luck of the draw had put him beside Barbara Kilmer, but that advantage was canceled out by Gam Torrigan being seated on her left . . .

Again,

Agnes Partridge Keeley felt curiously isolated from the group. At her left . . .

Back to Miles again:

Miles thought the food tasted a bit strange, and he looked
up and down the table . . . He made a mental note to talk to Margarita and Esperanza about serving. It was unnecessary to bang things down so briskly.

And so it goes as MacDonald moves us skillfully from character to character, building each into an individual with private quirks and tastes and goals.

Let me point out, too, my use of that word “skillfully” in the paragraph above. For because MacDonald has skill born of long experience, he can handle author omniscient with an ability most of us lack.

Because “author omniscient” flits from character to character pretty much sans pattern, it both tends to prove confusing and to lack the emotional impact that comes from living through the story with a single (or possibly two or three) highly involved people. At the very least, ordinarily, it should stay with a character for a chapter at a time. Otherwise the cost frequently is higher than the return.

What about the technique of telling the story entirely from outside any character—the objective, “I Am A Camera” approach?

Well, obviously, it can be done. Hammett became famous for it in
The Maltese Falcon
.

Again, however, the issue is skill. Can you create feeling and emotion in a character, and for readers, without going inside his head? If you can, fine, but for most of us it isn’t nearly as effective as presenting our story in terms of a subjectively oriented central figure.

Most fiction today uses this technique. It focuses on and resolves around a viewpoint character who’s the chief sufferer, the individual who’s most involved emotionally and who has the most to win or lose. It presents the story from
inside
this character—letting the readers see what Character sees, hear what Character hears, taste/smell/touch/think/feel what Character does. In a word, readers
experience
the story,
live through it,
with the viewpoint character, and thus receive maximum emotional impact and satisfaction.

Choosing the right viewpoint is vitally important. Suppose, for example, that you have a story that centers on high school football. Three of the major characters are the star running back, the coach, and the running back’s girlfriend. Colored by his or her own feel
ings and desires, each sees the situation differently. Which should you choose as viewpoint?

Let’s look at a fragment of a game as each experiences it.

First, the player, the running back:

As if somehow frozen in time, slowly, slowly, the pigskin spiralled down.
Desperately, Steve raced to intercept it . . . poised beneath it, heart pounding and standing still at once. Nail this pass and he’d have it made—the play, the game, the championship. And Vonya.

The boldface italics mark Steve’s viewpoint. Only he, the viewpoint character, could know what’s in his heart and mind at this moment.

Second, the coach:

Atkins’ fists clenched so tight
they ached. He couldn’t get breath into his lungs. If that damn ox Steve tripped over his feet again, missed this one—

Do you see the pattern? Only Atkins can know that his fists ache or that he can’t get breath into his lungs, let alone know his thoughts about Steve.

Finally, Vonya:

Vonya hung suspended in an awful, downward spiral like the ball. Steve mustn’t catch it! He mustn’t! Not when she’d already promised Tony about tonight.

Vonya’s thoughts, Vonya’s feelings. Her emotional reactions to the situation. That’s what constitutes viewpoint. And as you see, each individual has his own.

Above and beyond that, if you’re limited to one of these story people’s viewpoints, which will you pick to tell your tale? Which will be most effective? Which will prove most gripping for your readers?

I can give you no answer, of course. The decision, ever and always, must be yours. It will depend on your decisions, your insights, the story you want to tell. All I can do is warn you to make your decision carefully, looking at the problem from all angles.
Because it’s one of the most important choices you can make.

It will help, however, if you remember five things where your viewpoint character is concerned.

First,
it’s through the viewpoint character that you orient your readers to a story, let them know whose story it is.

Second
, being inside somebody’s skin is a major way—maybe
the
major way—to grip your readers. It provides instant identification and empathy with the character.

Third
, once you’re inside somebody’s skin—that is, in viewpoint—you can’t legitimately enter another character’s mind. You can show him only in terms of externals, what he says and does.

Fourth
, a viewpoint character can’t lie about his inner feelings. The reader is
inside
the character, so what the character feels or thinks or sees or whatever, the reader knows about. Which means that if Character is a con man, you can’t edit the fact that he’s trying to marry Heroine for her money from his thoughts.

(Do you want to keep your readers guessing? Then don’t go inside the character’s head.)

Fifth,
your audience in all likelihood will be a key factor in your choice of viewpoint. In our Steve-Coach-Vonya specimen, for example, Steve will probably be the viewpoint character if the story’s aimed at a teen sports magazine. A girl’s magazine? Vonya. A sports or service magazine? Quite possibly Coach Atkins.

Beyond this, you as writer have a whole series of additional choices to make.

Thus, whatever Character’s position, whether as protagonist or observer, this individual, this viewpoint character, may be presented in first person (“I”) or third person (“he”/“she”) or, on rare occasions, second person (“you”). It’s a matter of personal choice.

First person offers a level of intimacy and insight that’s very effective. To a considerable degree, however, it puts a straightjacket on the writer, for it also limits the scope of presentation to what the “I” storyteller can observe and makes it awkward to change viewpoint. Some readers and some editors loathe it. But it’s overwhelmingly popular with others, and thousands of short stories and novels using it have been published.

Third person, in contrast, tells the story “he/she,” as a participant observer might. Ordinarily that observer is one of the characters. Its weakness lies in the fact that it prevents the viewpoint character from seeing himself in action. By and large, it means that
you can’t describe Character’s appearance save as other characters see him.

Second person? It tells the story as “you” experience it. The best example of it with which I’m acquainted is Ralph Milney Farley’s “The House of Ecstasy,” and its very rarity as a technique is proof of the difficulty of managing it effectively. I’d class it as a
tour de force
and not worth bothering with except as an experiment.

What about having more than one viewpoint? It’s legitimate enough, certainly—I recall at least one suspense novel where the author had a different first-person viewpoint character for each of twenty chapters, heaven help me! And to have two or three viewpoints is not at all unusual.

Remember, though, that viewpoint switches may be confusing and hard to handle. It takes space to establish each viewpoint—and in a short story you seldom have that much wordage to squander. In consequence, multiple viewpoint tends to be limited to the longer forms.

Yet a change in viewpoint allows you to introduce information known to or experienced by the new character, and that’s a plus. In a suspense novel, for example, a switch to what my friend Jack Bickham refers to as “villain’s viewpoint” can reveal how the hero’s best laid plans will be thwarted, thus heightening tension immeasurably. It’s a device that can prove effective in almost any genre.

In general, if you’re going to introduce more than one viewpoint, it’s a good idea to put in a big enough chunk of each so your readers can adjust to it. My own tendency is to limit myself to not more than one viewpoint per chapter.

On the other hand, don’t allow any viewpoint to run on so long that the others are forgotten.

Be sure to establish time, place, circumstance, and viewpoint each time you change, though. Not to do so is an open invitation to reader confusion—and irritation.

I’ll talk about other viewpoint issues in the “long story” part of
Chapter 14
.