Advanced Brilliant Writing: Make Your Plots Wider and Your Characters Deeper (Go! Write Something Brilliant) (2 page)

In my first writing book,
How to Write a Brilliant Novel
, I teach how to build a character from the inside out. To do so, you first ask the right questions based on the five areas of self-esteem. Then you build a plot around those answers. That method is the foundation for great characterization. But to really draw your reader into the life of your character, we have to go deeper, have to engage our characters in an emotional journey of change. We have to layer our characters, so that when we reveal them we do it with the right balance and timing for the most impact. We have to write scenes that evoke emotions, with just the right amount of backstory. And we need to connect our characters to our readers on a soul-deep level.

Going
deep
with a character is about going beyond the basics of characterization. Going deep is about pondering your character’s journey and then thinking through how to engage the reader in the journey. It’s advanced fiction writing, and if you do it right, you can build a story that won’t just touch your reader . . . but change them.

Let’s get started.

Act One: Character Change Journey

These walls should be red!

I have always longed for a red wall in my family room.

Yes, red. I saw one in a magazine, and then at a girlfriend’s house, and I thought it would be a striking way to backdrop this incredible piece of Russian artwork I received from a friend. So, I sketched out the layout. I got paint samples. I compared them to the picture, and my other furniture. I found the right primer. I moved and covered furniture. Finally, I primed . . . and one beautiful morning, before the kids even left for school . . . I painted.

I love my red wall.

But it all started with a sense that my white walls weren’t enough. Something was missing. I knew I wanted a pretty room—I just didn’t know how to get there.

This is where your character starts. He has to start in a place of need, staring at white walls.

The first step is what I call the
Glimpse of Hope.

As you open your story, your character has to lack something. A quality. A truth. An ability. Your character might not know they are missing something. But you, as the author, do—and you need to subtly communicate this to your reader.

Of course, you are starting your hero out on their journey in their home world. That’s also going to be their “default” character, meaning their default beliefs and values. Something about these believes and values don’t work, and they need to change.

In this first section, you want the character to do, see, be, or value something that indicates their need.

For example, in
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
, Frodo is amazed by his adventurous uncle Bilbo. He loves hearing about his stories, and is drawn to his bravery. Frodo isn’t expressing his desire for adventure or courage—in fact, he doesn’t even realize he has it. But we, the readers, see his desire in how he worships his uncle.

Let’s take another of my favorite movies,
Eagle Eye
. The hero, Jerry Shaw, is a whiz at poker, but is spending his life in a ho-hum job at a print shop. Even worse is that his twin brother is a hero of the country . . . something he believes he can never aspire to. We see his own inability to see himself as heroic after his brother’s funeral, during an interaction with his father in his brother’s room. With the trophies his brother earned as a backdrop, Jerry says that no, he’s not going to try and re-enroll in college, and accepts his father’s cutting remarks about his lack of drive. As the viewer, we despair with him, as he believes he’ll never be anything more than a copy boy.

In
Cellular
, a fast paced thriller, our hero, Ryan, is a shallow, self-centered beach bum, who only agrees to help his girlfriend to win her affections. When he receives a phone call from a desperate woman who has been taken hostage, he has to be pressured by guilt into helping her. He can’t even see how selfish he is, although he is offended that his girlfriend has accused him of this. Thankfully, he’s agreed to help her in order to prove her wrong.

The key is to show your character’s desire for something more, even if they can’t believe it can be attained.

Here are some ideas for giving your reader that Glimpse of Hope:

1. Have your hero fail at doing something. Then have him—or someone else—comment that if only he had done or believed a certain way he might have accomplished his task. To which the hero says, “Well, that will never happen.”
   
2. Have your hero, or just your reader, see something that the hero longs for—a happy family, a good job, a hero’s welcome. Something that we can measure his later success by. I call it the glimpse of the Happily Ever After.
   
3. Have your hero hear of a story/legend/action that he wishes he could do.
    
   

Book Therapy Question:

• List your top five favorite movies, and watch the first ten minutes. Can you pinpoint the Glimpse of Hope—that element that shows their desire for change?
  
• How can you show the reader what your character wants and the beliefs that hold them back from this in the first chapter? Insert this into your story.
  

Release the Woobie!

My son has a Woobie. You know, a security blanket? It’s a disgusting denim comforter he sleeps with. It’s ripped in seven places. The stuffing is coming out. If I wash it, it will disintegrate in my washer. I fear the Woobie.

So, while he was at school recently, well . . . I remade his bed. I washed his sheets. And I took the comforter and shoved it in a black plastic bag and hid it in the closet.

Hoping, maybe, he wouldn’t . . . uh, notice?

He came home, and we all had a nice dinner and watched football and then . . . bedtime. I was reading, peacefully in my own bed when my son walked in with a distressed look.

“Mom, where is my . . . .blanket?” Although fifteen, he bore the expression of a worried three year old, his voice shaking.

“Uh . . . ” And here’s where I tried to get creative.
“It’s no longer with us.”

Fear flashed across his face. “It’s not? Where is it?”

“Uh . . . Blankie Heaven?”

“Blankie Heaven!” His eyes widened and he swallowed hard. Looked outside. “It was garbage day today! You
didn’t
.”

Now listen.
I did not lie.
I simply . . . shrugged. Made a little face, which one
might
have interpreted as an affirmative answer.

I had good intentions. I guess I was thinking I’d offer him a suitable alternative, one without the rips and the smells, and he’d take it like the man/football player he was.

Oh no.

He dropped to the floor (still in three-year-old mode) and shrieked, “Mommy, what have you done?”

Which brought in the other children, who, after my son declared my sins, were equally horrified at my actions. An hour later, after I’d exhausted
all
my psychological tactics (threats, shame, guilt, ridicule) I finally marched down to the closet and threw the plastic bag at him. He opened it like a starving man to C-rations.

“My blankie!” He clutched it to himself and then looked at me with an evil, very evil eye. “Do not touch my blankie again.”

Oh, I’m not afraid. And this is
not
over. But I learned something.

I need to
prepare
my son for the surrender of his Woobie. I figure I have about three more years, after all . . . certainly he can’t take it with him to college, right? Even if I had torn it from his clutches he would
still
need to go through the steps to
emotionally release it.

You’ve started your character on their journey by giving your character a Glimpse of Hope. On the next step, you need to give them an
Invitation to Change.

The Invitation is that moment when the character, very, very early on, is given the opportunity to do something different. To believe something, or value something, or try something that might change their lives. Often they turn it down, and it’s that regret that drives them to have the opportunity again. For example, in
The Patriot
, there is a classic scene in the beginning where Benjamin Martin, the father, is talking with his peers who are deciding to go to war with Britain. He says that he’s a father, and he doesn’t have the luxury of living by his principles. The rest of the movie is about him regretting those words.

Sometimes, however, the characters will take the opportunity, and see how woefully under-equipped they are. Like, when Bilbo gives Frodo the ring. Frodo takes it (reluctantly) and has no idea what he’s getting himself in for.

In
Cellular,
Ryan receives a call on the other line, and clicks over to take it. He is surprised that the kidnapped woman is still on the line . . . and he then allows her to talk him to the next stage in his journey.

The invitation to change is essential in building the rest of the journey of change. First, it creates a moment that the author can recreate later in the story as a “repeat” opportunity the character can then grab, showing their emotional change. It also sets up a concrete element that needs to change—a litmus test of sorts. For example, in
the Patriot,
Benjamin Martin is given an opportunity later to join up again. This time he takes it, showing that he’s realized that his principles and his family are one. And Ryan, in
Cellular
, later loses the phone call—and has to fight to get it back, despite personal cost to himself.

In
Eagle Eye,
Jerry Shaw is told to run from his apartment . . . and fails to respond, and is captured by the Feds. The next time this opportunity comes around he listens and obeys.

The Invitation to Change also affords the character a moment to consider their missed opportunity, think about their vacancies either immediately or later, and builds in them the next component in their journey: the
Need to Change.

Book Therapy Question

• Within the first three chapters, have you given your character an opportunity to believe or do something that they turn away from?
  
• Think ahead: How can you recast this choice into another moment later in the book?
  

What is that Smell?

I could see the problem. Actually, to be honest, I could smell it . . . seeping from my oldest son’s tomb-like room, as if, yes, there might be a corpse inside. I stood at the threshold of the doorway and peered in. He lay, a lump under his sheets, the floor of his room riddled with the debris of his teenage boy existence—old pop cans, bowls of hardened ice cream, decaying socks, his grimy attire for the last week. All of it marinating in the brew of young manhood filth.

He needed to clean his room.

I flicked on the light (hey, it
was
9 a.m.) “I think your room needs some attention.”

Somewhere beneath the covers, he grunted.

“Seriously, I can’t see your floor.”

“It’s there, or you’d be falling through to the center of the earth,” mumbled the voice from the bed.

Oh, so cute. Ha ha.

“If you ever want to eat again, I’ll see the floor of your room by dinnertime.”

“I have to work. I won’t be home for dinner.”

I flicked off the light. Closed the door. Apparently, my external-maternal forces were no longer effective. I had to face the truth.

Change had to come from the inside.

And only when he recognized the need.

See, a character isn’t going to change unless properly motivated. They might see a Glimmer of Hope, and even be invited by circumstances to change, but without seeing the need they won’t have the strength to tackle the challenges (or, in my son’s case, the smells).

The Invitation to Change, whether they accept it or not, needs to be followed, in short order, by, the
Need to Change
.

Remember the scene in
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
when Frodo and gang are hiding in the woods as the creepy Nasgould are looking for them? Suddenly, for the first time, Frodo realizes the danger they are in. He doesn’t fully comprehend it, but they’re terrifying enough that he knows it’s serious.

And, he knows he’s going to have to do something about it. What, he’s not sure, but the need is compelling enough to make him try.

In
The Patriot
, after Benjamin Martin safely secures his children at his sister-in-law’s plantation, he realizes that he has been wrong not to get involved in the war—it came to him anyway. He realizes that he hasn’t protected his family by trying to stay neutral—there is no neutrality in this war, and they would be drawn into the war against their will. So . . . the only way to protect his family is to help drive the British from the land.

In
Eagle Eye
, Jerry Shaw is arrested and at the mercy of the NSA, accused of a crime he didn’t commit but is clearly being framed for. It’s apparent that the NSA doesn’t believe him. Thus, if he doesn’t take matters into his own hands and figure out who is framing him, he’ll end up behind bars.