Dynamic Characters (32 page)

There was a temptation to lie, or put things in a way more favorable to Rick. Some instinct warned him that would be a mistake. He recounted the whole episode. . . . After the fact it sounded so stupid and pointless and unfunny. Rick was sure that any hope of employment with Vanguard Mining was evaporating with every word he said.

Finally, that Rick goes for the job interview at all—and, when he passes, goes first to New Mexico for training and then into space— dramatically illustrates that he possesses courage, initiative and some degree of adaptability. Sheffield and Pournelle will build on all these qualities later, as Rick changes.

It's important to emphasize that each of these qualities is shown more than once. Throughout the first six chapters, Rick reveals again and again that he can assess reality, face it bravely and react with self-preserving intelligence. These qualities are convincingly mixed in with his macho fights, predatory attitudes toward women, suspicious anger, and disregard for any rules he thinks he can get away with breaking. He is still a punk. But he's a punk that his creators have endowed with qualities upon which change can be convincingly built. The authors are preparing for the next developments in their plot.

It can also work the other way. If you start with a character (many writers do), you can use her complexities to generate plot ideas. Ask yourself:

• What qualities does this person have that her current circumstances don't allow her to fully express?

^•
 What circumstances might allow—or even force—her to express them?

• Does that indicate where my plot should go?

Adequate preparation is critical to our believing your character
can
change. Next you need to show us
why
he does so.

PRESSURE: THE FACTS OF LIFE IN SPACE

Rick Luban is already under powerful pressure as soon as he gets expelled from school: He has nowhere to go. If he goes home, his stepfather will beat him because he has lost the supplementary welfare that the government pays households with children attending school. He applies to Vanguard Mining out of desperation, a convincing pressure. It's also a common one in fiction. It drives characters as different from Rick Luban as Scarlett O'Hara, Robinson Crusoe, Mitch McDeere, Becky Sharp and Oliver Twist.

A need for somewhere to go is not the only pressure that Sheffield and Pournelle bring to bear on Rick. If it were, the novel would be over as soon as he signed up with Vanguard Mining. Instead, as soon as one pressure is satisfied, the authors introduce another. And another, and another. . . . This makes sense because pressure
is
plot. Pressure is things happening that tighten the screws on your character and force him to fight back. In other words, conflict plus action plus trouble equals plot. No pressure, no plot. Many pressures, much plot.

One pressure on Rick is macho competitiveness. From the first moment he arrives at the Vanguard training facility, another recruit, Vido Valdez, is determined to show up Rick and eliminate him from the program. Their competitiveness is reinforced by the trainees' discovery that not everyone recruited will actually be offered a job with Vanguard. They are in competition with each other for a limited number of job slots.

A second pressure is death (always a good motivator). Space mining is dangerous. The recruits are told to learn their training material, and learn it well, whether or not they object to the hated terms
school
and
rules.

''So let's agree that this isn't a school. Let's say it's a survival course for off-Earth mining operations. The Belt is a dangerous place. You can screw up bigtime out there, eat vacuum, O/D on radiation, blow yourself up, get flattened by an ore crusher, get stranded and starve to death. No legal liability for Vanguard Mining—read your contract. But Vanguard doesn't want you dead, because we already have an investment in you. You think all those tests you took don't cost money? So it's my job to make sure that by the time you leave here you know how to avoid killing yourself. That means learning a few new rules. Anybody object to the idea of
surviving?"

No one does. Effective pressure to change one's attitude.

A third pressure on Rick is also survival-related, and deemed necessary in dealing with a bunch of tough adolescents. An instructor explains to a recruit named Gladys:

''These are meal vouchers. You need one to obtain food from the cafeteria service system. When you complete your assignment satisfactorily—by this evening, or tomorrow morning, or tomorrow midday, or whenever—you will receive one voucher. But if you fail to complete your assignment to my satisfaction, you will not.''

"You can't do that to me!''

''I'm afraid I can. Read your contract. Vanguard Mining, in loco parentis, decides the manner and extent of trainee nutrition. Now, Gladys. Are you going to leave? Or would you like to stay here with the rest of the trainees while I explain today's assignment? Dinner is lasagna with mushrooms, peppers, and garlic bread. The choice is yours.''

Not all the pressures on Rick Luban come from the mining company. In addition to the competition for jobs, there are social forces from his peers. Rick has been used to intimidating girls into responding to him; he considers this a courtship technique. But the females at Vanguard Mining all receive training in handling male intimidation.

His first counterattack from a woman—a painful and nearly crippling knee in the groin, followed by a kick to the jaw—is sufficient pressure to change his approach to girls.

Finally, Sheffield and Pournelle show an important internal pressure on Rick—the desire to complete a job well. This pressure can't kick in until Rick actually has some real-world, meaningful successes, something his old school never provided. But once he discovers that school subjects he once scorned actually have important adult uses, he is driven by the human desire for practical mastery:

''So what do we do?''

Rick did not answer. He had called up a section of the ship's manual onto the display. More than anything he had ever wanted in his life, he wanted to read that manual. And he couldn't. The words were too long and unfamiliar, the sentences seemed too complex. He strained to understand,
willing
the words to make sense. And still he couldn't read them. The ship was drifting along, but CM-2 was not directly ahead. Their present course would miss the planetoid.

Again, pressure to learn to read well comes about as a result of plot developments (the training ship is rotating wrong) and in turn fuels more plot (intense studying—a new phenomenon for Rick Luban).

So the pressures to change are many for Rick Luban: a need for somewhere to go, competitiveness, physical danger, obtaining food, negative responses to sexual overtures and—eventually—a desire to succeed for the sake of success alone. As with showing us Rick's initial capacity to change, the authors of
Higher Education
don't merely mention each of these various pressures once. Each is dramatized over and over. Such dramatizations, along with Rick's responses, make up the plot.

What pressures will you bring to bear on your characters, driving them toward change? The list of possibilities is endless, since it includes everything a human being wants to obtain, wants to keep, wants to avoid, wants to conquer or wants to eliminate. Some common pressures in fiction follow.

• Someone wants to harm the protagonist.

• Someone wants to harm a loved one of the protagonist.

• A pressing need for money, or more money.

• A pressing desire to be loved.

• The ravages of war (from either civilian or soldier POV).

• The human need to explore.

• Internal pressure to avoid being alone and unconnected.

• Parental pressure to achieve or to be something specific.

• Desire to please God.

• Fear of displeasing God.

• Peer pressure to belong.

• Pressure from the boss to do something (or not do something).

• Pressure from a spouse, ditto.

• Pressure from the need(s) of one's child(ren).

• Pressure to conform to one's society, religion or subgroup.

• Pressure from internal guilt over some action one has taken.

• Pressure from the law.

• Internal pressure to look good through impressing others.

• Pressure from one's conscience or ethical values.

• Etc., etc.

You can also play these pressures against each other, creating even
more
pressure on the protagonist. For example, Rick Luban is under pressure from Vanguard Mining to avoid fistfights during training, or he'll be tossed out of the program. He's also under pressure from fellow recruit Vido Valdez to get into a fight, in order to establish the adolescent-male pecking order and not be thought a wimp by his peers. Whatever Rick does, he thinks, will be wrong—a good definition of pressure.

And a good generator of plot incidents.

REALIZATION: TESTS AND GIRLS AND STAYING ALIVE

In addition to creating plot, pressure also serves another purpose. It's a reason for a character to do something differently than he did it before. If what he did before was working, he wouldn't be in trouble. But he
is
in trouble (or you don't have a book). Therefore, the protagonist will often respond to pressure by trying something else. If the something else works, the stage is set for the character to realize he must change.

There is another version of this, in which the realization precedes

the change. Characters who are self-aware, used to intellectualizing, thoughtful about themselves and others—such people sometimes perceive on their own that they need to change what they're doing. So they do. Change is conscious and self-chosen.

Rick Luban, however, is not an introspective guy (nothing in his environment has ever even shown him the possibility). But he is intelligent, and he can adapt. When all the pressures detailed above act on Rick, he acts differently (he has little choice). And when his new behaviors prove effective, he naturally continues them. Thus, his actions change.

In what specific ways?

He's careful to follow mining-company rules—because he wants to avoid accidents. He studies hard—because he wants to stay in space. He cooperates with the other recruits in studies and assigned projects—because there's no way he can complete them if he doesn't. He keeps his hands off the girls—because they'll take him apart otherwise.

These changes are all motivated by selfishness. Rick changes his behavior because it's in his own best interests to do so. But then an interesting thing occurs. His changed behavior causes others to respond differently to him. He in turn changes his behavior toward them a little more—and out of these second-order changes comes a different internal attitude toward other people. Rick finally learns to see them as real, separate individuals with their own agendas and feelings, which should be respected.

For the first time, Rick realizes that his actions impact others—and he accepts responsibility for that impact:

''That's our answer.'' Deedee had turned. "We can go right around the outside. Don't waste time with that door, Rick. Come on! We're down to twenty-one minutes.''

She led the way, zooming at maximum suit speed for the open entrance of the mine loading chamber. Rick, close behind, did the calculation. They had to make their way right around CM-2 to almost the opposite side of the planetoid. Say, three kilometers. If they could average ten per hour, they would do it. If not. . . .

All Rick could think of was that early this morning he

had made Deedee sit down and eat breakfast when she was hyped up and raring to go. If they were too late now, it was his fault.

Rick's improved attitude toward women leads to a reciprocal genuine liking between him and Deedee. And out of that change comes an understanding of how bad his old enemy, Vido Valdez, must feel when Vido's girlfriend flunks out of the program and is sent back to Earth. This empathy ends the feud between Rick and Vido. It's new behavior for Rick:

Rick hesitated again. He wasn't sure what he had to say would please Vido, but he knew he had to say it. "Vido, it wasn't you. I talked to Monkey a long time that day before you came along. When it comes to math, she just doesn't get it. Not at all. I could have taught her every day, so could you, and it wouldn't have made any difference. She'd never have passed that theory final in a hundred years. She just didn't seem able to get the basic ideas. You know her a lot better than me. Surely you saw that?''

''I thought it was me. I thought I wasn't explaining right.'' ''It wasn't you. It was Monkey. I'm really sorry, Vido.'' Rick finally reached out and patted the other's shoulder, knowing it was something no sixteen-year-old male did to another male in his old school without risking mockery. But the hell with that, things were different in space.

By the end of the novel, Rick's actions have changed considerably. In response to the pressures on him, he has become more responsible, more sensitive, more trustworthy and much more hardworking. All of which has been
dramatized
—not merely talked about—by the authors.