Dynamic Characters (35 page)

• Macbeth, whose desire for power leads him to kill his king, initiating a string of other murders until eventually Macbeth himself is killed. (Shakespeare,
Macbeth)

• Captain Philip Queeg, whose very human desire is to never make a mistake—or at least to never admit to one. His increasingly convoluted cover-ups and threats lead to the mutiny of his World War II

minesweeper's crew, which in turn destroys Queeg's naval career (along with those of several mutineers). (Herman Wouk,
The Caine Mutiny)

• Count Almasy, driven by passion for a married woman and by his desire to keep his promise to her. He betrays his country and, indirectly, dies for it. (Michael Ondaatje,
The English Patient)

The character driven by desire beyond human laws doesn't always end up destroyed. It's the character who is the archetype, not the plot. Sometimes such characters triumph, getting clean away with their transgressions. Some examples:

• King Midas, obsessed with gold. His greed turns his beloved daughter into a gold statue. He escapes tragedy because Dionysus, god of wine, just happens to be a cheerful type who turns the statue back into a girl. (Greek mythology)

• Becky Sharp, nineteenth-century adventuress, who engages in adultery, fraud and betrayal—whatever it takes to go on living well and luxuriously. At the end of the book she's still at it, fresh prey targeted in her scheming sites. (William Makepeace Thackeray,
Vanity Fair)

• Michael Corleone, driven by a desire to avenge his father's shooting. He commits multiple murders—including that of his brother-in-law—and ends up a respected and powerful Mafia don. (Mario Puzo,
The Godfather)

• An endless number of detectives who become consumed by the desire to solve a particular case, no matter what the cost in (pick one) broken department regulations, disapproval of superiors, objections by wives and girlfriends, sneaky tactics. Almost always, the detectives' obsessions pay off.

Whether your character obsessed by desire comes out a winner or a loser is up to you. The archetype is strong enough to support all sorts of outcomes, all sorts of situations, all sorts of individual characteristics.

Can other archetypes also do that? Absolutely. Many writers and critics have amused themselves putting together lists of ''all possible plots.'' I've seen a list with thirty-six categories of plots, a list with twenty categories, a list with three. Such categories are always idiosyncratic. But that's not necessarily bad. If something on the list sparks your own thinking, it doesn't matter in the least whether or

not you agree with the way categories are carved up. The point of the archetypal plot is inspiration, not straitjacketing. Use anything you find in the rest of this chapter as a jumping-off point for
your
individual characters and their individual situations.

THREE BASIC PLOTS: HEINLEIN'S THEORY

Author Robert Heinlein was convinced that there are only three basic plots for fiction. All three revolve around character change. He named each plot according to what prompts the change:

• ''Boy Meets Girl,'' in which the protagonist changes primarily as a result of his interactions with another human being (who doesn't necessarily have to be a love interest; it could be a child, a mentor, a corrupter, a friend). Examples include
A Separate Peace,
in which Gene Forrester is changed forever by his complex encounters with Phineas, and
The Great Gatsby,
which leaves Nick Carraway's life altered by having known Jay Gatsby.

• ''The Little Tailor,'' in which a character changes as a result of facing some great challenge. In response to this challenge, he discovers in himself capabilities he didn't know he possessed, and uses them to triumph. This is the plot of John Grisham's popular
The Firm.
Mitch McDeere discovers he is able to outwit the Mob, the FBI and the banking system, and retires rich and anonymous on a Caribbean island.

• ''Man Learns Better,'' which is the inverse of the second plot. In this, the protagonist does something, or observes something done, that leaves him ''sadder but wiser.'' He loses, but he (and the reader) learn something about how the world works. In Michael Crichton's
Jurassic Park,
for instance, characters and readers both learn that it's not a good idea to play God and re-create vanished species. In Joseph Conrad's dark classic,
Lord Jim,
the protagonist learns that not even a lifetime of atonement may be enough to balance a moment of selfish cowardice.

Are Heinlein's plot categories of any use to
you?
To find out, compare the broad outlines of the story you're contemplating to the broad outlines of his formulations. Do the archetypal plots open any doors in your mind, spark any ideas? If so, fine. If not, move on to the next approach.

A number of plots are so time-honored they have become classics, rich stories that can still taste fresh on the palate. There exist several different approaches for bottling and labeling these classic plots. The following eight-category grouping is the house brand. One may suit
your
ripening ideas.

CLASSIC PLOT NUMBER ONE-CHASE PLOTS: SEARCHING HARD FOR HARRY

In the chase plot, someone or some group is pursuing someone else or some other group. The story can be told from the point of view of the pursuers, the pursued or both in alternate sections. Either one can be the good guys. The outcome can feature a capture or an escape. Combining these possibilities gives you many different structures.

For instance, Tom Clancy's
The Hunt for Red October,
with the Americans as pursuer and the Russian sub as prey, is a classic chase plot. So is Thomas Perry's
The Butcher's Boy,
in which Justice agent Elizabeth Waring is pursuing the Mafia hit man known only as ''the butcher's boy.'' That novel is told from both of their points of view, in alternating sections. In contrast, the movie
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
concentrates solely on the point of view of the pursued, who earn our sympathy despite being outlaws. So does Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo's
Les Miserables,
relentlessly pursued by Inspector Javert throughout eleven hundred pages.

Chase novels don't have to involve lawbreaking, murder or national security. You might have an adopted teenager tracking down her biological mother, or a husband on the trail of his runaway wife. In such personal chase stories, the pursuit structure is the same, but the emotions and events will be much different.

A variation on the chase plot is the
rescue plot.
Here, the protagonists not only have to find someone, they also have to either rescue him or rescue someone from him. The game has become three-handed: pursuer, pursued and helpless victim. Victims can be anyone: a child lost in the wilderness and pursued by wolves, civilians taken hostage by fleeing terrorists, a lover kidnapped by the bad guys. One example is Marilyn Durham's
The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing,
which was also made into a popular movie. It's a sort of double chase plot; the hero is pursuing his half-Indian son, and is in turn pursued by the husband of his female accomplice.

If you decide to hang your novel on a chase plot, here are some questions to stimulate your thought processes:

^•
 Who is looking for whom?

• Why?

• Which point(s) of view will you use?

• With whom would you like your readers to sympathize/identify?

• Will the pursued end up getting caught? How?

• After they do (or don't) get caught, what will happen to them? Will this outcome be depicted directly, as part of your novel, or will you just imply it?

Once you have the basic chase structure clear in your mind, you can concentrate on creating for it fascinating characters and inventive incidents.

CLASSIC PLOT NUMBER TWO-QUEST PLOTS: SEARCHING HARD FOR HARRY'S LEGACY

In the
quest plot,
what is being sought is not a person but a thing. There are several variations.

Sometimes the quest is for a specific object, which may be a magic sword or ring, a buried treasure, something valuable mentioned in an ancestor's will or a cultural artifact. In these stories, the characters know what they're after, have some clues (vague or not) to follow, and usually get in each other's way as they look. Within this framework, a wide variety of moods is possible. Object-quest stories include
Treasure Island
(Robert Louis Stevenson),
The Shell Seekers
(Rosamund Pilcher),
Raiders of the Lost Ark
(the Steven Spielberg movie),
The Word
(Irving Wallace) and the King Arthur legends of searching for the Holy Grail (various authors). A rich diversity indeed.

In some object-quest novels, the object being sought may not even be that important in and of itself. How much was a white whale
really
worth to Ahab, in the value of its oil and ambergris, over whales of other colors? But, as Herman Melville well knew, objects take on symbolic significance to the human mind.
Moby Dick
really isn't just about the quest for a white whale. It's about the quest for mastery of nature, for imposing one's will upon the enormous Other. Captain Ahab—like a great many other protagonists of quest novels—is obsessed with his search. He's willing to destroy everything for his obsession. And he does.

If your ideas lend themselves to a quest plot, ask yourself:

• What is being sought? Why?

• What are the obstacles to finding it?

• How many different groups are looking for it? Who are they?

• Is the object going to be found? Where? Is this where it was expected to be?

• Who's going to triumph in the quest?

• How will the other groups react?

• Where does the object end up at the conclusion of your story?

Each of these questions can be used to create surprises for the reader. In
Raiders of the Lost Ark,
for example, the Ark of the Covenant has been found by Indiana Jones on behalf of the American government. It ends up as just one more crate among thousands in a government warehouse.

But the search for a specific object is not the only kind of quest novel. In another type, character(s) search for a place. This might be a refuge, a semimythical location or just a new way of life. In such books, the character(s) pack up and move, and most of the book shows them either looking for the new place or exploring its ins and outs after they arrive.

Again, the place-quest plot has infinite variations. Tom Joad, of John Steinbeck's
The Grapes of Wrath,
is looking for a place where his ''Okie'' family can settle down and make a better life than in dustbowl Oklahoma. The Country Mouse is also looking for a place where life would be easier. So is Nora Silk, of Alice Hoffman's
Seventh Heaven
(the place she's questing for is Ideal Suburbia). On the other hand, Louis Wu, of Larry Niven's
Ringworld,
is looking for a place where life would be more exciting (he found it). In my own first novel, the long-out-of-print
Prince of Morning Bells,
the heroine quests for a mythical place called the Heart of the World. Several different times she believes she's found it. In the end, she actually does—and it's a much different place than she expected.

A variation on the place-quest plot is the place-exploration plot. The characters pack up and go somewhere exotic—the South Pole, Narnia, twenty thousand leagues under the sea—in quest of nothing more than adventure. This, however, is not a real plot by itself. Once the characters are there, and the strangeness has been described, there had better be another type of plot developed. Some other quest, or chase, or conflict had better develop, or you will end up with a travelogue rather than a novel.

If your people are questing for a place, consider:

• Why do they want to go there? (Again, the inseparability of character and plot.)

• What obstacles stand in their way?

• Will you let them get there?

• What will they find when they do? What will it mean to them by then? How will they cope?

• Do they stay, or go home again (the City Mouse/Country Mouse plot)?

Finally, characters can be questing for something intangible: a piece of knowledge, the answer to a question that consumes them. (What question? Your answer will be a strong part of their characterization.) Diogenes searched the world for an honest man. Larry Darrell, in W. Somerset Maugham's
The Razor's Edge,
covered much of that same world looking for mystical enlightenment. The scientist heroes of Gregory Benford's
Timescape
devoted all their dwindling resources to the search for a method to send a message into the past. The hero of Miguel de Cervantes's
Don Quixote de la Mancha
was on a quest, however misguided, for the good and the true and the beautiful, which he planned to defend as needed.