Make A Scene (37 page)

• Opportunities for dramatic and surprising changes.
Under all this change and pressure, your protagonist is going to start to change. He might act out in bursts of rage, or find that he is far more capable than he ever imagined. Either way, the complications you provide here in the middle should cause him to act
differently
than he has before, for better or worse.

• Opportunities for plot complications.
You may feel that your protagonist's significant situation was bad enough, but if you leave him with no new complications, you also stop the storyline. In this middle section, more will need to happen. Each new scene should provide a new complication or add complexity to the existing problems.

• Opportunities to test-drive new behaviors.
Even logical people react emotionally to situations—
react
being the key word. Therefore, under all that pressure and stress you've put on him, your protagonist can now legitimately get away with doing something that was previously out of character. That's the nature of conflict—it changes a person. So if you've complicated things enough, then your previously timid protagonist can now pick up the gun and threaten to kill someone, for example.

• Opportunities for dramatic tension.
As author Steve Almond said,

"You have to love your characters enough to put them in danger." This

danger, emotional or physical, will create an aura of tension that will drive the reader deep into your narrative.

If all your characters' desires and intentions were met in the middle of your narrative, you'd be done already. Middle scenes are not about resolutions. Middle scenes are the place for characters to experience the classic "dark night of the soul," desperation, uncertainty, and a host of other trials. This element of uncertainty and crisis will bring out a wide range of emotional responses in your characters that will change them, reshape them, cause them to undergo epiphanies and behavior shifts as you move toward the climax of your narrative.

Assessing Your Character at the End of the Middle Part

It's important to be clear that some protagonists change for the worse before they change for the better. When things get challenging, a protagonist often acts out, or behaves badly. In
House of Sand and Fog,
Kathy Nicolo is driven to desperation, and she enlists Lester Burdon to threaten the Colo-nel—which quickly escalates into physical violence and then tragedy at the climax of the novel. Not the kind of thing a rational, mature person does. You do not need to push your protagonist into some impossibly high ideal of human behavior—if your goal in particular is to redeem a character, you can save that redemption for the final part. In the middle scenes, what is key is that the reader sees your protagonist behaving
differently
than he did at the beginning of the narrative (or historically) as a direct result of the consequences of the significant situation.

THE LAST PART: FINAL SCENES

In the final part of your narrative, it's time to weigh all the changes your characters have or have not undergone and begin to resolve them. Ending scenes are not usually a place for much new character change—this is the place where you let the changes become evident to the reader as you tie up all threads.

Resolve Character Conflicts

In the final scenes of your narrative, the climax has already taken place, and the greatest amount of stress or tension has already been exerted on your protagonist. Now you want to show who he is in the aftermath. You can do this by determining (and demonstrating) the following:

•What are the consequences of having any desires met?

•What are the consequences of having any fears realized?

• Did your protagonist's desires change? How so?

• Did your protagonist's fears change or lessen? How so?

• How does your protagonist feel now about the significant situation?

Demonstrate Character Changes

Depending on the answers to the questions above, you want to show, through some form of behavior, action, or speech that your protagonist really has changed. Perhaps he turns himself in for the crime that his best friend is in jail for. Maybe she finally visits the grave of her dead husband when she was unable to before. Maybe he moves to a new town after being hung up on the past. Or the change might be as simple as a statement: "I'll never go back," a soldier might say, deciding he's ready for peace. In some cases it takes great tragedy to facilitate change, as in
House of Sand and Fog.
I won't give away exactly what the tragedy is, but it changes Kathy Nicolo deeply. Now in jail, up for trial, Kathy no longer is interested in passing blame or getting what she thinks she's entitled to. She's ready to take responsibility not only for what happened to the Colonel, but for her own mess of a life:

Only two days before, I saw Connie. She's still working on getting my hearing date moved up. I told her I didn't want her to make me look like I wasn't responsible for what Lester had done.

Provide Answers to Plot Questions

You're going to have to tie up all the consequences that came out of the significant situation. Whatever questions you raised must be answered or concluded. Murders get solved. Stolen property gets returned or found. And the thread of action and events that your protagonist has been involved with must taper to a final end.

In literary fiction this will probably come as more of an internal resolution or transformation for your protagonist. In a romance novel your protagonist will finally be ready for the right man and will find him, or consummate the romance that has already begun. In a mystery novel, your protagonist will not only solve the case, or be exonerated from wrong-doing, he will see himself and the world differently. In a science-fiction novel, your protagonist may get in touch with his humanity, or understand the power of the cosmos. There are many ways to tie up plot events in the final part of your narrative—and they all share these elements in common:

• The protagonist has learned something

• The protagonist's behavior or attitude has changed

• The protagonist has embarked on a new direction or path

The key to successful character transformation is to let your character changes unfold dramatically but also realistically. Let the reader see your characters change by how they act and speak, and by the choices they make within the framework of scenes, not through narrative summaries.

As the creator of all the wily and fascinating characters in your fiction, it can be difficult to assign levels of importance to them at first; after all, they're all wonderful to you, even the evil ones. Yet when it comes to how your characters contribute to each scene, and to the overall journey of your narrative, there is, in fact, a hierarchy that you should work to develop. Even though this is a chapter on the role of minor characters, let's quickly review the role of the protagonists before moving on.

Most important to any narrative is your protagonist—the character around whom your significant situation revolves and who is most challenged and tested in your narrative. In some narratives you might even have more than one protagonist. The protagonists are the headliners of your story, and do the most work and get the most lines; their emotional and spiritual conflicts are of central interest to the reader. In limited point-of-view chapters, each protagonist narrates his own scenes and chapters. It's not as common to show the points of view of secondary or minor characters unless you're writing from an omniscient point of view, and even then, you want to give those lesser characters far less stage time.

SECONDARY CHARACTERS

A secondary character's job is to affect your protagonist in meaningful ways, exerting change and conflict, offering support and sympathy, and enriching your narrative. True secondary characters are neither the stars nor minor players, since these characters have important roles that affect the narrative arc of your protagonist. But if one should die or disappear, the story should be able to go on without him (though his loss will have an impact on the protagonist, of course!).

Here, we'll look at the roles of the two main types of secondary characters: antagonists and allies. Neither type of character should get his own point of view chapters, or, if you've written in omniscient POV, too many paragraphs or pages inside his head. Point-of-view chapters and scenes should generally be reserved for protagonists; the reader will determine who your protagonists are by how much time is spent telling the story from their points of view. Main characters get more time on the page, and the reader sees through the protagonists' cameras more than through the perspectives of any other characters.

Antagonists

The antagonist is the person or the group of people whose objective is to thwart the goals of your protagonist. Antagonists cause conflict and pile on the emotional pressure. (An antagonist can also be a force of nature or other means of thwarting your protagonist, but for this chapter we're specifically going to talk about antagonists as people.)

While the antagonist does not have to appear in every scene, every scene should convey a sense of pressure, menace, or uncertainty as a result of his presence within the story itself. The antagonist needs to be developed well enough that you can understand how he thinks and what motivates him, but he doesn't need to have a full character arc and undergo transformation, like your protagonist does.

With an antagonist you really only need to know the following:

•What is the antagonist's motivation is for trying to thwart your protagonist in the first place

•What the antagonist expects to gain or seeks to obtain by thwarting your protagonist

•What the antagonist stands to lose if he does not attain his goal

Unlike the protagonist, who must undergo some kind of transformation in the narrative, antagonists don't need to be developed too fully. They can start out evil and stay evil. The most character work you'll need to do with an antagonist is to show why and how he came to be the way he is, to uncover his motivations so that the reader understands why he is causing so much trouble for your protagonist. Is it pure evil, greed, lust, or fear? All great villains have a motivation, and the top motivator is usually revenge. He was slighted, injured, thwarted, or insulted, and he is out to set things straight.

What makes the antagonist important to your narrative is not his own individual story, but how he affects your protagonist and acts as a catalyst for change. Here are some ways in which antagonists force protagonists to change or act:

• By providing a looming threat.
The antagonist has threatened your protagonist with a punishment or consequence if the protagonist does not do something. Think of Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter books—he is rarely in any scene, but the danger of his return is constant in Harry's mind.

• By prompting a course of action motivated by fear.
The protagonist behaves or takes a particular action out of fear caused by the antagonist.

• By prompting a defensive or courageous course of action.
The protagonist takes an action to defend himself or a loved one, or demonstrates an act of sheer courage that is specifically inspired by the antagonist.

Though you are not required to show any change on the antagonist's part (except defeat), you may choose to redeem your antagonist by the end of your narrative so that after his defeat, or at the precipice of it, he decides to help, rather than hinder the protagonist. This is a challenging feat to pull off, and generally works only when the antagonist has already demonstrated the potential for duality early on. For instance, a Nazi soldier may have a sudden fit of conscience and help a Jew escape. You are just as free to have your antagonist meet his demise and never be thought of again.

Allies

The other main type of secondary character is the protagonist's friend, ally, or loved one (we'll lump them all under the category of allies for ease of discussion). Again, these characters don't need to be given their own point of view scenes or chapters, because the story does not require that an ally undergo a dramatic personal transformation. The ally's actions should support the protagonist and make it possible for him to succeed and face his challenges. Your ally may simply be a love interest whose faith in his girlfriend keeps her grounded when everything is going wrong. Or your ally might be a companion on a long journey who keeps your protagonist on his toes and rallies him to keep up his strength to reach his goal.