Techniques of the Selling Writer (35 page)

Frequently, your contact with or knowledge of a real person blocks you when you try
to write about him. You grope, trying to remember exactly how he does a thing. You
draw back from making him behave the way he should.

These reactions may not even reach a conscious level. All you know is, all at once
you just can’t write.

Therefore, your best approach is to make no attempt to pattern your character after
anyone you know, except perhaps in the broadest terms. You should
avoid
detailed copying, in fact, even if it takes conscious effort.

Stress is the formative factor; the thing that makes or breaks a man.

So, plunge your people into conflict. Let pressure strip away the gloss and reveal
them as they really are.

In so doing, don’t hesitate to play the tune by ear. The inspiration of the moment,
the heat of your own fervor, may produce results that startle you!

Here we have a point much beloved and belabored by the critics. But most stories occupy
a brief time span. The action runs no more than forty-eight hours, say; or twenty-four.

How much growth do you yourself, or your friends, exhibit in such a period?

On the other hand, in the novel that covers years, your characters
do indeed grow. Or, to put it more precisely, they learn by experience.

Which means that if you show them living through the specific events that teach them
their lessons, there’s no problem.

They say so.

What such a writer means, however, if he only realized it, is that he becomes so fascinated
with the personality he’s created that he prefers to write about that personality
instead of the story he originally had in mind.

This can be good, or it can be disastrous.

Fascination with anything makes work easier and, in fiction, results in a more vivid
product.

On the other hand, preoccupation with a character seldom substitutes for sound story
structure. The personality run wild too often throws everything else off balance.

As a general rule, therefore, the character who stays within the framework of his
function turns out best.

Actually, despite all screams of anguish from the literati, many characters have no
depth, and need none.

Such characters start as “John” or “Mary,” and go no further.

The trick in this is to weigh each character as you build him. Ask yourself how much
attention he warrants. If the role he plays is only a walk-on bit, deal with him in
the simplest terms. You pay little heed to the man who drives your cab, in life. You
pay a great deal to your wife. In most cases, the same principle applies to fiction.

This offers the same hazard we discussed in question
h
, above. When it happens, you have to decide whether to reshape the
story to fit the character; or, cut the character back to fit his original function.
There’s no way to avoid the choice.

This is
not
to say that you shouldn’t make a bit player colorful and intriguing, you understand,
so long as you hold him within the framework of his role.

Give them precisely as much attention as their importance in the conflict needs and
warrants.

This too is a matter of degree. Carried too far, it can be dangerous, simply because
it’s so time-consuming. If you follow the routine some books suggest, down to whether
or not your heroine likes pineapple ice, you may very well end up with fine background
studies of your people—but no hours or energy left to write the story.

Such labels are tools of the critic, not the writer. They’re arbitrary, analytical,
and after the fact. Slap them on in advance, and they tend to paralyze creative thinking.

Difference of opinion is what makes horse races. Behaviorists work on one set of assumptions,
Freudians another. A detective and a social worker and a clergyman may each draw different
conclusions as to the motivation of a given act.

Your ideas about why a man takes a certain path can quite possibly prove as valid
as another’s. In characterization, as in anything else, you have to act on the courage
of your convictions. If you intrigue your reader with your concepts, he’ll go along.

How do you bring a character to life?

“A ’living’ character is not necessarily ’true to life,’” declares poet-dramatist
T. S. Eliot. “It is a person whom we can see and hear, whether he be true or false
to human nature as we know it. What the creator of character needs is not so much
knowledge of motives as keen sensibility; the dramatist need not understand people;
but he must be exceptionally aware of them.”

What do you say about a character and his behavior to make him seem vivid and credible
to your reader?

You make him look and act like a living person. Which is to say, you give him an
appearance
of life.

To this end, you use learned tricks and techniques of presentation.

The key to effective character presentation is
contrast
. The world’s population today is numbered in the billions. Yet each individual remains
different. There still are no two fingerprints alike.

Story people must be thus differentiated also. Continuously, from start to finish.
Otherwise, how can your reader know who’s who? How can he decide which characters
he likes?

Liking characters is vital to your reader. So is disliking, and feeling pity and contempt
and respect and tenderness and sexual excitement.

Why?

Because without such variations of emotional reaction, the reader can’t care what
happens to your people.

If he doesn’t care, he can achieve no sense of inner tension when they’re endangered.

It’s to gain such tension, remember, that your reader reads. Therefore, you must give
him vivid, contrasting story people . . . men and women who strike sparks in him,
and in whose moccasins he can walk.

To differentiate between your characters, you do five things for each:

What does each point involve? Let’s take them one at a time:

Consider what happens when, in life, you meet a person for the first time. One way
or another, whether you will it or not, he makes a dominant impression on you.

That is, you find yourself labeling him as a
dignified
person, or a
cruel
man, or a
sexy
woman, or a
flighty
girl, or a
rowdy
boy, or what have you.

Precisely the same process takes place in fiction. So, to shape your reader’s reaction
to a story person, you decide what image you want said reader to receive.

Suppose you’re directing a play. You want to pick an actor for the hero’s part.

Immediately, the question arises: Should you cast
to
type or
against
type?

This merely means that, in life and in fiction, each of us has certain preconceived
notions as to what certain categories of person are like . . . stereotypes, as it
were. Thus, most of us think of a hero, a leading man, as tall, dark, handsome, physically
prepossessing, and so on.

If, as director, I pick an actor who
matches
this stereotype—a tall, dark, handsome, physically prepossessing man—I’m said to
be casting
to
type: I’m fitting actor to audience preconception.

If, on the other hand, I choose an actor who
contradicts
this audience preconception—an ugly man as hero; a gawky, awkward girl as heroine—I’m
casting
against
type.

It goes on the same all down the line. Maybe I pick Mother to fit Whistler’s picture,
complete even unto rocking chair. Or, perhaps I visualize her as a beady-eyed, gin-guzzling,
vitriol-tongued old bitch. Child may be sweet innocence personified; or, she make
take form as an evil-minded little monster or a ragamuffin tomboy.

Partly, of course, your decision on such issues will be a matter of personal taste.
But there are also a few objective facts you should take into consideration.

Any stereotype has familiarity on its side. It makes for easy reading . . . demands
no thought, no readjustment. Though you run some minor risk of reader boredom,
Abie’s Irish Rose
and the strong, silent heroes of ten thousand TV westerns stand on your side.

When you contradict stereotype, on the other hand, you lose familiarity but you add
realism and interest. Readers know that not all policemen are Irish, not all gangsters
gorillas, not all girls beautiful. They’re excited by the very novelty of a Huck Finn
or a Philip Carey.

Now, back to story:

When you write, you’re in the position of the director above. You have to decide whether
the dominant impression you pick for a given character fits or contradicts your reader’s
stereotype of the figure who should be assigned such a role.

If you decide to contradict said stereotype, you must be prepared also to devise ways
to get Reader to accept that contradiction.

Yes, it can be done—witness Rex Stout’s use of ponderously obese Nero Wolfe as a mystery
hero, or the hypocrisy that stands as the trade-mark of Elmer Gantry.

But thus to go against the tide demands that you attack the task with open eyes and
forthright recognition of the problem.

Here stands your character, suited out in the armor of dominant impression.

Now, ask yourself a question: Is this a true picture?

Consider the dignified person. Is he really dignified—or is the appearance of dignity
merely a mask he’s adopted to hide stupidity? Is the cruel man totally cruel . . .
cruel to certain people only . . . or using the appearance of cruelty to hide the
fact that he’s really so sentimental as to be a pushover for any appeal? Is the sexy
woman in fact eager to go to bed with all comers, or does she hold sex in such fear
that she must hide her panic behind lewd talk and pretense of promiscuity? Does
the flighty girl’s appearance of flightiness conceal cold calculation? Is the boy’s
rowdiness a mask for shyness?

All of us are, in truth, a maze of inconsistencies and contradictions. That’s what
makes man interesting. Capture the paradox in print, and your characters will be interesting
also.

Obversely, the person or character who’s all black or all white, all good or all bad,
all honor or all lust or all servility, may do very well in a bit part. But he lacks
the depth to hold sustained attention. If you don’t believe me, try reading a year’s
Dick Tracy
strips at a single sitting.

The more effective character possesses both strengths and weaknesses. They modify
the dominant impression. The scholar, irked at a poor haircut, reveals a human touch
of vanity. The drunk turns down a drink because his young son is standing by. The
concert pianist cancels an engagement to help care for her sister’s newest baby.

Of such are actual people made. They don’t want just one thing. They aren’t limited
to a single feeling. Despite surface consistency, conflicts and contradictions upon
occasion rage inside them.

Your story people should show the same range of inner contrast.

One warning, though: Dominant impression should remain dominant; major modifying elements
limited in number. Too great complexity blurs the picture for your reader.

Ordinarily, a story involves people, plural.

Each person should make a
different
dominant impression. If three characters all pulse dignity at every turn, each will
detract from the impact of the others. What you want is variety, not sameness.

A tag is a label.

You hang tags on story people so that your reader can tell one character from another.
An impression, dominant or otherwise, is created by the tags a character bears.

Black hair is a tag. It helps distinguish the raven-tressed girl from another who’s
a blonde.

A stutter is a tag. It sets apart one character from others who speak without impediment.

Shuffling your feet is a tag. It keeps people from confusing you with your friend,
who strides along.

Pessimism is a tag. It marks its victim as different from the joker.

Tags also may translate inner state into external action. Each time the brother in
Arsenic and Old Lace
shouts “Charge!” and dashes up his imaginary San Juan Hill, we’re reminded that he
lives in a private world.

What types of tags are there?

Most fall into four categories: