Category: character

Yes, there’s love in the air this weekend. Well, love and covid. Probably why I forgot to line up a holiday-related post.

Most folks enjoy a good romance because most of us have either been in love, are in love, or want to be in love. It’s a wonderful feeling. Heck those first few months of giddy romance are just fantastic, aren’t they? Love is great because we can relate to it.  We believe in it. For the most part, we enjoy seeing other people in love.

If those three traits sound familiar—relatable, believable, likable—it’s because I’ve mentioned them three or fourteen times as the traits of good characters.  So a good romance can be a powerful tool in a story, because it immediately grounds one or two of my characters.

However…

I’m betting most of us have read a book or watched a movie where, with no warning, two characters start professing their mad love for each other. No preamble, no chemistry, they just suddenly start flirting on page 108 and they’re making long-term plans by 200.

Nobody likes emotional fakery, and few things can weight a story down like a pasted-on love interest. It just feels insincere and artificial. We roll our eyes when it’s in books and laugh when it’s in movies. And probably groan either way.

Anyway, I figure it’s been a while so for this Valentine’s Day let’s revisit my patented** Rules of Love that can help you write a wonderful, believable love story.

**not actually patented

The First Rule of Love –As I was just saying, love needs real emotions, and I can’t have real emotions without real people. And real people, oddly enough, act in realistic ways. Maybe not entirely rational ways, granted, but still believably realistic.

My characters are going to have needs and desires, likes and dislikes.  And it’ll stand out if they make choices that go against those traits. Yes, opposites attract—they even have a lot of fun together—but if we’re talking about real people, odds are these two are going to have more in common than not. Wall Street hedge fund managers don’t usually have a lot in common with mural artists.

Also, how fast and how far my characters take things should be consistent with who they are. They can be confident or nervous, experienced or awkward.  Some people schedule every hour of every day, others don’t own a clock. For some folks it’s a major moment to have that first cautious, fleeting kiss on the third date, and some people are tearing each other’s clothes off in the hall closet half an hour after they meet.

Short and simple version, my characters need to be believable if their love is going to be believable.

The Second Rule of Love  –Show of hands—who’s ever had somebody try to push you into a relationship? Maybe it’s friends or coworkers. Hopefully it’s not relatives, because that’s always kinda… weird. Maybe it’s the person you’re on the date with and they’re talking weddings and kids before you’ve ordered drinks. Which is even more weird.

It might just be me, but I think in all these cases the result is we want to get away from the object of our potential affection. Nobody likes feeling forced into something, and so we don’t enjoy seeing other people forced into things. That’s just human nature.

Now, for the record, “somebody” includes me, the writer. Characters need their own reasons and motivations to get into a relationship. I can’t just have them doing things (or people) for the convenience of the plot. If I’ve based my whole story around the hedge fund manager and the artist coming together to save the art school (and discovering their mutual attraction in the process), then I still need a real reason for them to get together, because they’re real people (as mentioned in the First Rule). 

Again, people get together because they want to get together, not because other folks think they should be together.

The Third Rule of Love – This one also counts as real-world advice. We shouldn’t confuse sex with love. We’re all adults, and I’m willing to bet most of us have had sex with someone we weren’t madly in love with at the time. Or at any time later. There are lots of points in a story where it might be completely acceptable for two people to have sex. Sex is fun. It’s a stress-reliever. It can distract us from thinking about other things for a while. Heck, it can even keep you warm.

But sex doesn’t always lead directly to love. In stories or in the real world. If my two characters fall into bed (or into a back seat, or up against a wall, on a desk, etc), I need to be clear what it means for both of them. Forcing something casual into something serious will just read as forced (refer to the Second Rule).

TL;DR… sex and love are not the same thing.

The Fourth Rule of Love—This one can be hard to grasp because Hollywoodkeeps telling us otherwise.  How often in movies can you immediately spot “the love interest” as soon as they’re introduced? It doesn’t matter what kind of film it is or what’s going on, it’s easy to pick them out the first time they appear.  You may have heard of a certain moment called the “meet-cute,” for example

But y’see, Timmy, the simple truth is…  romance doesn’t always fit in a story. Somebody might be fighting for their life, in hiding, or so terrified they’re an inch away from a heart attack. Maybe they’re already in a relationship with someone else. Maybe they just have no interest in that sort of connection right now—emotional or physical.

Forcing a relationship in these situations also risks making one or both characters seem very unlikable. If I’ve already established one set of relationships, trying to force new ones can create a lot of… complications.

I mean, we’ve all been there. Sometimes… it’s just not going to happen.

So there are the Rules of Love. Now go forth this weekend and spread the love. Where appropriate.  Don’t be that guy. Really, just don’t be that person.

Next time, I promise… Cloverfield. It’s going to be fantastic.

Until then, go write.

Hey, since I’ve been asked about this a few times now…

When I did the A2Q how-to-write-a-novel thing at the start of the year, it was every other week, and then every week, and trying to find those posts now, in reverse order, can make it a bit troublesome. So here’s a master list of more or less the whole thing. Now I can just point folks here, or you can just save the one bookmark. Y’know, if you felt this was bookmark-worthy.

Part One—The Idea

Part Two—The Plot

Part Three—The Characters

Part Four—The Story

Part Five—The Setting

Part Six—The Theme

Part Seven—The Outline

Part Eight—The First Draft

Part Nine—The Editing

Part Ten—The Criticism

Part Eleven—The Revisions

Part Twelve—The End
 
For the record, there were some other posts I slapped the A2Q tag on—the supplemental material, if you will—but I didn’t include them here. They’re useful, but most of them were afterthoughts and they’d feel a little jammed in, I think, if I tried to work them in here where they should be. When I someday bind all this into an ebook, I’ll make sure they’re all incorporated from the start.

Next up, rocks. And right after that, I’d like to do one holiday tradition a little early.

Now go write.

Halloween is so weird this year. One, because we’re all just exhausted from a year of isolation and stress and way too much death. I really hope none of that death has touched you and yours, but we’re kinda at the point where odds are it probably has. And if that’s the case, I’m so very sorry.

The other reason it’s weird is because we all understand it’s pretty much not happening. Trick or treating’s risky. Partying’s right out unless you’re an idiot.

Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk about.

There’s a certain type of character who shows up a lot in horror, and for lack of a better term, we’ll call them the Idiot. They’re the one who simply refuses to believe zombies are real, even when three people have been killed. They’re convinced the aliens are benevolent and this is just a communications problem that can be worked out. Or maybe they’re convinced *cough*cough* the deadly virus is nothing to worry about. Probably one of the most famous Idiots is Mayor Vaughn from Jaws. On the off chance you haven’t seen the movie—and seriously, what the hell is wrong with you if that’s the case—when a great white shark appears off the coast of his small New England resort town, Vaughn ignores all the warnings he gets from the local police chief and a visiting scientist, refusing to close the beaches.

As you may have heard, this does not work out all that great for him. Or some of his constituents.

It’s worth pointing out most of the time the Idiot isn’t actually ignorant. They’re making a deliberate decision to ignore all this evidence they’ve been given. Maybe it’s because it goes against too many things they believe. Maybe their motivation’s more financial. Maybe it’s about power. But it’s almost always a decision made for personal reasons, not because of lack of actual information.

There’s a reason for that, and it’s one of the reasons these characters sometimes fumble. If someone comes running up to me and says there’s a zombie horde around the corner, I’m going to assume they’re either under the influence or maybe a bit unbalanced. Because zombies don’t exist. Me thinking they don’t exist is completely rational. If a storyteller tries to paint someone like me, in a real-world setting, as the Idiot… it’s not going to work that great.

But…

If there’ve been reports of zombie attacks for weeks, and I saw a zombie take down a guy in the Target parking lot two days ago, and now someone runs up and says there’s a zombie horde around the corner… Okay, now I’m in a bit of denial if I mock them. Because I’ve seen evidence of this already. Lots of evidence.

When an Idiot character doesn’t work, I think a lot of times it’s because of where they’re appearing in the story. There’s only a small window where this character really shines. Too soon in the chain of events, and—as I mentioned above—it makes sense I’m not going to believe in zombies. So being the Idiot early on doesn’t work. 

On the flipside,  if we’re two years into the zombie post-apocalypse, it’s kind of tough for readers to believe someone could still be in denial. Heck, how could they have survived this long? There’s a point where we’ve moved past “denial” and we need to be asking about head trauma and medications.

Y’see, Timmy, the Idiot only really works in that one sweet spot of the greater, overall story. After things could be rationally excused or ignored, but before things are, y’know, in flames. If I try to have this character outside that range, it’s going to be really tough to make it work.

Also worth noting the Idiot tends to be an authority figure. Not always, but I’d guess it’s more often than not. Police chief, military general, senior scientist, politician—these are all common Idiots (no pun intended). From a narrative point of view, this gives their decisions (or lack of decisions) more weight. A waiter deciding he’s going to ignore the CDC zombie guidelines when he makes decisions doesn’t have as much impact as, say, a governor or a senator who thinks they can be ignored.

Now, granted, there are times I’ll have a character in my story who’s just… an idiot (garden-variety, small “i”). There’s always going to be that person who firmly believes zombie vision is based on movement, who crouches down to pat the alien space cobra, or who thinks wearing a protective mask is more likely to get them sick than not wearing one. That’s just kind of the way people are in any society that’s taken off some Darwinian pressure. Some folks are just stupid and they do stupid things.

And while having this kind of annoying character can serve a purpose in the story, we shouldn’t get them confused with that deliberate, capital-letter type. An Idiot can stick around in my story for a while, but an actual idiot… well, readers generally don’t have the patience for them. Not to point fingers, but think how fast most Vince Vaughn characters get annoying. We don’t have patience for idiot (small i) characters because the nature of the story asks us to identify with characters. And really, why would anyone want to identify with an idiot?

But the Idiot… we may not like or agree with their motivations, but we can understand them. Mayor Vaughn in Jaws knows there’s a shark out there. He also knows shutting down the beaches could ruin his small town and it’ll definitely ruin him come the next election. So… he makes a stupid decision. A similar thing happens in my own book, Dead Moon, with Luna City’s mayor, Lana.

Do you have an Idiot in your story? Do they exist in that sweet spot? Or are they at a point where their stubborn denial is just coming across as unbelievable?

Next time… look, you’re telling me too much. Please stop. I don’t want to hear this. TMI.

Until then, go write.

I talk about characters here a lot. A real lot, going off the size of that tag over in the cloud on the right. Are the clouds even a thing anymore?

Anyway…

While I’ve talked a bunch of times about the traits of good characters, I don’t think I’ve really talked as much about how to get these traits across in a story. It’s all fine and good to say someone needs to be likable, but does that just mean I should have them shout “Like me, please like me!” up at the sky? How do I get across the kind of person Wakko is without falling back on him rattling off his resume and dating history?

I think most of the ways we establish characters tend to fall into three broad groups.

First is the easiest one—my characters establish themselves through their own words and actions. We’ve talked a bunch of times about the importance of voice, how someone talks and what they tend to talk about. If all Phoebe ever talks about is work, that tells us something about her. Likewise, if every conversation she has leads to talking about sex, that gives us a different insight. If every time she speaks it sounds like her Adderall just kicked in, that implies something about her, just like it does if every conversation tends to center on her and how great she is. Heck, even if someone doesn’t talk much—or maybe chooses to barely ever talk—that’s them telling us something about themselves.

In a similar way, if I show Wakko shooing away a stray dog, it says something about him. It says it a little louder if he throws something at the dog or shouts at it. And of course, if I see Wakko have a really crappy day at work and then he goes home to his crappy apartment and heads back out to give the stray a plate of dog food… that can say a lot about what kind of person he is. Good people do good things, bad people do bad things.

The second way we establish characters is by how other characters talk about them and react to them. If Phoebe’s talking in a calm, measured voice but her employees are nervous—or even terrified—that’s a big clue in to what kind of person they know she is. Likewise, if she’s trying to ream someone out over their poor job performance and they’re ignoring her, that also tells us something. Heck, if I’ve got multiple POVs, I might decide to show a bunch of her employees at the bar after work, and they might have a lot more to say once they’re out of the office. Until Phoebe walks in, anyway, and then their tone might change really fast… which again, tells us something about Phoebe.

It’s worth pointing out that most of the time my characters are going to know each other better than my audience knows them. So these interactions are going to work on a couple levels. They’re probably going to hint at how much history there is between characters, what that history’s like, what their current relationship is like. This is where I can use a lot of subtext and let my audience read between the lines a lot. People love that. Seriously.

The third way is how my character’s words and actions line up with my reader’s personal experience. You’ve probably heard that old adage, “actions speak louder than words.” If I tell you this is the smartest guy you’ll ever meet, but then constantly show him being outmatched and outsmarted… what does it actually say about this guy? Up above I mentioned Phoebe turning every conversation to sex? What does it say if she does it constantly at clubs and parties, but then we see her go home sad and alone every night? On the flipside, if she talks all the time about how she’s a bit of a conservative prude and very old fashioned, but then every other night we see her take someone new back to her place, that’s telling us something, too. And if the guy she’s chatting up at the bar talks about how much he loves animals, but then we see him throw a bottle at that stray dog on the way back to her place… well, we get a much better sense of who he is.

This sort of contrast (or open contradiction), can be a great way to get across those character traits. It can let us see who someone thinks they are versus who they actually are. It can show us who they want to be versus who they tend to be. Maybe even show us who someone really is as opposed to the person they keep trying to tell everyone they are.

That’s what I’ve got off the top of my head. If you’ve got some other ways to get character traits across to your readers, please let me know.

And next time is Halloween! And then NaNoWriMo. And then who knows what…

Until then, go write.