Category: protagonist

            Kind of a goofy title.  Hopefully it’ll make sense in a few minutes.
            Hey, did you know today is the 50th anniversary of Star Trek?  Yep, the original series premiered fifty years ago today (tonight, really).  “The Man Trap,” the one with the salt vampire.

            May we always boldly go where no one has gone before…

            Anyway…

            If you follow me on Twitter, you know I often spend my weekends watching a half-dozen or so B- or openly awful movies while working on toy soldiers or tanks or something. And I often tweet out little bits of advice when I see a storytelling screw up that should’ve been easily avoided. They’re more frustrating in film, because it means someone had the screenplay sitting right there in front of them before this messed-up scene was put on film. And yet… they still put it on film.

            And sometimes the screw-ups are so bad, so overwhelming, that all I can do is drink…

            A recent awful film I saw hit on a really big problem I’ve seen a few people wrestle with. To be honest, I wrestled with it on my oft-mentioned book, The Suffering Map.  And when I realized what I’d been doing, not only did I feel like an idiot, but I realized that book might be salvageable someday after all.

            With a certain amount of rewrites.

            What am I talking about?

             A few weeks back I was watching a movie that was probably going for the idea of a goofy, somewhat inept hero with much more capable friends. Think of Jack Burton in Big Trouble In Little China or even, to a lesser extent, Shaun in Shaun of the Dead.  Alas, that’s a very tricky balance to pull off, and this writer/director didn’t have the skill or experience to do it.

            Meanwhile, the cute bartender (who liked him because… well, it was in the script, I guess) is well-trained with firearms, has a plan, stays calm under pressure… and keeps getting regulated to reaction shots and wide shots of the supporting character.  Except for one or two scenes, she’s almost a background character.

            And then, at the end, the hero sweeps her off her feet.  After the world’s been saved by someone else.  No, a third person altogether, not either one of them.

            That movie killed half a bottle of rum.  One of the big bottles.

            Anyway…

            Example two.

            In my early drafts of The Suffering Map, my main character, Rob, pretty much dominated the book.  There were some good supporting characters in Sondra, Miguel, Levi Gulliver and his ravens, and my villain, Bareback (a shameless Cenobite rip-off in those first three or four drafts), but Rob was easily 70-75% of the book.

            When I finally made a serious revision, one of the big changes was giving more time to Sondra. Really, the story involved her almost as much as Rob, and she had her own arc that I’d all but skimmed over because… well, he was my main character, right?

            By the next big revision (the last one) the novel was pretty much split clean between them.  But it still wasn’t quite right, and—as I’ve mentioned before—it was rejected a few times.  It was around this time that I finally trunked it.  Well, cyber-trunked it.

            Y’see, Timmy, both of these stories suffered from the same problem—not being aware of who should be the main character.  They’re not focusing on the heroic, active person—the person who’s actually making choices and doing things. And learning from those choices and changing because of them. What I came to realize was that Rob shouldn’t be the main character of The Suffering Map—Sondra should be.  She was more active, she was more interesting, and she had a serious arc.  Really, the book was her story.  Which I knew, but I was so stuck in the headspace of it being Rob’s story that I didn’t recognize the actual hero.

            The bad movie did the same thing.  It only took a few moments of mental re-plotting to see how much stronger and more entertaining the film would be if it had been focused on the bartender.  She was smart, clever, willing to take charge… all the stuff we want and need in a main character.

            Granted, it’s always possible to bend or break those rules, but—as I mentioned above—it’s not an easy thing to do, and probably not something to attempt without a lot of serious experience.

            I also think it’s worth addressing the elephant in the room.  In both of these examples, the better lead, the one shunted to the side, was a woman.  This isn’t always going to be the case, but I also didn’t want to gloss over it. 

            For me, it came down to The Suffering Map being my first all-out serious attempt at a novel.  I was worried I didn’t have the skill to pull off a female lead, and at the time I was right. But as I kept rewriting it over the years, and Sondra became a better character, I developed those skills. Alas, as I mentioned above, it still took me a while to get past the idea of “Rob is the main character.”

            In the bad movie… well, I don’t know what they were thinking.  I wasn’t there.  It’s possible, as I mentioned above, they went for a goofy hero with better sidekicks and really messed up the balance.  Or maybe they just planned on her as a love interest, put in a lot of character traits thinking it’d be cool to have a love interest who wasn’t just window dressing, and couldn’t register the fact that they’d made this supporting character into a far better protagonist than their lead. We’ll never know.  All I can say is that it was far from the movie’s only problem, and no one should ever watch it without a serious amount of alcohol on standby.

            But back to our topic…

            If I’m doing a story with a good-sized cast of characters, it may be worth taking a moment to look at the story from a few different points of view.  Maybe that clever thing I’m trying to do with my main character isn’t working.  Maybe she’s the main character.  Or that guy.  Or that person in the coat over there.  My goal as a writer should be to tell the most interesting story possible, and sometimes… that might not be the story I started with.

            Next time, I’d like to blather on a bit about where you’ve decided to write.

            Until then… go write.

             Grrrrh. Running behind again. Sorry.  Juggling too many things right now.  Honestly, I think I’m thinking about juggling too many things and just being hit with a paralysis by analysis situation…

            Anyway…

            Speaking of things that aren’t immediately apparent, I wanted to talk about a problematic character point for a moment.  It’s one I’ve stumbled across a few times (and fallen victim to once or twice myself), and once I worked out exactly why it was problematic, I thought it was worth mentioning.

            A few quick examples…

            I saw an older movie recently from the dark era of superhero films. You know, that time before Blade when studios (and writers, and directors…) really didn’t believe you could do a serious superhero movie. Well, not without changing everything about it. Play it more for laughs.  Minimize the costume.  Avoid logos. Avoid masks.  Absolutely no capes.

            Really, how could you hope to do a movie about superhero characters who wear masks and capes and get anyone to take it seriously?

            Anyway, this film had a scene where the superhuman hero waded into a minor gang war while wearing his street clothes.  To be clear, at this point, the hero knew the full range of his abilities. Super-strength.  Near-invulnerability. Enhanced reflexes.  So the bad guys were throwing themselves at this skinny guy and ending up with bruises, cracked knuckles, broken limbs, maybe even one or two concussions in there.  By the time they figured out something wasn’t right, the hero’d probably sent a dozen of them to the emergency room.

            Here’s another example from the book side of things.  As usual, names, genders, and genres have been changed to protect the innocent.  Or maybe they haven’t, just to throw you further off the trail…

            A friend of mine had been doing a western horror story recently and asked me to take a look at his current draft.  His main hero, Wakko, was a pretty solid gunslinger/sharpshooter type (yeah, named his lead Wakko—weird coincidence, isn’t it?).  At one point, Wakko and the other heroes find themselves taking refuge in an old frontier fort that’s run by some less-respectable types. Wakko wanders around and finds the local tough guy, and inwardly notes a few things that confirm the guy may have been the best in the fort, but that doesn’t mean he’s particularly good.  To prove it, and make a point, Wakko teases and insults the other guy until he finally leaps up, grabs for his pistol—

            And Wakko flicks out his own gun and shoots the guy dead.  Justified, of course.  That guy was trying to draw.  Everyone saw it.

            I made a note that this scene didn’t make Wakko look particularly heroic.  In any sense.

            This sort of thing is a hustle.  A con.  If you’ve ever played pool, nothing annoys people more than to discover the cute “rookie” who tricked them into wagering everything on their third game is actually a pool shark with countless notches on her belt.

           One thing about a hero—in real life or in a literary sense—is that we expect a sense of fairness and general decency from them.  They shouldn’t abuse their power.  They won’t deliberately harm people.  Yeah, they might have to do awful things at some point, and they might not hesitate to do them when they need to, but it won’t be something they want to do.

            Y’see, Timmy, a superhero in regular clothes is… well, just a dick.  Yeah, even when it’s Christopher Reeve.  Let’s be honest, that was a cheap move, beating up that guy in the diner.  A green beret who goads people into taking a swing at him is also a dick.  Or a gunslinger who forces somebody into a quickdraw contest.

            Honestly… it’s a bully move.

            Now, when my villain (or just a general antagonist) does something like this, it often works well for my story.  How often have we seen our hero throw a punch or kick or hail of bullets that had no effect?  What appears like a minor obstacle  just became a much more serious challenge for my heroine or hero to deal with. And challenges are great.

            But bullies aren’t.

            Especially when they’re supposed to be my protagonist.

            Next time, I wanted to talk about some thing.

            Until then, go write.

            I can’t believe the year’s almost over.  Where did the past few months go?

            I wanted to get much more done this year.  But we’ll talk about that in a few weeks…

            While posting my last few little rants and adding in links, I realized there’s a lot of basic stuff I haven’t revisited in two or three years now.  I think part of it is because I’ve been doing more conventions and talking about these topics there, so it feels like I’m going over them all the time.

            Anyway, over the next month or two I want to go over some things like dialogue, stakes, action, and a few other random tips and tricks I’ve stumbled across during the many years of mistakes that make up my career.

            Right now, I wanted to talk about some character basics.  Three of them, to be precise.  Put this rant near the top of the advice column.  I’m really, really tempted to call it a rule, but I think that would spark too many comments about various exceptions and distract from the point I’m trying to make.

            Pretty much across the board, my characters need to be believable, relatable, andlikeable.  If my protagonist doesn’t have these three traits, I’m pretty much screwed.  It’s not impossible to have a story where my characters don’t have these traits, but it’s going to be an uphill battle.  Like, rolling-a-boulder-up-a-mountain level uphill battle.

            Allow me to explain by going over each of these. We’ll do that with my frequently-used volunteer character, Dot.  Also, there’s a lot of back and forth between them, so I apologize now if this gets a bit confusing or jumbled at points. 

            First up, Dot has to be believable.  Almost nothing is more important than this.  If my reader can’t believe in the character within the established setting, if they don’t feel like a real person, my story’s got an uphill battle going right from the start.  It doesn’t matter who (or what) Dot is, she must be believable.

           How do I do that?

            The same goes for Dot’s actions, reactions, and motives.  There has to be a believable reason she does the things she does.  A reason that makes sense with everything we know about her or will come to know.  If her motivations are erratic and just there to push the plot along, my readers are going to pick up on that really quick.  If I find myself thinking (or shouting) “What are you doing?!” at a character, it’s a good sign their motivation isn’t believable

            Also, please keep in mind that just because Dot is based on a real person who went through true events doesn’t automatically make her believable.  Sometimes, believe it or not, it can make her seem even more contrived.  I’ve talked here several times about the difference between reality and fiction, and it’s where many aspiring writers stumble.  Don’t forget, there’s no such thing as an “unbelievable true story”—only an unbelievable story.

            Speaking of which, this first trait can be an immediate challenge for genre writers, yes?  Werewolves aren’t believable  because they’re not real.  Neither are leprechauns.  Nanotech cyborgs, aliens, ghosts, hive minds, demons, Santa Claus, Elder Gods, barbarians from the Ninth Realm of Shokar—we’ve pretty much proven all of these things are fictional, much as we might want some of them to be real.  But, as I just mentioned, part of this trait is making them believable within the setting of the story.

            Next, Dot needs to be relatable.  As readers, we enjoy seeing similarities between ourselves and the characters we’re reading about. It lets us make extended parallels with what happens in their lives and what we’d like to happen (or be able to happen) in our own lives.  It’s not a coincidence that most stories deal with ordinary people in extraordinary situations.  It’s hard for readers (or an audience) to enjoy a story when they can’t identify with the character on some level.

            Part of this is me being aware how my readers are going to view and react to Dot.  There needs to be something they can connect with. Almost all of us can relate to blue collar, middle class folks easier than multi-millionaire celebrities.  I feel safe saying everyone reading this—or writing it—has been the victim of an awful break up or two.  Very few of us have hunted down said ex for a prolonged revenge-torture sequence in a backwoods cabin.  Hopefully none of us.

            This is also going to tie back to the idea of being believable.  Dot’s actions and reactions, her motives and experiences, are a big part of what’s going to make her relatable.  This is how the readers come to understand her.  By the same token, the less believable or common a character element is, the less likely it is my readers will be able to relate to it.  If I make Dot a reincarnated, retro-futurist one-percenter who eats nothing but snake hearts, speaks only in Babylonian metaphors, and firmly believes the lizard men are going to be returning to claim the world (and welcomes her new reptilian overlords)… well, it’s going to be a real challenge for my readers to identify with that.  And if readers can’t identify with Dot, why will they care what happens to her?

            When Dot doesn’t have any character traits we can relate to, we’re no longer understanding her—we’re observing her.  It’s an immediate wedge between the readers and the character, keeping them at arm’s length.  And that separation is going to keep readers from getting caught up in my story.

            Again, this isn’t to say characters can’t have amazing traits or abilities, but  those can’t be my focus.  The most successful takes on Superman haven’t been the ones that focus on his godlike powers, they’ve been the ones that emphasize he’s still basically a guy who grew up in all-American, small-town Kansas.  Jessica Jones may be able to punch through a wall, but her story is really about how she chooses to deal with her past—therapy groups, lots of drinking, and random sex with guys she barely knows.  Jonathan Maberry’s Joe Ledger is a trained and lethal warrior who still prefers to spend his time playing with his dog, wearing Hawaiian shirts, and enjoying burgers and beer. In my own book, The Fold, Mike may have one of the most amazing minds on the planet but he really just wants to fit in and be like everyone else.

            Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Dot has to be likeable.  There has to be a reason we, as readers, want to follow her story and not his or hers or theirs.  We have to like her.  There should be elements to her we admire and maybe even envy a bit. We have to be somewhat invested in her accomplishing her goals and making it to the end of the story.

            Keep in mind, likable can mean a lot of things.  It can mean adorkable klutz but also fantastic work ethic.  Maybe Dot has impeachable integrity.  Maybe she takes care of every stray she finds.  She could be really funny or perhaps she’s just always there when her friends need her.  Or maybe she’s the one who just says what needs to be said and stands up for the little people, no matter the cost to her.

            On the flipside, if she’s morally reprehensible, a drunken jackass, or just plain boring… well, what’s going to keep people reading?  Nobody likes the person who kills babies or pets.  We’re rarely interested in boring people (because none of us think we’re boring) and we don’t like stupid people(because none of us think we’re stupid).  If this is how I’m characterizing Dot, nobody’s going to read through a few hundred pages of her exploits.  Or lack of exploits.

            Again, this doesn’t mean my character has to be a saint, or even a good person.   In Doctor Sleep, we find out that Danny Torrance grew up to be a major, life-ruining alcoholic. Cat Grant on Supergirl is a ruthless, often cruel boss who can’t even be bothered to get her assistant’s name right.  Sherlock Holmes has often been portrayed as curt and with very little patience for those he thinks are inferior to him (which is most people).  Raymond Reddington is a ruthless “concierge of crime” who doesn’t hesitate to pull a trigger or stab someone in the back (figuratively or literally).  We’re still interested in them as characters, though, either because of underlying codes of honor or because they’re doing things we wish we could get away with.  And because of this, we’re willing to follow them through their stories.

            Now, I’m sure many of you reading this can list off a dozen or so examples from books and movies of characters that only have one or two of these traits (someone probably skipped down to the comments after the first few paragraphs and started typing them up). It’d be silly for me to deny this.  Overall, though, I think you’ll find the people that don’t have all three of these traits are usually supporting characters.  They don’t need all three of these traits because they aren’t the focus of our attention.  If I’m a halfway decent writer, I’m not going to waste my word count or screen time on a minor character—I’m going to save them for Dot.

            So, to sum up, a good character should be someone we’d like to be, at least for a little while.  That’s what great fiction is, after all.  It’s when we let ourselves get immersed in someone else’s life.  So it has to be a person–and a life– we wantto sink into.  One we understand on some level or another.  One we can believe in.

            One we want to read about.

            Next time, it being the season, I’d like to talk about Santa Claus.

            Until then, go write.