Category: real

Punchline. You get it or you don’t. And if you get it, you’re already ahead for this week’s rant.

A common pearl of wisdom from gurus is “write what you know.” At its simplest, this little nugget means you should write about things you have experience with, and hopefully some love for. For example, I know comic books. I know Los Angeles. I also know horror. So, believe it or not, I wrote a book about superheroes staving off a zombie apocalypse here in L.A. and a bunch of people liked it. One of them even thought it was worth publishing, and now a lot of people like it.

The flipside of this is don’t force yourself to write things you know nothing about and can’t relate to. When you force writing like this, or falsify experience, a reader can spot it right away. How often have you seen someone try to write mobster discussions, scientific jargon, or period dialogue that just sounds like nonsense?

Most of us are average folks. We each have our little specialty, though, and that’s another place “write what you know” can come in handy. As I’ve mentioned once or thrice, I was trying to write stories before some of you reading this were even born. I have screwed up more stories, in more ways, than most of you ever have a hope of matching. You’ll give up on this writing thing long before you hit the levels of incompetence I managed at one point or another. However, it’s that same long experience and learning process that lets me speak with something vaguely resembling authority now. Not a lot of people can do that.

Likewise, not a lot of people have studied medicine, which gave Michael Crichton’s medical/ scientific thrillers such a great edge. Stephen King knows small-town life in Maine far better than most of us. Kevin Smith knows what it’s like to be lower-middle-class in New Jersey. Each of these people knew what they knew and wrote to their strengths.

Now, here’s the catch. Yeah, there’s always a catch.

A common complaint is “they didn’t get the facts right.” Check out Amazon or IMDb and whatever book or film you choose, there’ll almost always be some idiot pointing out the gross mistakes in it. I’m not talking about the occasional typo or misplaced comma. I mean that guy who feels compelled to point out that a passenger jet takes six and a half hours to travel cross-country from San Diego to Boston, not five. Or that the gasoline in a Geo Metro gas tank would evaporate after seven years so there couldn’t be any in the tank ten years after the apocalypse. Or that a katana would actually shatter if it hit a steel beam, not take a chip out of it. Plus everyone knows they didn’t actually make true katanas until well into the Muromachi period so there’s no way an 11th century Japanese warrior would have one.

Yeah, we all know that guy.

Y’see, Timmy, what this ignores is that sometimes there’s a reason the facts are wrong. As I’ve mentioned many times before, reality is not a story point. I’m generally talking about screenplays when I say it, but it’s true for any type of storytelling. You need to get the facts right as often as you can, but you also can’t sacrifice your chosen tale on the altar of truth. As it’s been said, never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.

You want a good example of deliberately getting the facts wrong? Watch any medical or forensics show on television. House is a good one. A standard device on this show is to simplify procedures. Tests get run in minutes instead of hours. Test results take hours instead of days. No, this isn’t realistic, but it allows each episode to maintain a level of suspense and keep a ticking clock atmosphere. If House has to wait two or three days for each test result, that’s a lot of time to kill… and a lot of dead patients the way things work on that show. It’s just not as exciting to hear the team has two months to figure out what’s killing someone, so the writers bend the facts and condense the time. It also helps that 99.9% of us don’t know how long a chromahaemotomagraph test takes. Or exactly what it’s supposed to do. Or how to spell it.

Okay, I made it up.

Now, here’s an example from the other side of the coin. I was reading for a contest a few months back and got a story that revolved around planes. Maybe revolved is too strong a word. There were a lot of planes in it, and they were important to the plot. Sort of. I think they were.

Needless to say, the screenplay had other problems besides the one I’m about to bring up.

At one point the script spent almost three pages on a test pilot going through his pre-flight checklist. It was amazingly detailed, explaining what each system was, what it did, and examples of what could happen if said system failed. No question in my mind, this writer was an experienced pilot who knew his or her stuff. Some of this explanation was in dialogue, some of it was in action blocks, and some of it was kind of an inner-monologue thing. Like I said, there were other issues.

Three pages of that.

Now, being able to rattle off the entire pre-flight checklist for a fighter jet is damned impressive, more so if it’s 100% accurate. But that doesn’t mean it’s good storytelling. To be honest, it brought the story to a crashing halt. It is information we don’t know, but is it really information we need to understand the story? If I didn’t know for a fact the pilot had checked the wing flaps, would some crucial part of the plot collapse later?

This is one of the most common mistakes people make when they write what they know. They feel the need to get the facts right because this is their particular specialty, but they get them right at the cost of the story they’re trying to tell.

One place I see this a lot is weapons. A lot of folks who know their weapons feel the need to list off a lot of information about them. So you get bombarded with makes and years and model numbers and ammunition and magazine sizes and… man, it gets boring just writing about it in general terms. Much like the pre-flight checklist, knowledge of firearms or fencing or martial arts is fantastic, but more often than not it just clutters the page and makes the story drag rather than impress people. Plus, since these almost always relate to action scenes, it’s the last place you want your manuscript to drag.

As a note to screenwriters, it’s especially lethal to load up a screenplay with these sort of details. Unless it’s life-or-death necessary to know the villain is using an Argentinean Bersa Model Thunder 380 Super rechambered for .45 caliber ammo–and the second act will disintegrate without this fact–he or she should just have a pistol. Once your screenplay’s getting made there will be an entire prop department that probably has a much better knowledge of firearms than you, plus a stunt coordinator with years more fight experience. We don’t like it when people tell us how to write–don’t try to tell them how to do their jobs, either. Use that space for your story.

Even if they’re all correct, we don’t need to know all the facts. Sometimes, in fact, it’s better to ignore a fact or three if you can do it without drawing attention to yourself. The most important thing when you’re writing a story is the story, not “getting it right.”

Now, I’d love to be able to say there’s some easy ratio of fact vs. fiction you need to keep track of when writing. It’d be great to just say “keep it at seven parts to three,” but saying that would be a complete fiction in itself. There’s nothing that easy about it. Alas, it’s one of those things a writer just need to get a feel for, usually after making several attempts, failing at most of them, and getting feedback that confirms this failure. And it’s conditional, too–you need a different ratio in a sci-fi story than you do in a comedy.

When all else fails, remember Samuel Clemens. “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”

Next time I think I’m going to rant about something that’s been driving me nuts.

Until then, go write.

So, as some of you may have picked up along the way, I used to work full-time as a crewperson on various films and television shows. On one level, this sounds very exciting and cool. People like hearing stories about blowing stuff up, getting to film in cool locations, and that Reiko Aylesworth is about fifty times more stunning in person than will ever, ever come across on film. I mean, she is just gorgeous. And funny. And a pool shark. Yes, to some extent, working in the film industry really is that cool.

On one out of twenty days. Maybe one out of fifteen, depending on the project.

The rest of the time, it’s dull as hell. Honest. No one’s that interested in the long days, the idiots in charge, or the screw up from another department that delayed everything for an hour. In this respect, the film industry isn’t that different from most other jobs, which is why a lot of people’s eyes glaze over when you try to tell them about it.

Which isn’t that surprising, if you think about it. It’s a job. It’s real life. And real life, for the most part, is pretty boring. Even in the movie industry.

Real life meanders. Sometimes it wanders aimlessly. It involves people learning the same lessons everyone else had to learn–or sometimes not learning them and screwing up more. The dialogue in real life sucks. Have you ever read an actual transcription? I do it all the time. Most people sound like idiots, trust me, and I include myself in there. We stutter, we second guess and repeat ourselves.

As such, it’s always baffling when people think they’ve done something amazing by writing a story about real life. With real characters. And real dialogue. In a sense, it’s like bragging about the peanut butter and jelly sandwich you made for lunch. The only thing more embarrassing is when you try to convince people the PB&J is something bold, daring, and new. Check it out. Bread on both sides. You’ll see I spread the peanut butter across the entire surface of the bread rather than leave it as a large glob in the middle. Also notice, please, that the jelly is between the slices of bread– I came up with that bit myself.

(If it helps, picture Chef Gordon Ramsey staring at me with that stunned look he seems to do so often… and then his next five or six words getting bleeped out.)

Let’s stop and consider for a moment. This is an accomplishment? It’s like congratulating someone for getting pregnant at the prom–so many people do it that it’s almost not worth talking about.

Now, one of the earmarks of this type of writing is when a character has an epiphany. A supposedly real world-altering revelation about their life. I say supposedly because most of them are the sort of simple life lessons most people have figured out by age twenty or so. You know, that it’s better to be loved than to be cool. That drugs are bad. That their destructive behavior is hurting the people around them. Those sort of things. While it’d be tough to prove, I can’t help but think a lot of these moments get put in because it’s something the writer experienced and they don’t grasp that everybody has these moments.

My friend Ace has a neat term for this, developed after years and years of reading for different screenplay contests. To quote: “It’s the moment when a baby discovers their own feet. It may be the coolest thing ever in the life of the baby, but for the rest of us it’s pretty dull and mundane.”

When a real character figures out it’s better to enjoy life than spend time at work, they’re discovering their own feet. When someone realizes they should cherish and spend time with the people that matter to them, it’s their own toes they’re staring at. If someone comes to the jaw-dropping conclusion that they’ve messed up a life that was clearly messed up on page one–OH MY GOD! The toes wiggle when I think about wiggling them!!!!

Part of why this rubs people the wrong way is that it’s plain condescending. As I mentioned before, a lot of these lessons are things we figured out in high school, even if maybe we didn’t take them to heart at the time.

Y’see, Timmy, when people talk about something great and say “It’s so real,” they’re making an implied statement. And that statement is (in full) “It’s so real, but I know it actually isn’t. But, wow, if it was real I bet it would be just like this.”

No one likes real life. If they did, there wouldn’t be any market for even the thinnest veneer of escapism. No one would read books or go to the movies. Reality rarely makes good stories, and the few times it does it’s often too outlandish to be believable. Anyone remember me talking about Vesna?

We want quasi-life. We want life +1. We want the good guy to win. We want the villain to get his or her comeuppance. We want the cute couple to overcome obstacles both physical and emotional so they can be together. We want cyborg ninjas from the future programmed by elder gods from the past and million to one odds that pay off and nymphomaniac heiresses who look just like Reiko Aylesworth.

Okay, maybe that last part’s just me…

Of course, that’s also key. We want all that, but we want it to be believable, too. I mean, if the hero beats the cyborg ninjas and beats the odds three times in a row and finds nympho-Reiko… well, that’s just silly.

So, we want life +1–maybe as much as life+3– but it has to be realistic. At least enough that we can believe in it.

Sound tough? It is, believe me. That’s why most people can’t cut it as writers. They don’t have the ability to pull it off or the patience to figure out how to do it.

A lot of them, instead, write these real stories. Gritty, depressing stories. Stories with broken, unlikable character who fail at everything and lead miserable, pathetic lives. That’s art, my friends. The sure sign it’s art–no one wants to pay to see it because they don’t understand it. No, seriously. That’s the definition of art. Just ask any failed artist and odd are they’ll tell you the problem is everyone else, not them.

At the end of the day, if you’ve decided to tell a real story, you’ve just made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. You’ve done something that’s common, available everywhere, and didn’t take much effort. It may be the greatest PB&J ever, but it’s still nothing compared to a fairly nice filet mignon. Or even a just-adequate slice of cheesecake. Heck a McDonalds 79-cent hamburger beats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Next week, I’ve got something I’d like you to read.

Until then, go write.

No, we’re not talking about tender character moments.

Writers of prose, feel free to take this week off. Or follow along, if you like, and maybe glean a few things here or there.

Would-be screenwriters… let’s talk about that script you’ve been working on. It’s that time of year where a ton of screenwriting contests are beckoning, especially the heavyweights like PAGE and the Nicholl Fellowship.

My friend who blogs over at Live To Write Another Day reads for three or four contests a year, some of which you’ve probably heard of if you dabble in such things. She once told me that easily a quarter of the scripts she’d read for one contest made The Fly II look Oscar-worthy. It ties back to something I’ve mentioned once or thrice here in an off-the-cuff manner. I call it the 50% rule. I’ve got no hard numbers or research backing this up, just my own experience and the experiences of other script readers, editors, and contest directors I’ve spoken to over the years. The 50% rule goes like this…

In any pool of submitted material (contests, publications, etc), half of the submissions can pretty much be instantly disqualified. They’re the people submitting gothic romances to sci-fi anthologies or entering plays in screenwriting contests. They’re also, harsh but true, the incompetent people. The ones who don’t know how to spell, have only the faintest understanding of grammar, and no concept of story structure. The folks who sent in their first draft with all its flat characters and wooden dialogue. If my screenwriting contest gets 1000 entries, I’d bet real money 500 of them can be tossed into the big pile on the left in less than five minutes.

That’s the 50% rule.

Sound unfair? It isn’t. It’s brutally fair, to be honest. Wakko entered the contest to be judged and he was. He made the judgment very easy, in fact. Unless there were a lot of specific promises or assurances past that, he’s got nothing to complain about.

However… I’m going under the assumption you’re not part of that 50%. You’re one of the ones who actually has a chance at this. Not saying a great chance, not saying you’re going to succeed, but you’re good enough at this that you’re not getting discarded in less time then it takes to listen to “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

That being said, there are still traps to fall into and mistakes to make. One of them is submitting a very, very common screenplay that covers well-explored material. I’ve mentioned some of these types of scripts before, so if they sound familiar… well, just try to keep in mind that I thought this was all worth repeating.

I also want to be clear of something else right up front. I’m not saying any of these are bad scripts in and of themselves. Many of them are awesome. I’m sure anyone who follows the ranty blog could easily name half-a-dozen films from the past decade that fit each category. I know I can. But we’re not talking about what’s in theaters–we’re talking about what’s being submitted to a contest. Your competition is not on screen, it’s in the submission pool. That’s a much harder group to stand out in.

So, a few types of scripts you should be a bit leery about submitting. Take a deep breath, and…

The Current Events Script

A friend of mine reading for a contest last year found that a noticeable percentage of the scripts dealt with Israel or Palestine. This was about four months after the brief-lived 2008 war on the Gaza Strip.

If Yakko saw some news report about some fascinating nuance of the world and realized it’d make a fascinating story…here’s the thing. It’s a safe bet at least a thousand other aspiring screenwriters saw the same new story and had the same idea. Even if only half of them do anything with it, and even if only ten percent of those people are sending their script to the same contest as Yakko… that’s still fifty people writing scripts about the exact same thing he is. Even if half of them are completely incompetent and the other half are just barely on par, it means the reader is going to be reading a dozen scripts just like Yakko’s. His script may be the best in the batch, but it’s going to lose a lot of luster because it’s just become a tired, overdone idea. It may be the best take on that tired, overdone idea, but is that really what any of us are aiming to be?

The Formula Rom-Com

The beautiful-but-totally-business-oriented, bitchy female executive who finds love with a middle-class Joe Everyman. The guy engaged to bridezilla who meets the real love of his life. The awkward, nerdy girl who needs to realize she’s the most beautiful girl around. The man chasing his dream girl only to realize his best friend has been his real dream girl all along.

Any of these sound familiar? They do after you’ve read nine or ten of them, believe me. Yeah, flipping the genders doesn’t make them any more original, sorry.

Does the script also have a scene where someone finally ignores their constantly-ringing cell phone in favor of quality time with that special someone? Maybe a prolonged, awkward scene where someone has to change clothes for some reason and ends up in their underwear/ robe/ a towel with that soon-to-be-special someone?

A rom-com has to be really spectacular and really original to impress a reader. In the past three years, I’ve read one that stood out. Just one.

The Game Script

Yes, it was the most amazing night of Dungeons & Dragons or Cities of M’Dhoria or Left 4 Dead in your entire life. That doesn’t mean it’d make a good movie. In fact, odds are it won’t (and I’m not even touching the copyright/ trademark issues). Most of the fairly successful game movies have one thing in common. No, it’s not the hot leading ladies. If you look at Resident Evil or Tomb Raider, they don’t follow the stories being told in their respective games. The screenwriters tossed them out and made up something new that just used a few story or character elements.

Y’see, Timmy, most games use a different type of storytelling, one that deliberate makes the audience (i.e. the player) part of the story. Odd as it sounds, it depends on the same problems that make first person so challenging to write. RP games of all types–both the computer and the pen-and-paper ones– want you to project into the story. They want you to fill in the details. This was a cool fight because it happened to Wakko, it was a clever puzzle because he solved it, and it was eerie and atmospheric as hell because he invested in a top-of-the-line surround sound system for his entertainment center. What happened in the story wasn’t cool–what Wakko experienced was.

However, if Wakko can’t get every one of these sensations perfectly on paper–and translate the experience to a believable third person character–it’s just going to be a lot of shooting while flat, uninteresting people run from A to B.

The Character Script

A popular thing in the indie field is the character script, also known in Hollywood (somewhat demeaningly) as “the actor script.” At its heart, it’s a tissue-paper-thin plot with a handful of character sketches thrown into it. Nine people wait for their connecting flight and strike up random conversations. Five people on a road trip have long talks about life. A group of women talk about relationships. A group of men talk about how their lives have gone in unexpected directions.

On one hand, it’s hard to argue against scripts like this. These really are the type of people you’d meet in an airport, and they really are the type of conversations and brief relationships that would spring up. On the flipside though, is there anything challenging–or interesting— about something that’s indistinguishable from the boring, everyday life we all lead?

This leads nicely into…

The Therapy Script

There’s an interesting sub-group of screenplays that seem to have sprung out of some psychology exercise or group coping session. Usually they involve someone telling off their mother. Or their father. Or their abusive boyfriend. Or their cheating husband. Many of these scripts involve female protagonists, but only enough so it’s worth mentioning. The overall feeling of them is you’re reading a story somebody wrote to help them work through some issues. The object wasn’t to tell a story, but to cleanse and purge or something like that.

The big problem with these scripts is there’s rarely anything to them beyond this big moment of therapeutic release. Everything leads up to that, and not much happens after it. That one moment is all the character development and conflict that happens in the script. So, when you boil it down, it’s just a story about someone throwing out their abusive spouse or learning to trust again or yelling at their shrewish mom. And nobody wants to read that. Not even Oprah. Definitely not a contest reader.

The True Script

Closely related to the therapy script is the true script. More often than not, the title page or closing cards reassure the reader this tale is based on real events involving me/ my parents/ my best friend/ someone I read about in a magazine article. These are tales of cancer survival (or not), abused children, Rwandan genocides, military struggles, and various other unsung heroes and villains of this world we live in. Alas, often they’re about struggling writers searching for someone to recognize their genius. The fact this is a true story is often stressed to give a certain validity and gravitas to what the reader is about to take in.

Thing is, no one cares if the story is true or not. Nobody. They just care that it’s a good story and it’s well-told. And in that respect, Dot’s tale of an abused nine-year old cancer survivor in Rwanda needs to stand up against the story of a cyborg ninja battling prehistoric lizard men from the center of the Earth. Whether or not one of them’s a true story is irrelevant. In the end, you are telling a story, and it’s either going to have its own validity or it isn’t. If it’s easier to read, if it has interesting characters, if it has sharp dialogue– these are what determine if a script is any good or not. Reality just doesn’t enter into the equation for the reader, so it can’t for the writer.

It’s worth mentioning that sometimes the true script and the therapy script have a horrific bastard child I call… wait for it… the True Therapy Script. In screenwriting terms, this is like one of the little mutant monster babies from that ’80s horror classic It’s Alive. Did your girlfriend leave you? Write a script about it. Tons of father-issues you’re working through? Write a script! Want to share your touching journey through the hell of addiction to booze, drugs, sex, or whatever? There’s a screenplay in that, for sure!!

Hopefully you all caught the sarcasm in those last few sentences.

The Holiday Script

If you add in movies of the week and straight-to-DVD, there’s a good case to be made that holiday films are one of the best selling genres out there. However, as far as a contest is concerned, the trick is to come up with something the reader hasn’t already seen again and again. They’ve seen Santa Claus quit, get fired, and be replaced a dozen times this month alone. The Easter Bunny has been in therapy, evil spirits have tried to save the bad name of All Hallow’s Eve, Cupid has taught someone the true meaning of love, and the first Thanksgiving story has been told—many, many times and many, many ways.

Just in case you missed it– they’ve been told many times in many ways.

The Writer Script –

I can repeat this one until I’m blue in the face, but I know in my heart it won’t change anything. Do not write scripts about writers. Jennifer Berg, the director of the PAGE Screenwriting Contest, once joked with me that if her contest banned scripts about writers they’d probably lose a quarter of their entries. I did the math once and in one contest I read for almost 15% of the scripts had a writer as one of the main characters.

No one cares about the day-to-day struggles you go through as a writer. No one. Especially not a bunch of script readers who are probably disgruntled writers themselves. If you’re being sincere, you’re going to bore them (see The True Script up above). If you’re making up some silly idealized writing lifestyle, they’ll call shenanigans on it. And then they’ll pistol-whip you for saying shenanigans.

Let’s assume they didn’t toss the script aside as soon as they saw the writer character. If they get to the end and said character finally sells their book or screenplay and wins the Pulitzer/ Oscar/ whatever… the reader will crumple your script into a ball and hurl it away from themselves. Then they will burn it so nobody else will have to read the damned thing. Then they will get your personal information from the contest director, hunt you down, and pistol-whip you.

I am dead serious about that.

There you have it. Eight scripts that will set a contest reader against you from the start. Again, I’m not saying it’s impossible to win with one of these screenplays. I am saying, though, that if you’re going to go this path you absolutely must knock it out of the park.

Next week, it’s time to finish this thing up.

Until then, go write.

I’d love to say there’s more to this pop-culture reference than just the number three, but I’d be lying.

Maybe.

So, it struck me a while back that I haven’t really prattled on about characters in quite a while. I’ve brought them up as kind of a sideline thing while talking about other story elements, but I haven’t focused on characters specifically. So I started thinking about them and why some come across so well on the page while others leave a reader cringing.

That got me thinking about Bob. To be honest, first it got me thinking about Yakko Warner, my usual example, but Yakko’s a pretty well-established character already. So I ended up with Bob, and wondering what could make him a good leading man for my action-adventure story about cyber-ninjas from the future.

If we want to make Bob the best character he can be, I think there are three key traits he needs to have.

First and foremost, a good character has to be believable. It doesn’t matter if said character is man, woman, child, cocker spaniel, Thark warrior, or protocol droid. If the reader or audience can’t believe in them within the established setting, the story’s facing an almost impossible challenge right from page one.

Bob has to have natural dialogue. It can’t be stilted or forced, and it can’t feel like he’s just the author’s mouthpiece, spouting out opinions or political views or whatever. The words have to flow naturally and they have to be the kind of words this person would use. I saw a story once where one high school jock said in amazement to another “You broke up with her via text?” Via? Is that even remotely the type of word or phrasing that would come out of a teenage football player’s mouth?

On a similar note, the same goes for Bob’s motives and actions. There has to be a believable reason he does the things he does. A real reason, one that makes sense with everything we know (or will come to know) about him. It’s immediately apparent, just like with dialogue, when a character’s motivations are really just a veiled version of the writer’s.

Also, please note that just because a character is based on a real person who went through true events does not automatically make said character believable. I’ve tossed out a few thoughts here about the difference between real-real and fiction-real, and it’s where many would-be writers stumble. They think because the amazing story they’re telling about Bob is true, it’s somehow valid. He really did this, therefore the reader must accept it. Alas, it just doesn’t work that way. Remember, there is no such thing as an “unbelievable true story,” only an unbelievable story.

Second, tied very closely to the first, is that a good character needs to be relatable. As readers, we get absorbed in a character’s life when we can tie it to elements of our own lives. We like to see similarities between them and us, so we can make extended parallels with what happens in their lives and what we’d like to happen in our lives. Luke Skywalker is a boy from a small town with big dreams (just like me) who goes off to join a sacred order of super powered knights (still waiting for that–but it might happen). There’s a reason so many novels and movies revolve around the idea of ordinary people caught up in amazing situations. Heck, Stephen King has made a pretty sizeable fortune off that basic premise.

Some of this goes back to the idea of being on the same terms as your audience and also of having a general idea of that audience’s common knowledge. There needs to be something they can connect with. Many of us have been the victims of a bad break up or two. Very, very few of us (hopefully) have hunted down said ex for a prolonged revenge-torture sequence in a backwoods cabin. The less common a character element is, the less likely it is your readers will be able to identify with it. If your character has nothing but uncommon or rare traits, they’re unrelatable. If Bob is a billionaire alien with cosmic-level consciousness who sees all of time and space at once and only speaks backwards in metaphor… how the heck does anyone identify with that?

Oh, but wait! I see a hand shooting up in the back. Watchmen has the all-powerful Doctor Manhattan, doesn’t it? Ahhhh, but y’see Timmy, one of the primary character traits we remember about him isn’t his omnipotence. It’s his awkward fumbling when he tries to interact with the people in his life. He’s the ultimate social outcast–trying to fit into a clique (humanity) he’s grown out of, and aware that every day he’s a little less a part of that group. He even acknowledges that losing his girlfriend–his last real connection with the clique–means he probably won’t even try to fit in anymore. If that’s not universally relatable, what is?

If readers can’t identify with Bob, they can’t be affected by what happens to him. Which brings us to our final point…

Third, a good character needs to be likeable. As readers and/or audience members, we have to want to follow this character through the story. Just as there needs to be some elements to Bob we can relate to, there also have to be elements we admire and maybe even envy a bit. If he’s morally reprehensible, a drunken jackass, or just plain uninteresting, no one’s going to want to go through a few hundred pages of his exploits… or lack thereof.

Keep in mind, this doesn’t mean a good character has to be a saint, or even a good person. The lead character of The Count of Monte Cristo is an escaped prisoner driven all-but-mad with thoughts of revenge who spends most of the book destroying the lives of several men and their loved ones. In Pitch Black, Riddick is a convicted mass-murderer who likes mocking all the people around him. Hannibal Lecter is a compelling, fascinating character on page and on the screen, but no one would ever mistake him for a role model. Yet in all these cases, we’re still interested in them as characters and are willing to follow them through the story.

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 want to sink into.

Now, I’m sure anyone reading this can list off a few dozen examples from books and movies of characters that only have one or two of these traits. It’d be silly for me to deny this. I think you’ll find, however, the people that don’t have all three of these traits are usually secondary characters. Often they’re also stereotypes, too. The creepy neighbor, the gruff boss, the funny best friend, the scheming villain. They don’t need all three traits– three dimensions, if you will–because they aren’t the focus of our attention. They’re the bit players, so to speak, and a good writer isn’t going to waste his or her time pouring tons of energy into a minor character who has no real bearing on the story.

Yeah, up top when I said I was lying about the 3-D thing, I was lying. I do that.

So there you have it. Three steps to stronger, three-dimensional characters.

Next time… well, I’m running short of ideas again, so unless someone suggests a good topic, next week might be a bit of a cop-out.

Before I forget, a quick shout out to Brave Blue Mice, a fun little fiction ‘zine which asked to publish the RSS feed for the ranty blog on their site. For the record, no, I didn’t know what that meant when they asked, but Greg explained it to me in simple terms even a caveman could understand. Go visit, read some stories, and send him a few of your own.

And go write.