The Novelwriter's Toolkit Read online

  I have heard people ask a thousand times why it is that all guides on writing declare against shifting viewpoint when successful writers allow their viewpoint to shift about. The reason is that successful writers who break such rules succeed not because of their breaking the rules, but because their style, characterization or mastery of the craft overcomes the inherent problems involved with the shifting of the viewpoint.

  What Makes Them Tick?

  In real life you probably often wonder what makes people do the things they do. What makes a runner get up at four o’clock in the morning and run 10 kilometres? Why does a teenager strew the floor of his room with so much dirty laundry that he can hardly reach his bed? Why does your boss insist on passing you over for promotion when you work so much harder than anyone else?

  As with the man with the pink house we met earlier, asking questions like this is the first step towards understanding the people around you. The same applies to the characters you are creating. If they are to be realistic, they must be driven by the same sorts of motivation that drive real people.

  Well-developed characters have goals, dreams, ambitions. They may consciously set goals for themselves, or be unclear what their goals are but still impatient or frustrated about not achieving them. Your main character may be a passionately committed detective who is obsessing day and night about solving a case. But he may also be worried that he smokes too much and that this is damaging his health. While he tries to give up smoking he becomes short-tempered and this has an effect on his marriage. Another goal is added: to save his relationship. Understanding your characters’ goals can help you understand them as people.

  Motivation doesn’t have to be complicated: not everyone is set on world domination or beset by a longing to explore strange new worlds. A character may be motivated by greed, anger, frustration, love, fear or the need to win a promotion in order to keep up with the mortgage payments. Readers will identify more easily with characters who share their day-to-day motivations.

  What Stands in Their Way?

  Conflict is what keeps you and your characters on your toes. It keeps the plot moving forwards, because it creates obstacles for your characters to overcome – and that is what plot is all about. It shows the reader what the character is made of – does he have the tenacity, the ingenuity, the honesty to deal with this obstacle?

  Look around you for examples of obstacles that stop people from getting what they want and observe what people do in order to achieve their goals. Are they ruthless? Cunning? Manipulative? What you see in real life might inspire you in your writing.

  Internal and External Conflict

  Conflict can be internal – emotions inside the mind of the character that stop her achieving what she wants – or external – a disaster or a bad guy who gets in the way. We all face internal barriers – fear, anger, love, hate – every day, so readers will recognize them when your character suffers from them. Hamlet couldn’t make up his mind what to do about avenging his father’s murder: that’s one of the greatest internal conflicts ever written. In your case, it may take other forms. Is your character unable to chase the villain on the roof because she’s afraid of heights? Fear can be a powerful internal conflict – and not just the fear of falling and breaking your neck. The fear of rejection can keep a woman from asking a man in her office out for coffee. She thinks about it for so long, it achieves epic proportions in her mind. Finally, that fear causes her to stalk him. Another plot hatches!

  External conflict, on the other hand, shows how your character handles the outside world. It doesn’t have to be huge – not every novel has an earthquake or a plane crash in it. But just because external conflicts are small, it doesn’t mean they don’t affect the character. As long as it keeps your character from getting what she wants, a shower of rain at the wrong moment, ruining an expensive new hairdo, can be conflict.

  A Mix of Conflicts

  Most genre books require both external and internal conflict. In romances, the internal conflict is likely to be the heroine’s changing feelings, while the external conflict may be that her house is being completely refitted (contemporary, as in Nora Roberts’ Tribute) or that gossips in the village spread word that she is a witch (historical, as in Catherine Cookson’s Tilly Trotter). In a mystery, conflict may be balanced by the sleuth’s inner workings or personal feelings and the terrible events going on around him.

  With some books, such as pure ‘adventure’ stories, external conflict is more important than internal. These books thrive on action and don’t insist on the hero doing a great deal of soul-searching.

  On the other hand, some mainstream novels rely almost entirely on internal conflict: the hero’s problems are to do with facing up to his own shortcomings rather than diving to the bottom of the sea to rescue treasure from a shipwreck.

  Strengths and Weaknesses

  Every character, whether hero, villain or something in between, has to have strengths and weaknesses. Is your protagonist a superhero who can pick up cars in one hand and rescue a busload of children with the other? Probably not. She might be a poor girl trying to get on in life by working hard, like Griet in Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. Character strengths vary from character to character. Even though Frodo in JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy has no great physical or mental prowess, his inner goodness is enough to carry him to victory against the forces of darkness. A character’s strengths can make an ordinary person into a hero and a minor villain into a supervillain.

  Weaknesses too can be large or small, but you have to have them. With no flaws at all, your character will turn out to be perfect – and boring. Readers will find themselves unable to sympathize with him or her. It’s difficult to get emotionally involved with characters who have no flaws: they’re just too unrealistic.

  A good example of a character flaw that can be used to set off the story’s conflict is a quick temper. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has a short fuse that helps to move the plot forwards on a number of occasions. Obstinacy is another. In Stephen R Donaldson’s Lord Foul’s Bane, the main character, Thomas Covenant, is transported to another dimension. But his stubbornness prevents him from believing that what he sees is real, creating all manner of conflict that carries him through the novel.

  Then There are the Subsidiary Characters

  You can’t write a novel with only a hero and a heroine or a hero and a villain. They have to have friends, family, colleagues, people they meet in the street or in the supermarket. These subsidiary characters can move the plot along, help with character development, provide a change of pace, lighten the tension and give depth to the setting. Some of them will be highly developed, like the heroine’s best friend or the murder victim’s alluring widow. Others may appear in only one scene, contribute their mite to the plot and then be heard of no more. But they all have to be authentic.

  Think of some of the great minor characters in literature: Mr Collins and Lady Catherine in Pride and Prejudice, Uriah Heep and Mr Micawber in David Copperfield, Eeyore and Tigger in Winnie-the-Pooh. They all have exaggerated characteristics, from Mr Collins’ pomposity and Mr Micawber’s optimism to Eeyore’s gloominess, but they are all true to themselves. Everything that has been said in this chapter about creating your main characters applies – on a smaller scale – to everyone else who appears on your canvas.

  A word of warning: be careful to keep your secondary characters from stealing the show. The main plot should belong to the primary characters. Sometimes minor characters are so much fun to write that you lose track of where they belong – which is in the background.

  What Makes Them Unique?

  You’ve thought about your characters. You understand what motivates them and who they are. You’ve give them strengths and weaknesses. But can they play the piano?

  What makes everyone unique – in the real world or in the fictitious one that you are creating – is a combination of different characteristics. The past haunts o
r enriches your characters. They move forwards with confidence or despite terrible fears. But, just like you, your characters are more than the sum of their fears and desires. They have lives. They work or go to school. They spend Saturday mornings doing up their classic motorbike. Now is the time to have some fun with them, to build them into people who may not be real but are nevertheless realistic.

  Your mystery sleuth may be a closet romance reader. Your tough-as-nails secret agent may like to play the saxophone when he isn’t saving the world. Think of Rex Stout’s detective Nero Wolfe, who grew orchids in a plant-room in his New York brownstone and took 45 minutes to cook perfect scrambled eggs. These habits weren’t always necessary to the plot, but they were quirks that helped to bring the character to life.

  Something that starts out as a quirk may also become part of your character’s development. Say you show your hero getting dressed, putting on a blue shirt. You look in his wardrobe and see that he has 25 blue shirts: he never wears any other colour. That’s quirky. But what if you find that he is superstitious about it – he wore a blue shirt the day he sat his final exams and passed with flying colours, so he doesn’t believe he can succeed dressed any other way? Then what if he is offered the job of his dreams, but the company has a strict dress code that insists on white shirts? That ceases to be quirky and becomes another obstacle for your character to overcome – suddenly it’s part of the plot. As we saw earlier, this is the sort of thing that happens when you ask, ‘What if …?’

  Having said that, be careful that your characters’ quirks don’t get out of hand. Make them believable and natural for the character, but don’t let them overpower the story. And make sure that they enhance the character and make him more interesting rather than annoying.

  Does Breakfast Matter?

  You probably know a lot about your characters by now. You know how tall they are, what colour their hair is, whether they dress smartly or casually. Many ‘experts’ on creative writing say that you must know absolutely everything about your characters. However, Sophie Hannah, bestselling author of psychological thrillers, takes a different view:

  When I read ‘How To …’ articles and books about writing, the sections on characterization are the parts I agree with least. Invariably, the advice will go something like this: ‘You need to know your characters inside out and be able to answer the following questions about them: what do they like to eat for breakfast? What is their favourite colour? Are they night owls or early risers?’ Usually, the list of questions is endless, and enough, in my opinion, to crush anyone’s creative enthusiasm.

  When you begin a work of fiction, you need to feel energized and excited about every aspect of it, including the characters with whom you’ll be spending so much time. You must be eager to get to know them – ideally, you should feel magnetically drawn to them – and so to force yourself to answer a list of (often irrelevant) questions about them seems to me to be a silly task to set yourself, as silly as saying to someone who has just fallen in love, ‘If you’ve met a gorgeous stranger who you hope might be “the one", the first thing to do is sit down and fill in a complicated tax return with him. ‘

  Why should we strive to know the characters in our novels inside out? In real life, we don’t know anyone inside out, not even those closest to us. People are unpredictable and full of secrets; many lack self-awareness and have an image of their own character that is entirely out of kilter with the reality. Sometimes the people who seem most stable are presenting a façade to the world, which might eventually crack to reveal an entirely different personality underneath. Often (as with the falling in love example above) we are keenest to spend time with – to try to get a grip on – those who are in some way elusive to us.

  This is true in fiction as in life. Therefore, writing fiction is going to be far more compelling for any writer struggling with the fascinating ambiguities presented by a character he/she has invented. In writing the novel, or story, you are striving to know your characters. To a certain extent you’ll succeed and to a certain extent you’ll fail – ideally, by the end of the writing process, your characters will still feel slightly intangible and out of your reach. That, in my view, is how you know you’ve created a genuinely plausible and rounded character. You can answer questions about how early someone likes to get up or what their favourite colour is till the cows come home – and yes, some of these details might be useful to include – but what do they really tell you about the core of a person? The taste in music, the messy versus tidy – these are peripheral details, not real character. They’re the sorts of thing you can easily tick off on a checklist, and, in doing so, give yourself the illusion that you know someone. I know the preferred getting-up times of all my close relatives, for example, but I’m not sure how a single one of them would react if I killed someone in a hit-and-run accident and begged them not to tell the police.

  I’ve often heard writers asked, ‘Which is more important to you: character or plot?’ Most writers choose character. I’ve only ever heard one answer, ‘Plot, plot, plot’ – that was the American thriller writer Jeffery Deaver. It’s a crazy question, because plot and character are inextricably linked. The best way to start a novel is with a character in a compelling or intriguing situation. There’s no character in the world unique and amazing enough to sustain readers’ interest if they’re not doing anything particularly fascinating, or if not much is at stake for them. Equally, the most gripping plot will fall flat if the characters acting it out are one-dimensional….

  Naming Your Characters

  In the real world, there are many people who aren’t done justice by their names. Could David Bowie have achieved all he did if he had stuck to his original name of David Jones? Since you are the creator of your world, you have the power to give characters and places names that fit them.

  Many writers say that their characters come with names, while others take weeks to come up with just the right one. However your characters and places come to you, be sure their names fit. (If you’re stuck for inspiration, consult www.babynames.com or any of a number of other websites that specialize in names and their meanings.)

  A name can become part of a character. Your romance heroine might be called Laetitia after a long-dead great-aunt and spend most of her waking hours trying to live it down. On the other hand, an action hero named Jefferson after the US president or Achilles after the Greek general may have trouble living up to his name. Always consider the impact your character’s name will have on your reader: Mary is more likely to conjure up a plain, stay-at-home girl like Mary Bennet in Pride and Prejudice than an exotic beauty in an alien world. At the same time, avoid stereotypical names: not every prostitute is called Désirée and not everyone in 19th-century America had an Aunt Polly.

  Common Mistakes

  When you create characters, there are very few things that you absolutely have to avoid. With the exception of misplaced flaws and exaggerated strengths, most readers will forgive an interesting character most things.

  However, there are some things you would do best to avoid when it comes to revealing your characters to the reader. Don’t be overzealous in ramming home how beautiful the heroine is or how terribly shy Aunt Sally has become in her old age. Any character trait can be overdone and this can be just as bad as a character who lacks basic personality.

  Allow your characters to unfold before the reader. Show the way boys react to your heroine, shy of asking her out because someone so gorgeous is bound to have a boyfriend already. Have Aunt Sally confide to a friend that she hates going even to the supermarket now that she doesn’t have Uncle Jack to go with her. In other words, don’t tell the reader what each person is like. Let them get to know them through other characters and their own actions.

  Skip the Stereotypes

  If you are writing comedy, using a representation of a person or group can be amusing. You can even exaggerate the stereotype for comic effect. Think of Phoebe in the TV series Friends – not just a dumb
blonde but a totally off-the-wall wacky dumb blonde. But if you’re writing a serious novel, avoid clichés such as the prostitute with a heart of gold, the fast-talking, in-your-face reporter, the City trader who’ll do anything to clinch the deal and a host of other ‘stock’ characters.

  It’s not that you don’t find these types of people in real life. And it’s not that some highly successful writers don’t have them in their novels. But as a beginner, it’s best to try for a fresh approach to your characters. Does your beautiful blonde have to be dumb? (Or your dumb and beautiful character have to be blonde?) What would happen if your reporter had a lisp or your City trader was dashing home after work every day to care for an elderly parent? By staying away from stereotypes, you give your characters room to grow. They are free to be extraordinary, charismatic individuals who will surprise and enchant your readers.

  SETTING

  The Details of Where and When

  If you think that when and where a story is set doesn’t matter, think again. Whether the background is a creepy Yorkshire moor or a distant desert planet, setting creates the picture you are trying to portray. If you don’t believe it, try taking the story about the desert planet and setting it in Wuthering Heights. How many things that you thought were basic to your plot and characters would you have to change?

  Time and Place

  Think of the setting for your novel as if it were the setting of a diamond ring. The diamond may be the most important part of the scene, but where you put it adds to or subtracts from its overall effect. The diamond, in this case, is your brilliant combination of plot and character. It’s a masterpiece of sparkling wit and intricate facets that will mesmerize readers. Now, are you going to put that diamond in a lovely antique setting, large and heavily carved, or in something lightweight and comfortable, more in keeping with modern times? Or do you fancy a hi-tech platinum setting, one that challenges the mind and questions the future?