How to unflatten a pancake character
Unless your novel takes
place in the two-dimensional world of Flatland,
you don’t want characters that lack multiple dimensions.
I re-tweeted a tweet last
week about an author arguing with her main character about something she had
planned to include in her story arc.
I’ve been thinking about
that since then—mostly because of a situation I wrote myself into.
In the first of a series
of books I’m collaborating on, we discussed an antagonist who would be involved
in at least the first two books. Since the book series idea had morphed from a
single book concept, the antagonist was originally cold-hearted, cold-blooded
criminal. That characterization worked fine for a single book. However, as I
was writing, I realized two things.
First. I’d written a
really bad person.
Second. There was no way I
wanted to continue writing about this particular individual because there was
no way to go but deeper into the pit of badness.
So, I had a choice to
make. You can speculate on what my options were. Here’s a quote to kickstart
your thinking.
“No character should
be all good or all bad--that is not believable. Characters are people and
they are three-dimensional. The way to flesh out characters effectively
is to have some good in the bad, some bad in the good. Showing a
characters soft side gives understanding to the reader and they might still
hate the character but it allows them to understand the character. All
bad or good is boring and only works in fairy tales with good princess and bad
queens.”
Go ahead, I’ll wait…
I’m not going to give you
what I thought my options were. I don’t think that’s particularly relevant to
this blog. Bad news: you can’t compare your ideas for options to mine. Good
news: because I didn’t share, you’re options can’t be wrong.
What I decided to do was
mellow the character out. I started by having his mother telepathically
communicate:
This gesture is both unexpected and
welcomed. It indicates a side of a personality I never manifested. It suits you
well. Do not abandon it.
He is euthanizing his mother
at the time of the comment. Hold that thought.
As I progressed along the
storyline, Antagonist became, well not genial, but at least quasi-likable. That
was fine… up to a point.
One of the key plot points
in book two involves the Antagonist doing something it was beginning to look
like he’d never do—now that he had this added depth of compassion.
So, I had to reverse
course.
- I could have deleted all I’d written about his morph from all bad to not so bad.
- I could have changed the plot point in book 2.
- I could have generated an incident that caused Antagonist to revert backwards into his former self. Not all the way back, because that would have been counter productive and a big waste of time and energy.
I chose #3.
I’m feel certain now that the Antagonist will resonate with more readers in book 1 and still be able to
pull of his dastardly deed in book 2 without moving out of character—and I now
have a variety of ways to complete the dastardly deed in book 2 from which to
choose.
You’ll have to wait until
book 1 of the yet untitled series is available to see if you agree that I “did good” with my
choice. But, you’ll have to wait until book 2 is out, to see if I really did
what I hope I did.
Your goal needs to be 3-D
characterization. Unless, of course, you live in Flatland.
Write on!
Next blog: Miscellaneous
Musings on The Business of Writing
