Characters needed

Hi Everyone:

Casey Stengel said; “If you want to play baseball, the first thing you have to do is go out and get a bunch of fellers.”

Casey’s pronouncement also applies to creating a story; you need some characters. Mark Twain, whom many consider the first of the modern American novelists, declared; “If you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them—you can’t help it; and then it will take you the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that occurrence, and so first thing you know, there’s your book all finished up and never cost you an idea.”

Good stories start with interesting characters. A bridge falling down is of interest for a moment or two; it becomes a riveting tale when we learn about the people who were on it at the time. Thornton Wilder’s acclaimed second novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, is just such a story. It opens with this line: “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.”

A friar, Brother Juniper, witnesses the event and journeys on a quest to prove that Devine intervention rather than chance led to the five deaths. His quest reveals each of the characters and leads him to uncover the nature of love and the meaning of the human condition.

Good authors are aware of the importance of character development. While some of the characters in a story may appear to be normal and therefore believable, they often try to endow a main character with some eccentricity in order to make him or her more memorable. Elwood P. Dowd comes to mind. While fond of drinking, he was no alcoholic, but his closest friend was a giant rabbit, invisible to most, called Harvey.

In my novel, Palm Beach Style, the main character, Dugan, is a pistachio eating detective, who frequently offers to share with those who help him nail the bad guy. This may not be as unusual as a giant rabbit but it sets him apart while letting him function in his profession.  Eccentricity will not, in & of itself, create a memorable lead character; for that the author must endow the fictional protagonist and antagonist with emotional and psychological depth—feelings, passion, and desires. Most of that comes to the author from digging deep within and I believe it is what makes writing an art like no other.

As an author, I find it helpful to develop personality studies for all my main characters (while limiting these developments for minor players).  My descriptions include physical attributes (that I may or may not reveal) as well as mannerisms and in some cases, favorite expressions (allowing the reader to identify a speaker without benefit of a tag line naming the source). Recently there was an interview published in Writer’s Digest. When asked about his 6’5” protagonist, Jack Reacher, the author, Lee Child, who has written seventeen books about him commented, “…I leave him undescribed a lot of the time, I leave him unexplained, and so he can do pretty much what he wants.”  Note the last phrase, “what he wants;” the author knows his character so well that in constructing the story, it is the character that dictates his actions and reactions. Authors often feel that the characters dictate the story.

According to Sol Stein, the author of Stein on Writing, “In a novel it is common and desirable for the principal character to change by the end of the book.” He also states; “A change can be surprising, but it should not seem out of sync with what we know about the character.”

Short story writers face the same challenges, except that conflicts must be resolved, or quests fulfilled in fewer pages. My good friend, Frank Lohan does this so well. I invite you to read Frank’s short story, Don’t Forget Pastrami and see for yourself. You can find it by going to my website at:  joshswritingroom.com