As a kid I enjoyed watching cartoons. One in particular that held my childish attention was “Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties”. In each episode Dudley, a not very bright member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, bumbled and stumbled into defeating his arch nemesis, Snidley Whiplash. On his initial appearance, old Snidley, with black suit replete with cape, black top hat, shifty eyes and curlicue mustache leaves no doubt that he is the bad guy. This is fine for cartoons, but in your novel your villain should be a well-rounded character, one that your reader will recognize as a fully developed, three-dimensional human being. In other words, you should spend nearly as much time developing your antagonist and you do on your protagonist. If you’re not sure how to do this, see my previous blog: “See Your Protagonist Through 3-D Glasses”. Not too long ago, I was talking with my pastor and the discussion drifted into people’s motivations and why some people did bad things. Drawing on my fiction writing experience I offhandedly said, “Everyone is the hero of his own story.” Some time later I think he used that quote in one of his sermons. The point of that little anecdote is even your villain should see himself as the hero of his story. His motivations, although seen from the point of view of the protagonist and the audience as evil, must make sense to him and, to a certain extent, appear in his eyes as pure and constructive. This requires you to get inside your villain’s head and figure out why he acts the way he does. Of course, this requires a certain amount of work on your part as writer to make your villain a 3-D character, one with a background that has molded him into the person you present in your novel. Interestingly enough, as I write this blog a documentary on Hitler is playing on the TV. His background as an abused child, a failed artist, and a heroic soldier, who fought in a lost cause and came to blame antagonistic internal political forces for Germany’s defeat, paints a more complete portrait of the evil dictator. Learning of all of this I can almost see why Hitler came to become who he was. Your job is to make your antagonist a complete person; one we can almost empathize with, one that is dynamic and believable. Do this and your novels will be much more interesting.
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Perhaps the most essential component of your novel is not plot, nor setting, nor action, but your main character or protagonist. You can have the most intricate plot, the most exotic setting, and spine-tingling action, but without your main character to interact within all of this things would fall pretty flat. Let’s face it, without your main character you have no story. So, how do you create your main character? What you don’t want to do is have a caricature. For example, in your action adventure novel your square jawed, clear eyed hero takes on a half dozen muscle bound bad guys in a dark alley and dispatches them all while hardly breaking a sweat or getting a wrinkle in his $1500 suit. Or, in your police procedural your cerebral detective deduces the identity of the killer with a cursory scan of crime scene and a superficial interview of a few witnesses. Unless your goal is satire, those type of protagonists sound pretty unrealistic. To have a well-rounded main character it’s a good idea to develop him or her on three levels. The three I use are: the superficial appearance, how others see the protagonist, and how the protagonist sees herself. These three areas, if done right, will give you a well rounded main character. Let’s look at each in some detail:
Before you begin writing your novel it might be a good idea to sit down and define your main character with these three parameters. You’ll get to know that character much better and you’ll exhibit greater depth in your writing. The last time I discussed avoiding deus ex machina scenes by foreshadowing. It occurred to me that I may have given short shrift to exactly what foreshadowing is. But, first, a little review may be in order. Deus ex machina is a plot device in which your protagonist, placed in a hopeless situation, is suddenly, dramatically and inexplicably rescued by some outside force (see my last two blogs). OK, now that we’re up to speed let’s tackle foreshadowing. Webster’s Dictionary defines foreshadow as “to give a suggestion of (something that has not yet happened)”. In writing foreshadowing is some information or action early along that hints at a big scene or the climax of your story. Foreshadowing not only avoids deus ex machina, it increases the tension in your novel. Your reader’s anxiety level rises as she anticipates a slam-bang ending. Examples of foreshadowing:
Use foreshadowing in your writing to avoid those awkward deus ex machina moments and to ramp up the suspense for your reader. They’ll keep reading and, more importantly, they’ll look forward to your next book. The last time we looked at deus ex machina, the plot device in which the hero in a story is put in a hopeless situation, then, out of the blue, someone or something appears that solves all of good guy’s problems wrapping up the story in a happy ending. It makes for easy, but generally unsatisfying, writing. Easy for you, but unsatisfying for your audience. This is not to say that deus ex machina has not been used with success in literature. The best example I could find is in the third book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Near the end of Return of the King, Frodo and Sam have delivered the One Ring to Mount Doom and now are surrounded by a rising lava flow moments from being immolated. Suddenly, the Eagles appear and lift them to safety. If you saw the movie, like me, you probably cheered as the Eagles bore our two heroes away. But, you and I are not J. R. R. Tolkien. Our plots have to make sense, otherwise we risk our audiences putting our books down never to be read again. Is there ever a time, you may ask, that deus ex machina is permitted? I would answer, “Yes.” In writing about an actual situation, if a deus ex machina moment occurred then, by all means, use it. For example, in the War of 1812, the British army landed near Washington, D.C. and marched into the Capitol city and set about burning it to the ground. The White House and some other Federal buildings went up in flames. But, before they could complete turning the D.C. area into the 19th Century equivalent of a glass paved self-lighting parking lot, a hurricane suddenly appeared putting out the fires and sending the soldiers scurrying back to their ships. If you were writing a historical novel with that War as the background it would be a shame not to include that incident. But, generally, how do you avoid those deus ex machina scenes in your fiction? You can do this by foreshadowing. You leave hints about solutions to that tricky scene or ending along the way in your story. Don’t make them too obvious, but clear enough so that at the end of that potentially impossible scene or at the conclusion of your work your audience will see how it all ties together and feel nothing but satisfaction as your hero triumphs. In the James Bond movies there’s always a scene at the beginning with Q, the engineering mastermind of MI-6, in which he gives Bond a host of gadgets to use in his assignment. Invariably, Bond gets out of one after another impossible situation using those quirky devices. This may be a clunky example of foreshadowing, but you get the idea. Use foreshadowing to extricate yourself from writing a deus ex machina scene. Your story will flow better and your readers will keep reading your work. Your James Bond-like hero, in requisite tuxedo carrying his trusty Walther PPK, is trapped at the edge of a hundred foot cliff by half a dozen bad guys carrying automatic weapons. The suspense has reached its climax. We know he’s doomed. Just as the villains raise their weapons to make mincemeat of our hero a helicopter suddenly appears with guns blazing wiping out the evildoers and dropping a ladder on which our hero climbs on and rides victorious into the sunset. Wait…what? If you wrote such an ending chances are your readers would feel cheated. After all, where did the helo come from? There was no previous scene where he arranged for a chopper rescue just at that key moment. And even if there was, how would he know the precise moment when the helicopter would arrive? Sorry, what we have is a deus ex machina moment. What is deus ex machina? It’s a plot device in which your hero, placed in an impossible situation, is suddenly and usually dramatically and inexplicably rescued by some outside force. The term deus ex machina is latin for “god from the machine”. It originated in the ancient Greek theater. The typical plot would involve the hero falling into an insolvable situation. Then, just in the nick of time, one of the “gods” would be lowered onto the stage by a rope and set into divinely solving all the hero’s problems. Everything would be wrapped up in a happy ending. I recall a deus ex machina scene I wrote years ago. The hero was minding his own business in his kitchen when an assassin burst into his apartment brandishing a knife. They struggled. The hero was backed against a counter. A microwave oven was on the counter. Just as the villain was about to stab my hero, his elbow bumped the microwave, turning it on. The bad guy suddenly dropped dead. Unbeknownst to the hero and, more importantly, to the audience the villain had a pacemaker that was sensitive to microwaves. Ugh! Not very satisfying. OK, in the interest of full disclosure, if you Google deus ex machina you’ll find several examples of famous authors using the plot device. But, it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Avoid those deus ex machina moments in your fiction and your audience will thank you. Next time I’ll discuss how you can avoid those deus ex machina moments. I’ve got a quiz for you. Match the novel excerpt with the author. Here are three excerpts: An abandoned auto court in the San Berdoo foothills; Buzz Meeks checked in with ninety-four thousand dollars, eighteen pounds of high-grade heroin, a 10-gauge pump, a .38 special, a .45 automatic and a switchblade he’d bought off a pachuco at the border—right before he spotted the car parked across the line: Mickey Cohen goons in an LAPD unmarked, Tijuana cops standing by to bootjack a piece of his goodies, dump his body in the San Ysidro River. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little know the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters. A white boy rode flatfoot on a skateboard, towed along, hand to shoulder, by a black boy pedaling a brakeless fixed-gear bike. Dark August morning, deep in the Flatlands. Hiss of tires. Granular unraveling of skateboard wheels against asphalt. Summertime Berkeley giving off her old-lady smell, nine different styles of jasmine and a squirt of he-cat. And here are the three authors: Jane Austin, Michael Chabon, and James Ellroy. OK, match them up. I’ll give you five minutes. ...dum, dum, dum dah, dah, dum, dum, dum… OK, times up. The answers are: number 1, James Ellroy, from L.A. Confidential; number 2, Jane Austin, from Pride and Prejudice; number 3, Michael Chabon, from Telegraph Avenue. Did you get them right? I bet you did. Why am I so confident that you knew the answers? Because each author has a unique voice. If you’ve been writing for some time now, someone has bound to have told you: “You need to find your voice.” So, what is voice? The answer to that is controversial. Different writers will tell you different things. As a compromise I’ll use the Wikipedia definition: it’s “the individual writing style of an author, a combination of their common usage of syntax, diction, punctuation, character development, dialogue, etc., within a given body of text (or across several works).” So, how do you develop your voice? First of all, like anything worthwhile developing your voice takes time. Its not an overnight affair and it may take years for your unique voice to come to the fore. But, it will be worth it. You develop your voice like any other ability—you practice. That means writing regularly and writing often. You can help develop your voice by reading great authors, authors whose work has stood the test of time. Not only the classics but contemporary writers, also. I recall my reaction to reading Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath for the first time. I became so angry I wanted to toss the paperback across the room, because I realized that no matter how much I tried I’d never be able to write like Steinbeck. But, I continued reading and I read other greats. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that my writing doesn’t approach the level of Steinbeck. But, it is much better that when I started. And, I think I have a unique voice as a result. Read the greats. Over time you’ll find yourself picking and choosing what works for you. Another way to help you develop your voice is to write poetry. If you’re sincere in your efforts, poetry can open you up to a new vulnerability and release hidden dreams. All necessary for a unique voice. Voice is more than writing style or technique. It is your personality, your sensitivities, your whole being. Voice, in the long run, is about you being you. Your vision, your love, your faith being laid bare on the page. No pretense, no effort to put up a façade of respectability. It is raw, it is naked, and it is sincere. You sit there staring at a blank screen. The cursor defiantly blinks at you like the strobe of a police cruiser in your rearview mirror. Your fingers are poised above the keys ready to peck out the stream of ideas that will begin percolating in your brain. But, nothing comes. The well is dry. You can’t think of a thing to write. You then realized you’ve got it. That dreaded writer’s block. It has hit you like a sudden case of the flu. Writer’s block is a controversial subject. Some say there’s no such thing while others see it as a real problem for writers. The cause could come from several fronts. A lack of inspiration is probably the foremost people cite. Other causes can be from distractions, adverse life events ranging from mild to serious, fear of failure, and the one I’m most guilty of: laziness. Aside from a serious adverse life event, which may require professional help, most cases of writer’s block, with a little effort, can be overcome or prevented. I’ve got six ideas that might help the next time you sit at the keyboard and feel absolutely stuck:
Consider these potential solutions to writer’s block. Put one or more into action the next time those creative juices don’t seem to be flowing and you may find that you can plow right through that writer’s block. I bet you’ve read this somewhere. The story features two friends who meet at the local eatery on a daily basis to discuss life. In this iteration of the conversation one says to the other, “As you know, Bob,” then goes on to tell a vital piece of information that must be given to advance the story. Information that the other character obviously already knows. Wait a second. Why do the two characters have to discuss this information if they both know it? This is the dreaded “As you know, Bob…” information dump. Writers, wanting to convey vital information about their story’s plot, will reveal it in a conversation between two characters who already know it. Not good. There are ways to fix this. First, you could just removed the information from dialogue and put it in the narrative. Let’s look at an example: Bob sat in his usual seat at Le Nouveau outdoor café. Seeing John approach he stood. After John was comfortably seated they ordered their favorite lunches. John took a sip of tea and said, “As you know, Bob, the killer wore stilettoes.” “Yeah,” said Bob, “so, that means Mary couldn’t have murdered him.” “Right, Mary would break an ankle if she wore a pair of stilettoes.” OK, so Mary can’t wear stilettoes and that means she can’t have been the murderer. If Mary is a major character in the story, this is important, but dumping information with “As you know, Bob…” dialogue is a poor way of revealing it. Lets try the scene again using narrative to reveal the information: Bob sat in his usual seat at Le Nouveau outdoor café waiting for John. Since he had a few minutes, he took the time to review the stolen forensics report. He removed the sheaf of paper from his pocket and flipped to the relevant section and read. The killer had definitely worn stilettoes. He knew, like John, that it meant Mary could not have been the killer. She’d break an ankle in stilettoes. This is a little better. The information is revealed in a more acceptable way—narrative. And, the clunky “As you know, Bob,” dialogue is avoided. But, what if you wanted or needed to reveal the information with dialogue? The answer is to introduce a second or third person that wouldn’t know the information. Let’s look at the café scene again, this time with a third party that has no knowledge of the vital information. Here goes: Bob sat in his usual seat at Le Nouveau outdoor café. Seeing John approach with a man he’d never seen, he stood. “Bob, “ said John, “this is Ted. He’s Mary’s cousin from Seattle. He came as soon as he heard.” They shook hands, sat, and ordered. After an awkward silence, John said, “Well, you gonna tell him?” “Tell me what?” asked Ted. “I got a copy of the forensic report.” Bob pulled a sheaf of paper from his jacket pocket and waved it in the air. “You didn’t hear this from me, but the killer wore stilettoes.” John grinned. “Yeah, Mary can’t wear stilettoes. She’d break an ankle.” This is a much better way to introduce the information that Mary is not the killer. Bob and John use their common knowledge to give the good news to out-of-town Ted about his cousin. A way to reveal information in a dialogue between two characters that avoids the “As you know, Bob” problem is to have them compare notes on a subject that they both know but they realize that by discussing the subject a greater depth of knowledge may be mined. This occurs in conversations between professionals such as doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. In my new novel, The Peril Protocol, two detectives squat over a murder victim and discuss the findings they see: Careful to not disturb the crime scene Foster and Montrose squatted on either side of the body to get a better look. “Dump site,” said Montrose. Foster nodded. He knew the lack of any blood at the scene meant that the woman was killed somewhere else and deposited here. Foster noted bruises on the wrists and ankles. “Probably tied down before she was killed,” he said. Montrose nodded his agreement then pointed to a line of bruising on the skin just under her breasts as well. This isn’t an “As you know, Bob” situation. The detectives talk about their findings to help confirm the information in the same way that two doctors may discuss a difficult diagnosis or two lawyers might talk over a complicated court case. For example, a web site for a tumor board, a meeting of doctors to discuss the best way to treat cancers, states the reason for doctors discussing tumors as follows: “They each have a unique view of the best approach to treat and care for a patient. It is great to have different perspectives according to the different specialties. We all complement each other, share knowledge and offer recommendations as far as the best strategy for the patient.” If your story involves two people discussing a subject on which they have common knowledge and they approach it with the above attitudes and goals you’ve avoided the “As you know, Bob” problem. Avoid that awkward “As you know, Bob” scene to reveal information, and your dialogue will sound much better. It’s a horrible rainstorm. The hero of your thriller has been captured by the bad guys and is dangling by a frayed rope over a swelling river in front of a dam that’s cracked. At any moment it will break spilling millions of gallons into the valley and drowning the hero in a Biblical deluge. You turn the page and the author plunges into a dialogue between two minor characters on water pressure and flow rates complete with formulas and theories to explain the dangers the hero is about to face. Whoa. What just happened here? One moment you were on the edge of your seat wondering will the hero live or die and the next it felt like you were back in Physics 101 with Mrs. Johnson. You know, the teacher with the greying bun and orthopedic shoes. You’re probably thinking by now, Hey, author, way to go! That’s how to take me out of the story. And your next move will be to close the book and put it on the shelf never to pull it down again, until its time to put it in a stack with other unwanted books for that long overdue garage sale. Information dump is a great way to turn off your audience. No one wants to sit through a dry lecture on…well, anything. Either you start to doze off with the book in your hand or you’re reminded of class with your most hated college professor, the guy that gave you an “F” last semester. Face it, it’s no fun. What is information dump? Its revealing important information in the middle of the story in a manner that feels awkward and inappropriate. Its like when your pooch takes a dump on your neighbor’s nicely manicured yard. It’s very necessary for you dog to go, but not right in the middle of Mr. Rigley’s freshly mown lawn. Here’s an example of information dump: Detective Walsh looked down at what was obviously the murder weapon. It was a World War II vintage M1 Garand rifle. “Hunting rifle?” asked Greg, his twenty-something partner. “No, an M1, a combat rifle used by the U.S. in the Second World War. It has a muzzle velocity 2950 feet per second. Weighs 9.5 pounds. It was the first semi-automatic combat rifle used. Just load an eight round clip into the breach and pull the trigger to get off a shot and the gases automatically eject the spent shell and reload a fresh bullet. No recocking. It was unlike any of the other combat rifles of the day. The British Enfield, the German Kar-98, the Russian Mosin-Nagant, the Japanese Arisaka, they all were bolt action rifles. You fired a shot then had to pull back the bolt to eject the spent shell and push it home to seat the new round. The M1 gave our troops a distinct advantage in combat. Patton called it, ‘The greatest battlefield implement ever devised.’” Unless you’re a World War II buff like me, this probably felt like a bit too much information and really, the little history lesson could have been left off with no loss of vital information for the story. So, how do you avoid information dump? One way is to give the information in a more natural way. In my novel, Fatal Impact, one of the main characters, Jared Birch is a physicist. He has to explain quantum mechanics to other characters. He begins like this: “Well,” began Jared, “quantum mechanics is the branch of physics that deals with the behavior of very small objects like atoms, subatomic particles, and photons. At that level, those things don’t just behave like tiny billiard balls rolling around a table….” This is beginning to sound a lot like just information dump. But, what would be the natural response of your friends or acquaintances if you started into a long dissertation? This is how I tried to make this a more natural conversation. The discussion continues as follows: “Wait a minute,” interrupted Sam. “This is way too much information. Bottom line is it’s complicated. Is that what you’re trying to say?” “Yeah. I guess so.” Being interrupted by your friends when you start into a longwinded explanation sounds more natural than everyone sitting around listening to your character pontificate for pages on some arcane subject such as the mating habits of pygmy rattlers. Another way to introduce information is to entwine it into the story. This way it merely sounds like an expected part of the narrative. In my recent novel, The Peril Protocol, the heroine, Hope Allerd, a physician in training, is asked to explain the Protocol while on rounds: As if on cue, Hope said, “The Protocol. She needs the Protocol.” “Ah, perhaps there’s hope yet.” Peril smiled on hearing the titter over his pun. “Enlighten us, Dr. Allerd.” Hope made eye contact with Marcia then turned to Peril. “The Peril Protocol,” she said, “consists of nanotubes constructed of condensed benzene rings containing molecules of the antibiotic cefotaxime. When injected into the patient they bind to a protein receptor on the meningococcus bacteria cell wall causing the release of the antibiotic which inhibits bacterial cell wall synthesis thus killing the organism.” Medical students and residents on hospital rounds with the attending physician (usually a professor with years of experience) are expected to spout volumes of information in response to the attending’s questions, as was shown in an earlier part of the scene. So, Hope’s explanation fits right in with what is expected. Avoid information dump at all costs. Your novel will flow and your readers will continue reading. Next time I’ll discuss a subset of information dump: the dreaded “As you know, Bob” snippet of dialogue. Last week I discussed writing more exciting dialogue. I’d like to continue discussing dialogue. Specifically, I’d like to review some of the uses of dialogue. As I mentioned in my last post, we generally take dialogue for granted. Most likely, it’s due to the fact that we use dialogue on a daily basis. It is, after all, the chief way we communicate. But, in creating stories, dialogue has many valuable uses beyond just the day-to-day casual function we are all accustomed to in our communications. As I mentioned, dialogue has many functions in writing fiction. I have come up with five different functions (you may think of more):
“Don’t you ‘hey’ me you son of a bitch. Martha told me everything.” “She what?” “The late night meetings. The lunch time trysts in the local motel.” “Wait, Jack, it’s not like that.” “Having an affair with my wife is not like what?” This sounds interesting. You likely want to hear more and learn why Ralph and Martha are having the affair.
“I am Death.” “Are you coming for me?” “I’ve already waked by your side for quite some time.” “I know.” “Are you ready?” “My body is ready, but I’m not.” This certainly sounds intriguing and if you don’t mind subtitles you’d probably continue watching until the closing credits.
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