Wordcraft -- Bones of a novel, part I

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On the last day of the recent FenCon writing workshop, workshop leader Lou Anders wanted to teach us to write screenplays. Why, some participants must have wondered, would Anders, editor for a press that publishes novels, want to discuss screenplays in a nonscreenwriting workshop?

Because when he taught it to other novelists, he said, their beta readers went from merely sighing to weeping aloud at the climax of their books after putting the principles of Dan Decker’s Anatomy of a Screenplay into practice. And maybe because Anders, who has taken Decker’s classes, is a former screenwriter himself. And he’s the guy you’ve got to please if you want to get published at the Pyr imprint where he’s the editorial director.

Having struggled with the structure -- rather, nonstructure -- of the fantasy novel I pulled out of my files for the workshop, I was willing to learn more. I’d read enough books on screenwriting to be a fan of adapting the three-act structure of screenplays to the longer format of a novel. But I’d struggled not only with the structure but also with character relationships.

Protagonist I could pretty well get, although it helped to hear Anders point out that the protagonist’s desire -- the overriding reason for the story -- must be concrete. “It can’t be ‘happiness,’” Anders said.

Okay, but why, when I picked out a bad guy, didn’t he (or she) always work the way an antagonist is supposed to?

Surprise, Anders said, clicking through the stills from classic films that illustrated his talk. The antagonist is out to prevent the protagonist from achieving his desire, but he’s not necessarily a bad guy. So in the movie Casablanca, the antagonist isn’t the Nazi. He’s “good guy” Victor Laszlo -- because Laszlo and protagonist Rick want the same thing -- Laszlo’s wife, Ilsa.

And when Anders mentioned a third party, the “relationship character,” most of us looked knowing until he told us, this person isn’t necessarily the romantic interest. Instead, the relationship character is the one who accompanies the protagonist on his journey, has often “been there” before, and is the person to whom the protagonist expresses the theme of the story. Or who may express it himself. So in Casablanca, the relationship character isn’t Ilsa. It’s Claude Rains’ Captain Renault, who insists that Rick is a sentimentalist at heart, and who stays with him to the end, even when Ilsa leaves.

Those less steeped in older classics might find Anders’ analysis of the Batman movies more helpful. The relationship character is the Joker -- he’s always there.

Now we had a triangle of character relationships -- protagonist, antagonist and relationship (also known as dynamic) character. Need to expand the list of characters to fill the needs of a novel-length work? Give each member of the trio her own corresponding triangle, remembering that every antagonist and relationship character is the protagonist of her own story, every protagonist is somebody else’s antagonist or relationship character. Happy writing!

(But wait, is that it? Where are the three acts? Coming up next Wednesday, in bones of a novel, part II.)


　

Wordcraft -- Character: The likeability factor

I''ve lost the likeable character lottery -- again, after being turned down for the Sword & Sorceress anthology with a rejection letter from editor Elisabeth Waters that said, "This is a perfectly good story, but. . . "

Hey, wait!  She didn't actually say the characters were unlikeable, did she?  But I'd better turn to those who can write with more authority on the magic that makes a character -- specifically the main character, the protagonist -- someone readers (and that includes editors) will want to spend their valuable time with.

One of my favorite books adddressing this subject is the late Blake Snyder's "Save the Cat!"  Not least because it makes me laugh.  Although it's aimed at screenwriters, his discussion of story structure and character can apply to other forms of writing.  As he describes the concept, the "save the cat" scene is "the scene where we meet the hero and the hero does something -- like saving a cat -- that defines who he is and makes us, the audience, like him. . . . You must take the time to frame the hero's situation in a way that makes us root for him, no matter who he is or what he does."

Or as writer and agent Donald Maass puts it in his "Fire in Fiction," our job as writers is to create a bond between our readers and our protagonist.  And that's an immediate bond, on the first page if possible, not the last page or hidden in the depths of the story.  To do this, he said, we must give the readers a reason to care.

I love and care about all my characters, as you love and care for yours.  They're the children of our imagination.  And like good parents, we love our children no matter how weird or naughtly or -- let's be frank -- how unloveable they can sometimes be.  But passing out snapshots of our kids at their unloveable moments isn't going to make random strangers care about them.  We need to show pictures of the kids at their best, remembering that their best may be when they're soaked in sweat and mud.

Show the picture of her standing up for a bullied friend.  Or the one of him hugging his brother instead of hitting him.

In Maass's words, "Demonstrating a character trait that is inspiring does cause readers to open their hearts."

(While pondering editor Waters's words, I read fellow blogger Deborah Walker's wickedly funny post "Rejectomancy," about finding meaning in rejections.  See her post at http://deborahwalkersbibliography.blogspot.com/  Next Wednesday:  "The Passage" author Justin Cronin tells us what it's like to get a multimillion dollar advance for a novel -- and what happens next.)
 

Wordcraft -- Character, character, character

I provided a link previously to the late Marion Zimmer Bradley’s explanation of why editors reject stories, but I’m going to break her discussion down into smaller nuggets over the next few weeks.  When I looked at her list of eight specific reasons for rejecting a story, it became obvious that the greatest number of these dealt with the likeability and strength of the characters.

Remember this discussion deals with short stories, rather than the defects of novels discussed in the columns dealing with agent Weronika Janczuk’s workshop.  Although I’ll have to confess that Weronika has since rejected my novel for keeping what she felt was an emotional distance from the characters – again, that pesky character issue.  So I hope working through this will help my writing also, and I appreciate your suggestions.  None of us have to write alone.

Reason number three on Bradley’s list of reasons for rejection was written as, the main character was not identifiable or was not likeable enough for the reader to want to identify him or her, or there were too many characters.  (This actually sounds like three separate reasons to me.  Clearly character is becoming more and more of a concern.)  Reason number four was:  the editor could not get interested enough in the characters to care whether they solved their problems.  And number six was:  the character did not have a serious enough problem or did not solve it by her own efforts.  (Reason number five:  nothing much changed and the characters ended where they started also sounds suspiciously character-related.)

For today, I’m going to deal with what sounds like the simplest of these problems, but obviously isn’t – is the main character identifiable? 

Last fall I mentioned a workshop whose leader urged death to the prologues so many of us used to start our stories.  (September 22, 2010 – Start at the beginning, go to the end, then stop.  The leader was Jessica Wade, associate editor at Ace/Roc books).  Although prologues slow the pace of a story, another of their deficiencies is that they frequently feature someone who is not the main character.  Not necessarily a fatal problem, but always a potential one.  So who is our main character?  Almost inevitably, the one who changes the most.  Or sometimes, for the group Christopher Vogler described as “catalyst heroes” in The Writer’s Journey, figures who bring about transformation in others – especially useful in serial stories.  One way or other, the main character – protagonist or hero – must either undergo significant change or bring about such change in the other characters.  If that doesn't describe your character, maybe you're writing about the wrong person.

For simplicity’s sake, Bradley also suggests limiting the total character cast – in a story of fewer than ten pages, using only a main character, a minor character and perhaps a couple of walk-ons, like the unnamed ticket clerk who annoys your main character and her date.  And watch the names.  I was once in a workshop with a woman who pointed out that I had multiple male characters whose names all started with the letter H.  Ouch!

(Next week:  The likeability factor – bringing extraordinary characters down to earth, or elevating the ordinary Janes and Joes.)

Where did the bad guys go?

I'm reviewing the submissions for a speculative fiction writing workshop -- that's fantasy and science fiction to normal people -- and am awed by the range of imagination in the nineteen submissions.  Not to mention that a few of the stories really knock my prissy little lace-edged Sunday socks off.  But something bothers me -- fewer than half the stories have an antagonist.  That's the person who opposes the protagonist, the main character.  Sometimes we call the main character the hero, although in modern stories he or she isn't usually very heroic.  By traditional story-telling standards, the conflict between the protagonist and antagonist is the heart of the book.  In this case, the workshop was for novel proposals, and the workshop leader asked us to submit a synopsis and the first five thousand words -- about twenty pages.  In more than half, no antagonist either appeared or was named in those first five thousand words or in the synopsis of the entire book.

So if there's no antagonist, what does the main character do?  Clock out and go home early?  Be assured, there is conflict in all of the stories.  Some are in subgenres that don't require a human antagonist -- make that sentient being antagonist.  This is science fiction, after all, where being human is not necessarily a requirement for characters.  In coming of age stories, for instance, the protagonist's struggle to find a place in society can be conflict enough.  A couple of the stories were also murder mysteries, and we all know the murderer isn't supposed to get named until the end of those.  But not even to mention the murder's identity in the synopsis?

Most of the apparently antagonist-free stories had a sort of group baddie -- a conspiracy, a computer network, a cadre of unnamed government agents or clergy.  But these people had no names, no personalities, no single individual who truly hated the poor protagonist's guts and was out to make his or her life miserable, maybe even short.  In real life, conspiracy nuts -- I'm not one, but I don't know about you -- can put faces on their fears.  Sarah Palin, President Obama, bin Laden, maybe even the late Chief Justice Earl Warren.  (You don't really believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone do you?  You do?)

Wondering whether I'm old-fashioned about this antagonist business, I spent a perfectly nice morning with a dozen books published by the company that employs our workshop leader.  I looked for the first reference or appearance of potential antagonists, cutting off the search at page twenty.  In that space, only four -- a third -- hadn't had an antagonist show up.  Even in one of those, the blurb inside the paperback cover promised an opponent for the hero.  Of the remaining three, two were murder mysteries and one was a Crichton-ish techo-thriller, so there's still hope for an antagonist to make an appearance.

It's too late for me or the other workshop participants to change our submissions.  We'll have to let the leader decide whether antagonists are a make or break issue.  But I'm going to plead for writers to consider using antagonists.  Bad guys need jobs, too.  Be warned, of course, that if you invite an antagonist into your story, she'll duct tape you to a chair, steal everything you have and set the house on fire.  But you're a writer.  What else is happening in  your life?