A Whale of a Story

whale, the great (aka Moby-Dick)--a tangible, forceful adversary; a dramatic partner to the protagonist in story landscape; a presence eventually discernible as having an agenda opposing the protagonist.

Cruising along at mid-level in the sea of dramatic convention, surfacing on occasion for a gulp of air much as the whale does in real life, there is the convention of the worthy opponent, the man, woman, or child who not only believes utterly in the rightness of his or her position but who radiates the embodiment of that stand. It is the very strength of conviction within this opponent that drives the story toward its eventual combustion. Therefore it must be respected rather than demonized. In creating such a dramatic presence, the writer is clearly investigating opposing forces within his or her own sense of conviction and justice. It would be foolish to suggest that the great whale had a personal vendetta against Ahab or any crew member of the Pequod, but it is not so foolish to ask the reader-who-wants-to write, the writer within, as it were, to imagine the preparation need to prepare for portraying the role of the whale in a dramatized version of Moby-Dick. What does the whale want? The very question suggests parody, but that absurdity is mitigated by the further question: What does the whale represent? The whale represents forces of Nature, which is a start to the answer. The whale wants to survive, another answer. The whale has been witness to and present at events counter to its desire to survive.

In similar fashion that borders on risk of absurdity, it is instructive to think through the agendas and goals of the adversary, whether they be forces of Nature or teen-agers wanting to borrow the family car. This introspection is not for the purpose of finding the irrational in the dramatic partner. Rational partners don't make for drama, they make for moot court proceedings. Rational as he was, Sherlock Holmes could not have stood up dramatically without Dr. Watson. Although not an adversary in terms of plot goals, Watson represents a behavioral and social force antithetical to Holmes, just as Dr. Wilson represents antithetical behavior to the fictional Dr. Gregory House.

Let the great hulking whale represent a literary totem, representing the duality of partnership and adversary. A partner represents someone with whom the protagonist can confide, share, explore survival strategy. An adversary represents a threat to the protagonist's agenda in significant enough measure to cause the reader concern for the outcome of the story. Remember as well: the protagonist has caused some level of threat to the adversary--otherwise the adversary would not behave in such a gradually accelerating pattern of opposition.

The collision between protagonist and adversary can come suddenly, with no warning, in spite of preparations; the consequences may be highly physical as in plot-driven narrative or of more internal, morality-sensitive issues as in the character-driven story. Although a significant dramatic convention exists to turn the protagonist into a Cassandra, who is fated to see the future exactly but no one believes her, the consequences of a protagonist alone with no confidantes triggers the risky business of the protagonist having no place to go but interior monologue.

Think whale. Think partner. Think confidante. Then, without even having to think about it, you will be introducing layer upon layer of dramatic intensity.

Out of Character

Sherlock Holmes--a quintessential essence of the presence needed in a character, he is the embodiment of curiosity-as-agenda, happiest when engaged in solving problems, so comfortable with his considerable abilities and deductive process that he walks the sharp cusp between being right and being insufferable. Truth to tell, Holmes, in his deductions, is often right, which has a direct, supportive effect on his insufferable behavior. This volatile combination of traits should and does make it difficult for Holmes to find happiness between mysteries to solve, leaving him vulnerable to boredom which, in his case, leads to violin playing and cocaine.

Added truth to tell, Sherlock Holmes cannot be trusted with his own point of view; he'd not only put off too many readers, he'd tick them off as well. This sets the stage for John Watson, M.D., a filter for narrating the Holmes adventures, and a perfect foil for allowing Holmes to explain the force of logic behind his reasoning. The presence of Dr. Watson as buffer allows Holmes to talk down to Watson without talking down to the reader while explaining the Holmesian logic.

The buddy system has been with us in storytelling as far back as Aristophanes' memorable The Frogs, in which a slave and his master are setting forth the story through dialogue and action. True dat; Sherlock Holmes is mystery fiction, but any number of buddy teams work the genre, Archie Goodwin coming to mind as a Dr. Watson surrogate for Nero Wolfe. A Sherlock Holmes-like character has weathered six seasons of TV in the persona of Gregory House, M.D., emerging as a preternaturally bright diagnostician who is given a team of associates with whom to consult, said consultations often involving House's impatience, irony, bluntness bordering on rudeness, and bluntness bordering on childishness. Instead of Holmes' cocaine use, House is addicted to pain killers, instead of a violin, his musical interests are considerable and extensive. The popularity of the series and its potential for quirky puzzles speaks to the point of major characters who are the literary equivalents of extraordinary individuals wearing ordinary clothing.

Strong characters such as, variously, Captain Ahab, Captain Nemo, Nora Helmer, The Wife of Bath, and Sir John Falstaff, do not have to rely on the obvious strength of being diagnosticians; any laser-like focus will do, whales, for instance. All support the vision that strength of character resides primarily within an overriding passion for some thing; the surplus strength may spill over into morality or even empathy. Followers of Sherlock Holmes, Gregory House, M.D., and some of the others listed here are well aware of the numerous puzzles solved by these individuals. Indeed, they are followers precisely to see the solutions. But they are also followers out of the curiosity to see what these iconic characters will do when there is no readily available solution.

What's up, Doc?

No list of mystery/suspense fiction with any claim to awareness of history can ignore the contributions of that most reluctant of mystery writers, Arthur Conan Doyle. A doctor who was rare in the sense of not making much if any income from his practice, a writer who yearned to write of things more otherworldly, Doyle could serve as a poster boy for writing away from one's passions and for unsuccessfully trying to kill off one of mystery's most famous personages, Sherlock Holmes.

True enough, Holmes had his predecessors in Poe's Dupin and Wilkie Collins' Sgt. Cuff from The Moonstone. Indeed, for some years, the mystery books column of The New York Times was called Sgt. Cuff. But Holmes was not, for all his edgy reserve, to be denied. Readers loved him to the point where they clamored for more. Well, that is not exactly the case; readers loved to hear of his escapades, his methods of detection, his characteristic "Elementary, my dear Watson." Speaking of whom, writers as well as readers have cause to pay respect and heed.

If it were not for John Watson, M.D., Sherlock Holmes in all likelihood would not have survived The Red-Headed League. The simple truth, for there is always a simple truth if we look for it, is that were Sherlock Holmes to have been presented in third person or, Heaven forefend, first person, he would have emerged as insufferable, a boor, an insensitive, self-satisfied marginal man who happened to be able to fit together logical progressions, a thing many of us are not able to achieve with any consistency. Had Holmes appeared without Dr. Watson to admire him, we should have long since banished him to the cloak room. I use the school analogy because even in Los Angeles, where I grew forth, we had cloak rooms, although I once won a bet of a packet of Twinkies by challenging a classmate to correctly define what a cloak is. New York and Rhode Island and Florida youth knew more about cloaks and so there were no snagged Twinkies.

Sherlock Holmes is so abrasive that we can only root for him in the abstract, cheering his exploits through the bumbling Doctor Watson, who is to Holmes as Sarah Palin is to John McCain.

The simpler truth becomes the need the reader and writer has to like and identify with someone before a tale draws us into its maw. The someone need not be a paladin or a paradigm, merely someone we can take identity in or, as the case of Doctor Watson, be amused by or relieved that we are a few steps ahead of. This simple fact extends even to the scruffy, contentious Bobby DuPre as portrayed by Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces of You want me to hold the chicken fame. If you think about it, Jack Nicholson in his Bobby DuPre edginess could not successfully take on the role of a Sherlock Holmes with, say, Albert Finney or even Sean Connery as Dr. Watson because we would like the Nicholson Holmes more than we ought, spoiling a subtle but necessary chemistry, the one of surface tension between character and audience.

Fun as it is to cast our own versions of Holmes, say an African American Sherlock Holmes with Dezell Washington as Holmes ad James Earl Jones as Watson, or to really reach over the top, Michael K. Williams, fresh from Omar of The Wire as a gay African American Sherlock Holmes, those castings, effective as they may be, are distractions from the thesis, which is that we need a way, any way, to like the principal character enough to allow him or her to stand before us without insulation. Doyle cleverly uses Watson as the narrator, a role for which he has at least a medical school background on which to prop himself.

Particularly if a character is to be larger than life, we need the point of view of another lens through which to see all that focus and energy in a way to make it palatable.