Characters: Wild or Farm Raised

You have to listen to them carefully because they are, in their way, just as human as you are, quite capable of missing important information, once again, just as you are quite capable of missing important clues, hints, implications. They frequently have pleasant if not noble motives, and you must not judge them because their motives are, in your opinion, more on the pleasant than the noble side.

They are your characters, some of them farm raised, others wild, plucked from the seas of your imagination and experience, sometimes even leavened with your motives. You do not, for instance, merely stumble on a story; there is some factor being fed upon that maneuvers the characters from mere shadows to individuals who are caught in some widening inevitability. You are more likely to begin suspecting the lurking presence of a story if you are at the moment bored or defensive or awaiting some event with less than enthusiasm, thus story as distraction from an ordeal or a routine, sometimes even as a distraction from a routine ordeal.

The parts of the mind that are actively engaged in presenting story to you are constantly at work, piling on the coals of enthusiasm. What a lovely conflagration we shall have, you think as these seemingly unrelated moments, these scenes that appear as if in no particular order, as toothpaste taking a vacation from being confined within the tube.

Before long, you have realized they are the equivalent of day workers, men and women looking for an honest day's work for a reasonable day's pay. You will be doing great things for the local emotional economy, keeping these workers close to hand.

It is important to remember to give them a task, which is to express their desires. They don't get the job without telling you.

A final caution: Characters being control-freak types, some of them will want to tell you what theme they bring onto the page with them. They will scurry about, auditioning theme, but they are invariably wrong. You, on the other hand, may be wrong from time to time but with the flick of a delete button, you can solve most of those problems. Theme comes after you've got at least all of the first draft done. It may not even come then, and if you find yourself looking for it as you do your reading glasses or your pocket knife or even your fountain pen, you can bloody well stop looking. If you have been honest in letting the characters have at whatever it is they truly want, you may well have everything you need. Then some reader or critic, perhaps even an editor may approach you with a sly discussion of the theme that so movingly came forth from your story

The Dystopia

dystopia, novels of--narratives in which the ills of society are exaggerated for thematic effect; cautionary tales demonstrating social, moral, economic, sexual, and religious agendas allowed to run wild.

In the story-telling sense, utopias--stories of perfection and accord--are not really stories because they lack the major dramatic ingredient of conflict. Thus grace is boring, the fall from grace and its consequences a magnet for interest. If everyone gets along, is his brother's keeper, does not covet, etc, the reader will have little reason to continue because, redemption being precluded, there is no big finale to anticipate. If, however, a protagonist, say Ray Bradbury's Guy Montag from Fahrenheit 451, has a gut feeling that there is something wrong about what he is doing, the reader begins to see the inevitability of Montag going up against something quite larger than himself, forced to deal with it.

Seen as a paradigm of a dystopia that cautioned against the consequences of war, The Iliad's most seemly character is Hector. His tragic fate elevates him to a role model for the conflicted protagonist. It was a dumb war to begin with, started when Hector's brother, Paris, made off with his prize from having judged a beauty contest. Hector's wife, Andromache, pleads with him to abandon the war they will surely lose, reminding him that were things to continue, she'd probably be taken as a prize of war and their son, Astyanax, would be killed. As devoted to his wife and son as Hector is, even though he agrees with her assessment, he knows he could not face life, even a life in exile, were he to turn from battle. Nor is Hector naive or insensitive. He well foresees the consequences, but feels obliged to continue, nevertheless.

The backstory conditions of the dystopia--See Brave New World, Logan's Run,1984, The Handmaid's Tale--is the unthinkable come to pass. The present-time narrative of the dystopia sets a protagonist with whom the reader can identify in motion to cope with it.

In its own idiosyncratic and memorable ways, Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is welcomed company in the genre of dystopic fiction, offering forth its modern-day Hector in the form of the bombardier Yossarian. For all her bombast and philosophical sturm und drang, Ayn Rand easily is awarded membership in the Dystopia Society, primarily with Atlas Shrugged and its driven protagonist, Dagny Taggart, but not to forget Howard Roark of The Fountainhead. And not to forget the preternaturally bright Alex, protagonist of Anthony Burgess's enduring dystopia, Clockwork Orange.

Hints: There are seeds of dystopia in every satire, just as there are seeds of satire in every dystopia. If you were to look closely at Tess of the Durbervilles, Jude, the Obscure, and The Mayor of Casterbridge, you could find cause to think of Hardy as a writer of dystopian fiction. Hardy (1840-1928) was a close contemporary of another dabbler in the dystopic, Mark Twain (1835-1910).The 1950-90 science fiction era is larded with dystopic visions, one of many reasons why that genre became literature.

Counterpoint

counterpoint--the dramatic play of two differing, possibly even opposing themes within the same story; the overall relationship between two voices or agendas in contour and pace; a blending of two seemingly disparate points of view resulting in some added dramatic effect such as irony, satire, humor, or pathos.

Two of the three most obvious examples of thematic counterpoint in literature were composed by Jane Austen (1775--1817); these are Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. The themes are not only sounded in the titles, they are given full orchestration in the thematic use of the characters. 

 Who can forget Elizabeth Bennett as she responds to the chemistry of Fitzwilliam Darcy, each in turn battling against the inner conflict of romantic interest and social position? Another English writer, Aldous Huxley (1894--1963) has a title right on the mark, Point Counterpoint, its opposing themes being reason and passion. 

 Notable among the array of characters in what could be thought of as a run-up to the talky and pretentious 1981 film from Louis Malle, My Dinner with Andre, Huxley presents himself in Point Counterpoint as a novelist who is not very good at getting characters down on paper.

Yet another, wickedly inspired example of counterpoint is found in the Canadian writer, Robertson Davies (1913--95), whose The Rebel Angels appeared in 1981. Long interested in myth and mythology, Davies interests gravitated toward the psychology of Jung. 

 His contrapuntal Rebel Angels appeared to be playing the themes of pure academic research and the effects of mysticism and magic against one another. A significant character in this novel is Maria Theotoky, a graduate student researching Rabelais, which sets the theme of academicism in motion against the likely prospect of her stern discipline being overrun by the overt sexuality and emotional gormandizing of her subject matter. Davies does not stop there. Maria, through her Gypsy heritage, leads the reader into the murky areas of concert-level violinists having their prized instruments temporarily buried in horse dung to impart the true clarity of their voice.

Any seemingly disparate subjects can be employed, provided the characters have sufficient dimension to support the investigation. Of the four examples given, the Davies far outshines even the iconic Pride and Prejudice, suggesting that novels of ideas must have more weight to them than the sense of talking heads in serious discourse. Indeed, the Davies has humor and satire bordering on the blasphemous.

Academic-college-based novels have an open-door policy to thematic counterpoint, the novels of David Lodge and Lucky Jim, the one venture into the medium by Kingsley Amis, added examples of how effective the medium can be. Saved for last is a strong candidate for the most sublime example yet of the effects of counterpoint in story.

D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers engages the theme of a woman of breeding, education, and sensitivity, who meets a rough-and-tumble coal miner at a Christmas dance, falls into a sensual relationship with him almost immediately, then marries him. Together, they produce two sons, each of whom contributes in his way to the counterpoint. 

 The character of Paul Morel has become synonymous with D. H. Lawrence, who was a living example of the unharmonic conflicts visited on him by his mother and father. Watch Paul Morel's relationship with each parent, and then watch his urgent need to leave the atmosphere of the coal mining village and its stiffling effect on him. Now you will have seen and understood counterpoint, the better to use it as a tool in short story, novel, and intermediate lengths, seeing characters for what they represent through articulation of their needs and the circumstances they have built for themselves.

Did Captain Ahab Forget His Meds?

Captain Ahab--a major causal character in Herman Melville's novel, Moby-Dick; a man so bent on revenge that he becomes the instrument for the death of all but one seaman aboard the whaler Pequod; a sworn foe of the great while whale, Moby-Dick;by extension a metaphor for an individual so focused on his goal that all perspective becomes lost. (See also Don Quixote, King Lear,Wile E. Coyote)

For all its enormity and discursiveness, there is little specific information in Moby-Dick about Captain Ahab; he is a follower of the Quaker faith (an enormous fact given his vengeful mission), has a young wife and son, is somewhere between his late fifties and early sixties, has spent most of his life at sea, is named after a biblical king. Using this scant information, Sena Jeeter Nasland has written a novel, Ahab's Wife, which further investigates his conflicting humanity and desire for revenge.

While it is possible to read Moby-Dick as an adventure, the characters within it engage in existential and moral questions to a degree that causes the novel itself and many of the characters within it to take on the dimensions and whale-like aspects of metaphor. (Ahab's first mate, Starbuck, for example, is a well-read intellectual, also a Quaker, who is able to argue and discuss with Ahab from a similar background.) 

Add to that calculus the fact of the whale, which clearly is making statements of its own with a considerable intelligence of its own. The interesting question arises, Did Melville deliberately or by artistic accident happen upon the American equivalent of John Milton's Paradise Lost? A pursuit of the answer to that question may well lead, for the appropriate seeker, to thematic insight at a comparable level to Nasland's curiosity about Ahab himself and the woman who married him.

Ahab's attractiveness for all writers of fiction begins with the unyielding strength of his purpose--to track down and destroy the whale. A Quaker whose moral code speaks to pacifism, Ahab's actions and determinations are encouraged by the inner voices of hatred and loathing in the face of the whale's supposed representation of pure evil. 

 Thus even were he to have won, Ahab would have had to face the consequences of his conscience. By now, over a hundred fifty years after the publication of Moby-Dick, it is no spoiler to observe that the whale is directly responsible for the sinking of the Pequod and the death of all aboard her except Ishmael (who survives in order to render his first-person account of what happened). Does this absolute sense of doom that begins with the very first line, Call me Ishmael, make the reader aware that the events are any less tragic than, say, King Lear?

Is it such an unfathomable jump for a writer to see connections between the character of Ahab and Don Quixote and Wile E. Coyote in a landscape haunted by the imperceptible divisions between revenge (Ahab's), illusion (Don Quixote's), and humiliation (Wile. E. Coyote's)?

Ahab is a gritty reminder of the ways a character's goals become the interior decorator for the setting, pace, and ultimate effect of story.

Do the Endings Justify the Meanness?

ending--the point at which a dramatic narrative delivers its payoff emotion; characters in a story being led from a precipitous brink to a more comfortable landing spot; the arrival at an offered solution to the major dramatic issue.

As in all events where humans are involved, story endings are at best temporary because one or more of the characters involved will quickly become caught up in another strand of activity--even if it is only a return to some old conviction, habit, or pattern, where a new chapter will begin. Ending is a sense that things are over for the moment. At the final curtain of Hamlet, with so many of the dramatis personae dead, only Fortinbras and Horatio are left to deal with the energy of the previous activities, but just as playwright Tom Stoppard saw possibilities for a spin-off in which Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern had their own show, Horatio could challenge Fortinbras after his final tribute to Hamlet, working himself up to wonder why Fortinbras hadn't done anything sooner, to which Fortinbras could have wondered a similar wonder to Horatio, whereupon the two would get into the exchange of blows and a sequel to Hamlet would have been in the making. Huck Finn could have done quite nicely in the territory ahead, but Tom Sawyer, fed up with the heavy responsibilities of family life, civic affiliations, and the weight of The Social Contract heavy on his shoulders, could have come looking for Huck and, once again, became caught up in Huck's life style.

Endings are a sign to the reader that things are over for now--not necessarily solved, but done until the next defining moment settles upon the characters.

Reminder: not ending soon enough may produce anticlimax.


layer--a stratum or single element manifest within a story; a subplot, thematic, or character-related motif found in a dramatic narrative.

Stories, even shorter ones, tend to have more than one layer of activity accompanying the main thrust of the story, perhaps extending to a remote past or possibly not quite as recent as the present moment. Layering often takes form in the interaction between two or more characters, relying on attitudes related to past experience or experiences between them. Results from conflicting or disappointed expectations among characters may also add layers of complexity to a narrative.

The conventional wisdom for layering holds each tier responsible for some enhancement of story line (plot), character development, subtext, or an enhancement of theme.

Thus may a story be seen as an archaeological dig in which the reader discovers more about the individuals involved in the narrative, their social make-up, artifacts, and attitudes as each layer is excavated. In general, plot-driven stories tend to have fewer layers than literary, but as with all generalities related to story, the writer must take care not to be driven by them to the point where imagination and inventiveness are overridden.