Central Casting
By David Corbett | June 9, 2015 |
Photo by Quinn Dombrowski
Having just published my fifth novel and begun my sixth, I’ve found myself experiencing a curious sensation of: Wait. I’ve been here before.
It’s not that I recognize the same problems – each book has many of the same problems, and a dozen others all its own – or that I’m beginning to repeat myself. A certain element of repetition is inevitable as I refine my understanding of certain human conundrums I’m trying to address in my work – the necessity of love despite its limitations, the social nature of not just morality but truth, the hypocrisies of justice. I’ll be tripping over that furniture in the dark for as long as I write.
This time the sense of circularity concerned my characters. And since I’ve staked my pennant on that particular narrative overlook, I found it troubling, this suspicion that I might, in fact, be simply parading out the same cast of players in different costumes.
[pullquote][E]very writer has a given theater in his head, a repertory company. –Gore Vidal[/pullquote]
In particular, I realized the decent but troubled cop in The Mercy of the Night, Jordan Skellenger, bore no small resemblance to – guess what – a decent but troubled cop in Done for a Dime, Dennis Murchison.
Not only that, both had politically incorrect, wisecracking sidekicks: Dick Rosamar in The Mercy of the Night, Jerry Stluka in Done for a Dime.
Now by resemblance I mean exactly that: these men were similar, not identical. I have my limitations but I’m not a total nitwit. I did the hard work of making these characters unique. But in the end I had to recognize they were variations on a theme.
How many themes – how many characters – did I in fact possess? How could I know?
[pullquote]I had to accept the humble truth that the number of genuinely unique characters inhabiting my imagination wasn’t infinite.[/pullquote]
This question sent me back to something Gore Vidal said in an interview concerning his own characters:
[E]very writer has a given theater in his head, a repertory company. Shakespeare has fifty characters, I have ten, Tennessee has five, Hemingway has one, Beckett is busy trying to have none. You are stuck with your repertory company and you can only put on plays with them.
The notion (true or not) that as great a writer as Tennessee Williams, who I came to admire when I studied acting, commanded a circle of a mere five characters came as no small shock. And yet as I called to mind the various plays I began to detect some patterns.
- Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire has a sister not only in Blanche but in Serafina in The Rose Tattoo. (Call the character: Plain Jane Awakened to Passion.)
- Chance in Sweet Bird of Youth and Stanley in Streetcar are certainly distinct – in IQ alone – but are they different? (Call this one: Troubled Testosterone.)
- Split Blanche DuBois in three and you get two characters from The Glass Menagerie, Amanda Wingfield (the Aging Southern Belle) and her crippled daughter Laura (the Wounded Dreamer), as well as the Princess from Sweet Bird of Youth (the Perpetual Performer).
- And let the gentleman caller pay his visit to the Protective Mother, not her limping daughter, and give him a bit of Chance’s and Stanley’s virility, you turn Amanda from Glass Menagerie into Serafina from The Rose Tattoo.
This epiphany was both sobering and liberating. I had to accept the humble truth that the number of genuinely unique characters inhabiting my imagination wasn’t infinite; on the contrary, it was necessarily limited. But if that’s also true of writers as estimable as Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, even Shakespeare, where’s the shame in it?
[pullquote]It’s a bit deflating to realize these individuals I took so much time to render uniquely in fact conformed to a type, but I’ve come to accept that as a challenge, not a fault. [/pullquote]
I also realized that by recognizing this humbling fact instead of resisting it I could more deliberately fashion those characters into unique variations instead of merely repeating myself (and them).
And so I set about trying to identify who in fact made up my core repertory of characters. After a little reflection, I came up with a decent beginning. There are other characters in my head, of course, most of whom so far largely serve secondary roles, but for the sake of my argument, here goes:
- Lone Wolf Romantic: This character has been my hero twice (Dan Abatangelo in The Devil’s Redhead, and Phelan Tierney in The Mercy of the Night). He’s fundamentally a loner but is fiercely loyal when he opens his heart, and has a weak spot for the wounded. Though he considers himself more a lover and helper than a fighter he does not shrink from battle. Locked in to a goal, he’s a heat-seeking missile. He plays in a minor key but not without humor. In both incarnations, he has fallen for:
- The Redheaded Reality Check: Another way to describe her might be the Tough Cookie with a Hennaed Heart of Gold. She has my mother’s red hair but the fire and beauty and down-to-earth common sense of my best friend’s Aunt Nina. Maybe that’s where she comes from. She was the mesmerizing mother I wanted, not the troubling one I got. As twenty-one dealer Shel Beaudry in The Devil’s Redhead and oncology nurse Cass Montesano in The Mercy of the Night she plays the earthy realist to her lover’s reckless nobility. She’s not always connected to a man: She’s also the single-mom coke dealer in the story “Pretty Little Parasite.” I may get around to changing her hair color someday. (Actually, I do, in her younger, more musical incarnations: She’s the Salvadoran singer Lupe in Do They Know I’m Running? And in Done for a Dime, she’s the tiny, indomitable classical pianist Nadya Lazarenko. Why did I make both musical? You have to be tough to make it as a woman in music.)
- Felonious Monk: This character, my antihero, has a moral code but is not without sin. He makes serious mistakes but self-corrects before skidding into true immorality. He’s appeared as both Skellenger and Murchison – the Decent but Troubled Cops mentioned above – and as the rodeo rider turned art forger Tuck Mercer in the novel I’m writing now. There are shades of him in Abatangelo, who is otherwise a Lone Wolf Romantic (and this reveals how these characters are mutable, not fixed, and wander the landscape a bit.) His Latino incarnation was Happy in Do They Know I’m Running?, where he assumed the mantle of both brooding former gang member and penitent son. In one instance the character did indulge in true evil, but paid, and gained a chance to redeem himself; this was the disgraced ex-cop and SWAT Team sniper Phil Strock in Blood of Paradise.
- Salty Dog/Savvy Cat: The aforementioned politically incorrect, wisecracking sidekick. He can be stocky (Stluka), matinee handsome (Rosamar), scarred with war wounds (Godo in Do They Know I’m Running?), or simply a Pacific Islander fond of western attire (Gordy Matafeo, the “Samoan Six-Gun,” in The Mercy of the Night) but he invariably, when it comes to speaking his mind, believes in: Damn the torpedoes. He’s also skilled at what he does, takes the job very seriously, knows what hides in the darkest corners of the room, and never suffers a fool. He can also be a she: Tía Lucha in Do They Know I’m Running?, who’s not quite the wag the others are. Call her sadder-but-wisecracking.
- Young Buck Hero: A character I had trouble getting right both times he appeared in a book. I tended to make him too Luke Skywalker, not enough Holden Caulfield. In the end I overcame that limitation by either giving him a serious wound (Jude in Blood of Paradise) or a flaw (a capacity for vengeful cruelty, in the case of Roque in Do They Know I’m Running?). In female form, she’s Jacquelina Garza in The Mercy of the Night. I had trouble with her as well, but the other way around. Her wounds were obvious – abducted at age eight by a child predator, for starters – and her flaws abundant. My initial problem with her wasn’t a failure to see her darker side, but understanding her dreams.
- The Noble Elder: He can be a scientist (Axel Odelburg in Blood of Paradise), a Salvadoran truck driver (Tío Faustino in Do They Know I’m Running?), or an elderly African American librarian (Carvela Grimes in Done for a Dime), but in each case the years have brought wisdom. The character gets that death is coming: What’s to lose by having the courage to be decent? (A more troubled, tempestuous, contrary incarnation of the character is the aging jazz musician, Raymond “Strong” Carlisle, in Done for a Dime.)
- Slick Bastard: This guy’s the center of the universe, just ask him. He knows the game is rigged but he’s got it figured out. He’s the smartest guy in the room and the first one in the lifeboats. If you’re unlucky enough to be his target – or his lover – you’ll probably end up calling him a narcissist or a sociopath, but labels are for suckers. When waxing philosophical, he’ll tell you life is war, so fight to win. He’s been Rick Ferry in Done for a Dime and Bill Malvasio in Blood of Paradise (in fact, these are just two aliases for the same character, who appears in both books). Stripped of the primping vanity – but not the malevolence – and given a sex change, the character becomes Nina Garza, Jacquelina’s mother, in The Mercy of the Night. Split in two, he’ll be both the corrupt ex-judge Gideon Litmann and his lawyer henchman Don Rankin in the upcoming novel.
- Evil Ass Clown: This guy aspires to Slick Bastard, but as the saying goes: No way in hell. In his neighborhood, Fool’s Gold is coin of the realm, and his brilliant plans never end well. He was the firebug Manny Turpin in Done for a Dime. In The Devil’s Redhead he appeared as the haunted screw-up Frank Maas (sorry, Don – but note different spelling!).
[pullquote]I’d be surprised if you didn’t recognize these characters – if you haven’t, in fact, used variants of them in your own writing.[/pullquote]
I’d be surprised if you didn’t recognize these characters – if you haven’t, in fact, used variants of them in your own writing. That’s the sneaky truth about characters: they’re unique iterations of types we all recognize.
These characters exist in the shadowland of my mind, just beyond the scrim of consciousness. As probably became obvious as I described their various incarnations, they have an element of the shape-shifter to them, and are capable of not just serving one role in different ways but adding elements of different roles to a particular embodiment. To return to the repertory analogy, they are the humble actors who step forward to play the parts I’ve assigned them, gaining a few pounds here, having a darker childhood there, losing a son or a marriage this time, serving time in prison another.
Also notice how much what unites the type is the role that’s played. There is a thematic and situational element to their similitude, the result of their existence within a story. (One way to escape cookie-cutter characters is to realize they have a life beyond the story, and to explore that in imaginative detail. Your story is just a chapter in their life.)
It’s a bit deflating to realize these individuals I took so much time to render uniquely in fact conformed to a type, but I’ve come to accept that as a challenge, not a fault. The ability to move beyond type – where behavior is locked in – to a character capable of change, contradiction, surprise, is what separates better characterization from worse. If I don’t allow these characters to break type — do the unexpected, the seemingly unthinkable or even impossible — I’m not just being lazy. I’m selling short myself, the reader, and even these mysterious creatures themselves.
We’re all writing variations on stories that have been told for centuries. Little surprise we wouldn’t write the same one more than once, the same characters aboard, just with a zig left here where before we zagged right, one set in Vegas, the other the dark side of the moon. (Wait — those are the same place.)
[pullquote]That’s the sneaky truth about characters: they’re unique iterations of types we all recognize.[/pullquote]
This is where I’m supposed to talk about archetypes, and I’m sure some of the characters I described above wouldn’t feel alien in a Jungian showroom.
But that line of thinking has always struck me as a little ooga-booga. I consider Jung a genius, Joseph Campbell an fascinating if flawed scholar, and Christopher Vogler a brilliant teacher. (The Writer’s Journey is an indispensable text for writers, period.) But there’s also a lockstep, bandwagon feel to the Hero’s Journey meme that makes the contrarian in me itch. I was trained in math, where we were taught to think deeply about simple things. It’s been my unfortunate experience that far too many acolytes who sing in the Joseph Campbell Choir tend instead to think simply about deep things.
I have no clue as to whether these characters tap into some deep mythic Unconscious. I tend to prefer the view that they arise from my personal unconscious and memory, given my materialist inclinations. As already noted, I do recognize they have the shape-shifting quality of dream figures. Also, like I said, I recognize both my mother and Vince Militello’s Aunt Nina in the Redheaded Reality Check. And I grew up knowing not a few Evil Ass Clowns. Even more humbling, I see shades of Raymond Burr as Perry Mason in the Lone Wolf Romantic. (Figure that one out, Dr. Jung.)
This last example raises a cautionary element to our enterprise. There are indeed characters based on other characters – the whole Tap into Archetype approach often degenerates into this – the problem being that this can all too easily lead to what I call the Trap of Type: writing stories based on other stories with characters based on other characters.
The way out of that trap is to look around and look within, take your story ideas from actual experience and add elements to your characters taken from real people you know well. “You can’t make this stuff up” is a testament to the fact that nothing is more creative than real life.
[pullquote]“You can’t make this stuff up” is a testament to the fact that nothing is more creative than real life.[/pullquote]
Which brings me to my second, concluding quote.
A month and a half before his death, when he knew he was terminally ill, John Updike wrote a poem to the people he grew up with in tiny Shillington, Pennsylvania, in appreciation for their giving him the material he would mine for the rest of his writing life:
Dear friends of childhood, classmates, thank you,
scant hundred of you, for providing a
sufficiency of human types: beauty,
bully, hanger-on, natural,
twin, and fatso—all a writer needs
So, using Gore Vidal’s calculus, Updike apparently had a repertory company almost double the size of Shakespeare’s. Take that, Bard of Avon!
Do you recognize certain repeat characters or types in your stories? Do they speak to certain themes or dramatic situations you see yourself returning to over and over?
If you have repeated variations on a certain character type, has this been deliberate or largely unconscious as yet?
Do these “repeat characters” or “type-cast players” speak to some deeper psychic reality for you? In what way?
Do you ever use people from your own past for material as characters? Has this helped you escape the Trap of Type?
David Corbett (he/him) is the author of seven novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar, Do They Know I’m Running?, The Mercy of the Night, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, and The Truth Against the World. He has also published the story collection Thirteen Confessions and the novella The Devil Prayed and Darkness Fell.
David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in a broad array of magazines and anthologies, with pieces twice selected for Best American Mystery Stories.
His non-fiction has appeared in numerous venues, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Narrative, Zyzzyva, MovieMaker, The Writer, and Writer’s Digest.
He has taught both online and in classroom settings through the UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, Book Passage, LitReactor, 826 Valencia, The Grotto in San Francisco, and at numerous writing conferences across the US, Canada, and Mexico. In January 2013 Penguin published his textbook on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character (“A writer’s bible that will lead to your character’s soul.” —Elizabeth Brundage), and Writer’s Digest published his follow-up, The Compass of Character, in October 2019.
I have about 12 archetypes I use. I explored the various types through the series I just finished. Mostly all of my men are lone wolf romantics, or what I call wounded warriors. Different wounds = different variations on the same theme.
The women are the other hand are all hand picked from my high school graduating class! You cannot escape these women and even though it’s been 35 years, I find them in the workplace every day. They’re easy to archetype. Shy Suzy, Bitch Betty, Bully Belinda, (there is a difference between a bitch and a bully), Slutty Sarah, Too Nice Nancy, I don’t have to go on.
As a romance writer, everyone of those people needs to find love by the end of the book, so the characters do change. I do make them realize their faults and their flaws and they always become better for it. I wish real life were that easy.
Hi, Anne:
I find it interesting that your men characters come from archetype but your women characters came from your own experience. Now, the “real experience” characters seem to have fallen into type — that’s often the case once we fir them into stories — but that’s also the curse.
Have you found that your female characters possess greater specificity and a more intimate quality of “real life” than the male characters? Do you have to work harder to make the male characters seem unique or real?
Also — how have readers responded to your male characters vs. your female characters?
As I said, I’ve tended to resist the whole archetype gestalt, and yet the more I read, the more I recognize the irresistible tide.
Thanks for chiming in.
This reminds me that when I was in high school our English teacher screened Shane (later The Ox Bow Incident) and proceeded to explain how the archetypes worked in the story’s characters. I thought the teacher was nuts. Now I wish I’d paid more attention. (Btw, this was probably long before Chris Vogler heard of Joseph Campbell.)
There are 64 named characters in the three planned volumes of Pride’s Children (Book 1 finished and in production, the other two outlined to within an inch of their lives).
Each one’s character gets tweaked as necessary for the role he or she plays in the story.
I hadn’t thought about a repertory company – fascinating idea! I’ll have to bear that in mind as I go, to see if I can identify my prototypes.
Thanks for a new way to investigate them. I suspect, though, that from the way I construct the characters originally, I don’t have a limited set, but instead call on central casting, and get one from millions. They don’t become people until AFTER their role is locked in. Then I ask myself: How would someone get to be that person? And they get a history and a life.
Hi, Alicia:
I think the question you ask your characters is key: How would THIS character have come to play THIS role? Even better, why was it NECESSARY they do so?
The great challenge — and often the great fun — is when the character seems ill-suited to the role. Then the question becomes: How did I get here? And a deeper understanding of the character emerges.
Thanks for commenting. Good luck with all those characters!
“The Trap of Type”. As I was reading your post I kept thinking of Gods. Pantheons of them. Greek and Roman and Hindu. I read or heard somewhere about how they stood as archetypes for us so that we could recognize parts of ourselves and understand them better. Their adventures were designed to personify for us our own flaws and beauty. I loved that, and I think maybe our cast of characters are like those zany Olympians, or maybe even like the dress dummy in the store window. We change the clothes, the hair, the backdrop, even the gender, but underneath all that, the dummy. Or, if you will, the archetype.
I do recognize type-cast characters in my little band of miscreants. And yes, their antics address themes that are important to me. I didn’t know this when I started out, but I see it now. “I’ll be tripping over that furniture for as long as I write.” What a cool way to say it. And thank you for such a rich and thought-provoking post.
Hi, Susan:
I wrote a reply earlier but apparently it got swallowed up by the website machinery. So, here goes my second crack.
I think the Pantheon speaks to something deep inside our unconscious minds, whether because of some racial memory at work (the Jungian archetype approach) or simply because we’ve heard these stories — or stories based on these stories — since we were kids.
And I agree that we often, knowingly or not, draw upon them, dressing them up like mannikins in new sets of clothes, with every story we write. I think the trick is to start from whatever deep well of understanding that archetype speaks to, and then ask: who in the real world might personify that? Why?
It’s that back and forth between our unconscious, which seeks out patterns and types, and our conscious which seeks out the unique and individual, that comprises the real work of characterization and storytelling.
Good luck with those miscreants.
David, this is one of the most thoughtful pieces I’ve read on this topic. I try to avoid using archetypes. My characters come from the wellspring of my life experiences. I’ve always thought the key to writing successful characters was to strive for complexity. Develop major characters who are multi-dimensional. Take a stereotype and turn it on its head: the tough guy who is a romantic at heart. Having said that, we must constantly guard against recycling characters with a few tweaks here and there. It can happen subconsciously and we need to spot it when it does. Thanks for sharing your insights on character development.
Thanks, CG.
Yeah, the trick is recognizing it. I didn’t really see the Murchison/Skellenger and Stluka/Rosamar similarities until I’d put them on the page. Kind of embarrassing to admit, frankly. To my credit, I think they stand up to the uniqueness test.
But I could feel that curious similarity in my own imagination or intuition. It’s like a center of gravity inside your mind, this strangely substantial bit of nothingness we call a character. I agree with you the best remedy is to base your characters on real people, though even there the hole inside your memory that that person has come to fill may in fact be an entryway to a type.
This is why I compare working with characters to fingering smoke in THE ART OF CHARACTER. I’m not sure there’s a “right approach.” There’s just that click when the characters takes over and starts to behave on his or her own.
Insightful article. It reminds me of film actors. There are great actors and stars. The stars seem to play variations of the same character over and over again. That’s why I really like Once Upon a Time in the West. Sergio Leone cast Henry Fonda against type as a heartless villain. Your piece got me thinking and in my next book, I may throw my standard heroic character across the protagonist/antagoist line. That ought to be fun.
James, you bring up a very interesting point. I almost brought up the whole issue of real-life type-casting in film and TV by referring to a great article on the subject by Laura Goode in BRIGHT IDEAS, a journal on indie filmmaking. (I’ve written for the magazine as well — Laura’s article followed mine in Volume I, Issue 2 of the magazine.) You can find the article here online: https://www.brightideasmag.com/ideas/a-multiplicity-of-shadows/
But my piece here was already over-long (as Keith Skinner once remarked in a private email: “We’re all a little fond of our own voices”), and I thought that might drag us into the weeds. But it’s a fascinating topic — maybe for another, later piece.
But the subject is worth some thought. Are our inner characters much like Bogart, who comes to us as a type, leaving it up to us to find the Captain Queeg in him.
Interesting approach to character development. My stories are character-driven and generally begin with laying down character arcs. And I do pull from everyday life, from real people I know, observe, or meet briefly in an effort add originality to the complete character. What I struggle with, which may be a subset of you cast of characters issue, is voice. I choose resilient women to tell my stories. They aren’t always brave, or strong, or sure, but they have an edge to them. So, I struggle with showing that edge without being snarky and with an eye to creating an original voice.
Hi, Deborah:
I used to think I started with unique characters as well, until I realized the center of gravity pulling certain characters together, as I have since reflecting on the matter once I recognized the similarity between Murchison and Skellenger, Cass and Shel, etc.
You seem to have found a way to make your characters unique despite the fact they all in some way conform to “resilient with an edge”. How did you go about that?
I just noticed this yesterday as I was working on my WIP, when I saw similarities to the MC in my last book. At first I was shocked. How could I write similar characters and not even realize it? After much reflection I came to realize each woman had enough differences to make them unique. Phew! I guess these two woman are in the forefront of my bank. :-) This post could not have come at a better time. Thank you!
Hi, Sue:
Yeah, kinda caught me unawares, too. But remember there are good reasons the characters are similar: they speak to core values you cherish and need to write about. They speak to something important inside you. Now the task becomes: How do I depict those values in someone different from my last MC?
BTW: One of the ways I find works best for differentiating characters: look for contradictions. How does this character NOT conform to type?
Good luck!
This is an excellent, thought-provoking piece, David – thank you.
I remember encountering that Vidal quote, and it rang true for me – but I was looking at it in terms of the other authors I’ve read, not my own work. But I suspect it applies to me as well, and I think I know where some of those characters come from. For years I proudly maintained that none of my fiction was autobiographical, but in hindsight I realized I borrow very heavily from my past; I just dress things up differently and put familiar people in unfamiliar situations. The funny thing is that I didn’t realize that I was doing it until long after the book was completed.
I’ve spent the last few years studying structure and archetypes, and while I share your antipathy for overly rigid or formulaic writing “rules,” I found a lot of resonance in much of what I studied, particularly in the work of Chris Vogler, Michael Hauge and the late Blake Snyder. But I’m not too worried about creating cookie-cutter characters by following their approaches, because I think we each draw on such personal observations and experiences (or *should* draw on these, if we’re being emotionally honest) that your lone wolf romantic and mine would never be mistaken for each other.
One other aspect that comes into play for somebody who writes as slowly as I do is age. I’m a much different man than the guy who wrote my last book. So I bet the next book will be informed by the many changes and experiences I’ve been through since the last time I typed “the end.”
Thanks again for posting such a great topic for us each to explore!
Hey, Keith:
I didn’t realize Blake Snyder had passed away. I think SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES is one of the most useful writing guides out there.
I also like Vogler and Hauge — and Truby, who’s more similar to Hauge than Vogler.
They key phrase you used, though, was “emotionally honest.” I think that’s the test of whether archetypes and such are being used well or just as devices to crank out the same old same old. We have to write from a place where those ideas matter to us, not as some formulaic freeway to publication.
And yeah, it’s kind of embarrassing sometimes, the degree to which you can’t escape your past — in writing, in relationships, etc. The only recourse is to recognize that, accept it, and dig in. Use it wisely.
Sometimes I wonder if all of writing doesn’t come down to: Resist the obvious, but tell the truth. (Or, in its more commercial rendition: Give the audience what it wants in a way it doesn’t expect.)
Thanks for chiming in. Hope all is grand on your end.
Wonderful insights here, David. Thank you for such a depthy article, with such useful examples.
I agree 100% about Save the Cat; it’s gold, no matter that it’s meant for screenwriters. Blake Snyder’s death was a shock. He’s one of the few people I interviewed over the phone for WU, and he was wise and humble and so gracious.
Michael Hauge is also brilliant. If anyone ever has the opportunity to see him speak in person, please do yourself a favor and go.
Thanks, Therese. That doesn’t surprise me about either Blake Snyder or Michael Hauge, the one’s humility, the other’s brilliance in person.
My wife, Mette, will forever be grateful for your use of “depthy.” (She’s Norwegian, and constantly forms adjectives by adding a “y” to nouns.)
Ha! Well, now we have a word for adjective creation: Mette’ed. Thank her for me.
David, this is a beautiful post. Really. I’m going to have to read it several times to truly appreciate its depth.
For me, each character springs to life as a separate being with a specific look, feel, back story, agenda, etc, and I’ve never thought to run parallels, but will now look for such things.
I suppose we (as writers) have a special connection – a bond one might say – with our characters, and this closeness might make it difficult to stand back and see them in general terms, maybe even fitting into a box, and maybe even similar to other characters that roam the halls of our subconscious.
Way to make me think today, David!
Dee Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT
Hi, Dee:
Trust me, I did elaborate backstory work on all these characters. I made them as unique as I knew how. I just found on reflection that, either because of story demands or my own inner gravitational centers, I’d written variations on a theme.
I do believe that this is because we can’t keep our unconscious minds out of the creative process, and the unconscious looks for (and creates) patterns.
However, I also now realize that certain dramatic situations naturally suggest certain character types. If one character is quiet, deliberate, saturnine, it’s natural to give him someone quicker, mouthy, impulsive as a foil. Enter Felonious Monk and Salty Dog, in one of who knows how many unique incarnations.
But this is a caution as well: Why not use a different type of character as a foil? How about letting the love interest play Salty Dog? How to keep her from just becoming the next Redheaded Reality Check?
These will be the kinds of questions I ask myself from now on with every book.
Thanks for commenting, Dee.
David-
I like the point of this post: we all have our own archetypes and the danger is that they may become our own stereotypes.
Character delineation (making them different from each other) is an important tool to counter that danger. So is inner conflict, which (if done well) keeps characters from being too predictable.
Drawing characters from life certainly helps. Lord, you can’t make up the people we meet, never mind our families.
To me the best tool, though, is not to think of characters as archetypes at all but rather to think of them as people. People have agency. People do weird stuff. People surprise us and themselves. People do things without knowing why.
People are also quirky, idealistic, expedient, generous, selfish, lazy, loving, and a range of things that we often do not get in manuscripts.
Maybe we should create for ourselves a checklist of human qualities then find ways for characters to exhibit, at least once, each item on the list. Then perhaps characters can both be archetypes we recognize and people that defy our expectations.
Great post.
Hi, Don:
Yeah, this post really is centered on recognizing the trap of unconscious self-imitation, as it were, and trying to both accept the reality and reasonableness of why it happens — the unconscious seeks out patterns — and using that recognition to escape the Trap of Type.
I’m a firm believer of thinking of characters as people, not just because I’ve seen too many archetypal characters that are nothing but rehashes, stereotypes, lifeless cardboard cutouts from some cereal box of the mind.
And the qualities you mention bring me back to a response I made to Sue: look for contradictions. Look for ways this character defies type, and is instead capable of doing the unexpected — even the seemingly impossible given the pigeonhole into which she or he is too easily and often confined.
I also believe in quirks, tics, and bad habits as a way to individualize characters.
But even then, I may find my unconscious begins to pull the character toward his narrative brethren, with an undertow that’s all the more fierce if I don’t know it’s there.
Thanks for taking the time to comment. See you in July at CraftFest/ThrillerFest.
This was a fascinating read. I agree that it’s liberating to think about brilliant writers having a limited cast of characters. I’m still writing (revising) my first novel, so I’ll have to see what happens next!
Thanks, M.E. Do yourself a favor and avoid the Beckett route. :-)
Good luck! Happy writing!
Even in my inexperience I can tell that is solid advice. :)
Hi David, This is such a fascinating post. Leave it to Vidal to do a cast count. I feel I have a whole movie crew in my head. A director that aspires to take unexpected turns, a lighting technician who likes shadowy angles and a location manager with a penchant for moody architecture. I’m going to have a meeting with my casting director, and go through her character files, to see if I can get a head count. Thanks for jump-starting my brain this morning.
Hi, Bernadette:
I love that “inner film crew” analogy.
And who hasn’t got a composer of the mind, orchestrating the soundtrack to our books!?
PS – Felonious Monk for the win! Great name!
Thanks, K-Man. Was wondering when someone was going to mention that.
Hey David – I recently received some feedback from an astute beta-reader who pithily identified the thematic similarity of my two main stories and the two lead protagonists of each. At first I was a bit deflated. Here I thought them so very different. But, just as you did, I recognized the challenge. The core of the characters would naturally be the same (in one instance they are actually father and son). What’s interesting is how to make them surprising, and how the results of those surprises change the evolution and resolution of each tale.
I’ll agree with so many others – this is a thought-provoking piece! And the category names are classic. Thanks for making me dig a little deeper today!
Here’s the thing, Vaughn: it’s not necessarily bad your two story threads have similar themes, especially given the father-son element. The challenge will be to tease out how they’re complementary, not identical, and let them serve and reflect each other without being merely repetitious. To be honest, that kinda sounds like fun. Not all rewriting is drudgery. Sometimes a note like that sets off a spark and you go: Of course! Yes! Great!
Happy writing!
I am primarily a short story writer and I really enjoy shining a spotlight on different aspects. Then I started writing bigger books. And yikes, I didn’t realize this cast of character thing until I wrote my second novel, even though one is contemporary and the other historical. Looks like I’ll always write about what it means to have a home, a family, a kitten (or a parrot). It sounds so pedestrian when I write it like that, but my story people are so real to me, so engaging. They take up residence in my head and help me to process big questions about life. Ah, well, I’m having a great time learning to write the bigger story. Thanks for a great post.
Don’t be discouraged, Vijaya. You’re in the same boat as Shakespeare.
David, no, I’d never be trapped in that shallow recycling of character pattern and trait, no, my bumbling-but-good-hearted goof in my first novel isn’t on the same map as my bumbling-but-good-hearted doofus in my second novel. See, one’s a goof and one’s a doofus! And the lead character in an intended series of threaded short stories has some bumbling goofiness too. Hmmm.
But as you point out, those personas are only boxes if we seal the sides tight—each character’s role needn’t be strangled by type, but can breathe all the fuller in working against type. And drenching them in actual experience, as you suggest, draws out the shades, alternate angles and differing possible paths.
Thanks for a great exposition on roles (and the chance for role reversals). And don’t be upset when I borrow your flame-tressed mama to engage with some slick bastards and evil clowns. (Ooh, the makings of a series!)
Tom:
Expect to hear from my lawyers. (They also represent the evil clowns.)
Yeah, it’s only a trap if you pretend your foot isn’t stuck in it.
Thanks for the late-in-the-day chuckle.
David-
Nice thought provoking piece. So, a couple of thoughts…
First, aren’t well all the pantheon? Or, isn’t it us? Since we can never *really* know someone else – I mean, after living together 28 years and then suddenly getting a steak knife in the eye, I think that means maybe you didn’t know that person (or what they were going to do when they reached for the knife) – aren’t our characters really some version of how we perceive things, no matter how much we might try to make it otherwise?
And, otoh (this’d be B) … do series writers bypass this problem by writing about the same cast of characters, for the most part, over and over. And … aren’t they rewarded for that by the readers?
But, maybe those characters over time – and several books – do have time to develop, to mature, to richen (izata word?) and get more deep and complex … so that maybe they’re not the same character, really, at the end of the 10th book as they were in the first.
Also, it seems no one has a problem with musicians working with variations on a theme. And not just jazz or classical – but any number of pop people, you can identify them by their style. And that doesn’t put people off.
I think the only danger may be in using 2-dimensional characters.
But it seems that if you do find an audience, they tend to come back to read something similar – not necessarily the same, though – and a number of good writers, even some best sellers, have figured out how to give that to them.