The Bedrock of Character Development
By Barbara O'Neal | July 27, 2016 |
This morning, I took a walk. An easy couple of miles around the neighborhood to get some oxygen running through my brain and meditate on the hoof, admiring trees (the maple over on Lexington with its vast deep pool of shade, the enormous old willow dripping over the drainage ditch where kids practice breaking collarbones on skateboards) and nodding friendly good mornings to the others on my route, dogs and humans alike. I know all of them now. They ask about Jack in worried tones and I assure them he just needs a shorter walk these days.
I am a walker. I don’t do it because somebody tells me I need to, or that it will be good for my health. I just do, and have done since my grandmother took me with her on walks when I was four. We walked miles, often in the cool evenings, peering in suppertime windows, and ambling over to the drugstore for C-A-N-D-Y. When I’m tired, when I’m jet lagged, when I need to think, when I’m feeling restless, when I want to explore a new city, I head out for a walk. It’s just what I do, part of the bedrock of my nature.
Another thing I do is grow things. If there is six inches of bare soil, I’ll plant flowers in it. If there is an acre, I’ll plant more. I’ve been planting and growing since my mother gave me a tiny bed by the front porch of our new house when I was twelve and I planted bachelor buttons. Which grew. And flowered!
I also write, tell stories, which I’ve been doing since I was five and made up stories to sing because I didn’t yet know how to put words on the page. And I write because I fell in love with books before I can even remember. I have cats, and will always have a cat. Even when I ran away from a too-young marriage and lived in a wretched little apartment to punish myself, I coaxed a pair of feral kittens to come live with me. (I also love dogs, but they came a little later.) Although I’ve only recently taken up painting, I’ve been drawing and shooting photos for as along as I can remember, too–often of cats and flowers and windows into other worlds.
These things give you a picture of who I am, don’t they? What are some of yours? Can you come up with a list of the daily, ordinary things that make up the baseline of your personality?
Now move into the next layers—the sedimentary layer in my life is red sandstone, which underlies my hometown and gives it a blast of color. I choose that particular mineral because I am deeply rooted to this landscape, a third generation native, and very proud of it. I love Colorado and think it is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and unless there was a very good reason, I would not actually live anywhere else. This is a particularity, a place and a passion that sets me apart from other people.
Also in this layer is my pleasure in cooking, creating new dishes—and feeding people. This layer holds my pleasure in tai chi and swimming. Hiking goes here, connected to my love of walking and my adoration of my place which loans itself to such a pursuit. But also here is the wall of postcards collected in my travels. I take particular pride in the in the ones that are far away or odd—Wineglass Bay in Tasmania, Cheddar Village in England. My shell from the Camino de Santiago is there (walking, travel, eating).
What is in your sedimentary layer? What sets you apart from others who share a similar bedrock? Has a particular place shaped you, does it hold you in the hollow of its palm? What hobbies make life more interesting to you, and what grows out of your bedrock?
Topsoil is all the other stuff. The clothes you wear, your taste in music, the genre of books, movies, television you like. The way you drive. I mostly wear easy things–yoga pants and sweaters in the winter, hiking capris and t-shirts in the summer–because gardens, walks, cooking, writing, painting. Comfortable and easily cleaned are the most important elements. What about you? And how does that grow out of the bedrock and sedimentary layers of your life?
Understanding how these layers are formed in ourselves helps us to understand how to build them in our characters. What are the things your character will do no matter what? I have a traumatized young woman in Fierce, who loves the violin and planned to go to Julliard, but her instrument is tied to the incident that gave her PTSD, and she does not play. What she can’t stop is unconsciously fingering the positions of pieces she hears on speakers or the radio. It gives her away, over and over.
What are the sedimentary layers of your main character? How does this layer contrast and compliment the bedrock of his personality (as hiking grows from walking)? My young character is running away by cashing out her college fund and backpacking around the world. She doesn’t care about her appearance, which contrasts with the precise person she was before. She’s a loyal friend, and loves to read and sleeps around. She misses her siblings, but can’t go home.
The topsoil is formed of the things that character questionnaires sometimes ask: what is his favorite color? What food does she love the most? What’s her favorite song, and why? These can be important layering opportunities, although they are shallower points. Whether someone loves or hates kale or loves yellow more than blue are not likely to deepen the character or the plot very much.
Play with these ideas a little, first with yourself, then maybe by pondering a friend or spouse or child. One of my children wanted to argue the constitution from the time he was twelve. It is no great surprise that he became a lawyer who ponders questions of the constitution for a job. That’s bedrock. He’s also a gamer geek who loves Penny Arcade and has been spotted playing Pokemon Go. That’s sedimentary. He is also an animal lover and a vegan who finally started eating meat again when he found a farm he could trust to be humane.
Once you get the hang of the layers by applying the idea to humans you actually know, try it on your characters. I’m working on a pair of friends today and I’m going to see if I can give them more depth and power by applying these principles. In the comments, I’d love to hear you work something out aloud—either with a human (who can remain nameless) or a character.
Don’t be shy! What about yourself? Can you tell us a bedrock something, like my walking and gardens? A layer of sedimentary qualities? A sprinkling of topsoil?
Barbara O’Neal is the author of more than a dozen award-winning, bestselling novels, including the runaway bestseller, When We Believed in Mermaids, which has been published in more than 20 countries and spent many months on the Amazon Charts, as well as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller lists. Barbara lives on the beach in rugged Oregon with her husband, a British endurance athlete who vows he’ll never lose his accent and their zoo of cats and dogs. You can find more information on her newsletter and where to find her on social media at barbaraoneal.com.
Barbara, thanks so much for this post. The superficiality of the questions on most of the lists I’ve seen have made me dismiss them. Knowing whether my character prefers chocolate or vanilla tells me nothing about who she is. But your examination of layers looks truly useful.
I’m a walker, too, Barbara. And a planter of things. And a native of good old New Jersey. But I’ve been obsessed with Scotland since a was about 10, and when I finally went there, I felt like I’d come home. The smells, the colors, the people…it was a great big ahhhh. And yes, I think I could live there. I also love to write about regular people with a passion for justice. I saw the original Robin Hood series as a kid and fell in love with the notion of fellowship, and of a band of merry men (and women) fighting evil. Oh, yes, and sword fighting. We lived outside Boston at the time, in a very green and wet place w/lots of moss, so looking back, I can see how I morphed all this into the kind of person my main character is, and with moody wet green places, of which Scotland has its share. Thanks for diving so deep beneath the surface with this post. I hope the painting is going well! Every time you mention it, it reminds me how much I miss spending my hours with liquid color!!
Sword fighting! What an excellent hobby.
The painting continues to be a source of deep, deep satisfaction, thanks. Who knew?
Thanks for this post. As a newbie, trying to create the plot and characters, this helps and gives me some ideas. I envy you the painting. I’ve always wanted to draw and/or paint, but that is not an ability I possess, unfortunately. I have always loved to color, from a child to adult. I colored before adult coloring books were popular. Now they are, this is how I relax and get rid of stress. It helps! :)
I arrived back from my morning walk and picked up our copy of The Chicago Tribune from the porch to find a banner headline reading, “Clinton Claims Nomination.” And just below this headline is a huge picture of… wait for it… Bill Clinton (on the podium delivering his convention speech). Not a picture of our history-making candidate on the entire front page. What the…? And people wonder why traditional newspapers are going the way of the dinosaurs.
Later, as I’m reading your post, aware of my lingering annoyance over a misogynistic newspaper front page, thinking about my sedimentary layers, I thought of Wonder Woman, natch. Yep, I’m a geek, and over the weekend I was pretty psyched by the release of a new trailer at ComicCon for the upcoming Wonder Woman movie, starring Gal Gadot. The whole thing is pretty awesome, but the line that gave me chills? Steve Trevor says to Diana (about a dangerous mission), “I can’t let you do this.” Her response: “What I do is not up to you.”
The line’s awesomeness is derived from its being so matter-of-fact. It’s not that she’s being defiant or rebellious. She can’t even comprehend the fact that anyone might think she needs permission, let alone protection.
I had this coffee table book as a kid (well before I had a coffee table) called DC Origins. It was all the original stories of all the major DC super heroes. I now recall being fascinated by the Wonder Woman origin story. So I’m thinking about this sedimentary layer of mine. People have speculated that my creation of the Skolani (an all-female warrior sect among the Goths) is derived from my wife, who – by all accounts – is pretty kickass. Although I admit in taking great pleasure back in our boardroom days in watching her outmaneuver (and often make fools of) males who thought to indulge and pander to this pretty little gal playing at vice-president, I can now see the layer is much deeper.
After my mom passed away, I found an old sketchbook of mine, from my early teens. In it there are drawings and scraps of stories, and many of them feature female heroes. One drawing of particular interest is of a Norse warrior-woman, sword hilt rising from over her shoulder, self-assured smirk on her fair face. There can be no doubt, she is Skolani. And it was drawn four decades before they came to life on the page.
I’m unsure of the psychology behind it. I’m sure my mom, who was the first mom among my circle of friends to go out and get a job, was a part of it. I’m sure my dad, who always said my mom was the smartest person he knew, was a part of it. I know my wife is central to it, but in hindsight I can see part of the bedrock of our relationship is entrenched in this deep level of respect, admiration, and trust. One of my goals for my female, and male, characters is to have them be utterly matter-of-fact about one another’s capabilities—for there to be no sexual nuance to mutual respect and admiration.
I can see this is one of the essential truths that informs my stories, and continues to lure me to the page to tell them. How’s that for a morning’s worth of digging? Thanks for the shovel, Barbara.
That’s fantastic, Vaughn. I am so looking forward to the day your world makes its way into the world where I can access it!
I considered drawing psychological conclusions from the examples, but decided to let them stand. It doesn’t matter as much what the real psychology behind our choices are as the way they manifest, and in terms of our characters, what conclusions they come to. We can draw from your very first paragraph that you believe in equality.
(And SERIOUSLY newspaper? Where were the editors?)
Vaughn,
Wonder Woman! I love that you were fascinated by her. What a role model she’s been for me. Have you seen Jill Lepore’s book about her origins? I blogged about it here: https://www.bmorrison.com/the-secret-history-of-wonder-woman-by-jill-lepore/. You can read more about the book here: https://www.powells.com/book/secret-history-of-wonder-woman-9780385354042/1-4
Barbara-
My bedrock is coffee beans and my topsoil is brewed coffee, but I’m not sure that helps me understand myself better. But no matter. The better question today, for me, regards the layers of character.
For me, it’s layers of questions: What does my protagonist think he wants? What does he really want? Then…what does he actually need?
My protagonist has a lot to tell me, but I have things to tell him too. Like me, he thinks he knows himself. But does he? He’s chasing the perfect half-water Americano, maybe even thinking whether it’s brewed of single origin beans, but is that what he actually needs?
What he needs is not press coffee or ethically sourced beans roasted just right, what he really needs is time. To think. To be ready.
For what? Ah, well, that’s what my novel is about. If I can make each of those layers a mystery, make each one matter, then I may have a shot at keeping you reading.
Good post, thanks.
I too am a walker. I use that meditative time to empty my mind and let my characters inside.
One of my writing teachers gave us an excellent exercise. We had one minute to write down everything that was in a character’s pocket or purse. Amazing the amount of detail we knew. And equally amazing was the fact we would never, ever use these details in a story. Just knowing where a character put her keys when she entered her house gave her depth for me. Back to that bedrock thing.
Great post. Thanks for helping other writers see deeper.
I knew someone who used the purse and in her world, the glove box, of characters. Marvelous exercise.
Betty Ashton, your comment made me realize my character would not even have a purse. She’s a farm wife in the early 20th century, and the idea of needing something to carry things around in – or even needing to go to a store to spend money kept in a purse – would not make sense to her at all. I’m thinking about what that means to her character. I certainly know her bedrock (thanks for that insight, Barbara!) but now I’ll give more thought to her other layers.
Intriguing post.
Wow! Thanks so much at sharing this food for thought! This is just what I needed to move along some characters. :)
Barb, what a lovely post about digging deeper into character. Bedrock, sedimentary, topsoil. My 13-yr-old protagonist’s bedrock is the security that comes from having a mother and father who love each other deeply. When they are torn asunder, violently, the personal and political collide. She, who never paid attention to politics, is suddenly very interested in how policies affect families. She’s 13. She’s powerless. She cannot change the world, but the choices she makes will have an impact. She is all about building up the family because she knows it is the bedrock of society. I didn’t know this last bit until I wrote it. Funny, this writing thing … how it clarifies the thinking :) Thank you for being such a terrific help as I revise.
Thanks Barbara. This resonated deeply for me. I remember rocking on my little wooden rocking chair in front of the huge console stereo at the age of 5, singing along to My Fair Lady. Musical theatre still has the power to move me like few other things in life – Hamilton has been a revelation. And I still love my rocking chairs – in fact I still have that little wooden one (and I sat in it or on it in front of the stereo well into high school) sitting in my room at my dad’s house.
The dog stories of Albert Payson Terhune that I read from about the age of 8 on still have the power to bring me to tears. One of the great moment of my life was the day I went to Pompton Lakes, NJ to visit his home. The house was gone and the property was a community park. Even so, it felt familiar as I walked down the driveway, and I knew where Lad was buried from reading the books. I stood at his grave, and the graves of Bruce, Bobby and Jean, and Grey Dawn, Lady, Wolf and the others. He wrote the stories in the early 1900’s, and that day they were as alive to me as the lake and the trees where I stood.
The layers are there in all of our lives – thanks for sharing some of yours.
Carol, those books by Terhune were favorites of mine, too. It was always a toss-up whether I liked the Black Stallion series or the Lassie series the best. Both spoke to my childhood heart in a way that no other books did at the time. So I am sure my bedrock is centered around animals. I now live on Grandma’s Ranch with one horse, one goat, one sheep, one dog and four cats.
HI, Barbara:
I love this approach — so intuitive and natural and capable of really rich and useful insights.
I wish I could comment more intelligently, except I have to finish an article for Jessica Strawser at Writer’s Digest today — on when and why characters should change — and I’m wrapping up preparation for a workshop on “The Character of Crime” that I’m giving tomorrow before the Book Passage Mystery Writer’s Conference, for which I’m co-chair (and where I’ll be doing a class on character with Laurie King).
So — guess whose WU post will be front and center on my mind!
I’m going to print it out and share it with everyone at the conference.
Thanks!
I love your description of the three layers and your use of geological metaphors for them. You’ve set me thinking about change. It’s hard enough to change everyday habits (topsoil); changing bedrock seems almost insurmountable. Though, of course, we can and sometimes do. Thanks for getting my brain buzzing.
This nature lover thanks you for the visual/tactile remarks. I’m trying to construct multi-layered characters so you’ve got me wondering if bedrock is where desire(s) form, percolating up through the sediment to arrive at the topsoil where they find the light of day? I wonder if I’ve included enough bedrock in the novel I’m editing …hmm. That strange noise is the sound of gears turning in my head (or else one tectonic brain plate pushing against another).
I was drawn in by the photo because it’s from my hometown…Winnipeg, Canada! Then I read the rest of the article and have to comment on the bedrock metaphor—on the layers. Yes, we humans have layers and so should our fictional characters. It’s how we relate to the world. I have friends with very different superficial tastes, but our core values are shared and that’s what the friendship is built upon. By the way, I’m a walker, a gardener, a swimmer and friend of dogs and cats. I’m a lot of other things, too, but I think those have withstood the element of time the best.
Hey, thanks for that insight! It’s a wonderful piece.
Sounds like we could walk together.
Barbara,
I am a walker and planter, too. Just a little while ago I was out watering my numerous plants that are wilting in the blaze of the Texas sun, and I thought of something I’d once idly said at a gathering of friends. We were looking ahead to the time when we would have no more kids at home, and I joked that when that time came for me, I didn’t even want a houseplant. I didn’t want anything to depend on me for sustenance. LOL Now I have a myriad of houseplants, potted plants and several garden areas on my little patch of ground in East Texas. So I would hazard a guess that my bedrock is firmly rooted in nature.
The sedimentary layer that sets me apart from other gardeners, is that I just plant what I like, where I like, and don’t have beautiful gardens that some magazine might want to photograph. I couldn’t wait to get out of suburbia so I didn’t have to keep a lawn or have a neighborhood association cite me for the way my flowerbeds look.
This exercise of looking at layers this way was so helpful. I have always shied away from those lists of character likes and dislikes, and now I know why. Thanks so much.