Out of Character
By Kathleen McCleary | October 12, 2022 |
Since early May, I have traveled alone to Europe, eaten octopus, walked 130 miles of the Camino de Santiago, gone backpacking in a wilderness area where bears live, ridden an elevator to the top of Seattle’s space needle, taken a two-hour sailboat ride with complete strangers, sat alone at a bar to have a drink, and, believe it or not, gotten my first tattoo.
I tell you all this not because I think I’m all that, but because all these things are, without exception, out of character for me. Elevators terrify me, as do bears, foods with strange textures, traveling in foreign countries alone, and pushing my body to its physical limits. I’m not too crazy about heights either, or about doing things like going to bars or riding on sailboats without a friend or partner or relative along for company and moral support. And yes, I worry inordinately about death and disease so getting a tattoo has always seemed crazy (what if the needles aren’t properly sterilized and I get hepatitis C or MRSA?) You get the idea.
One of the most basic elements of story, obviously, is to put characters into situations that are foreign to them and challenge them in new, previously unimaginable ways. But what about the small moments, the times when your character is faced with eating something strange, entering a new situation for the first time, or doing something that makes them really nervous? Why do they choose to do that? What motivates them? How do they react? How does the experience affect them? How does it affect other choices they make in their lives?
Nothing about my summer of adventure was remotely comparable to Frodo’s journey into Mordor. Yet I did emerge from this summer feeling braver, bolder, more self-assured, and more open to new experiences. I experienced a lot of joy and serendipity, as well as moments of doubt and insecurity and fear. Elevators still terrify me and I probably won’t get another tattoo, but I’m not the same person I was in April. All of this has made me think about how I can challenge the characters in my WIP to act differently, to say “yes” when they’d usually say “no,” or to surprise others (and themselves!) by choosing to say or do something unexpected. Consider:
What small actions might be out of character for your character? Why would they choose to try something different? Going to a bar alone is hardly the stuff of action movies or adventure stories. But it’s not something I’ve done before, so wandering into a bar in downtown Burlington, Vermont, on my own to try a maple bourbon cocktail was challenging for me, an introvert who doesn’t spend a lot of time in bars. I was very aware that most men I know wouldn’t think twice about going to a bar alone, which made me perversely determined to do it. I also really wanted a taste of that maple bourbon cocktail. And I’m old enough to care less about what other people think. What small act of defiance or difference could your character do? And what would motivate them to do that?
What fears hold your character back? Where do those fears come from? What would motivate them to do something that scares them?
I’ve been claustrophobic since I was a child, and I don’t know why. Elevators are my nemesis. I was with a good friend when we visited the Space Needle and even as I bought a ticket and got in line I figured there was no way I was getting on that elevator. But I wanted to. As we approached the doors I searched for the exit ramp. But then I thought about how good I would feel at the top of the Space Needle, how fun it would be to see Seattle from that vantage point, and to share that experience with my friend. I held my breath and got on the elevator. And it was great to visit the top of the Space Needle. I don’t know that I’ll ride elevators with equanimity now, but I’ve done something I never thought I’d do.
What might happen if your character faced down one of their biggest fears? I recently saw an episode of Grey’s Anatomy in which a woman with agoraphobia agrees to leave her house and travel to another country in order to donate her rare blood to a dying child. On the way to the hospital, bad weather rolls in and the car she’s in is involved in a multi-vehicle pile-up. She’s uninjured, but then has to leave the car and walk through carnage to get to an ambulance that will transport her to the hospital where she can provide the needed blood. She steps outside her comfort zone and some of her worst fears come true, and yet she survives them all unscathed. It changes her.
How do you push your characters outside their comfort zones in small ways as well as large ones? What have your characters done that’s out of character? Why did they do it?
Kathleen McCleary is the author of three novels—House and Home, A Simple Thing, and Leaving Haven—and has worked as a bookseller, bartender, and barista (all great jobs for gathering material for fiction). A Simple Thing (HarperCollins 2012) was nominated for the Library of Virginia Literary Awards. She was a journalist for many years before turning to fiction, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, and USA Weekend, as well as HGTV.com, where she was a regular columnist. She taught writing as an adjunct professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and teaches creative writing to kids ages 8-18 as an instructor with Writopia Labs, a non-profit. She also offers college essay coaching (https://thenobleapp.com), because she believes that life is stressful enough and telling stories of any kind should be exciting and fun. When she’s not writing or coaching writing, she looks for any excuse to get out into the woods or mountains or onto a lake. She lives in northern Virginia with her husband and two daughters and Jinx the cat.
[coffee]
As writers it’s so easy to stay in our insular worlds, where our closest relationship is with our computers. I applaud your efforts to step out of your safety zone Kathleen! I too spread my wings a bit this year. It feels necessary to gain new experience to write from. Oh—and you had me at “maple bourbon cocktail”!
Kathryn, you raise the excellent point (which I should have included) that stepping outside our own comfort zones as writers also provides us with an enriched trove of experiences and emotions on which to draw when we write. We’ll have to share a maple bourbon cocktail some time. Thank you.
One of my main characters, an ex-physician, is disabled, and has become a recluse who writes bestsellers from a Sanctuary in New Hampshire surrounded by mountains. In the first volume of my mainstream trilogy, PURGATORY, she allows a request from a talk show host to drag her to New York City for a late night live interview about her disease – which turns out to be shared by her host’s sister – and meets people she would otherwise never know before fleeing home to her mountains, exhausted.
In the second volume, NETHERWORLD, just published, she gives in to a request designed to make it possible for her to finish a novel in India, where she’s always wanted to return – by being available for consultation on the set of a Hollywood/Bollywood collaboration. They don’t actually consult much – the actor she met in NY tells her his Indian costar’s wife considers her a status symbol as a writer for the film, as ‘an American bestselling author.’ She flees home when it becomes too much drama – but she couldn’t make herself turn down the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
In the third volume she will have to push herself out of her comfort zone again – lives depend on it.
Alicia, I love hearing about the ways in which you put your protagonist in beyond-her-comfort-zone situations. I’m also impressed that you’ve established such great motivations to show WHY your character would be willing to stretch herself like that. Both your books sound compelling. I love your comment here. Thanks for posting!
Hi Kathleen. Your list of the new experiences you’ve made for yourself proves that you’re no couch potato or shrinking violet (although I have to say that anyone whose resume includes “bartender” isn’t all that believable when she tells us that sitting down alone on the other side is something major).
As for my characters, confronting risk and tension always comes down to moments of decision. A value or purpose greater than the risk tips the scales. In my short novel Just Bill, the central character is a dog. Bill is terrified of electrical storms. He’s big, but always struggles his way under the master’s bed for protection–and often pees from fear.
At a key moment late in the story, Bill has been given up. He escapes from a dog shelter, just as a tropical storm is beginning. But the dog smells the scent of a nearby golf course. That’s where the Mister’s house is. Desperate to be reunited with his human provider and protector, Bill risks everything to race across a busy street, then through a golf course being shaken by thunder and zapped by lightning strikes. The Mister’s house is sealed behind storm shutters and closed for the season, but Bill takes shelter under a patio table.
Although I once lived on a golf course frequently zapped by lightning, my story is all imagined. My non-human character must choose either to cower, or to risk all to seek out what’s most important to him. In more complicated terms, I see this kind of choosing being faced by my human protagonists.
Hi, Barry. What a wonderful way to put it, that “a value or purpose greater than the risk tips the scales.” That seems to me to be the key to giving your story an emotional truth. Poor Bill! I hope he finds his Mister. It’s also a great point that sometimes the choice to take a risk or not comes down to a spur-of-the-moment decision. Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment.
Kathleen, life is all about growth. When I think back on your early novels, I remember your characters in spaces that were challenging in emotion more than in physical attainments. Maybe I have that wrong, but I have been blessed to read all of your work….Life is always about change. I admire the challenges you have made yourself face. Bravo for everything you have done. I believe my life will continue to be more insular (but who knows) but the challenges I have faced with my husband and his health have made me stretch and grow in that area. To be human, is to be challenged. Now, Beth, get that book published!! Thanks for your post.
Beth, it’s so true that sometimes the biggest challenge is stepping out of an emotional comfort zone, not a physical one. I’m sorry your husband has health challenges that must be difficult for both of you, but it’s true that those kind of challenges force us to grow and change. To me, writing fiction often pushes me outside my comfort zone, especially when I’m writing about characters’ dealing with situations or emotions that are difficult for me. Happy writing, and best wishes on getting that book published soon!
Let’s talk Maple Bourbon cocktails. I had one recently in Austin, TX, in the bar at the ornate Driskill Hotel. I was in town for a writing workshop. The city was buzzing. It always does but it was particularly busy due to TribFest, their annual festival of public policy discussions.
You read that right. People waited in long lines to hear the likes of Pete Buttigieg and Hilary Clinton, though it must be said that the lines were not as long as the one at Stubbs BBQ to hear the band Sex After Cigarettes. The bar at the Driskill was busy too but you could get a table, such is the beauty of drinking in places other than New York or L.A.
Anyway, it was a Maple Bourbon Manhattan. Now, I don’t know how you feel about Manhattan’s. I’m fairly liberal where cocktails are concerned. An Amaro Manhattan doesn’t throw me, though I think Vermouth is still the best secondary liquor. However, the Maple Bourbon Manhattan was…how can I put this…awful. The problem is not only the cloying sweetness of the syrup but the overpowering flavor of maple. Even a branded bourbon could not stand up to it. I haven’t had any variety of maple cocktail, anywhere, that worked.
On the other hand, I spent a valuable hour with a friend catching up and musing about writing and life. For that, it was worth a $19 cocktail that wasn’t memorable. My point is that if a character is going to do something out of character, then there ought to be a secondary outcome that makes the deviation from the norm worthwhile to include.
Good post. Got me thinking.
Okay, the maple bourbon cocktail I had consisted of bourbon, lemon juice, maple syrup, and a dash of angostura bitters. The lemon juice and bitters cut the sweetness of the syrup and, I admit, I love the flavor of maple so would happily consume a wide variety of maple-flavored things. I like your point about a secondary outcome to whatever out-of-character move a character makes. And my cocktail was only $12!
Benjamin, though I love sugar, I’m not much for overly sweet cocktails either, though Demerara syrup is good in an Old Fashioned. As for amaro in Manhattans, have the best of both worlds: a variant of a Black Manhattan. So, a whiskey that’s least 100 or more proof (Old Forester 1920 bourbon or maybe WhistlePig 10-year-old rye), Cocchi vermouth and Amaro (maybe Cynar or Montenegro) in 1/1/1 proportions, w/bitters and cherry. I love making and drinking cocktails, so I had to comment.
Kathleen, I admire your intrepidity in stepping (or even jumping) out of your comfort zone. I have a basket of fears and anxieties, but I often push them aside to travel to unusual places, meet locals, and try—and try to like—different foods. I don’t have a problem with heights and tattoos (Mark Twain comfortably smokes a stogie on my bicep), but getting stuck in an elevator—panic!
Fine notion to expose characters to situations, minor or major, that challenge them. Some could be surprised if they act with aplomb when forced into discomfort, and later show resolve in a bigger circumstance, or some might crumple under expected internal emotional stress, and be more likely to withdraw in even less pressing situations later, both enough to move a plot forward, and perhaps set up a relevant denouement. Thanks for the post (and I’m jealous of your Camino jaunt).
What I especially love about your post is the reminder that stepping outside one’s habits/safety zone doesn’t have to be something huge and dramatic . Growth, whether for us or our characters, consists of small moments. As writers, if we want our protagonist to take a giant leap away from comfort (and thus to change or fulfill something), we have to build up to that by having her do small things first. Just like in “real life!”
Thanks, Barbara. Yes, I agree that it’s doing the small things that can lead to the big leaps. That is a key point especially in writing our characters–everything has to have the ring of emotional truth, and if we take them from A to Z without some smaller leaps along the way, we lose believability. Thank you for your comment!
Hi Kathleen: Daunting regimen. Good for you — with an excellent message for us all.
Interestingly, your piece landed in my Inbox on the same day a post from a writer and academic objecting to the firing of a NYU chemistry professor because students claimed his classes were too hard. The thrust of the writer’s argument was that difficult work forces us not just to hone our skills but to face our limitations, obliging us to realize we may be striving something simply beyond our talent level. It created a bit of whiplash reading your piece, about overcoming limitations, and his about accepting them, but there’s truth in both positions, and it really has me thinking about this issue from both sides.
In particular, here are his concluding remarks:
“[E]ven if the university made all engineering classes artificially easy, eventually our graduates would find themselves in a job market that would be unforgiving of their lack of ability, or in jobs where they would be destined to fail because of the things they could not do. You can kick the can further and further down the road, but sooner or later, ability will out, and not everybody has ability.
“That is a fact that all of us must come to learn in time. I prefer the upfront mercy of weed-out classes to the long-term cruelty of letting students chase dreams that will ultimately go unfulfilled. We know what it looks like in artistic fields with no gatekeepers—would-be actors and screenwriters and musicians and novelists who hang on too long, never being gently but firmly told that they don’t have what it takes. They therefore never have any reason to let go of unlikely dreams and build more stable and financially rewarding lives.
“When I attempted to make myself into a computational linguist, I was both the square peg and the hammer. And what I found in time was that I could not force myself into the round hole of my ambitions. It was a tough lesson, one that involved dozens of hours of work that were misguided—misguided, but not wasted, as I did indeed learn a special lesson about who and what I was not.” {If you’re interested, here’s a link to the essay: https://www.persuasion.community/p/learning-from-our-limits?publication_id=61579&post_id=77772343&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I imagine I’m not the only one whose neck hairs tingled at that remark about “would be actors and screenwriters and musicians and novelists who hang on too long, never being gently but firmly told that they don’t have what it takes.” There is so much to unpack in that statement I may need an entire post of my own to do it (not this Friday’s though — already written), especially the conflation of the arts and the hard sciences in terms of “what it takes” and “unlikely dreams.”
But your post makes clear that many of our seeming limitations are self-imposed, and can indeed be overcome by courage and determination — and that such an awareness translates to our characters in obvious ways. (I especially like your remark out the small resistances, like eating strange foods, that can bring a character to life. I reminded me of the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird when one of the poorer neighbors’ children shares dinner with Scout’s family, and he begins by pouring molasses over everything.)
Okay, enough, Clearly you kicked my mind into gear. Thanks.
I’m clicking over to read that post, because I’m intrigued. Like you said, I’m thinking about both sides. On the one hand, I see his point, about whether many people might be better off switching gears. On the other hand, having just read (so far) the snippet you shared here, it seems like his arguments are grounded in a fixed mindset (vs a growth mindset) which as we know, can become a self-fulfilling and self-limiting prophecy.
David–your comment does some kicking of its own, at least for me. It has to do with years of teaching great books, particularly, great works of fiction, poetry and drama. The effect was to obscure from view my actual strengths as a writer, leading to efforts to emulate greatness that is out of reach. Admiration versus a real-world perception of what is and can be done = not an easy ask for an old college-teacher type to make of himself. I know I’m not alone. I’ve read a few howler efforts stillborn from the word processors of people with my background.
Terrific, thought-provoking comment, David. Thank you! There’s a lot to unpack here (and I hope you do write an entire post about it). I read the column you linked to. It’s true that not everyone is good at everything, and one of life’s hardest lessons is accepting that. But you can accept that you’re not great at something and still love it, still do it for the sheer joy of the experience. It made me think of a terrific teacher my daughter had in high school. My daughter wanted to take an advanced chemistry class after taking an intro class. Math does not come intuitively to my daughter. The teacher told her that the advanced chemistry class involved a lot of math that would be challenging for her, and that she’d be unlikely to do better than get a “C” in the course. But she ALSO told her that she had a curious, lively mind and that she would be an asset to the class and would learn and would likely enjoy it. All of which proved to be true (including the “C.”) As you say, the point sometimes isn’t stretching ourselves or our characters outside of comfort zones, sometimes it’s facing that that thing we yearn for will never be ours, but to enjoy the pursuit anyway. Excellent comments!
Kathryn, how wonderful that you are having new adventures! Although my life is small (I only do 4-5 things) both by necessity and by choice, I know how important it is to push myself out of my comfort zone to grow in virtue. And so do my story people (also due to necessity). In my historical, my MC forces herself to get help (she has to swallow her pride first). Even though she is humiliated, help comes from an unexpected source, which she wouldn’t have received had she not gone there in the first place. Thanks for a lovely post and helping me think about the ways in which I need to grow too.
I so appreciate your comment, Vijaya, and love hearing about how you’ve handled this in your historical novel. Yes, sometimes the boldest, most daring thing someone can do is to admit they need help and ask for it. What a wonderful insight! Thank you.
I like your suggestions for how to think about pushing our characters — and haha, I’m so intrigued about what led you to push yourself in so many directions these past few months! Seems like there is probably a good story there. :)
Thanks, Kristan. And you’re right, there are a lot of factors that converged to launch me into my summer of daring (for me) activities. I hope to put many of them into the novel I’m currently working on. I’m glad the column resonated for you.
I’m loving your blog, Kathleen, raising very useful questions to improve our writing. I was thinking how these ideas today apply to my character, Ben, a socially awkward teenager with self-esteem issues. Raised in a painfully dysfunctional family, he accidentally kills his abusive stepfather, then tortures himself with guilt and fear of discovery. He hides his involvement for a long time but is finally motivated to confess because his beloved late grandmother planted in him a moral idea–to be honest, and to protect his little sister, who was still vulnerable to their toxic mother. Big twist at the end in how the system responds.
Congratulations! For what you dared and then did, I should nominate you for the Congressional Medal of something. What a list of accomplishments! And in six months!
Of course, the medal won’t be as rewarding as the experiences, what you learned, what you learned about you, and about how to improve your writing. Maybe I’ll skip nominating you; I’ll simply put what I’ve learned from this wonderful post to work in my writing. Thank you, Kathleen.
Thank you so much, Bob. I did learn more about myself, my writing, and my place in the world this year than in any other previous time of my life, which is just one of the many terrific things about getting a little older. I’m so glad you found something useful here for your own writing, and thank you for your kind words!