Polarize Characters, Energize Your Novel
By Kathryn Craft | March 14, 2024 |
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
The email assault continues without rest, its dire warnings and in-your-face messaging delivered in yellow highlighter, handwritten red ink, and ALL CAPS WITH MULTIPLE EXCLAMATION POINTS!!! [Yawn—is it November yet?] I’ve never been more grateful for the phone setting that rejects calls from people who aren’t in my contacts.
But seriously—is a novelist’s life ever truly free of political content? Listen in on some memorable moments I’ve plucked from the last twenty years of my life.
Heard at a recent book club meeting:
When putting forth as our next book club pick Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, I shared from the book description that one of the point-of-view characters lives on “the second moon colony.”
“No.”
I was surprised to be cut off so soon. Typically we are an open-minded group, willing to read books that fall outside our usual fare. Thinking this was simply a call for further convincing, I shared the accolades: over 26,000 reviews that averaged 4.3 stars, starred trade reviews, “Best Book of the Year” nods from sixteen reputable sources, President Obama’s reading list, plenty to chew on and discuss…
“That scares me too much,” my neighbor said. “I can’t think about that kind of future.”
Her admission sent a thrum through a room gone suddenly quiet.
Instead, my neighbor steered us toward the other novel I’d put forth, Z, A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, written by our WU friend Therese Anne Fowler. I suppose my neighbor’s thinking was that the conflict in a historical—which in this case included the financial and psychological struggles of a life in publishing, a woman’s fight to be heard among the men who marginalize her, and the deleterious effects of drinking to excess on health, relationships, and a career—might produce less anxiety, since it had already been resolved.
Hmm.
Heard at a party, the summer of 2016:
“I refuse to talk about anything political.”
That will be a trick, I thought. But I knew as well as the speaker did that her politics would not be particularly popular in our grouping, so I asked, “What would you like to talk about then?”
She said, “I don’t know, the arts.”
Oh boy did that poke a very political bruise for me, and anyone else present whose underpaid work to enhance and preserve our country’s culture—our very humanity—had depended on grants from the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities. With everyone watching their steps, the topic quickly petered out.
“Okay then, pets!”
Talking about fur babies might sound like a subject insulated from political intrigue, but the one and only time I had to go to court to defend my rights was after a neighbor, ignoring leash laws, allowed her German shepherd to run into the street, pick up my cockapoo by the neck, and shake it until he tore his skin. My peace-loving Max could still walk, thank goodness, but he was so afraid to do so I had to carry him up and down hills for more than a half-mile to get home, even as my own arms were shaking. Then my thoughts switched to the time when, thanks to a dating app, my son had finally connected to a woman he really liked, but whose career was ensconced in a city to which he could never move, because its pit bull ban outlawed his ability to keep the beloved dog he’d rescued six years earlier.
When this touchy woman’s next “safe” topic was to ask what books people’s grandkids were reading, I had only one way to honor her ban on political content. I picked up my plate and moved to a different table.
Heard from a developmental editing client in 2008:
“My character is a married lesbian with a learning disability who is running for U.S. president. It’s set in the future. The next president will be decided by reality show.” While a narrower focus on the nature of this protagonist’s core conflict would give the idea more punch, my mind immediately started doing what it should upon hearing a logline: buzzing with anticipated conflict. How would gender conflicts come into play? Was the marriage of this candidate and her wife a secret? Did they have a family, and if so, what kind of price would their children have to pay for the inevitable criticisms of their parents’ lifestyle? How would the writer portray the protagonist as intelligent enough to lead the country, while also delineating the workarounds necessary to transcend her learning disability?
The writer did not address one of those questions, nor did she want to. She was dead-set on evoking a world in which diversity and inclusion were normalized. Without those obstacles to spice up the reality show, readers wouldn’t understand the depth of the protagonist’s desire, or how hard she was willing to work to achieve her goal, or what the stakes were if she couldn’t. These are the most basic elements of story.
Meaning, this writer had no story. The project never went anywhere.
Back in 2008, it seemed ludicrous to choose a president by winning a reality show anyway, I consoled myself. But fast-forward eight years, to 2016—the year of this future she envisioned. How prescient would it have been, if she had been willing to dive into at least one of her character’s core conflicts?
Overheard everywhere in 2024, from both sides of a deeply divided country, in these final months leading up to the presidential election:
**** **** ****
(those are either cuss words or the jangle of tension-filled silence)
But know that what can feel like gasoline on flambé around a family dinner table just might be a vein of gold a novelist can tap for her story.
Dig until you find the polarizing strife
The conflict held within each of the examples I shared above—other than the unrealized political novel, interestingly enough—did not start out as overtly political. But in each instance, my life experience inspired politically charged thoughts. And with them, deep feelings.
I may have chosen to keep the peace by not expressing those feelings in polite company, but writing a novel allows us to pluck such issues from our inner thoughts to create plot.
Take childbirth. Bringing a child forth from her own body is a plot point that is quite literally as old as the human race, and arguably the most deeply personal—but again and again, it becomes a political issue.
Readers are endlessly fascinated by the true nature of motherhood. Eileen Goudge’s 1989 New York Times bestseller, Garden of Lies, did so through baby-switching, and I suspect that plot wasn’t new then. Charlene Carr’s 2023 release, Hold My Girl, updates that plot to the IVF era with switched eggs. Another 2023 release, Jean Kwok’s The Leftover Woman, offers an intercultural take on similar themes.
You can try to write a very intimate look at motherhood, but making that story relevant to today’s female reader will touch on changing expectations of a woman’s role in society, as well as new technologies. Since you’re bound to stray into the political anyway, it behooves you to dig all the way down to the biological, psychological, and spiritual bedrock that has fired up opposing positions in today’s society—and then orchestrate a cast of characters whose beliefs are bound to come into conflict.
If done well, you too might earn a blurb as compelling as the one Shelby Van Pelt (Remarkably Bright Creatures) wrote for Carr’s Hold My Girl, which evokes a true reading experience: “Each fresh twist had me shifting my sympathies until the very end.”
In your novel, extreme differences in perspective can provide what subtler conflicts cannot. The chasm that opens between your characters can expose deeply held morals and values that will make your story seem to matter more. Exploring a chasm’s many sides can give all persuasions of readers someone to relate to in your novel, even as you show the ways that each deeply held belief is relatable. A chasm allows your protagonist to fall into a deeper, darker place, allowing you to show the effort expended as he fights to climb back into the light.
The result just might be a story with, what to my mind, is the perfect trifecta: heart-thumping tension, heart-breaking consequence, and heart-warming resolution. A story that, because it is deeply felt, will also be memorable.
I’ll end on a personal note.
Frankly, I can’t believe I just wrote this post. I used to think I didn’t have a political bone in my body.
Now that I’m a novelist, I know better.
Do you agree that if you dig far enough, every deeply held belief is political? How did that process manifest in your WIP? How have you harnessed polarizing energy in your writing?
Kathryn Craft (she/her) is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks, The Art of Falling and The Far End of Happy. Her forthcoming book, Crafting Story Movement: Techniques to Engage Readers and Drive Your Novel Forward, draws from decades of experience as both a story consultant and a movement specialist/dance critic. Learn more on Kathryn’s website.
[coffee]
Thought-provoking discussion—which always means there’s something right going on. I am stuck, however, on the lost opportunity for the learning disabled lesbian presidential candidate book. It’s a very compelling premise to build a world in which being lesbian or learning disabled or both is not the source of conflict for a character. I love the challenge of considering how a society blind to the many intersections of diversity as we know it would behave … like how would the same evolved society have also decided to elect a president via game show? And how was it a neutral society or a supportive society? Could income equality exist in a place like this and so forth? What rights are leaders elected to protect? What would then be the core conflict of the protagonist in this world?
From my 2024 perspective, being polarizing is a turnoff. Playing between extreme poles, however, is fun—especially because those poles are connected on a continuum.
Thanks for your comment, Serenity. I absolutely agree about the lost novel, which I feel you already developed further than the writer who abandoned it did. Many writers are conflict-averse in real life, but we can’t afford to be so on the page.
Thanks for this wise addition to the discussion about using politics in our fiction, Kathryn. Re your question about whether every deeply held belief is political, I would say that it’s a little more complicated than that. Our deeply held beliefs have been influenced by the structures that formed us: family, social mores, and–yes–our political environment. In turn, our beliefs may put us into conflict with these structures, conflict that can lead us to try to change, say, the political structures. So there is always a political dimension to our beliefs, since they are at least partially formed by politics, and they motivate us to take political action.
To dig a little deeper, are you defining politics solely in the sense of government? There is a political aspect to every relationship because things like power, authority, respect, and willingness to compromise play a role. I remember my social psych classes from college where we analysed the power inherent in even small interactions, such as who extends their hand first for a handshake, who steps aside on a crowded sidewalk. When a tall, heavyset man walks close enough to loom over a shorter woman during a televised debate, that is a political action.
I’ll just add that I have a little sympathy for your book club friend. When I read Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, I had to keep stepping away because it terrified me so much. I could see it coming true in the near future.
Thanks so much for the added dimension you brought to the topic, Barbara, and for suggesting I define further my use of the word “political.” I meant it in the way you use it here—any issue that is socially charged because we feel our ability to live in peace should dictate “correct” behavior, from the small power plays that define a society like personal space and handshakes to the punishable laws to which all are held.
At book club last night I was sharing a story about a time when all my “source figures”—my mom, dad, and aunts and uncles—were sitting on the shore at our lake house, asking me what I’d do with my biology degree after college graduation. I said I wanted to go to med school and become a doctor. Practically as a unit, they all laughed at me. I thought they’d be proud! When I asked why they laughed, my uncle said, “We aren’t professionals. We’re teachers and businessmen.” That decree felt “political” to me—in the society of our family, I would be an outsider. Ultimately, I assimilated. Med school would be hard enough; I couldn’t imagine succeeding without the support of a single member of my family. Luckily, as a writer, I can be anything!
I enjoyed eavesdropping on your interactions! Politics feels inbred for me, though I grew up in a household ruled by my father’s belief that the secret ballot is our most precious freedom. In my current WIP, my protagonist shares my deeply held beliefs; the antagonist believes we are hysterical. Politics exists as an undercurrent, with a lower case p–but definitely influence the plot.
I love the way you put it, Chris: “political with a lower case p.” That was definitely my intent. Not necessarily politics as in campaign tactics, but the ways in which we try to control one another. Thanks for your comment!
So much here, Kathryn, as always. My daily struggle is to read two newspapers (both leaning in the same wrong direction!) and then try to write a blog post or work on bigger projects, while believing that someone will smile or sigh in recognition when my characters think as I do. It has just become harder and harder…yet in the worlds I create, easier and easier. There is also my family…everyone of them thinking as I do. That helps. There is also the beauty of language when I write, lose myself in worlds that I WANT TO LIVE IN. Create characters whose souls are open. My conclusion, and maybe I wandered a bit from your conclusions, is that being a writer helps one to READ with a brain, use words as tools to discernment. Damn, I can go back to college classes and remember when we were all open and eager. That time has passed. Our work might break open a chink in the wall. At the very least it helps ME remember.
Thanks for sharing your process, Beth. But be wary of creating a world you want to live in that’s too comfortable, because it is through conflict that our characters can realistically change, in incremental yet profound ways. People who are closed off can make compelling characters, and characters who live with souls wide open can be in danger for doing so. At least we can take comfort in the fact that at least, in story, we can control the nature of the conflict, instead of the everything-dire 24/7 of our current news cycle, right?
Dear Kathryn:
Two quotes from your post stand out for me:
“But know that what can feel like gasoline on flambé around a family dinner table just might be a vein of gold a novelist can tap for her story.”
Bingo, as Faulkner once remarked.
“In your novel, extreme differences in perspective can provide what subtler conflicts cannot. The chasm that opens between your characters can expose deeply held morals and values that will make your story seem to matter more.”
Boom, as Simone De Beauvoir was known to say.
Politics is polarized, especially in this country right now, because of profound differences in views of the right way to live, what it means to be an American, and the role of power in bringing one’s vision to bear. These speak to the very core of what I call a character’s dream of life: the kind of person they want to be, the way of life they hope to live. But when you thrown in group dynamics (as one must when politics enters the picture), you then have the added potential of conflict not just between opposing groups but within the character’s self-identified group as well.
Obviously, I’ve said plenty about this elsewhere and there’s more on the way. But thank you for noting that what we as novelists mean as “political” is really just the clash of morals, values, and a vision of who has proper authority–and thus has the right to exercise power over others.
Haha—thanks for tying my comments into the great literary tradition, David! I’ve been following your political posts, and was hoping that my decidedly personal remarks would add to, rather than detract from, your more intellectual discourse. This is a topic that’s hard NOT to think about right now! Your last sentence perfectly addresses my hoped-for takeaway—thank you for that. See you at your next post!
Those who openly discourage the discussion of what they perceive as “political” are in themselves exercising a form of political power.
As a former political organizer, lemme tell you–some of the most cutthroat, high-stakes political maneuvering I’ve seen has happened in so-called “non-political” spaces such as toddler indoor park cooperatives, PTAs, and the like. Low-stakes in the overall world, but within that particular bubble, there’s significant impact. And all of it has to happen under a veneer of “nice.” “Non-political.” Meanwhile, the wielders of such demands to be “sweet,” “nice,” and “polite” are really, really skilled at the fine art of knifing an opponent in the back–figuratively, of course (I’m surprised there aren’t more murder mysteries set around PTAs…and no, I’m not writing one because mystery is not my playground and I have no interest in revisiting my experiences of those days).
Political dynamics in the workplace are also one of those things where the person who is loudest about being “nonpolitical” often uses that stance to acquire and wield political power.
Politics is everywhere, including within your own family. It is inherent to how society functions. In any situation where power dynamics come into play, whether between equals or within a dynamic of inequality, you’re going to have political maneuvering.
That said, when someone tells me “I’m not political” I find excuses to drift off elsewhere because that tells me that said person is very likely to be one of the most political, controlling people I’ve ever encountered in their personal life. They’ll have quite strong opinions about the raising of children, the personal morality of friends and family, the general falling-apart of society, or general nitpicking about How Something Should Be Done Correctly (which can range from singing a particular song in choir to dog or horse training, or how to sew a quilt binding)…but oh no, they’ll claim to be non-political, not at all because they aren’t talking about political parties or government….
While being ragingly political.
Joyce, oh my goodness, thank you for this juicy comment, chock full of insight—and stories ideas about the effective use of interpersonal dynamics in story! Thank you for sharing your perspective, which is clearly born of experience and keen observation. I absolutely agree with this: “Politics is everywhere, including within your own family. It is inherent to how society functions. In any situation where power dynamics come into play, whether between equals or within a dynamic of inequality, you’re going to have political maneuvering.”
Kathryn, you’re welcome! I say that all of my books are political, even when they don’t deal with governance…but of course they are.
If ever in doubt about whether politics is personal, write a post about politics and watch for personal responses. When I teach conflict studies, I ask for a show of hands to the question, “who likes to be judged?” and get exactly no one. Second question, “who among you judges others?” and watch the squirm before hands wiggle up just a little. I’m putting a lot of judgement into my characters’ polarizing dialogues, especially the ones who hate being judged.
This is great perspective, Deborah, thanks for sharing your experience. Judgment creates the kind of conflict that, when and if it can be resolved, leads to compassion, which I consider one of fiction’s highest callings.
Kathryn, yes, even the domestic stories or stories with animal characters for children have at their heart an idea I want to explore, whether it’s questioning your parents or confronting your own core values–choosing between two goods, determining which is the higher, or choosing the lesser evil. I love reading and writing stories about moral dilemmas. And of course, they’re all political because we are a body politic. Thanks for a great essay.
I agree—there’s nothing better for a story than a moral dilemma that causes inner turmoil in a protagonist! Digging down to the bedrock at the core of your story exposes that. You go, Vijaya!
Personal experience has shown me that generally when someone claims to be non-political, what they’re saying is that they’re good with the status quo. As someone transgender in the US right now… let’s just say that doesn’t sit well with me.
I write fantasy, so I get the benefit of writing in worlds at a remove from our own, but politics definitely feature prominently in them, both overtly and more subtle. Even setting aside that everything I write will be considered inherently political for always being from the perspective of queer, often disabled and neurodivergent, characters – and the ways these affect how they experience the world, and are treated in it, are not ignored by the narrative.
Thank you for this post, it has reminded me to give more attention to focusing on the division in the ideals at play in what my protagonist and antagonist are pursuing. In the case of my protagonist, to try to and keep their culture from being assimilated by the expansionist country on their borders. For the antagonist to provide leverage to push the assimilating of that culture – the full of his ideals behind this are still a little fuzzy, I know he’s trying to prove himself to his own society (said expansionist country) that he has worth in spite of the parts of him that are presented as lesser by the culture.
An “outsider looking in” is a powerful stance in story, as it has much to offer about our shared humanity. And because this has to do with the group dynamics that create society, you’re right—this perspective will be inherently political. I’m glad you’re throwing your voice into the arena, Dorian, and that you’ll keep digging for the emotional bedrock of your antagonist. Making them relatable will create the best story. Allowing our own outrage to vilify (or villain-ify) an antagonist is like flame-throwing—it feels good in the moment, but the flame will burn out. The constant smolder of relatable, multi-sided conflict, on the other hand, will fuel a novel for much longer.
Excellent post, Kathryn, equally by the thoughtful and thought-provoking comments. I agree, everything is fodder for politics, or for being politicized. Whether it’s polarizing, however, is up to the individuals involved. I think some people use politics to distance themselves from others whose lifestyles and beliefs they find too abhorrent to even think about: e.g., the straight, white conservative male who wouldn’t dream of being seen with the liberal transgender female — and vice versa — for fear of being associated with that person, much less admit they might have something in common. So much safer to vilify the other or pretend she or she doesn’t exist. As writers, we can either help bridge the divide or deepen it.
You pegged the motivation behind the distancing, Christine. It’s just easier to avoid shouting matches such as those I’ve witnessed in my own extended family, as people on opposite sides of an issue (okay, every issue) dig in and pontificate at one another without communicating much at all. Our unspoken understanding is to avoid the tripwires, and when the occasionally politically-charged comment slips out, a hand is reflexively clapped over the mouth by way of acknowledging the need to move around, instead of through, the topic at hand. Polarizing simply to create grounds for such shouting matches would be tiresome in story, where we can do better. But I believe that digging into the psyches of our characters until we identify the differing charges of the motivating factors at play will help us develop useful conflict.
I found this article so helpful. I have written about people and their politics in different ways. My first published novel, a near future story, tackled the complex politics in an independent Wales beset with strange weather that affected people’s mental health. Different characters made different choices that affected their personal relationships. I’ve also written a historical novel about second wave feminists whose children make very different political choices. It seems to me that the important points in such novels are the hard choices that have long lasting effects within emotional relationships. Your article helped me see that even more clearly.
Strange weather that affects mental health—what a great idea to explore, as is the generational shift in your second novel. Thanks for sharing with us, Frances!
I grew up in a very politics-centered household, and I’m an activist, and my mother wrote a book about the Gulf War and traveled to Palestine as a human rights worker. HOWEVER, the one place I don’t like to encounter polarizing politics is my fiction. 🤣 I don’t like to read or write novels that are political. Funnily enough, I find much of my short fiction is political. But longer work, for me, is escapism. Not fluffy escapism, but escapism nonetheless. I avoid politics in novels like the plague. I enjoyed this article and the idea of polarization, though. It’s interesting to think about, and the more political novels will, I think, have the advantage of being taken more seriously and awarded the big prizes.