Dig into Your Character’s Taboos
By Kathryn Craft | April 11, 2024 |
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
I am drawn to the things that people won’t talk about. That may be obvious, if you know that my first two novels were about body image and suicide. When was the last time you asked a new mom about her poochy, post-baby abdomen, or what it was like for your neighbor to find her son dead by his own hand? Body-altering, life-changing events happen to us every day that most people just won’t talk about, even though staying mum feeds a churning magma of shame.
Secrets and lies are everywhere in contemporary fiction, and will often drive the entire novel, as David Corbett covered well in a 2022 post. For the purposes of this post, if the protagonist participated in “the thing that shall not be mentioned,” it’s probably more like a shameful secret that someone might lie to cover up.
What I want to look at today is a subtler contribution to characterization—unquestioned taboos passed down through your character’s family or tribe of origin.
Our understanding of what behavior is acceptable in society can come from what we’re told—“No sweetie, we don’t bite our friends”—or, sometimes more powerfully, through what’s never spoken about. If you’d like to try this way of enhancing characterization, look for a taboo relevant to your premise that is specific to the character’s family, as in the examples below. Because it won’t ever be talked about, the character may not even know why it’s taboo; they’ve simply accepted it as forbidden. These silent influences can add shading to a character, impact goal achievement, or dam/damn their inner arc of change.
Love. A man approaching a dock in a motor boat is met by a four year old waving his arms. “Uncle Jim, Uncle Jim, I love you!” The man climbs onto the dock, says hello to the child, then marches up to the boy’s mother and asks why her son would say that to him. She says, “Um, because he loves you? Wild guess.” The uncle harrumphs. “Well. We don’t do that.” What if using the word love causes suspicion in a family member instead of pleasure?
Money. Even though your character’s father was a vice-president of a major company, she had no idea what he earned except that according to her mother, the money didn’t stretch far with five children. This might leave the character clueless about budgeting, saving, and investing in ways that could impact her goal achievement. If her best friend hinted at “how much more money” she was making at her new job, your protagonist might feel prompted to ask for the details her friend longed to spill, but, believing it was crass to talk about money, have to force those words through the involuntary constriction in her throat. What if making money made her feel uncomfortable rather than successful?
Age. At dinner, a girl once asked her favorite aunt how old she was. Her mother cut her a stern look. A long, tense pause ensues. Her aunt finally says, “Old enough to know better.” How might this impact the girl? Would she think that aging is shameful and to be avoided at all cost? Might she be waiting for the day when she knows better?
Emotions. As with many who will not talk about the trauma they’ve suffered, there might be only two prevalent emotions at home: silence and anger. How might this impact a sensitive boy, who perceives the emotional world in many more shades, and cannot stop his tears despite his mother demanding that he do so? Might he see his emotional intelligence as emotional damnation, instead?
Sex. A fourth-grade girl brings her mother a permission slip from school so she can watch a movie about menstruation. “What’s menstruation?” she asks as she hands it over. “Oh you know, when you get your period,” her mother snaps, and signs the form. Actually, she doesn’t know. How might it impact her life to learn about making babies—and how to prevent doing so—out on the streets?
Here’s a creative example of a narrator’s inability to talk about something from Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh.
Way up there near the roof of Go-Down No. 1, Aurora da Gama (PH), at the age of fifteen lay back on pepper sacks, breathed in the hot, spice-laden air, and waited for Abraham. He came to her as a man goes to his doom, trembling but resolute and it is around here that my words run out, so you will not learn from me the bloody details of what happened when she, and then he, and then they, and after that she, and at which he, and in response to that she, and with that, and in addition, and for a while, and then for a long time, and quietly, and noisily, and at the end of their endurance, and at last, and after that, until…phew! Boy! Over and done with!
Interpersonal issues. An only child grows up to be a mother ill-equipped to manage the five children she has after she marries, especially since her husband works long hours supporting them. Her strategy when trouble erupts is to divide and conquer. How might this impact her daughter, when she’s called upon to resolve conflict in her own life?
Mistakes. A boy grew up never realizing that the parents he’s been emulating made mistakes. They certainly never admitted to any. How might this hamper this young man later in life, when an important relationship requires that he make use of the fine art of apology? And might he dismiss as weak an important mentor after the man admits to his own mistakes? How can he leave perfectionism behind in order to allow new awareness and personal growth?
Miscarriage. During treatment for infertility, a woman suffers two miscarriages—but afterward, the mother who sat by her side during both never again mentions what happened, as if she’d done something wrong. One day, her maternal aunt casually tells her, “I hope you’re not like your mother. She had five miscarriages before having you.” What would this character feel first: closer to her aunt than her own mother, who’d held out on her? An infusion of hope that one day she might have a child? Or simply shock that the word “miscarriage” had been spoken aloud?
Homosexuality. Certain family members had been whispered about, sure. But he learned his bachelor uncle was gay from a work colleague who lived on the opposite coast, who just happened to have taken high school biology from his uncle. How might the character feel to learn this intimate detail from someone who claims that “everyone at school” knew?
The rules. As a child, she too often heard, “You should have known better.” While she didn’t dare say it out loud, she always thought, How, exactly? She was willing to please, but could not succeed at home. Might she run away from the constant unexpected punishment? Or might she sign up for as many extracurricular activities as she could so she could stay at school, where the expectations were clearer?
Okay, enough about my family.
While people seem willing to broadcast about anything on social media these days, revealing themselves in private conversation hasn’t gotten any easier. Yet rather than explore the dramatic effects of skirting around the elephant in the room (as Hemingway did masterfully in his short story, Hills Like White Elephants, which you can read here), many manuscripts feature page after page of dialogue in which emotions are thoroughly expressed and dissected. That’s not a bad drafting technique while still getting to know your characters, but only if you’re willing to take words out of their mouths later. For the reader, letting it all hang out on the page is kind of…well, boring.
In story, sometimes the more interesting response to “tell me how you really feel” is “no.”
If you feel your protagonist or their dialogue is falling flat, see if adding an unspoken element might spice up your scene in a more interesting way than the oft-recommended fatal flaw or fear. Adding the right taboo can send your protagonist through life with misguided notions, obstruct their information-gathering, and hold them back from the growth they need.
A taboo kept in the dank basement of a character’s mind molders; your story can bring it into the light and examine its effects. Dig into what your character’s family refuses to talk about and I know, from personal experience, that your readers will thank you for doing so.
What other subjects can you think of that might be taboo in a family? Have you used something like this in your own fiction? If not, might one of these shadings work to help make your protagonist “pop”?
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]
Thanks for this post. My WIP is all about taboos, secrets, and lies, and how they are affecting the present and future of all my characters, and their country.
Sounds like you have a lot to work with in your WIP, Michelle—you clearly know the power of withholding. Thanks for reading!
Excellent post as always, Kathryn. I’ll be adding it to my DEVONThink for times when I’m stumped on character building.
I am also fascinated by the unspoken subjects in a family or the places where conversation shuts down between close friends because the emotions are too much. Particularly when people don’t realize WHY they’re shutting down emotionally.
Your post has lots of good material to consider as we craft our characters to make them more believable.
And, many of these topics would be ways to force characters to confront their taboos. If they’re unwilling to face these topics and why they’re taboo, perhaps they’ll fail to achieve some goal.
Thanks for your kind words, Ruth. I’ve experienced the phenomenon you’re talking about myself—shutting down when the going gets tough without knowing why, and then maybe cracking a joke. We humans are fascinating creatures! A plot that forces a character to face a taboo is one that works, to my taste!
I’m attracted to writing urban fantasy because of the implicit conflict between the so-called real word and all the weirdness that slips into it through the cracks. I’ve also been working with the early brainwashing and conditioning that people have to overcome as they discover who they really are. I have a character whose mother forbids any talk of magic, yet secretly craves it for herself and feels jealous of family members who have it. What’s okay to believe in and what isn’t? And in YA, how much bullying, marginalizing, or downright violence, should one endure in to order to be tru to oneself? Wonderful post, as always, Kathryn. Thank you!
Susan, at first I had planned to pluck out a favorite sentence of yours to spotlight here‚ the one about the character craving the very thing that was not spoken about—but then realized how much I loved every single sentence in your comment. This description makes me want to read your book!
Now that’s twice that you’ve made my day. :)
Kathryn, wonderful post about the many tabboos we have to navigate. And all in the family, too :) When I came to this country at the age of 14, a classmate, one year older than me, took me under her wing to teach me what not to say and do because it seemed that my foot was often in mouth. Some of it funny, but most of it just awkward.
My WIP deals with secrets and lies and tabboos. So there’s a lot of stuff that’s unspoken. And I’ve decided to keep some things ambiguous. Did she or did she not have an affair? What other lies do these people live? I recently read a book that shall remain nameless because there’s so much dialogue between a therapist and kid, it just kills it for me. It is a kid’s book, but kids are smart and don’t need to be told every single thing. I hate it when writers dumb it down for kids. I loved that excerpt of Salman Rushdie. And White Elephants was a story my daughter read in high school. Masterful. Aptly titled too. Thank you, Kathryn.
Vijaya, I love the way you are using unspoken elements in your WIP. I think it takes a certain bravado on the part of a writer not to tie up every single thing. While it may frustrate some readers, it will also help the story continue to resonate within them after they finish the book. Well done! And I’m with you—I think a writer should think long and hard about whether to include therapy, and how they can ensure that it raises more questions than it answers (at length…). I don’t know if you ever saw the movie LIFE ITSELF with Oscar Isaac and Olivia Wilde, but when Isaac’s character kills himself in his therapist’s office, her reaction mirrors the viewers’s shock. That was a good twist. But showing therapy doing what therapy is supposed to do? Meh.
Love this, Kathryn, your examples are excellent, so import to fulfilling story lines. My fatherless MC in my WIP, looking back on the many secrets she grew up with: Ella at a friend’s house, watching the father grab, roughly kiss her friend’s mother…was that rape? Ella using a dictionary. Rape: sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury. Okay, look up sexual intercourse, something about two people’s genitalia. But why would you let anyone besides your mom see your private parts, your genitalia thingies. Weird, scary. Was that why the boys tried to lift the girls’ skirts? Was that why every year, at the same time, Cecile’s rule—you have to stay inside, you have allergies. Cecile’s mom-guilt, making that one day a big deal, making that time period an electric storm that could set their lives on fire…
I love that Ella has no one she can talk to about sexual matters. Sometimes that’s a function of a family of origin, sometimes it’s because the people the character would ask are major players in the behavior that needs to be discussed. Although it occurs to me, depending on how old this character is, that if she needs to and knows to look up rape in the dictionary, she’d look up “genitalia” as well, wouldn’t she?
I absolutely love your column, Kathryn. Always so informative. It’s interesting how one taboo can affect multiple characters in different ways, or impact one character in multiple ways, or all of the above. In my last WIP, my main character’s father was a drunk. At first we think it’s due to the tragic accident that took his arm. He won’t talk about it. But he also won’t talk about his wife, the MC’s mother, who died in childbirth 8 years ago while giving birth to the MC’s little sister. Both these taboos impact the character as she tries to understand her father while dealing with the repercussions of his alcoholism on her family. It’s a major subplot the winds through the story and comes to a head towards the end, greatly affecting the climax.
Aw, Karen, thank you—you’ve made my day! It sounds like you have a good grasp on this technique and are using it to good advantage. It’s interesting, too, in the case of alcoholism which is causing this father problems, because if people knew why, they might feel more sympathetic. Then again, if he let on that he knew why—if he put a name to it—he’d have to address it as well. A lot of story there!
My WIP is going well, yet I’m having difficulty with a sequence leading up the my MC’s Big Mistake, laying the groundwork and answering the reader’s question, “Why?” (Meaning, why would she do that?)
But I can’t talk about it.
Seriously, I don’t know the true, deep answer to the question and what I’m realizing in reading your post today is that my MC doesn’t know either. Buy you’ve given me an idea. What if discovering the the reason for her BM actually becomes a need? How *could* I have done that? Why *did* I cross a line? What was I trying to prove? What taboo was I unconsciously trying to break through?
There can’t be a satisfactory resolution until she knows. Hmm. Could work. I love how your posts always get me thinking, much thanks!
As someone who always seems to be the last to know why I do anything—and who has asked aloud many times, “Why would I do that,” I do think that could work! When my characters hold out on me, I’ve had some luck asking a secondary character, “Why is my protagonist holding out on me?” Then, I journal the answer in the secondary character’s POV. They have less at stake so are often more forthcoming. But then of course, that’s only their perception, and could be a misperception that swings wide of the truth, so… this can be a way of digging through many layers of truth.
I never thought of it ’til I read your wonderful post. What a great technique! It could be a clue to put my protagonist onto the villain’s motive. Thank you so much!
Hi Bob, why not play around with it and see? I hope it reaps the tension you’re looking for!
Excellent post! Makes me think of my own WIP in which a wife discovers a terrible secret about her husband and revenge has unintended consequences. I wonder what taboos they’ve not spoken about? I’m going to have to ask them.
Thanks Marcy! I hope your efforts reap rewards!
Thanks for this perceptive column, Kathryn. I’m always fascinated by secrets and hidden motivations, especially when they are hidden from the person themselves.
One subplot in my WIP has the MC struggling with a version of what you’re describing, something similar to what Benjamin Brinks mentioned. She is well aware of her family’s taboos, rejected them early, and has built her life on her own values (which are the opposite). However, in a stunned moment, she initially reacts in obedience to those early taboos. Then she has to figure out why she did that, and becomes aware of how deeply embedded those early lessons are, despite her rejection of them. The process shakes up her complacency (verging on self-righteousness when it comes to her family) and helps her understand how hard change can be.
Thanks so much for sharing such a great example of the usefulness of this technique, Barbara! You had me from “However, in a stunned moment, she initially reacts in obedience…” all the way to “…helps her understand how hard change can be.”
“Motivations hidden from the characters themselves” is powerful in both life and story, and is one reason why moving forward simply because your subconscious is telling you to do so (as in, “I just think she’d act this way and you should trust me, even though right now I can’t tell you more”) can be a valid way of proceeding in a draft.