C. Aubrey Hall's Blog, page 33

TIME TRAP #2: SHOWDOWN

Announcement:  the second installment in the TIME TRAP series by my old pseudonym Sean Dalton is now live on Kindle. Am I proud? You betcha! As proud as the day the book was first published by Ace Books and appeared on a bookstore shelf.

Under the Sean Dalton name, I wrote six TIME TRAP novels altogether.  This second book is a Western, set in 1887 New Mexico. It’s called SHOWDOWN. Once again, the protagonist Noel Kedran finds himself reluctantly involved in the problems of people who could affect the future. The showdown comes between Noel and his evil twin Leon, who’s as determined to destroy the future as Noel is to save it.

Twenty years ago, when I first wrote SHOWDOWN, I was heavily influenced by my love for the southern New Mexico desert near the U.S./Mexico border. I drew on the dialect and colorful expressions of my grandfather, who began working as a cowboy on the famous Ladder Ranch when he was a teenager. He grew up in the wild days of WWI, Pancho Villa raids, and Prohibition. Later, my grandfather acquired his own ranch and spent his life as a cattleman. I didn’t want to set the book in the early 20th century, however. I wanted to deal with a far more dangerous era, before NM statehood, before the Apaches were confined to reservations.

The six TIME TRAP books were written during a two-year span, with deadlines falling every four months. That’s not much time to plot, research, write a rough draft, and polish. Each volume is only 70,000 words, designed to be fast-paced and filled with adventure.

Presently, I’m rather slow getting the old backlist converted into electronic editions, but to paraphrase Mr. Spock in one of the better STAR TREK television episodes (“City on the Edge of Forever”), I’m dealing with “stone knives and bearskins.” The TIME TRAP novels were written originally on an elderly IBM computer with dual floppy disk drives and only 64K of operating memory, exactly enough to boot the machine when I switched it on. At the time, I couldn’t afford a new computer and so I worked daily with the prospect of the motherboard failing at any minute. Despite my IT consultant’s dire warnings, the motherboard held up just fine.

Now, because I have no electronic version of the manuscript, creating an e-book involves cutting the spine off a physical copy (something someone else has to do for me as I can’t bring myself to decapitate my own novel), running the loose pages through a scanner, converting the gobbleygook result into first Acrobat and then a Word document, carefully proofing the sometimes bizarre errors created by the scan, and then formatting the whole thing for uploading to a Kindle version.

Yeah, there are people I could hire to take care of all this for me. But I’m a novelist of the old school. It’s my baby. My name–in this case, my pseudonym–is on the cover, and I aim to make sure it gets all the care and attention I can give it. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect. I’m haunted by the prospect of having overlooked some word with the letter “h” converted by the scanner into the letter “b.” Or vice versa. So I pull favors, and borrow access to scanners, and pull more favors, and thus far I’ve been assisted by a wonderful group of friends willing to share their technical expertise.

My goal is to get #3 up much more quickly than SHOWDOWN, and then to proceed until all of TIME TRAP is up. After that, I’ll tackle the other Sean Dalton series, one that’s pure space opera all the way. This project has to be accomplished between new books and additional obligations, but slowly and surely it’s getting done.

One other thing … please accept my apologies for the irregular posts lately. I’m in my sixth week of coping with walking pneumonia. It’s proving to be much harder to shake off than I expected, but I’m getting there! As the misery abates, my brain fog is clearing. Probably due to breathing better.

Meanwhile, I hope all of you found something to be thankful for on Thanksgiving Day. I had my father with me, and SHOWDOWN was finally proofed and ready to upload. What more could a writer ask for?

Other than a new book contract, perhaps? 

Making the Cut

Are you a lean writer, never wasting words, able to bring your rough-draft manuscript in on length as precisely as a chopper pilot landing a Huey in the Vietnam jungle?

Or are you a florid, verbose writer, drunk on the wonder and shape and sound of words, seeking the most baroque imagery and the intense flavor of every metaphor you can find? Are you never able to meet assigned length? Do you, after the sublime joy of creation, have to butcher your manuscript to make it fit?

Perhaps you’re somewhere in between these extremes, the ordinary writer with good ideas that’s striving to convey them effectively via the written word.

However, we all come to a point where we’re required to cut our manuscript. My first novel sale, by the way, was contingent on my cutting the manuscript in half.

So … How is it done? How should it be done?

(No, shortening your story by deleting the second space after each sentence period is NOT how you do it.)

You begin by determining the following:

Do you need to make limited cuts or major cuts?

Limited cuts:

Sometimes known in the business as tightening, limited cutting involves combing the manuscript for what’s least important. Passages of description should be shortened. Rambling sentences should be trimmed or cut. Unimportant dialogue that’s not advancing the story should go. Unnecessary adjectives and adverbs likewise. Ask yourself what you would delete if you were paying by the word for publication.

Tightening should eliminate 300-500 words from a short story and maybe 1,000-2,000 words from a long novel. Consider it a painless tidying process.

Major cuts:

This can be both painful and challenging. You should again start with passages of description and explanation. Shorten them as much as possible. You should delete scenes that aren’t advancing the story. The least important character(s) should be removed from the plot. The least important subplot should be removed. Any book chapter that’s simply self-indulgent or a set-piece needs to go.

Always begin with the most conservative cuts and don’t remove parts of story unless length requirements force you to. Understand that the fabric of your story has been torn and will need to be rewoven. That means rewriting some scenes and transitions to smooth things out.

It’s important to keep your chin up during a major cut. You may feel like you’re tearing out your heart. You may feel resentful of having to remove a chapter that took weeks to research. Get over it. Remember that you should preserve the emotions of your characters and jettison the facts that you’ve dug up. Fiction is about your character’s heart, after all.

However agonizing the revision process may be, maintain your perspective. In a few months, no one but you will ever know what’s missing from your story. Meanwhile, you have a publication! Be proud of it.

If you absolutely love what you’ve had to remove, then save it for a different story.

Good luck.

Tricking the Trap

I was asked recently about how to get a character out of a tough spot without contrivance or dragging the reasoning process on forever.

Pyotr Protagoniski is trapped on a narrow rock ledge halfway up a cliff. His back is pressed to the rock face. His feet are struggling for purchase on the rain-slick stones. His fingers are digging desperately for any projecting root to cling to or hold he can find. Wind and rain are lashing him. Above him, a helicopter hovers, and a sniper is leaning out with a high-powered rifle trained on him. Below, a squadron of mercenaries gather at the base of the cliff, ready to swarm up in pursuit.

Because of the high degree of physical danger, Pyotr doesn’t need to think much about what he should do next. Survival is obviously his goal. Depending on his personality, he may be experiencing terror or he may be fighting back panic in order to keep his wits. He may be even as cool as James Bond.

He should have few options available: he can escape or he can surrender or he can fight.

He needs to weigh those options briefly in an internalization. How can he escape? Does he have a para-sail device in his pocket that he can whip out and jump off the cliff with? If he goes for this option, how likely is it that the sniper will shoot a hole in his sail and send him plummeting to certain death? Is he able to gauge wind velocity and use the worsening weather conditions to evade the sniper?

Can he throw something that might damage the chopper blades? Does he have a weapon? Even so, if he fights he’ll probably be killed in the crossfire between his enemies.

If he surrenders, will they kill him or take him prisoner?

If you can narrow the options down to two instead of three, all the better! Weighing options is basically letting the character acknowledge the risks each one entails and deciding whether those risks are acceptable or too high.

A sentence or two examining each option is sufficient. Then the opponents should close in, and Pyotr is forced to decide and take action.

The story hasn’t been slowed down to a crawl, yet the illusion is established that the character gave the situation some consideration. His reasons should then make sense to the reader.

As for that para-sail device, the only way for Pyotr to have it without contrivance is to plant it in the story earlier. Maybe he tucks it impatiently in his pocket before he starts out that day.

One of the beloved traditions of a Bond film is that there’s always a scene where Q introduces Bond to his equipment. The audience knows that every gadget will be used later. A running joke is Bond’s impatience with having things explained to him while Q drones seriously on. The audience is on Bond’s side, eager to see the cool gizmos and aware that Bond will use them in far more creative ways than Q could ever imagine.

What works for the James Bond franchise as a tongue-in-cheek play on the technique of planting probably isn’t something that the rest of us can copy. Think instead of your own clever way to plant a means of success for your protagonist.

Don’t Warm Up

How do you launch your story?

Do you think it begins with the first word you write on page one?

Do you think it begins when the protagonist is thoroughly introduced to readers?

Do you think it begins when trouble appears, cloudlike, on the protagonist’s horizon?

Or, do you just start typing and hope for the best?

Many years ago, when I was a teenager in Driver’s Ed., my driving instructor tried to teach us to merge and turn our vehicles more assertively by saying, “Hit that car! Try to hit that car! Move!”

I don’t think it was an effective way to teach tentative teens. I understood what he was trying to do to us psychologically, but the concept of intentional collision so alarmed me that I tended to freeze up rather than mash down the accelerator.

Now, as I teach my students how to get their stories moving, I experience frustration similar to what my driving instructor must have gone through.

Start the story on page one!

Make your words count. Make your character introduction count. Get something happening that is pertinent to the plot and start advancing it.

Know what your protagonist wants on page one!

Most writers dawdle in the opening when they haven’t a clue of what their main character’s goal is. You can’t arrive if you don’t know where you’re going.

Make sure your protagonist is in trouble on page one!

What are you waiting for? An invitation? Student writers meet with me all the time to justify why nothing is happening, storywise, for the first eleven pages. “There’s all this background the reader needs to understand.”

Readers don’t need to understand anything except what’s happening right now!

In other words, when I pick up a book to read, I don’t care how the protagonist came to be trapped in a dead-end canyon with hostile mutants closing in. I just want to see if the protagonist is going to find a weapon and survive the encounter.

The back story can be explained later. Much later. Opening with an info dump means Wally Writer is infatuated with his little story world but hasn’t gotten around yet to plotting. Readers seldom have patience to wait while Wally pulls his act together.

It’s like asking readers to read a rough draft instead of the polished version.

Bring in an antagonist fast.

“Oh no!” my student writer protests. “I want the reveal to be a surprise later.”

My response is usually, “Why?”

What are readers to do in the meantime, waiting for the big plot twist? Probably they’re going to read someone else like Dick Francis, or John D. MacDonald, or Agatha Christie, or Robert Crais.

I’m not saying that you mustn’t conceal some shadowy villains from being identified, but they need to be present. (Even J.K. Rowling injects Voldemort early on.)

Story trouble and conflict need to come from a source. They don’t just drop from the sky as random bad luck. The quicker an opponent appears–say, no later than page two–the quicker your story will get on track . . . and stay there.

What Is There to Say?

What kind of dialogue are you assigning to your characters?

The snappy kind that zings back and forth?

The erudite, intellectual kind that calls forth rolling periods of rhetoric?

The mundane chat of reality?

Maybe you’re using a combination of the three, depending on the design of your characters.

Or possibly you aren’t sure what to do with dialogue–let alone how to punctuate it–so you’re relying instead on narrative and description to carry your tale forward.

Commercial fiction–the kind that I write–relies heavily on dialogue between characters. I was trained to set up fiction scenes to be a combination of dramatic action and dialogue. Doing so allows the story to advance and keeps the pacing quick.

An important thing to remember about dialogue is that it’s in the story to either display character personality, share reaction from a non-viewpoint character, or heighten the conflict. Any of those three purposes results in story advancement.

The worst kind of dialogue is aimless chatter between two characters in agreement, where they say nothing but social amenities. I can get that drivel at any time in real life. I want my fiction to be heading somewhere to deal with something that matters!

It helps if you have what is known as an “ear” for dialogue. Are you born with that talent? Maybe. Can you develop that skill? Sure you can.

How?

Listen to the best dialogue in the best films. Shut your eyes in front of your television and just listen. Don’t watch. (Ideally you should view the movie in its entirety first before you try this exercise.) What makes sense? What doesn’t? Start the track over and listen again.

This kind of listening exercise is hindered a bit by actor voice inflection and the soundtrack, but you can overcome such distractions.

It’s helpful if you can read the script as you listen.

Pick the films carefully. I recommend the classic movies–the old b/w ones–because many of them featured such strong writing. Screwball comedies such as Bringing Up Baby or His Girl Friday were pioneers of certain types of dialogue. I believe His Girl Friday is the first film to allow characters to talk over each other. Bringing Up Baby pushed the speed of delivery.

Another, possibly less famous, film is Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three. It was the movie that drove James Cagney into retirement. One of the scenes requires Cagney’s character to speak extremely rapidly as he issues orders to solve the mess he’s in. Take after take forced Cagney to talk faster and faster, until he was exhausted. The effect onscreen is hilarious.

Any Billy Wilder film is going to feature superb dialogue. Another master is Preston Sturges. I’m sure you can think of an entire string of favorite movies that you admire.

Beyond listening, you should also develop your “ear” by reading good dialogue in novels. If you’re going to write prose, you have to focus on that medium and observe how writers get inflections and tone of voice across with words alone.

A great deal of it has to do with the character’s vocabulary. Other factors include the rhythm of the sentences, their cadence. Are they clipped and staccato? Are they drawling, slow, and loquacious?

Compare the varying speech patterns among the cast of Key Largo. Again, part of this has to do with the actors, but you can adapt those rhythms to your own passages.

Look at the stripped dialogue of a writer like James Cain. It’s as naked as a bare wire suspending a light bulb from the ceiling. It gets the story across in a raw, almost brutal kind of way.

Maybe you’re writing a romantic story instead. How tenderly, then, can your characters converse with each other?

Or, if you’re into urban fantasy, can your characters achieve the snarky sarcasm of a Jim Butcher protagonist?

Enjoy mysteries? Agatha Christie’s stories are almost entirely dialogue.

To quote one of the best movie lines ever (in Singing in the Rain when Lena Lamont proclaims in her varnish-stripping voice): “Well, of course we talk! Don’t everybody?”

Hitting the Iceberg

Character design involves an entire plethora of details and construction, including background development. Where many writers run aground is regarding how much background to devise and include.

Hemingway’s famous Iceberg Quote advises using only ten percent of what you know about a character in your story. The other ninety percent should be reserved for your knowledge base alone.

However, it’s easy to crash into that iceberg rule after you’ve worked so hard to round out a character.

How, you may ask, do I know what to use and what to leave out?

The only answer I can provide is, “It depends.”

What kind of story are you writing?

How long is it? A short story or a novel?

How complex a character are you designing?

What story role will this individual play? Protagonist? Antagonist? Sidekick, etc.?

Is background motivation necessary to advance the plot?

John Grisham’s breakout novel, THE FIRM, provides no background on the protagonist Mitch other than a couple of sentences about Mitch’s brother serving prison time. Background isn’t necessary here because the book doesn’t need Mitch’s past. He isn’t motivated by what’s happened to him before the story opens. Instead, the novel focuses on the mystery of what’s really happening in this law firm where Mitch now works.

In contrast, the Dick Francis mystery, ODDS AGAINST, features a protagonist whose past is doled out in bits from start to finish. Sid’s background is important because it feeds his motivation through the ongoing plotline. Francis is careful, however, to avoid info-dumps and never stalls the story advancement to indulge in them.

The two novels demonstrate how wide background material can range.

Research: Sinking or Soaking

When I was a college student, I was very fortunate to have two superb writing teachers, Jack Bickham and Robert L. Duncan. One of the wisest pieces of advice that Bob gave to me was regarding research.

At the time, I was working on a historical novel set in 1797 England. I was juggling plot, characters, and setting in a scramble to turn in my weekly assignments on time. (This was back in the Dark Ages of writing, before the invention of the Internet or personal computers, when writers shivered in garrets with snow falling on their quill pens.)

Bob told me, “Write the story first and then research it.”

It took a huge burden off my shoulders. I can still recall my sense of relief. Without the obligation to triple-check every detail as I was creating the rough draft, I could focus my attention on my characters and plot. The story went more smoothly, and once the draft was completed, I combed through it and looked up the information I needed.

Granted, at the time a lot of information simply wasn’t available to me because I lacked access to certain resource material. I was in greater danger of losing writing time to the sheer frustration of having to search and search and search. Today, writers have a wealth of material available right at their fingertips. It is indeed a different world.

However, thanks to the ease and convenience of using the Internet, writers have to be more careful than ever. While I find a small amount of early information gathering essential for idea development–picking up facts here and there while mulling over protagonist design and building the setting–it can be tempting to start intensive research during the planning stage.

Gathering a little, just to gain the atmosphere or the feel of what you have in mind, is letting the information soak.

The danger lies with overdoing preliminary research. Before you know it, you’ve been sucked into the whirlpool of too much information. You will sink.

Instead of weighing plot options, you’re weighing how many of these cool events or facts you can wedge into the storyline. Will this result in a better plot? No!

Another danger lies in researching as you go. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t look up something briefly or double-check the direction of the tide at 6 p.m. in Seattle if it has a direct bearing on your murder plot, but if you aren’t careful your rough draft will start to skew off course because you want to fit in a scene written around something you’ve learned.

Instead, stick with your outline. Let the fact-checking wait for draft #2. If you’ve made an error and have to rewrite a page or two to correct the goof, that’s easy to do.

But if you twist your story to fit the research, you may find yourself deleting 30,000 words from a 90,000-word manuscript–simply because you’ve written a set piece that doesn’t have anything to do with the actual story. That kind of cut is not only painful but a huge time waster as well.

As Bob explained to me, “Until you’ve written the rough draft, you won’t know exactly what you need to look up.”

Sage advice, indeed.

In Search of Villains

Why is it so hard to find a truly bad guy (or gal)? In our efforts to render multi-dimensional characters, have we gone too far down the road of understanding and/or excusing wrong behavior?

Fiction needs conflict in order to test the protagonist and advance the story from its opening to its closure.

Conflict comes from the antagonist. For years now, I’ve been carefully using the term antagonist most of the time because I wanted to convey to my students that the opponent in a scene need not be Snidely Whiplash.

However, I’ve grown weary of that namby-pamby approach. What I’m looking for is a well-designed villain, someone who’s evil and intent on harming or thwarting the protagonist.

Serial killers qualify, but they’ve outworn their welcome. Let’s get over the psychotic insanity and find a motivation that’s a little more clever, shall we?

How can a villain harm an individual? Let me count the ways ….

Embezzlement? Blackmail? Ruin? Identity theft? Robbery? Abduction? Emotional slavery? Abuse? Bullying?

On the surface, embezzlement seems rather tame. A bit dusty. Certainly dry.

But is it? It was, if you recall, the underlying motivation for the villain in the film GHOST. Patrick Swayze’s best friend electronically transferred a few million and got himself in trouble.

John Sandford’s novel, BROKEN PREY, features a trio of geeks that electronically drain the bank account of a powerful Mexican drug cartel.

Real-life crook Bernie Madoff siphoned off the pensions of so many people who are now facing uncertain futures and impoverished retirements.

This year, I assumed management of one of my father’s business accounts. It only took a quick comparison of my checkbook balance versus his to show me how easily a person in financial trouble could stumble down the road of temptation.

Embezzlement is more than taking someone’s money. It breaks trust as well, and that hurt can stab deep.

Blackmail? Oh, tosh! No one can be blackmailed these days. Modern society no longer deals with guilt or its sister, shame. People behave as they please. All kinds of indiscretions float through Facebook, and even a princely scandal fades fast.

There is, however, emotional blackmail. One family member coercing another within the entangled webs of dysfunctional families. A wealthy, elderly relative can force her children and grandchildren to put up with her demands in order to inherit her money.

A rebellious teenager can manipulate his parents, pitting them against each other and possibly even pushing them toward divorce.

Blackmail operates best on a foundation of guilt, but it’s really about the inequity of power between two people.

Robbery? Muggings happen. These days, the fear of having your identity stolen due to a robbery preys on people’s peace of mind–less for the inconvenience of losing cash in the wallet and more for the supreme nightmare of juggling bureaucratic red tape to restore everything.

But what if you’re a courier entrusted with the formula for a remedy that will cure cancer? The formula has been sold to a pharmaceutical company, and you’re supposed to deliver it. Only you never arrive.

Robbery, in today’s world, needs to have enormous consequences.

Wait! Let’s define what “enormous consequences” means.

Consider a little girl in the year 1900 that’s given a dime–all the money the family has until payday a week away–and she’s sent to buy a loaf of soft white bread because that’s all her ailing grandmother can eat.

If the dime is stolen, or if the loaf of bread is stolen, aren’t the consequences to that child and her family also dire? What happens to the grandmother if she can’t eat anything? She will weaken and possibly die. If they love her, they’ll be devastated. The child will blame herself. What if no one helps her understand this isn’t her fault? Or what if a grieving parent does blame her? How can she make restitution?

There are so many ways for characters to hurt each other, and so many paths of evil that the bad guy can take. In writing, remember to think through why an antagonist selects the course of action he or she chooses. The motivation doesn’t have to be one that will activate compassion in the reader. Sometimes, villains are just mean because they enjoy it. Effective story conflict doesn’t always require readers to feel that the villain is justified in some way. As my father would say, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” The bad guy’s mother may beat him black and blue every morning before school, and that won’t justify his bullying a scared little first-grader out of her lunch.

No matter why, he’s practicing extortion. We can understand where it comes from, but we don’t have to paint it a sympathetic color in an effort to have a complex character. Wouldn’t it be better to keep reader sympathies with the six-year-old who has nothing to eat all day?

Or, if we want to make a protagonist out of the boy, then he should not let the beating drive him to commit wrong. It takes a mighty strong character to break the cycle of violence and abuse. If this boy has that kind of character, then how will he defeat the abusive mother without degenerating to her level?

Fiction needs villains in order to keep story conflict going. Study James Cain’s THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE and DOUBLE INDEMNITY for examples of how banal evil can be.

The Game of Scenes

When you’re planning a scene in your fiction, try to think of it as strategic maneuvering between two combatants. The conflict may be mild and verbal, but there is still strategy to consider. Think of it as a chess match or even a game of tennis.

Two opponents only:

Although scenes can be written with multiple characters present, this is a considerable challenge to tackle. Only very skilled authors usually handle such scenes well. In the hands of someone inexperienced, it can become a mess.

Scenes are at their strongest dramatically when only two characters are involved. Other players may be present, but they are backdrop to the conflict that’s occurring between the scene protagonist and the scene antagonist.

Tennis doubles can serve up exciting play, but a doubles game seldom matches the intensity of a singles game. (Have I supplied you with enough groaner puns here?)

The scene goal should be clear:

People play games to enjoy each others’ company, to spend time in a pleasant or recreational pursuit, and to win.

If you sit down to a game of chess, your objective is to take your opponent’s queen. At the same time, your opponent is trying to take yours. It’s win, lose, or stalemate.

In scene action, let the protagonist state the scene goal from the outset. It can be conveyed internally, as an intention. It can be spoken aloud. It can be acted upon. No matter what method is used, there’s no need to hide the scene goal from readers.

Conflict should have a strategy:

I’m repeating this point because it’s important.

My writing teacher, Jack Bickham, used to define story conflict as two goals in direct opposition. That’s absolutely correct, but there’s more to writing conflict than that. When your protagonist enters a scene, she’s planning the steps she’s going to take to accomplish her objective. She’s anticipating who might oppose her intention and weighing options on how to best thwart that opposition.

Likewise, the scene’s antagonist will have a strategy in play as well. Just as two chess players plan their moves well in advance, a scene’s characters are thinking ahead about what they want and how they’re going to get it.

Scene conflict should not be predictable:

I find the most enjoyable aspect of writing a scene is blowing that carefully planned strategy out of the water.

In other words, my protagonist often finds his opponent to be smarter than expected, or craftier, or more manipulative, or more ruthless. This isn’t to make my protagonist look stupid or inept. Instead, it’s to keep him off balance, to challenge and test him.

That challenge isn’t there just to defeat my protagonist. It’s to force him to try harder than he intended. When he has to struggle and adapt quickly, then he’s going to show readers what he’s really made of.

What’s the outcome?

Scenes should end definitively and not just trail off or stop before completion. If you pay money to watch a tennis match, you want to see the finish. Is it victory or defeat for the athlete you’re cheering for?

In chess, a stalemate is less satisfying than a conclusive win/lose outcome.

A scene ends when the protagonist either achieves his scene goal or loses it. There’s an answer, good or bad.

The sleuth interrogates a suspect for answers but doesn’t get the information he expected. The scientist tries to flee with the secret formula and is shot in the back before he can escape. The wallflower is asked to dance by a handsome young man in uniform.

Remember:  the scene should surprise the protagonist by delivering much tougher opposition than she expects, never easier; the protagonist must counter manipulation and maneuver from the antagonist; the scene conflict should escalate as it goes; and the scene should end with an outcome.

Please Like Me: the Sympathetic Character

Another way to keep readers glued to your prose is through establishing an emotional bond between that audience and the story’s protagonist.

If you can create a character that readers like and care about, that connection will carry you a long way.

So how do you design such a character? How do you reach readers? Through emotion, attitude, action, and goal. Let’s deal with those one at a time.

EMOTION

The best way to touch a reader’s feelings is to evoke them through the character’s emotions. You can write something like this:

Bob stood by the grave, staring at the headstone. A cold drizzle was falling on his shoulders, soaking through his suit. He shivered a little, but didn’t bother opening the tightly furled umbrella in his left hand. In his other, he held a small, wilting bouquet of white roses. He’d tried to be here for the funeral. It had been impossible to get leave from work. Now, three weeks too late, he’d come. He frowned at the stone, then tossed the bouquet on top of the mound and walked away.

Or this:

Bob stood by the grave, staring at the headstone with a strong sense of unreality. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Children didn’t die before their parents. A cold drizzle was falling on his shoulders, soaking through his suit and making him shiver. He didn’t intend to cry, but a tear slid down his cheek anyway. It felt hot against his chilled skin. Although he held a tightly furled umbrella in his left hand, he didn’t open it. His father had taught him that grown men never cried, that it was a sign of weakness, a mark of shame. But today, the rain could hide his tears, and no one would know how sorry he was for what had happened. He tightened his grip on the small bouquet of wilting roses before tossing it onto the mound. He should have been here for the funeral. He’d been too cowardly to insist that his boss grant him leave for the service. Now, he was more ashamed of that than anything else. Abruptly, he turned and walked away, trying not to run.

In these two examples, we basically have identical action. However, our perception of the character is different in each one because of the emotions that are present or absent.

Consider your reaction to Bob as you read each example. Did you like Bob in either presentation? Did you care about him more in one than the other? Why? What did you respond to positively and what did you dislike?

How readers react to your characters is never happenstance. Writers should control and manage that response.

ATTITUDE

There’s the old adage about the optimist seeing the glass as half-full and the pessimist seeing it half-empty. Identical glass; two very different reactions to it.

So, does your character have a positive, upbeat attitude? Is your character soured on life and deeply cynical? Is your character living in denial? Is your character the individual who shoves in a panic to get aboard a Titanic lifeboat? Or is your character someone who stands back and lets women and children on first?

Some attitudes we like or respect. We gravitate to individuals who show courage, leadership, loyalty, honesty, and self-reliance. We tend to shy away from people who are lazy, whiners, passive, and self-centered.

What I find appealing may repel you. Figure out what works for you personally. Chances are it will work for your characters as well. Just keep in mind that a slacker attitude in a character doesn’t usually lend itself to an active, goal-oriented protagonist who will carry a plot to the end.

ACTION

In real life, many people are willing to keep things as they are. They’re perhaps afraid to change, afraid to take a risk. So they avoid confrontation, seldom stand up for themselves, and let others take advantage of them.

In fiction, the most heroic or appealing characters tend to be ones who don’t stand around and absorb whatever life dishes out. They take action. They do something, right or wrong. They try to solve the story problem.

Granted, it usually takes a catalyst in the plot to open the story and force the character to take action. That’s why so many stories begin with what we call “a moment of change.” Change is perceived as threatening because it upsets the status quo.

In fiction, protagonists do speak up. They take chances. They dare to try.

It’s what makes such characters larger than life.

GOAL

What a fictional individual wants reveals something about his or her personality or true nature.

Think about the elevator scene in the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan film, You’ve Got Mail. The elevator operator announces that he loves his girlfriend and decides he should marry her. Tom’s girlfriend announces that she’s going to get LASIK surgery, and Tom realizes that she’s shallow and self-centered, that he doesn’t love her, and that he isn’t going to stay with her. It’s a terrific contrast between one character’s love and tenderness, of his willingness to open his heart to strangers and display vulnerability, and another character’s vain disregard for anyone but herself.

A character’s goal, whether short-term or the story objective, helps define that person. Some goals we can applaud. We’re willing to cheer that character on. We hope he succeeds. We want him to win. Such goals, whatever they may be, help create that empathetic bond between reader and character.

Other goals are signals to readers that this character is up to no good, is cruel or selfish or criminal. We don’t want this individual to succeed. We can’t be sympathetic at all.

All these methods are ways by which you can shape your audience’s like or dislike for the characters you create.

Take charge.