Part 4 (1/2)

CHARACTERIZING VILLAINS.

Once upon a time, readers tolerated mustache-twirling villains with no countervailing virtues in their makeup. Today's readers can be roughly divided into two groups, those who accept the fantasy villains of childhood, as in the James Bond stories and Arnold Schwarzenegger films, and those who insist on credibility. In life, villains do not uncurl whips and snarl. They seem like normal human beings. But normal humans are not villains. What distinguishes the true villain is not just the degree to which he hides his villainy under an attractive patina to snare his victims, but his contact with evil. There is no social solution to the true villain's villainy, he cannot be reeducated and become a nice guy. His villainy is an ineradicable part of his nature.

In the successful TV series NYPD Blue, a senior police official from outside the precinct makes the precinct captain's life miserable at every opportunity. The official is not a nice guy, he is a bad guy. The audience dislikes him more than it dislikes the criminals who are brought in. Every time the official hurts one of the good cops, we wish something bad would happen to him. Then, when the official overreaches and blunders, we are exhilarated. The official has boxed himself into a corner. We like that. Finally, when the official has to choose between defending a civil lawsuit he can't win and resigning from the force, we are joyful. The villain is getting his due.

What the writers have been doing with this character all along, of course, is manipulating our emotions, which is exactly what your role is when you are pitting characters against each other to create a story.

Some suggestions to consider in characterizing an antagonist: Can he have a physical mannerism that would be at least slightly disturbing to most people, for instance an involuntary blinking of one eye? Or sniffing? Frequent nose-wrinkling? Earlobe-pulling? Elbow-scratching? It is the repet.i.tive nature of such mannerisms that grates on readers.

How does your antagonist behave toward people he's never met before? Does he effuse charm, is he overly deferential, or is he discourteous, uninterested, openly bored, arrogant? All of these are characteristics that would help form the reader's att.i.tude toward your villain.

Another possibility is to have your antagonist do something frequently that most people do only occasionally. For instance, does he blow his nose every few minutes (though he is not sick), does his forehead sweat a lot though it is not especially hot, does he scratch himself, cough unnecessarily, wink at others as if there were some implied meaning in what they or he were saying?

To weave individual characteristics into a story, as much as possible let them come out during or as part of an action. The object is to avoid holding up the story and to keep the writer's explanations out of it. To see how it's done, let's examine a work-in-progress in which a successful young businessman, driving to work in what becomes a severe rainstorm, pa.s.ses a hitchhiker, then out of compa.s.sion and guilt, turns his car around to pick the man up: As the man clambered in I could see he was one of those a.s.sless thin fellows who hikes his pants up higher than most men do.

The hitchhiker had his hand stretched out to shake. I was of the belief that hitchhikers, like waiters and mailmen, don't offer their hand, but this man's was stuck out there like an embarra.s.sment, so I held on to the wheel hard with my left hand and put my right hand out to shake the man's rain-wet palm.

I could tell the man's breath was the kind that toothpaste didn't cure.

The hitchhiker introduces himself. Even his name has an evil sound. He is characterized by clothing, sight, smell, and now touch: The skin of Uck's hand seemed flaked, reptilian. Even when the man tried to smile, his face didn't cooperate. Like Peter Lorre's, his lips thinned, but that was all. I thought if this man's mother had pressed a pillow on his nose and mouth when he was a baby, would anyone have convicted her?

The protagonist is so repulsed by what he sees, smells, and touches of the hitchhiker, that his mind jumps to wis.h.i.+ng the man dead. That puts the reader's emotion on the defensive. The reader-whatever his conduct in private life-doesn't believe or wish to believe that he would hope a man would drop dead just because he was repulsive. ”Hey,” the reader thinks, ”this guy's human.”

That's the key, of course. Uck is human. We meet his wife and child. He can be charming if he wants to. Nevertheless, he is fundamentally evil in the way he attaches himself to the life of the protagonist and won't let go. He is not just getting a lift in the rain, he is the leech that cannot be pulled off the skin. Uck has taken the first step in pus.h.i.+ng himself into the protagonist's life and has begun the process of forcing the protagonist out of his job and home, a true villain.

You need to ask yourself about your antagonist, Is he curable? Is he bad but can be straightened out? Bad will work, but evil will provide a more profound experience for the reader.

We have seen that wimpishness is off-putting in a protagonist. We have a sense that will-desire reinforced by ambition-is what makes protagonists drive us through their stories. In the example just given, the protagonist is intensely interested in his work that has brought him a comfortable life, his wife, his house. The hitchhiker who appears in the rainstorm is set to take that from him and cannot be bought off by ransom of any kind. From that clash of these two characters, we get the kind of conflict that attracts readers.

CHARACTERIZING MINOR PLAYERS.

Major characters deserve and get our primary attention. That doesn't mean we should settle for stereotypes for minor characters. Sometimes they are given a name, a s.e.x, an age, and no characterization. I've seen minor characters given too much characterization, fooling the reader into thinking they had some larger role to play. Sometimes all you want is for the reader to be able to see the minor character. Here's how Nanci Kincaid does it: You think you never saw white completely until you see Roy's b.u.t.t.

The most efficient technique for making minor characters come alive is to select one memorable characteristic that singles them out from the rest of humanity. This is particularly true for fleeting characters, those that appear and vanish, not to return. Early in Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms the reader comes upon: The priest was young and blushed easily.

In just seven words, the priest is visible even before his special uniform is described. Note that blus.h.i.+ng is an action that characterizes, important here because the priest, in military service, is about to be picked on by a senior officer. Irwin Shaw, in a story called ”No Jury Would Convict,” shows us this: The man in the green sweater took off his yellow straw hat and carefully wiped the sweatband with his handkerchief.

Simple enough, but what makes us see that man is not a description of what he is wearing but an action, wiping the sweatband.

When a writer characterizes beautifully, we indulge him. Every page of Dennis McFarland's first novel, The Music Room, is a delight because it is so well written. McFarland doesn't pa.s.s up any opportunity to characterize. Here's how he deals with the most minor of characters, a hotel desk clerk, seen from the point of view of the protagonist, whose brother has just died: ... the man behind the hotel desk, whom I had never seen before-dark, and sporting the handlebar mustache of a lion tamer in a circus-seemed to know me, and to know my trouble. I watched him cheerfully help a man just ahead of me, then turn decidedly sorrowful as he s.h.i.+fted his gaze in my direction. It was with great sympathy that he handed me the pink slips of paper on which my telephone messages were written, and I couldn't help noticing that the skin on his hand appeared a bit too moist and white, and the several hairs on the back of it were a bit too coa.r.s.e and black, individual, and rooted, as if magnified.

Characterizing a minor character through the eyes of an important character is a valuable technique. Note how Anne Richardson Roiphe does it in Up the Sandbox!: ... the dwarf lady who lives in our building is hurrying across the street, her shopping bag filled, her fat legs bare and her feet encased in their usual heavy orthopedic shoes. Her face is round and her features are broad, distorted by thick gla.s.ses. I had never seen a dwarf till we moved to this building. It's been four years now, and each time we pa.s.s my skin crawls. Despite all the humane teachings I have of course heard, I still feel not considerate, compa.s.sionate or easy in the company of cripples. I hold to the medieval conviction that someone has been criminal, perhaps in bed, or maybe only in imagination, but someone has committed a crime, perhaps the victim herself.

Minor characters can not only help characterize the major players in a story, but can also advance the plot. In the first three pages of The Best Revenge, I introduced five characters in addition to the protagonist in order to characterize the protagonist, Ben Riller, and to get the main plot line going: Ben is in trouble.

A theatrical producer, Ben is just entering the reception room of his office. An elderly messenger is at the desk of Ben's a.s.sistant, Charlotte. She is trying to signal to him, but Ben's attention is on the waiting actors. Let's see how the messenger is used: The geriatric who'd been wrangling with Charlotte spots me at last. Some of the best actors in the world are close to eighty. Their age-lined faces exude character. In the movies you can do repeated takes, but in theater the scourges of the body haunt eight performances a week. Old people chip at my heart. I see my father, Louie, in every one of their faces. ... It aches to turn an old man down. I smile as he approaches me. I think he wants to shake my hand.

What he wants to do, it turns out, is to provide me with personal service of a subpoena.

I try to hand it back to him, but he's out the door with a gait a younger man would envy.

I used the messenger to help fill out the characterization of the protagonist, Ben. Characterizing a minor player gives us a chance to characterize a major player.

In that same paragraph, several other things come across. The reader learns the producer's feelings about the theater, age, the differences for actors in film and on the stage. It also introduces the producer's father, Louie, a major character. The point to note is that when depicting a minor character, you can seize the opportunity to convey much else. The most important thing in that brief bit with the messenger is that it takes us- through an action-into the heart of the plot: the hero, Ben Riller the successful producer, is in trouble.

The point I want to leave you with is that the permutations of character are endless and the techniques for achieving them are many. When you are engaged in the complex task of characterization, consider the techniques in this chapter the equivalent of calling 911.

I have tried in this chapter to convey a variety of ways to characterize both minor and major characters. I have an additional suggestion. Spend some time reading or rereading two or three of the cla.s.sics in which characterization is both profound and memorable: the novels of Dostoevsky and Flaubert from other cultures; Shakespeare's great plays, particularly the tragedies; such twentieth-century writers as Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, Henry James, to pluck a few from among the many. You'll find that one of the characters resonates in your memory or speaks to your view of life more than most. As you are readying yourself for sleep, imagine a scene in which that character and the character you are working on have a conversation about the story of your book. Imagine what one says and how the other answers. In due course, let yourself sleep. You might find that in the first moments of wakefulness the next morning, you'll want to reach for a pad and paper at your bedside to record some thoughts about your character, enriched by his or her conversation with a character you loved.

Ultimately, the job of characterization among the best of writers is governed by that writer's understanding of human nature. In the early twentieth century, a novel called Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter put a new word into our language. ”Pollyanna” has come to stand for a blindly optimistic person. We speak of an ostrich att.i.tude, putting one's head into the sand, pretending what is out there and real does not exist. A writer cannot be a Pollyanna. He is in the business of writing what other people think but don't say, which leads us to markers, the subject of the next chapter.

Lionel Trilling, one of the influential critics of the mid-twentieth century who was also an infrequent but interesting writer of fiction, declared that fiction at its heart involved the differences between cla.s.ses. While this observation is invaluable to writers of fiction, it is also a match tossed into flammable material. The fact that acute differences exist between social and cultural cla.s.ses seems to be acknowledged in most of the world, but in the United States, where democracy is often confounded with egalitarianism, even the idea that social cla.s.ses exist has long been taboo. It is, however, a writer's specialty to deal with taboos, to speak the unspoken, to reveal, to uncover, to show in the interaction of people the difference between what we profess and how we act. Moreover, because touchy subjects arouse emotion, they are especially useful for the writer who knows that arousing the emotions of his audience is the test of his skill.

When we discuss cultural differences, we are not talking about economic differences or equal opportunity. Cultural differences arise from inherited characteristics, upbringing, and individual temperament. The best literary fiction often confronts these differences. Even transient or popular fiction can benefit from an awareness by the writer of this rich lode.

Wonderful stories can be crafted about people's inherited characteristics, upbringing, and individual temperament. Characters, just like people, can strive to overcome this baggage and training. Some people succeed in doing so, some can't, and the same is true of the characters available to our imaginations.

Many dramatic moments in theater and film come from clashes between characters based on differences in background. How can we overlook the source of audience interest in Shaw's Pygmalion or its rendering as a musical in My Fair Lady? Put the garish and tacky Eliza Doolittle in touch with Henry Higgins, and you have a clash of social and cultural differences instantly recognized by millions.

These differences are at the heart of what is in my judgment the best play by the best American playwright of the twentieth century, Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire. The play and film derive their power from the cultural conflict between Blanche DuBois, the fallen ”lady,” and Stanley Kowalski, the blue-collar brute, who strip each other's pretenses, witnessed by Stella, who married beneath her, and found herself in the world of card-playing, beer-swilling male animals.

Characters of different cultural cla.s.ses caught in a crucible are, of course, ideal for fiction. The dramatic heat generated by cultural differences, inherited or nurtured, added to the differences of individual temperaments, can help writers create wonderful stories.

These differences are a valuable resource for scenes as well as entire plots. It is the underlying basis of conflict in fiction.

Most people, regardless of their background, prefer others whom they think of as ”their own kind.” Which means that there is a widespread prejudice against ”the other kinds.” While this prejudice can be controlled and even overcome to some degree in life, a vestige of feeling about ”otherness” remains even in most people who deny it. That feeling of ”otherness” is useful to the writer in plotting because readers' emotions can be quickly committed when they observe two characters of differing backgrounds in the same story.

It is useful for writers to step onto the thin ice of this subject matter with a clear understanding of terms and meanings.

A culture consists of the behavior patterns, beliefs, traditions, inst.i.tutions, taste, and other characteristics of a community pa.s.sed from one generation to another. The adjective ”cultured” is usually used to connote a superior level of aesthetic and intellectual development that results from education and training.

A cla.s.s is a stratum of society whose members share cultural and social characteristics. ”Cla.s.s” used by itself-as in ”she had cla.s.s”-connotes superior style or quality.

Good writers have come from every imaginable social cla.s.s, and some stand ready to defend their turf. A writer has to squelch his emotional reactions consciously in order to get enough distance to use them in his work as a writer.

People in civil society usually try to overlook the kind of differences we have been talking about. But they don't succeed. Their attempts to cover up noticed differences sometimes fail, hurting others. In general, cultural differences are noticed by almost everybody. When people learn to set aside cultural differences, we speak of them as ”open-minded.” Yet ”open-minded” people sometimes say inappropriate things to make people of other social cla.s.ses feel ”more at home.” This makes the others feel less comfortable, not more comfortable. Therefore, despite n.o.ble intentions, social and cultural differences can be a source of high feeling and high drama. As we shall see, for plotting purposes, differences are more important than similarities.

Action movies categorize people into good guys and bad guys. In many of the films that are nominated for Academy Awards, the discernment of differences becomes more subtle. That discernment becomes a necessity in the best literary and mainstream fiction.

The b.u.t.ting together of characters of differing backgrounds can be extreme, as in D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. It can produce comedy if a good old boy joins the ladies and gentlemen of Virginia on a fox hunt. What we expect of a good old boy is that while he, too, hunts for pleasure, it is in the company of men who hunt in packs, dressed in rough clothes, who would laugh at the gaudy dress of traditional fox hunters. Social and cultural differences strike sparks both for the writer and the reader.

In literary fiction, the clash of differences is often more subtle than in My Fair Lady or A Streetcar Named Desire. One of my favorite stories, which won a place in The Best Short Stories of 1991, was Kate Braverman's ”Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta.” Let's look at the beginning of that remarkable story and observe the clash of background and values: It was in the fifth month of her sobriety. It was after the hospital. It was after her divorce. It was autumn. She had even stopped smoking. She was wearing pink aerobic pants, a pink T-s.h.i.+rt with KAUAI written in lilac across the chest, and tennis shoes. She had just come from the gym. Her black hair was damp. She was wearing a pink sweatband around her forehead. She was walking across a parking lot bordering a city park in West Hollywood. She was carrying cookies for the AA meeting. She was in charge of bringing the food for the meeting. He fell into step with her. He was short, fat, pale. He had bad teeth. His hair was dirty. Later, she would freeze this frame in her mind and study it. She would say he seemed frightened and defeated and trapped, cagey was the word she used to describe his eyes, how he measured and evaluated something in the air between them. The way he squinted through hazel eyes, it had nothing to do with the sunlight.

”I'm Lenny,” he said, extending his hand. ”What's your name?”

She told him. She was holding a bag with packages of cookies in it. After the meeting, she had an appointment with her psychiatrist, then a manicure. She kept walking.

”You a teacher? You look like a teacher,” he said.

”I'm a writer,” she told him. ”I teach creative writing.”