Get Started Telling Your Stories By CAPT George Galdorisi, USN (Ret.)
Plot Is Important: But What About Characters?
O
kay, time to change direction and emphasis in our columns designed to help you become an even more fabulous writer. We are still focused on fiction. We have beaten “plot” into submission in the last several issues of Rotor Review. Now it is time to talk about the people who make the plot real, the “characters” in your story. What about characters? Where do they come from? Who are they? Are they composites of actual people that you know, or are they made up from whole cloth. Well, for most of us who write fiction that is something we always wrestle with and the easy answer is that it depends on the writer and what he or she wants to do (either consciously or subconsciously) First, full disclosure: I write thrillers. That means my male and female protagonists are doing active (and often kinetic) things. This leads to a certain kind of character. Writers who focus on other genres: romance, YA, supernatural etc. will likely have different kinds of characters. So let’s talk about characters in general, and then about characters who populate thrillers. First, some tried and true advice: I quote Timothy Spurgin, author of “The Art of Reading” in The Great Courses program. “There are only two plots: The hero takes a journey and a stranger comes to town.” Yes, the word “plot” is there, but it is the character – either the hero or stranger – who drives the story. Now here is some advice from the accomplished screenwriter, Bill Bleich, “You can distill any drama – a Greek tragedy, a Shakespearian play, a modern novel, a TV drama or comedy, whatever – into a simple equation: ‘What do these guys want, why do they want it, and what’s keeping them from getting it?” The point here is that the protagonists (as well as the antagonists) must want something for there to even be a plot. They can’t just be sitting on the beach waiting for the green flash. Rotor Review #153 Summer '21
A gent named James Hall wrote a book a while ago called Hit Lit. He analyzed 20th Century novels and called out the 12 best. His criterion wasn’t “artistic merit,” but what books sold the most copies. Here is his list: • Gone with the Wind • Peyton Place • To Kill a Mockingbird • Valley of the Dolls • The Godfather • The Exorcist • Jaws • The Dead Zone • The Hunt for Red October • The Firm • The Bridges of Madison County • The Da Vinci Code I would challenge any of you to come up with the plot points of most of these novels (all of which were made into movies), but I would wager that most of you remember quite a number of the characters: Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Marko Ramius and Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October, Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu in The Da Vinci Code and many others in these books. The point is that characters are memorable, plots maybe less so. If you want to write compelling fiction, your characters must be equally compelling. Here is some “how to.” It is important to introduce your characters in your story in a way that draws the reader in, gets them interested in knowing, and wanting to be with the character. All too often beginning writers introduce a character this way: “She was a gorgeous blond with crystal blue eyes who was five-foot-ten and a lithe 125 pounds. She had the presence of a CEO and the grace of a dancer.” And more and more data. This is what is called a “police blotter” and nothing here causes most readers to want to know or be with this character. 74
