8 minute read
Getting Started Telling Your Stories
By CAPT George Galdorisi, USN (Ret
Plot Is Important: But What About Characters?
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Okay, 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.
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.
They say “write what you know,” and as mentioned above, I write thrillers. For decades, going back to Tom Clancy’s first books, these novels were overwhelmingly male. While I had male protagonists in my Tom Clancy Op-Center thrillers, as well as in my more recent Rick Holden thrillers (The Coronado Conspiracy, For Duty and Honor and Fire and Ice), I made a conscious decision to introduce strong female protagonists.
Why? Think about it this way. When Tom Clancy published The Hunt for Red October in 1984, how many women commanded naval aviation squadrons, surface ships, strikes groups or other prominent operational entities? I think you get the point. So to wrap this column up, here is how I introduced female protagonists in three of my thrillers.
For Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Into the Fire: Kate Bigelow was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. She’d gone to the Academy for two reasons: to play lacrosse and to sing. Coming out of Montgomery Blair Prep in Silver Spring, Maryland, her two passions had been playing lacrosse and singing in her school glee club and church choir. She was an all-state midfielder and also had a strong voice. Her grades were good if not outstanding, but the Academy women’s lacrosse coach saw her play and liked what she saw. Lacrosse was a rough sport, even the woman’s game, and Kate Bigelow, while owning a technically sound game, was not above flattening an opposing player with a legal hit. She started for three years on the lacrosse team, beating Army two of those three years, and had sung in the Catholic Choir and the Naval Academy Glee Club.
Kate had graduated in the upper half of the bottom third of the Class of 2002. She’d never really considered a full career in the Navy as a seagoing officer, two things intervened that kept her from leaving the service. She found she liked U.S. Navy sailors and she had a knack for leading them. Secondly, she found command intoxicating. There was nothing like it on the outside, so she stayed in the Navy. She had previously commanded an MCM ship like Defender that now followed them out of Sasebo.
For the Rick Holden Thriller The Coronado Conspiracy: For Laura Peters, it was an opportunity for professional growth that might not come her way again. It was not surprising she loved what she was doing. The daughter and only child of a Navy chief petty officer, she had been the apple of her father's eye. Master Chief Donald Peters had risen through the ranks as far as he could, but he always wanted to be an officer. That goal, unfortunately, had eluded him. When it was clear his marriage would produce no sons, he regaled Laura with the opportunities that beckoned in the Navy. The master chief knew enough about how the Navy worked and what it looked for in its officers—and particularly its need to recruit more women officers—that he groomed his daughter throughout high school to make her a shoe-in for winning a Navy ROTC scholarship.
She had thrived at the University of Virginia, earning top grades, and lettering in cross-country, squash, and tennis. Sensing that the Navy was still not enlightened enough to fully accept women as equal partners commanding ships and aircraft squadrons, she opted for the intelligence field upon graduation, correctly surmising that it would provide a more level professional playing field and afford her the opportunity to prove herself and advance through the ranks. In her seven years since graduation she had sought out only the toughest assignments, usually registering firsts, breaking ground where female officers had not gone before.
For the Rick Holden thriller For Duty and Honor: Anne Claire O’Connor came by her bent for naval aviation naturally. The only child of now-retired Captain Jeff “Boxman” O’Connor, who had flown F-4 Phantoms in Vietnam and gone on to command his own carrier air wing, she had grown up in the midst of the lore of naval aviation. An honor student and varsity athlete at Coronado High School in southern California, she had won an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy and had excelled there as a swimmer.
O’Connor was also worried. Not of what would happen in the air. No, she was worried because of Bingo. Commander Craig “Bingo” Reynolds was the Stingers executive officer and he was not the kinder, gentler type. As a brand-new lieutenant, O’Connor had absorbed more than a fair share of Bingo’s wrath. She didn’t know if he was trying to make it hard on her because she was one of only four women officers in the squadron. She was terrified because he would be in the Stingers’ Ready Room and would see her come in late.
O’Connor looked out on the waters of the Arabian Gulf and into the perpetual haze that hung in the skies. As she got ready to taxi her aircraft back to its original position on deck, she wondered what part she would play in any conflict. One thing she did know—she’d be ready.
I think you see the point, I introduce each character in a way designed to get you to want to know more about them professionally and to want to go on the journey with them. So, lots to chew on here. If your curiosity has kicked in and you don’t want to wait for the next issue of Rotor Review, try this link to my website: https://www.georgegaldorisi.com/. Other than writing thrillers, I like nothing more than connecting with readers. You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter, and learn more about my books, blogs and other writing on my website. For those of you trying to up your game regarding any kind of writing, check out my “Writing Tips,” which offer useful advice for all writers, from established authors to future best-selling writers.
