Thursday, June 23, 2011

My Novel, Revolution, Develops Characters in Conflict

Welcome back. I once wrote an ad for Keds that had images of Bugs Bunny and other cartoon characters on them. My headline: ''Shoes with a little character, $9.95.'' This month's EWA is about developing characters in fiction. Over the last month, I spent five days in Iowa City attending the 75th Anniversary of the Iowa Writers' Workshop (an inspiring experience), I wrote a short story (one of a collection of stories I'm calling ''Unfinished Business'') and I spent literally weeks moving to a loft in downtown Dallas (a trying and arduous journey with a happy ending). Still I made excellent progress on my novel, Revolution. I've now finished the first four chapters, and I can't wait to move deeper into the story.

As I mentioned last month, my novel Revolution is about a Peace Corps volunteer who, while serving in Colombia, S.A. in 1967, becomes friendly with a FARC revolutionary soldier. Through a series of events, he gradually becomes radicalized and in a moment of truth has to decide whether he wants to be a member of the Peace Corps or the ''War Corps.''

Writers have always been challenged with making their characters complex and multi-dimensional with flaws, obsessions, dreams, and redeeming qualities readers can identify with.

Telling a story that makes a character plausible is one thing; telling a story that causes readers to deeply care about a character is quite another. It is the sine qua non of novel writing; if you get the caring thing right, there's not that much you can do wrong.

There's a well-worn formula for enticing readers to care: Make your characters intensely likeable but let circumstances place them in horrible circumstances. Here's a variation that can be made to work just as well: Make your characters seriously flawed but place them in horrible circumstances that call forth their redeeming features.

Notice the common denominator: horrible circumstances.

In my novel Revolution, I want to show characters in intense conflict with each other; I want to show characters creating horrible circumstances for each other. And I want to let the conflict and the turning points forced by the conflict delineate the story while they define the characters. I want to show my characters not just trying to overthrow governments and trying to keep governments from being overthrown; I also want to test and overthrow the most basic belief structures and most profound notions of what we are as human beings, workers and lovers. Yes, Revolution, like my first novel, Redemption is at its core a love story.

In writing Revolution, I am allowing myself to be influenced by Donald Maass and his book, Writing the Breakout Novel. Maas writes that ''escalating stakes'' in a breakout novel (escalating what is at stake for a reader) requires being ''willing to make your characters suffer.'' (And trust me, you can't get a reader to care about a character until something is at stake for him or her.)

Writes Maass: ''Trials and tests are the stuff of character building, of conflict. Ask yourself, who is the one ally your protagonist cannot afford to lose? Kill that character. What is your protagonist's greatest physical asset? Take it away. What is the one article of faith that for your protagonist is sacred? Undermine it. How much time does your protagonist have to solve his main problem? Shorten it. Push your characters to the edge, and you will pull your readers close… and add dimensions to your novel that will lift it above the crowd.''

This is the approach I've taken in planning Revolution. I've created two mind-maps of the novel, each more than 20 pages long, that visualize the conflict and events that heighten the conflict. I've also filled in a worksheet of Don Maass' that starts off with basic questions such as, ''Who is the main character and what is his main goal, conflict and problem?'' and ends with complex questions that demand a fuller conceptualization of the novel than many novelists begin with, such as, ''What are the five turning points toward the solution of your protagonist's main problem?'' and, ''Delineate the psychology of place with respect to the setting of the novel's climax.''

As I answered the questions I realized I was much better prepared to write Revolution than when I embarked on writing Redemption nine years ago. I think that the planning I've done will ultimately add tension and depth of character, and make the novel more exciting to read.

Next month: Why I think it's so much fun to write novels.