Inflate Flat Characters by Breaking Stereotype

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Rob E. Boley

Last night, I took my daughter, my mom, and her husband to see a limited engagement of Gone With the Wind on the big screen. It’d been years since I’d seen the film, and I was most struck this time by the touching relationship between Melanie Hamilton and Rhett Butler.

The two characters couldn’t have been more opposite. Rhett is a classic devilish rogue interested only in himself, while Melanie is as selfless and wholesome as can be. If the story had lesser writing, these two wouldn’t have had anything to do with each other. Instead, their characters are so much richer because of how much they respect and appreciate each other. And that’s the point of this week’s post: keep your characters from being stereotypes by giving them moments where they can break type.

Melanie the Goodie-Goodie and Rhett the Rogue.

For example, if you have a character named Randy who’s a grim-n-gritty anti-hero loner, flesh him out by giving him an undying devotion to the original Beverly Hills 90210 series. Or a love of Lifetime movies. Or a habit of reading romance novels. Or a girlish laugh when his feet are tickled.

Back to Gone With the Wind, the kindly Melanie has a great moment right after Scarlett shoots a Yankee deserter. Rather than react in horror, Melanie says, “I’m glad you killed him.” She also comes up with a quick lie to account for the gunshot and then suggests pilfering the dead man’s pockets. It’s a brilliant moment in which the character really shines—and becomes more than a simple goody-goody.

Likewise, Rhett has some great off-type moments, too. Now, you could argue that his love for his daughter Bonnie is a break from his rogue character, but there’s a hint of selfishness in his parenting. At one point, he even refers to Bonnie as the one person who’s ever completely belonged to him. No, I’d argue that it’s his admiration for Melanie where the self-centered Rhett takes on real dimension. For example, when Melanie donates her wedding ring to the war effort, Rhett returns it and makes a donation on her behalf. Or course, true to form, he also takes a playful jab at Scarlett in the process.

Perhaps most touching, when Rhett has a complete breakdown after Bonnie’s death, Melanie is the only one who can reason with him. A few scenes later, her last words to Scarlett on her deathbed urge her to be good to Rhett.

Bottom line: the key to making archetypal characters work is to give them a few moments where they break out of their mold and become more human. Likewise, real magic can occur when you have characters, like Melanie and Rhett, who can find new depths to themselves in the context of each other.

Don’t Hurt Your Writing by Repeating Your Writing

Posted on September 22, 2014 by Rob E. Boley

A short story consists of about 5,000 words, give or take. A novel is anywhere from 50,000 to more than 100,000 words. By the time you put the last period on the final sentence, you’re going to repeat a few words. There’s nothing wrong with that.

However, do make sure you avoid reusing the same word in the same paragraph, because otherwise it can make you look like a lazy writer.

See? I used “make” twice in the same sentence. Doesn’t that feel unpolished? According to Merriam-Webster, the English vocabulary consists of around one million words. One million. With that many tools at our disposal, there’s no excuse for repetition.

Example:

Randy watched the bed late into the night. He sat on the hard folding chair and listened to the clock on the wall. Tick. Tock. Finally, sometime after 3 am, the mattress shifted. Tick. Tock. Something wiggled under the sheets. Tick. Tock. Randy leapt onto bed. The monster under the sheets shrieked. Its tentacles flailed. One clocked Randy in the temple. He fell on the hard floor. The monster threw itself out the window.

Randy hated bed bugs. Tick. Tock.

Look at all that pesky repetition. One million words, people. And yes, clock is used as a verb and as a noun, but that doesn’t matter. It’s still repetitive. Plus, Randy is the only dude in the scene, so no need to keep reusing his name. So, let’s take another pass at this, and whittle away some of this repetition.

Randy watched the bed late into the night. The folding chair dug into his ass and jabbed his spine. He listened to the clock on the wall. Tick. Tock. Finally, sometime after 3 am, the mattress shifted. Tick. Tock. Something wiggled under the sheets. Tick. Tock. He leapt onto bed. The monster beneath the covers shrieked. Its tentacles flailed. One slammed Randy in the temple. He fell on the unforgiving floor. The creature threw itself out the window.

He hated bed bugs. Tick. Tock.

Doesn’t that feel better? I cut out a lot of the repetition. Plus, rather than describe the folding chair as hard, I decided to show it as hard. Note that I left in all the Ticks and Tocks. That repetition was used intentionally, so it gets a free pass. It had a purpose, and the reader should sense that.

That repetition was used intentionally, so it gets a free pass. It had a purpose, and the reader should sense that.

Sentence Length and Scene Pacing

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Rob E. Boley

This is a tip that got from Jeffrey Ford’s fiction seminar at Antioch Writers’ Workshop (AWW). If you’ve ever read Ford’s stories or novels, then you know that he’s a master of the craft. If you haven’t read his stuff, stop reading this right now, go buy one of his books, read it, and then come back.

All done? Good. He’s amazing, right?

The point here is a simple one: longer sentences slow the pace of a scene, while shorter sentences speed it up.

So we’ll start with a paragraph of long sentences:

Randy walked into a crowded bar and before he could ask the bartender for a bourbon, something slammed into the back of his head. He spilled across a flimsy table cluttered with empty bottles—yellow snowflakes flashed across his vision—and crashed to the floor.

Now slice up those sentences into quicker bits:

Randy walked into a crowded bar. He motioned for the bartender. Something slammed into the back of his head. He spilled across a flimsy table. Empty bottles rattled. Yellow snowflakes flashed across his vision. He crashed to the floor.

Or mix it up a little with some paragraph breaks:

Randy walked into a crowded bar and motioned for the bartender.

Something slammed into the back of his head. He spilled across a flimsy table. Empty bottles rattled. Yellow snowflakes flashed across his vision.

He crashed to the floor.

See how sentence and paragraph breaks really impact how you read the scene? The words stay the same, but the pacing changes subtly. So, for more introspective moments, I find that longer sentences do the trick. For more action-based scenes, I like to use short, quick sentences and lots of paragraph breaks.

Ending Chapters with Anything Other than an Ending

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Rob E. Boley

As a writer, the last thing you want to do is give your readers an excuse to put your book down. Be relentless. Think of your chapter breaks as commercial breaks. You don’t want the reader to walk away. You want them to dive right into the next chapter.

So, how do you accomplish this?

For one, end a chapter mid-scene. Don’t wrap everything up with a nice neat bow. If a scene consists of Randy entering a kitchen, getting attacked by a werewolf, and killing said werewolf with a silver spatula, then your chapter break shouldn’t be after the werewolf dies. No, it should be when the werewolf first lunges. And then the next chapter break should be when he realizes the dead werewolf is his brother Ronnie.

Poor Randy.

Chapter breaks don’t always have to be so dramatic, of course. Another effective device is to end the chapter by recalling an image or metaphor that’s been used throughout the scene.

So, maybe in the wake of Ronnie’s death-by-spatula, Randy makes himself a cocktail. Maybe that drink becomes a metaphor for his relationship with his dead brother. It’s sweet but it’s also mighty strong. It’s cold but it burns going down. Maybe the chapter ends with him downing that drink and tossing it against the wall. Glass shatters. Ice falls to the floor.

The chapter closes with Randy picking up the pieces. The scene might be over, but its emotional momentum carries the story forward. The reader turns the page, because they want to see what Randy will do next.

Writing Characters that Sing (without Actually Singing)

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Rob E. Boley

If you haven’t seen the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Once More With Feeling, you should really check it out. In a nutshell, a demon arrives in Sunnydale and infects everyone in town with the need to sing about their innermost feelings. Buffy’s opening song is a example of what I’m talking about in this post: giving each of your characters a song.

Here’s Buffy’s song, Going Through the Motions:

Going through the motions – Legendado PTBR from Sith BR on Vimeo.

The idea here is that everyone in your story should have something buried beneath the surface: a secret longing, a desperate need, or perhaps a guilty memory. These hidden feelings and thoughts should drive your characters’ actions.

I like to think of this as each character’s song. They don’t literally need to sing these songs in the story, but you as the author should know the song by heart. The song is the character’s emotional context. It’s where they’re coming from and where they’re going. So before you start writing your next story or your next scene, consider each character and see if you know their song.

If I’m going to write a chapter in which Randy has dinner with a merman and a mime, sure, I want to know his thoughts on mermen and mimes. But I also want to know what’s going on deeper inside him. What long-term path is he traveling? What scars are hurting him? What hidden desire is he longing for? Has he gotten over killing his werewolf brother with a spatula?

And keep in mind that by the end of your story, your main character should most likely have a new song to sing. Or—at the very least—a new refrain.