The Direct Relationship with Character
Moreso than in television, film, or theater, the novel gives us a direct relationship with character. First-person and second-person narration allow the characters to speak directly to us. Third person, whether limited or omniscient, affords a distinct narrative voice while also allowing us to travel into one or more character’s consciousness—something only possible in television or film through the use of voice-over.
This deep and special relationship with character is why so many successful theatrical franchises are based on books. Would The Hunger Games touch us as closely had it emerged first as a Lionsgate film rather than a novel published by Scholastic? We were bonded to Katniss Everdeen on pulp, not cellulose. Let’s take a look at the direct relationship we have with Katniss via the first-person narration:
When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.
I prop myself up on one elbow. There’s enough light in the bedroom to see them. My little sister, Prim, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother’s body, their cheeks pressed together. In sleep, my mother looks younger, still worn but not so beaten-down. Prim’s face is as fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as the primrose for which she was named. My mother was very beautiful once, too. Or so they tell me.
Now let’s compare this with the beginning of the screenplay written by Gary Ross, Suzanne Collins, and Billy Ray:
The same holds true for Harry Potter. We were bonded to Harry on the pages printed by Bloomsbury and Scholastic, not the reels of Warner Brothers.
While the primacy of character in novels has always been the case, it matters even more today, when television predominates narrative drama. Today, people turn to the novel not just for entertainment, but for that direct relationship with character. To build on what we spoke about in the last post, on The Idea, you are giving people the one thing Netflix can’t, which is to inhabit the interior consciousness of a fictional self. Whether television or film, everything from screenwriting to acting to directing to cinematography is about externalizing the internal emotional truths of characters. The novel invites you in.
Irrespective of your novel’s point of view, this means that your dexterity with character is of greater importance and advantage than ever before: character, rather than plot or setting, is the primary experience you provide in a novel. This is also the primary place in which a writer’s dexterity with prose is less important than their capacity as a dramatist—their ability to create emotional truth from the blank page.
What does it mean, then, when we speak of character? When we say character here at Inkshares, we mean three things.
First, the most obvious: Who is the character or characters? What do they do? What world do they live in? What is their journey about? This is about the core experience. Are they an amnesiac superspy trying to discover who they are? A botanist abandoned on Mars trying to survive until help arrives? Or just a teenager facing a recognizable existential crisis?
It’s important to ask yourself whether the characters you have created serve your novel—what about these characters is right for the story, setting, and genre? Jack Ryan was an amazing protagonist in The Hunt for Red October because he wasn’t a superspy. He was a powerful character because, as readers, we each imagined we could be Jack. In Kill Creek, the fact that Sam McGarver is a world-famous horror author going to a haunted house fundamentally changes the story. The matter of character servicing plot does not mean that it needs to be high-concept: in 1989, the reminiscences of a fictional butler sold millions of copies and earned the Booker Prize. Put simply: know your character, and know what they offer the story and your reader.
Second, we are speaking about dimensionalizing the fictitious self. What are the ways in which you bring them—their wants and needs, their pains and fears, their memories and hopes, their relationships—to life? People are made up of details. Mediocre novelists tell us who a character is. Great novelists build an entire life in the same way that a method actor becomes the role. Whether anticipated or found while writing, character should ooze out of you as you become the character. Note how well Scott Thomas knows the lead character of Kris Barlow in the first chapter of Violet. I edited Violet across many drafts, and across each, Scott’s understanding of Kris Barlow grew.
“Kris Barlow glanced at herself in the rearview mirror and saw a stranger staring back at her. The soft glow of the dashboard deepened the hint of crow’s feet that stretched from the corners of her eyes. Her porcelain skin attempted to peek through large clusters of freckles. She wished her mother had forced her to wear sunscreen when she was little, as Kris did religiously with her own daughter. But that was a different time, before words like “SPF” and “reapply” were drilled into the vocabulary of children. She recalled the odd satisfaction of slowly peeling away thin layers of dead, translucent skin, trying to keep a large section intact. Once, she managed to remove a patch as large as the palm of her hand. She placed it carefully over her right cheek and admired herself in the bathroom mirror, feeling like a lizard as the edges of the old pulled back to reveal the new.”
You don’t need to always tell us specific details or memories. We can learn immense amounts from simply seeing the world through the character’s eyes rather than our own. M.M. Deluca does this exceptionally well at the beginning of The Savage Instinct:
During that same year, I met the accused murderer Mary Ann Cotton and learned that the evil ones amongst us are not confined to the filthy alleyways of the poor. They mingle freely in the polished parlours of the middle classes and the gilded ballrooms of the wealthy. I’d always viewed the world with an artist’s eyes. Drawn to edges, angles, curves, and texture. The way light plays with shade and casts surfaces into bold relief, revealing the beauty of their imperfections. But now I know this does not apply to people, whose flaws can be so loathsome, so vile, so entrenched, that nothing—no earthly or heavenly light—can redeem them.
Third, once you’ve done the work to build that character out as an authentic self, you need to think about how you sequence out our relationship with the character. How, what, and when you let us learn about a character can drastically change our relationship with that character. This does not mean that there needs to be a high-concept Gillian Flynn twist at the halfway mark, but it does mean you should think about how to parcel out our understanding of who a character is in order to keep us intrigued and consistently engaged. Rather than telling us everything you can about the character in the first chapter, allow our understanding of the character to unfold alongside the plot.
These are three structural points about character. We have much more to say on character here at Inkshares, continuing in our next post.
Stay creative,
Adam Gomolin