Character Building: Frankenstein
I am playing with my new work in progress and once again I have a heroine with a mess of a brother. In this case, he's in East Jersey Correctional (formerly known as Rahway). At other times, I have stashed the relatives of my main characters at Clinton (usually called Little Siberia or Dannemora) . . . Rahway again . . . and I think I've even had someone in Riker's until sentencing. Oh . . . and Sing Sing.
And of course, the brother is guilty as sin. And of course, he's also a good guy to his sister (despite being a burden).
I wonder why I return to comfortable roles of families or characters, slipping into them, in a sense. I have my humorous real-life stories of producing bail money for one relative, and getting the 2:00 a.m. call every person dreads. Not "Your child is in jail," but "Dad's in jail." I've even had the fun of trying to convince the officer in charge to let him out because of advanced age and needing medication. At 2:00 their unamused response was, "Bring the medicine to jail." These make for wonderful tales around the dinner table--and I do mean uproariously funny. And since I know this is perhaps NOT typical, I figure they make for good details in a book. How many of you have gotten that call? (And if you flood my comments with a hundred of them . . . color me amused.)
But that's not why I write the brother in jail. I mean why?
In YAs, the main characters are often orphaned. I have seen bloggers and readers, and even kids, ask why? In Magickeepers, Nick has lost his mother. Why?
I always have complicated fathers and dead mothers. And yet my mother and I speak for an hour, without fail, every day. When my parents went on a cruise and I couldn't talk to her for a week, I cried, as a grown woman, thinking this will be what it is like to be orphaned. Do I write about mothers no longer there for anticipatory grief? Why did I make Cassie Hayes's father in Spanish Disco have Alzheimer's?
I suppose a piece might be muddling through my growth as a person. But I really suggest that it's to create our Frankenstein monster.
Yesterday, I talked about back story. For most writers, back story isn't accidental. We sift through possibilities or create them to manipulate the end product. We need a Frankenstein. We need pieces and parts that produce an end product that suits our thematic needs.
Yesterday, I talked about back story. For most writers, back story isn't accidental. We sift through possibilities or create them to manipulate the end product. We need a Frankenstein. We need pieces and parts that produce an end product that suits our thematic needs.
What kind of person doesn't blink when asked for bail money? You need to create a back story that fits that. What kind of person is resilient to a fault, won't let people in, will fight to the death for a newly formed family? Dr. Frankenstein plays with combinations to find the winning formula.
If editors or agents or crit partners complain that they don't believe something about your characters, or they don't know them, really emotionally know them, then I suggest you go back to your lab. You cannot assign traits without giving them the requisite Frankenstein parts.
That's why I go back to brothers who are a mess. I want my heroines to have an ability to see gray, when so much of the world sees black and white. I want them already the kind of person, before a reader has cracked page 1 to be the "stand-up gal"--the one you can call for bail money. I want her to love people even though they hurt her. To be the one who goes on visiting hours knowing as soon as he gets out, he's going back to his old ways. She's not a doormat. She's not even an enabler. She is a realist and can accept this is the brother she's got. And none of that is "told" on the page. It's shown by stashing her brother in East Jersey.
So tell me, do you play Dr. Frankenstein? Why do you give them the back story you do? What traits are you aiming to create? Do you give them traits . . . and provide the back story that matches?
18 comments:
Never been called for bail (knock wood).
This made me think of the novels by Jack Kerley. You'd probably hate them, they're very violent and twisted, but not necessarily gratuitous. It's just...
Well, the main character is a cop in Alabama who essentially works a two-man special cases squad, where they're called out to do weird and violent cases, often serial-killer type cases. The thing is, you discover that the main character's brother IS a serial killer and from time to time he has to go to prison to talk to his brother to get insight into the case, but his brother is so sick and evil that he makes quid pro quo demands of the main character in exchange for his help.
In that respect I think Kerley basically took Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lechter deals with Clarice Starling and asked himself, "What if Lechter were a relative?"
In its own way the concept was brilliant and invariably makes the reader squirm because you're forced to wonder what you'd do in the same situation. Blood is blood and all that.
Mark:
Actually . . . that sounds REALLY interesting. I like Bobby Goren on Law & Order and he had a big shock last season regarding a relative like that.
And yeah . . . I really think the squirm factor would be that. I mean, I cannot picture finding out I am related to a serial killer (but one never knows) . . . but I have really wide latitude in how I view my family. I would NEVER say, "Well, it's cut and dried, if any of them did this, then forget it." I know better than to assume the world can be made black and white like that.
E
I don't give them traits. I give them stories and the traits come out of that.
You are right. To me, for the book to work, the people have to work. I'm speaking here as a reader as well as a writer.
They're orphaned because it takes the parental expectations out of the equation. Parents are immensely influential (yeah even for those serial killers, don't they all hate their mothers?) so if you're orphaned and not particularly loved then you're more free to do something that would restrain you normally.
No calls because of me but my parents have received them. I won't ever forget being a child at a friend's house and seeing my father in the doorway, his eyes red, his whole being hurting, as he told me my uncle was dead. Speculation is that the Spanish Mafia killed him but there was no proof. You mentioned emotional talismans once, that uncle gave me a cheap jewelry box that I cherish because my memories of him are nothing but good ones.
Joe:
I think it's a hand-in-hand thing. But I had this huge ah-ha moment. I remember working with this writer and all her stuff was just so meh. But then I realized--and this only NOW--that she was assigning a lot of tendy traits for heroines at the time (height of chick lit) but it had no soul. They were traits without an interesting enough back story to support them.
E
Richmond:
I would have made many more HUGE mistakes if I had not feared disappointing my parents. You are totally right, I think.
E
Mark, those are absolutely awesome books. I love them!!
*
It's no secret that my father deserting my family informs my writing and my characters. I've had tons of characters with rotten dads. I'm trying to get away from it. But, the thing is, I can't feature a character without a significant betrayal in his past, and who better to betray him than a parent?
So while I might be resolving my own issues through fiction (badly) I also think it's a useful device.
Trinidad was betrayed by his parents: they worked for a eco-terrorist organization and their final attack killed them and his younger brother (along with several other people). His past has absolutely influenced Trinidad to work for the Church, partly as payback for "crimes of the father" and partly because he views himself, rather romantically, as a sacrifice. After all, his little brother got to die for a "cause."
He regards his parents with unmitigated hatred (always denying his love for them) and idolizes his younger brother. His personal journey in this book is about finding "the gray"--between his love for his parents and what he's done, finding respect for their viewpoint, if not their methods, and rectifying the dichotomy between his living and his brother's death, and even jealousy that his parents chose the younger brother to die with them.
He's a complicated boy, our Trinidad.
Sex Scenes:
Thematically, that is very powerful stuff, and all the more real.
In my case, my stories are all rather hilarious . . . not so dark, though I suppose at the time I was mildly upset. However, we tend to make a good tale out of most of our kookiness.
E
My MC's are alone. Oh, they have family and friends, but invariably, they are outcast for one reason or another. And they find a staunch friend who doesn't fit the mold of an acceptable peer.
I blame the dead mom syndrome on Disney. Just look at their films. I can only think of one where Mom wasn't dead and that's Mulan. And Mulan's main parent relationship was with her father.
Though I have a very close relationship with my mom, the mom's in my books (the ones who are still living) are distant and not very nurturing.
Interesting to think about what we are creating and the why behind it.
No, not enough. Must do that more. My characters are irritatingly devoid of family and parents. I just have NO clue what it's like to have family, really. I think I don't provide an explanation because this feels normal to me. Geez, and my characters definitely have mother issues. Any remotely mother figure ends up betraying or being crazy or evil.
I really hate all that. It just happens. Last book, I forced the crazy woman to be gray. Just back and forth with no explanation, but with some rhyme and reason. I think I'm going to have to give her a subplot with a happy ending in the next book.
I do love to write women who are dirt-poor, nothing to their name, with absolutely no friends or family. I'm actually DYING to write a girl who has absolutely nothing, not even a name. It's a random obsession I have to edit out in nearly every book.
Sarah:
I know I am usually aiming for a character I want to spend 300 pages with. The traits are generally ones I admire or relate to. The only books or manuscripts I have abandoned or had huge trouble with were when I had main characters I really didn't understand.
E
spy:
LOL! Crazy, evil moms. Oh, they're out there. My mother-in-law!
E
I don't normally think of my fiction as in where it comes from in my real life. Some of it, I'm sure does... now that I think of it though, the my mc's fathers are seldom largely involved in their lives, if at all.
My own father was my favorite person - the sun rose and set on him as far as I'm concerned. So maybe I don't need the fictional characters to deal with father issues because I didn't have anything but the most positive of feelings toward mine... or maybe because that part of my life is so special that I'm just not willing to share it.. We could go there if we want to psychoanylize it... but on a very real level, I kind of feel like it's the mechanics of the story more than my personal life issues.
I need the parents at a distance so my characters can find and influence their own destiny - in ya and middle grade it can be kind of hard to get them out of the way, too... The YA I'm working on now, the mc's father died in an accident when the mc was 10. In the middle grade the parents were newly divorced and the father was a minor presence due to the changes in living arrangements.
On a personal level, Erica, it never ceases to amaze me how much we have in common... we should talk sometime off the blog.
Merry:
LOL! yes, we should. :-)
My parents were very involved in my life--STILL are. So . . . I think, like you, I sometimes have that distance factor so the character can grow. On the flip side, in books like Invisible Girl and The Roofer, the family is so intensely involved with each other that it's almost suffocating, but the characters generally feel loved if in this horrifically dysfunctional fashion.
E
Hmm, interesting to pick your favorite person and give it, like a gift, to your character. I guess Trinidad sort of has that: a no-nonsense priest for whom Trin is the kid he never had.
betsy:
I think, even in chaos or pain or crisis, my characters have such depth in their friendships that they have gifts that if they stopped to think about, they would appreciate--but usually so much is happening at once that . . . :-)
E
I like damaged characters, so I tend to give them am unhappy backstory, usually as a child. My heroine in my wip had father problems. My hero's mother was awful. And then I gave them more problems.
The traits come from the character, but also from my story idea. What kind of person do I need the character to be to fit my premise? I ask those questions, usually unconsciously.
Edie:
I am sure much of this is unconscious, which is why, like I said, I seem to gravitate back to similar back stories.
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