Write a Story, Part III: Character Motivation & Change

***This post is the third in a series of eight.  From now through September I'll be posting weekly exercises designed to take our short stories from rough draft to finished "masterpiece"(or as close as we can get ;-) with the help of the late John Gardner and a host of other well-known authors and teachers.  Click here for Part I ***

Now that we’ve set the mood of our stories and grounded them in time and place, let’s focus on our main characters for a bit. What motivates your character to behave the way she does?  What does she want at the beginning of the story, and how does that desire change by the end? Does your character at least begin to undergo a change by the end of the story?

Of course, not all protagonists change during the course of a story, but according to Brandi Reissenweber of Gotham Writers’ Workshop, they should at least “possess the ability to change, and the reader should see this potential. Change is particularly important for a story’s main character.  Just as the desire of a main character drives the story, the character’s change is often the story’s culmination…. If you don’t create the potential for change, the character will feel predictable and the reader will quickly lose interest.”

Showing character change (and the potential for change) is not simple.  Nancy Kress, author of Beginnings, Middles & Ends, devotes twelve pages to character motivation and change, and tells us how to pull it all off in her chapter “Under Development: Your Characters at Midstory.”  The first thing we need to do, she says, is to convince the reader that a character is capable of change by “showing him doing it” either through flashback or small parts of scenes that “can foreshadow your character’s ability to become whatever you eventually have him become” (for example: maybe the reader sees through flashback that your character has changed his mind once before).  In a short story (as opposed to a novel) you obviously won’t have much time (words?) to accomplish all of that. 

Once you’ve shown that a character is capable of change, the next step is to show the character actually changing, and to convince the reader that the change is genuine.  This, according to Kress, is accomplished through a pattern of incidents that the character is forced to live through.  As Kress says, “…one mention [of your character changing] on page sixty-eight isn’t going to do it.”

Josip Novakovich, author of Writing Fiction: Step by Step says, “When you introduce a character, imagine what her motive is.  Setting several characters in motion, with conflicting motives, may give you enough momentum for the whole story.  You need not worry about plot as much as about getting several characters together with strong motives at cross-purposes.  Let the motives in conflict work until a climax, a showdown, occurs, and from there a conclusion will flow.”

Nancy Kress: Beginnings, Middles & Ends

Josip Novakovich: Writing Fiction: Step by Step

Brandi Reissenweber: Gotham Writers' Workshop: Writing Fiction, the Practical Guide, "Character: Casting Shadows"

Write A Short Story:  

Part I: Introduction

Part II: Setting & Emotion  

Part III: Character Motivation & Change

Part IV: Story Shape

Part V: Dialogue

Part VI: Authenticating Detail & Description

Part VII: Tension & Reader Anticipation

Part VIII: Plot

Write a Story, Part II: Setting & Emotion

***This post is the second in a series of eight.  From now through September I'll be posting weekly exercises designed to take our short stories from rough draft to finished "masterpiece"(or as close as we can get ;-) with the help of the late John Gardner and a host of other well-known authors and teachers.  Click here for Part I ***

There’s a famous writing exercise you’ve probably heard of, an exercise in technique that the late John Gardner developed to explore links between character emotion and setting. There are four parts to it.  Here’s one of them:

“Describe a building as seen by a man whose son has just bee killed in a war.  Do not mention the son, war, death, or the old man doing the seeing; then describe the same building, in the same weather and at the same time of day, as seen by a happy lover.  Do not mention love or the loved one.”

I’d like to tweak this exercise to help me develop the setting in my own story.  It would be easy to write only one side of this exercise.  The happy lover’s point of view, for instance, if that’s an emotion that works for your story.  But it’s helpful, I think, to write the contrasting POV as well, to write both extremes in order to really understand the setting's "dramatic potential".  In my story my POV character, Victoria, arrives with her family at a Christmas tree farm in the country, the setting where most of my story will take place.  She’s irritable and on edge, angry with her husband for ruining a day that is supposed to be joyful, playful, and fun. I think it will help me develop the setting and character if I explore how different her interpretation of the tree farm would be were she to be happy instead, and thinking about how much she can't wait to make love to Tom as soon as the tree is up and decorated. 

The Christmas tree farm is an important part of my story--almost as important as one of my main characters (if not, the story might as well take place somewhere else). So instead of just describing the tree farm as if it were a photo or a painting, I want to use Gardner’s exercise to set the mood of the story, to anchor the reader in time and place, to move the story forward, and most importantly, to reveal something about Victoria’s character and the whole family dynamic.

As Janet Burroway writes: “Our relation to place, time, and weather, like our relation to clothes and other objects, is charged with emotion more or less subtle, more or less profound.  It is filled with judgment mellow or harsh.  And it alters according to what happens to us….  Imagine experiencing a thunderstorm when in the throes of a new love: the rain might seem to glitter, the lightning to sizzle, the thunder to rumble with anticipation.  The downpour would refresh and exhilarate, nourishing the newly budding violets.  Then imagine how the very same storm would feel in the midst of a lousy romantic breakup: the raindrops would be thick and cold, almost greasy; the lightning would slash at the clouds; the thunder would growl.  Torrents of rain would beat the delicate tulips to the ground.”

Take a look at this passage from Louis L’Amour’s novel, Hondo (used as an example of “how to weave character, landscape, and action” in Writing Fiction Step by Step by Josip Novakovich):

Novakovich writes:  “L’Amour creates suspense while giving us the setting from the perspective of his protagonist; the setting not only helps us get into the story, it also helps us experience the character’s mood (tension, vigilance)…. if L’Amour simply described how the southwestern landscape looks every summer, he’d create no suspense. His fiction would be reduced to a travelogue.” (Novakovich).

John Gardner: The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers
Josip Novakovich: Writing Fiction Step by Step
Janet Burroway: Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft

Write A Short Story:  

Part I: Introduction

Part II: Setting & Emotion  

Part III: Character Motivation & Change

Part IV: Story Shape

Part V: Dialogue

Part VI: Authenticating Detail & Description

Part VII: Tension & Reader Anticipation

Part VIII: Plot

Write a Short Story with John Gardner (and me): Part I

8/11/2010:  I’m about to finish the rough draft of my latest short story. The estimated time of completion is nine-thirty this evening, but only if I stop blogging now and get back to writing.

I have a plan for this story and here’s what I’m aiming to do: I want to take this “shitty first draft” and turn it into a finished masterpiece by September 30th. A nearly impossible task (especially the “masterpiece” part), but certainly something to strive for, don’t you think? John Gardner thinks I should. He thinks I can come close, too, in places, if I really work at it and concentrate on each individual unit: “When the beginning writer deals with some particular, small problem, such as description of a setting, description of a character, or brief dialogue that has some definite purpose, the quality of the work approaches the professional.”

Obviously, then, I'm going to need some help.  I can’t accomplish this goal without some very good instruction and guidance. For that I’ll turn to some of my favorite writing teachers, and to authors whose stories and novels I’ve admired, whose writing constantly surprises and astonishes. Not that I want to copy their style, but I do like to study how they accomplish what they do in just a few short sentences or paragraphs.  For instance, how does the author make me feel such sympathy for her despicable villain? When the description of a particular setting makes me feel as though I know the place as intimately as I do my own town, I wonder how the author accomplished that.  And here's a good one: how is it possible for an author to smoothly transition from the present to the past, and back again, fifteen times in one short piece of fiction without my even noticing?

The late John Gardner, writing instructor, author, and mentor to the likes of Raymond Carver (who wrote what is considered by some to be the most nearly perfect short story ever written: “Cathedral”) believed that with practice, and sharply focused concentration, we can surprise ourselves with the great work we produce.  The focused concentration comes in the form of writing exercises limited to one particular element of technique at a time. We can use the rough drafts of our own stories to practice, perfect, and apply these techniques, and thereby write our “masterpieces.”

I can see already in my rough draft many of the different structural units that will need to be developed there. My plan is to concentrate on each one individually and work my way through the story as Gardner suggests, “working unit by unit, always keeping in mind what the plan of [the] story requires [me] to do but refusing to be hurried to more important things (Aunt Nadia’s hysteria when the gun goes off)….”

So here’s the plan: you finish the rough draft of your story and I’ll finish mine (yikes, it’s after one o'clock already!)  Then meet me back here this weekend for our first exercise.  September 30th is only seven weeks away and we have so much yet to accomplish!

Happy writing…
Leslie

Click here for Part II: Write a Short Story: Setting & Emotion

John Gardner: The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers (click here for an interesting story about John Gardner, by Jeff Widmer)

Raymond Carver: "Cathedral" (You can purchase "Cathedral" as part of many, many short story anthologies, but I suggest getting it here, where not only is the complete text printed at the back of the book, but where you'll also have the benefit of experiencing "Cathedral" as a teaching tool, the story analyzed by the experts at Gotham Writers' Workshop)

Write A Short Story:  

Part I: Introduction

Part II: Setting & Emotion  

Part III: Character Motivation & Change

Part IV: Story Shape

Part V: Dialogue

Part VI: Authenticating Detail & Description

Part VII: Tension & Reader Anticipation

Part VIII: Plot