Theme-Character Integration Part 17 Building a Lead Character from Theme

Theme-Character Integration

Part 17

Building a Lead Character from Theme

Previous posts in this Theme-Character Integration series are indexed here: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

The essence of story is CONFLICT. 

If you have a "story idea" - the key to developing the Characters who live out and thus illustrate (show don't tell) your story idea is to answer the question, "Who would have to conquer (insert story idea problem) in order to live Happily Ever After?" 

Plot (as I use the term throughout these Tuesday posts) is a series of events connected by "because." Plot is all about what people do in response to stimuli in their environment -- "environment" being the world you build for the characters which stimulates the particular character to live out the events that illustrate your story idea.  Sometimes a novel first surfaces in your vision as a Plot Idea. 

Story is the sequence of changes a Character undergoes while living out the events of your plot which is the result of the environment the Character is embedded in.

The Romances I love best start with the Lead Character departing their environment and plunging (often willy-nilly) into a new environment they have to figure out as they go.

Re-read the opening of THE LORD OF THE RINGS - it is iconic. The most interesting part of a lead character's life starts when they leave their Hobbit Hole.

So a change of environment (going on vacation, being evicted from an apartment, divorcing, marrying, quitting a job, being "head-hunted" by a firm giving you a job way over your head)  makes a human much more keenly aware of environment, and brings long-held routine choices done subconsciously up into conscious choices.

Conscious choices cause actions which are the events of the because-line of Plot.

The way a Character handles change of environment depends almost entirely on their ability to judge other people -- and that ability accurately assess others is a product of the previous environment.

The ability to assess others accurately (insight) is a learned ability - usually learned in the school of hard knocks, for example marrying the wrong person then getting divorced and having children's lives displaced.

The process of learning to judge others accurately, and thus move smoothly through life, managing difficult situations generates plot which reshapes Character, producing Story.

For example, pulling a group together to produce a salutary result (e.g. organizing the parents of the PTA to pressure the school board to increase college opportunities for the system's Science Curriculum graduates) would make a first book in a Romance Series with a powerful heroine destined to be elected Governor, maybe President, over decades -- lots of novels.

We're talking LEADERSHIP here. 

What does it take to be a leader? 

What element of Character do you need to propel your Theme into the stark, clear, questioning hearts of the readers?

One indispensable trait of Leader Characters is the ability to see into the heart and soul of Others -- to understand what is going on inside others and then place those others into positions where their short-comings actually become major assists in the project.

In other words, the Leadership Trait that you, the writer, get to develop in your Lead Character is the ability to develop more Leaders.

THEME: Human society must mature to where every individual is a Leader.

CHARACTER: The victim of an online Bully, despised by parents for not fighting back effectively, secretly wins a Scholarship to Harvard and leaves home to earn a way into the Space Program.

To compete at Harvard (or pick a School with high standards), you not only have to be smart, you have to gain an understanding of the hearts and souls of your competition.

What you choose to do with that understanding reveals your strength of character. 

And there's your story generating plot -- the character destined to become a Leader gains a little power by understanding the competition and chooses to behave differently than HS classmates or parents behaved when they had power over the character. 

Why do they choose differently, and what difference do they choose to impose on their behavior? That's the story.

The plot is all about the consequences of those choices and what HAPPENS as a consequence of the consequence.

Is that beginning to sound like Harry Potter?

Here is an article to read about judging others, and how the ability to judge correctly can be employed.  Read to the bottom of the page to discover why it is titled DOUBLE STANDARD.

https://www.chabad.org/therebbe/article_cdo/aid/4032797/jewish/Avot-16-Double-Standard.htm

Note particularly what you can do in a Romance with a Character who sees in another a piercing Truth the other is not aware of.  

----------quote---------

Judge every man to the side of merit

Ethics of the Fathers, 1:6        

   

On the most elementary level, this means that if you discern a negative trait in your fellow or you see him commit a negative act, do not judge him guilty in your heart. "Do not judge your fellow until you are in his place," warns another of the Ethics' sayings, and his place is one place where you will never be. You have no way of truly appreciating the manner in which his inborn nature, his background or the circumstances that hold sway over his life have influenced his character and behavior.

However, this only explains why you should not judge your fellow guilty. Yet our Mishnah goes further than this, enjoining us to "judge every man to the side of merit." This implies that we should see our fellow's deficiencies in a positive light. But what positive element is implied by a person's shortcomings and misdeeds?

Differently Equal

An explanation may be found in another Talmudic saying: "Whoever is greater than his fellow, his inclination (for evil) is also greater." - a rule crucial to our understanding of a fundamental principle of Torah, man's possession of "free choice" regarding his actions.

Indeed, how can we consider a person's choices to be free and uncoerced, when there is so much inequality in life? Can we compare the moral performance of an individual whose character was shaped by a loving family, a stable environment and a top-notch education with that of one who has experienced only rootlessness, violence and despair? Can we compare a person who has naturally and effortlessly been blessed with a superior mind and a compassionate heart to one who has no so been privileged? Are their choices equally "free"? Are they equally accountable for their actions?

------end quote------

There are several hundred Science Fiction Romance SERIES of long novels wrapped up in this very condensed outline of a question about Character vs Action, about Story vs Plot.

The essence of story is Conflict. Inner conflict generates story -- external conflict generates plot -- THEME connects the two.

Why is this a principle of ART -- of novels? Because that is the structure of the universe which we recognize subconsciously but just can't quite grasp consciously.

In fact, consciously, humans tend to fight this idea is if it is an existential threat.  

The idea that those with the potential for greatest good have that potential for true great-goodness BECAUSE they also have an equally gigantic potential for Evil -- and that CONFLICT within the great leaders, movers and shakers, (such as Elon Musk?) is what generates their life story, and the public life's plot.

To become a fully mature species able to take a productive place in Galactic Society, humanity may need a social structure which cradles, buffers, develops and supports Leadership in everyone, but particularly those with the strongest inclination toward Evil.

If we could take our worst villains and point their energies at a productive target (colonizing Mars?), and cheer them on shouting their praises for doing GOOD, perhaps Evil would be vastly diminished -- to the point where the UFO people watching us from afar might invite us into Galactic Civilization.

If that's your theme, find the Character with the potential to settle that internal conflict in such a way that it reconfigures the external (public) conflict into a peaceful resolution.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Mysteries of Pacing Part 4 - Story Pacing

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 4

Story Pacing 

Previous parts of the Mysteries of Pacing:
Part 1
 https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/09/mysteries-of-pacing-part-1-siri-reads.html

Part 2
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-2-romance-at.html

Part 3 - where we discussed the TV Series Outlander
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-3-punctuated.html

"Pacing" is a property of both Story and Plot.  Along with Theme, the Pacing techniques are what tie together these levels or layers of the work of Art.

If the story goes at one pace, but the plot goes at another pace, the reader/viewer will have no idea what's going on and little interest in turning the page.

Art is the result of extracting elements from the pea-soup of real life and arranging those elements on a canvass or background that brings the meaning of life to the fore.

In real life, we get lost in the details, or swept away by the huge forces knocking us off our intended course.  In fiction, we can get a grip on events, understand the connections, and find new ways to think about our real life experiences.

One trick used to make fiction seem like real life is to use the pacing of the story to generate the pacing of the plot.

Alternatively, the writer can use the pacing of the plot to generate the story.

Each way is favored by different genres.  In science fiction romance genre, we are inventing the protocols as we go along.

Science Fiction has been defined by editors to be "action adventure" -- I have always disputed that.  I see "science fiction" genre as Relationship Fiction.

You can't have a Relationship without at least two Characters, each of whom is on a Character Arc.

A Character Arc is just what the name implies -- not a straight line.

In real life, our notions of who we are, what we can or can't do, how we can get to a comfortable place to live, with good people as friends, lover, ally, do not develop in a straight line.  We, as humans, rarely go directly to our goal.

We swerve, dodge, retrace steps, stagger sideways, fall flat, pick up and go on.  At each point we reassess the value and importance of our goals, and even change goals.

Falling in love has a tendency to wipe out everything we thought about ourselves, morphing our self-image.  We can become more dominant and more compliant, more self-sacrificing and more self-assertive, all at the same time.  Our real life character arcs, our strength of character as a person arcs.

Humans are interesting -- imagine how much more interesting the Character Arc  of an Alien can be, especially when the Alien has fallen in love with a human and is desperately trying to figure this person out.

How you, as a human writer, figure people out is something to study carefully.

Watch your mind as you assess a new acquaintance, ponder them as a love-interest, think of who you know that might make a good mate.

They say first impressions are lasting.  Maybe that's not true for your Aliens?

Think of meeting a person for the first time.  The Story of your Relationship with that person begins at that point, where you decide if you will say hello, or veer aside and pretend you never saw that person.

Take a mental snapshot of that moment of decision and dissect it.

Just seeing a person, maybe hearing the voice, watching posture, gesture, watching them assess you, sets off a cascade of free association memories and experiences.  Millions of data points flow through your mind creating a picture of what would happen if you said hello.

None of those data points have anything to do with the particular person (or Alien) before you.  Those data points have been collected from interactions with other people, many of whom are no longer in your life.

We love novels that start with Love At First Sight, or even Hate At First Sight.

The Story of the relationship starts At First Sight -- which is not always Page 1 of the novel.  The best Page 1 content is the Event that kicks off the Plot, and gets it rolling.

Characters Arc in response to Plot Events - so the Plot Event comes first, then the Character's response to that Event changes the essence of the Character.

Character Arc is about how the Character changes in response to Events.

We decide whether we like a person, or not, by how they RESPOND to stimuli.

Think about it.  In the sexual dimension of Love and Romance, isn't it all about stimulus and response, and the two characters becoming engrossed in stimulating responses in each other - mutually?

So the reader's first impression of the Main Character you present on Page 1 will be the reader's personal assessment of that Main Character based on the very first action the reader sees that Character make.

All good novels BEGIN with the Hero, the Good Guy/Gal, the Main Character who has an Internal Conflict that will Resolve on the last page, acting.

The Main Character's story begins with the PLOT ACTION that will set the Rube Goldberg plot-dynamics into convoluted action.

The Main Character's first action may simply be to pray for something, to wish for something, to see something they disapprove of and just WISH they could act to fix it.

As in real life, a THOUGHT is an action.  An EMOTION is an action.

The reader assesses the nature of the Character by the Character's assessment of their situation.

For example, if a Character staggers down the gangplank onto a cargo dock and sees a thief making off with a crate (full of drugs or guns or whatever), and the Character responds to the sight of the thief as sexy, some readers will know this is a "bad-boy" novel and turn the page for more.  Other readers will think the Character is an idiot and toss the book aside.

The nature of your Main Character's FIRST ACTION on page 1 determines your Target Readership, which Agents might handle the manuscript, which editors might be interested in buying it, all by how these professionals think readers will assess the Main Character.

Is this someone I want to spend time reading about?  Can I relate to this Character?  Do I understand this Character's view of reality?  Or do I even want to find out?

The first page has to be a hook, and has to be baited for the kind of fish you want to catch.

But how do you learn how to create such Plot-Story opening moments?

Well, of course the first thing you do to learn is to read a lot of books and make a shelf, or file folder, for the books that grab you right on page 1.

But beyond that, you must study yourself, slow down the lightning fast mental processes that are always running in the back of your mind, and make them run step-wise, so you can see what you're thinking and why.

Watch yourself assess people.  Watch what makes you change your mind about the nature of that person's character.  Watch yourself leap to assumptions and discard facts that don't fit.

A pervasive mantra of our times is, "Don't be judgmental."

But writers must be judgmental because their readers are.

The trick in being judgmental is honing judgement until it becomes reliable.  That takes practice.  A lot of writers, actors, photographers, producers, anyone in The Arts, spend a lot of time "people watching."  At shopping malls, on Facebook, at movie theaters, sporting events, even political rallies of the opposite persuasion.

Watch people assessing other people.

Watch yourself choosing what to wear to a particular place according to how others would categorize you.  You know people judge you - and you want to guide their judgement to certain conclusions.

So right away, you already know how to guide your reader's judgement of your main Character to certain conclusions on Page 1.

You want your Main Character who acts on Page 1 to be seen by your Target Readership as someone "who has a lot to learn about life."

What your reader knows about Life that your Main Character obviously does not know is your HOOK.

From that point on, your reader is lusting to watch the Character learn that lesson.

Humans (maybe not Aliens) learn by having their head handed to them on a silver platter, (as the saying goes).  Experience is the only teacher that matters.  Pain is the only measure of whether the lesson has been learned -- "no pain; no gain."

Maybe your Aliens don't function that way, but your reader knows that humans do.  This is why "the ink is still wet on his diploma" guarantees the person will make every amateur mistake in the book.

Humans don't learn from theory.  Humans learn in the school of hard knocks.

However, humans with a solid, broad grounding in abstract theory learn faster from hard knocks, learn more, learn deeper lessons, and come out of their first year on the job with an extremely accurate judgement.

So your Main Character will "arc" faster, in response to softer-blows, to more subtle hints, more gentle promises, if the Character has been through a theoretical schooling while young.

A child who has been abused (say a cabin boy on an old sailing ship) into forming hard opinions, who has bled because of wrong decisions, will need much harder blows, much louder instruction, and more convincing that the promises are real. 

In other words, humans "know" the things they figure out for themselves under the duress of life-or-death situations.  In later years, it takes a much more crushing blow to get them to change their minds, behavior, values.

For example, a street tough dealing drugs at age 10, killing their first man at age 12, caught and thrown in jail at age 18 might take twenty years of privation to change, maybe gain religion.

When was the last time you changed your mind because someone yelled obscenities at you, expressing their contempt for you?

Instead of changing your mind on the issue, you probably adopted a low opinion of the yeller of obscenities -- and possibly answered with even more blistering contempt.

Think back to such a moment in your life, and then find another "aha!" moment of enlightenment where you understood you had been totally wrong about something and set about  changing yourself.

Contrast and compare those moments.

When you changed your mind, your character arced.

When you did not change your mind, did not see you had been wrong, your Story stalled.  The plot of your life went on - and you were engaged in external conflict aplenty as you fought back against the one yelling at you.  But your STORY did not move.

This happens in real life -- sometimes decades long stall outs as your opinions on matters don't change, but you fight hard against the forces you think are wrongfully attacking you.

In real life, the plot of your life (the sequence of Events) is inexorable, but the story of your life moves in fits and starts (if at all.)

In fiction, story and plot move together in the same (often complex) rhythm.

Fiction is art, a selective depiction of reality, not reality itself.

What we mean in real life by the term, conflict, is not the same as what we mean in fiction by the term, conflict.

In real life, Evil is what tries to make us change our minds and Good is what agrees with our opinions.  In real life, we see our opinions as facts.

Those facts have been acquired in the school of hard knocks.  Thinking differently is risking death. It takes heroic courage to change our minds in accordance with new, incoming information.

That's why readers love stories about a Hero who is "open" enough to accept new information.

As noted in many previous entries, Romance is a condition of mind and soul often timed to coincide with a Neptune transit to the person's natal chart.

Neptune dissolves old opinions and allows new ones to form.  In the process, it often coincides with the dissolving away of life structures (job, marriage, house and home), as does Romance.  Falling in love can make you willing to sell your house, quit your job, and move to another country (planet?).

Under such a Neptune transit, such change is a whole lot less painful, but just as permanent once the transit is over.

While in the fog of a consuming Romance, a Character's story can proceed at the exact pace as the plot. To anyone who has experienced falling in love, this easy Character Arc will seem realistic.  To anyone who has not, it will seem contrived.

Internal conflict drives the story while external conflict drives the plot.  Both conflicts must be structured from the same theme.

A good example of how to construct different plots from the same theme is the TV Series, BLUE BLOODS.  It uses the same techniques used in the old TV Series, THE WALTONS.

Just as the first page presents the Main Character acting on a judgement call originating deep inside them where the incontrovertible facts forming the Character reside, so the last page presents the resolution of both the internal and external conflicts.

On page 1, the reader sees a Character "with a lot to learn" -- and on the last page, the reader sees that Character "learning the lesson."

One of those incontrovertible facts hammered home by the school of hard knocks has proven false.  A new incontrovertible fact now replaces it at the foundation of the Character.  The reader experiences affirmation of the life-lessons the reader has learned in that school of hard knocks.

That affirmation is the reason most readers buy books, or follow a given author.

Most of the science fiction readership, however, looks for an affirmation of how much more there is out there to learn, rather than of what is already known.  Science is all about enjoying the shock of discovering how wrong we were.

Romance genre has that element, too, the joy of discovery.  Love has a way of changing your mind about the nature of reality, and life itself.  Love really does conquer all.  But it takes a hero to dare to love.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com