Write about what?

Enchanting books that I read in my childhood, which still hold up under my scrutiny as an adult are the ones I turn to for examples of how to write. One such classic, The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli, is a model for creating character flaws. This historical fiction deals with a boy named Robin whose hopes of becoming a knight are dashed when an illness leaves him with almost completely paralyzed legs.

He doesn’t regain the use of his legs, but he is forced to crawl on the ground and learn new skills such as swimming. He doesn’t solve the threat facing the feudal estate where he resides by himself but gets help from a monk. Robin is a character with a great deal to learn. His flaws, partial paralysis and lack of confidence and knowledge, are major problems that simply cannot be ignored.

That slim volume has inspired the way I create imperfections in characters. They get major flaws, not simply interesting minor ones. These are part of the conflict—difficulties that either have to be dealt with or be accepted by other characters. What kind of shortcomings can characters have that don’t make them unlikeable?  

1. Physical flaws such as missing limbs, stammering, weak heart, or unattractiveness—However, physical ugliness can be a challenge to overcome for a female protagonist because readers may assume ugly is unlikeable.
2. Irrational fears of large crowds, closed spaces, heights etc.—These are flaws of the mind similar to physical weaknesses, and a favorite ploy in the stories that Hitchcock used. The protagonist cannot make the transition to hero with such a fear hindering them.
3. A mental illness—John Nash, the schizophrenic and Nobel Prize winner who suffered from schizophrenia, was noted as being arrogant, uncaring and not particular likeable in real life. The key to changing this image in the fictionalized account of his life was to show that he was attempting to do something valuable for others, even if he was deluded.
4. A different way of relating to the world—A personality disorder or neuro-atypical pattern of thinking may result in strained relationships with people around them.
5. Proud, egotistical, or critical of others—These protagonists have enviable abilities, but their inflated self-esteem produces its own kind of heartache. This is the hardest flaw to pull off and still have a likeable character. One lesson they must learn is a degree of humility.

The character arc that deals with these physical, mental or personality flaws is as important as defeating the enemy or a devious undermining acquaintance. If you really want to annoy a reader, create a character that does everything right with little to no effort.

The rapid pacing of movies allows script writers and directors a few freedoms that would be criticized in novels. They may stir in a scene that audience that reels in the audience in with mounting tension, but which ultimately does not make sense. Alfred Hitchcock is said to have referred to the incongruities in a scene in Vertigo as the kind that “hits you after you’ve gone home and start pulling cold chicken out of the icebox.” From that quote, we’ve gained the movie term “ice box scene.”

In Hitchcock’s Vertigo a woman named Madeleine is able to walk into a hotel, completely unobserved. She then enters the room of another woman that should be locked. There is no explanation of how Madeleine obtains the key without the desk clerk seeing her, or how she is gains access to the room. However, the audience is too terrified by watching the height fearing character played by James Steward on the roof of the hotel to question these plot wholes.

The screen writer cuts out exposition for the sake of economy to keep the movie on its scheduled pace. The movie viewers take in exciting scenes at face value in a movie and don’t consider why they occurred. However, a novelist must fill in between the scenes or provide a short exposition to connect events. Otherwise many readers will become alienated by events that don’t make sense. The constant “showing” that occurs in films is not feasible. Sometime the author must take a break from the amount of words required to show all action and simply tell the reader what has occurred.

The early action scene in Matewan (a film about a West Virginia coal miner’s strike) involves a train full of  replacement workers or “scabs” being brought to Matewan by the company. Unexplainably the train stops in the middle of the woods, not at the mining camp, to drop off these new workers. The strikers immediately appear to attack them. It seemed as if the whole point of the early drop off site was to expose new workers to a danger that the mine owners would want to avoid. So, why did this happen? No explanation is given. Movie viewers have no time to question why this occurs. The “scabs” re-board the train as if begins to move and the viewers watch breathlessly to see how the last of them, a main character, manages to be pulled into the rolling train by his friends. Then, the scene immediately switches to another setting in the remote mining town of Matewan.

The writer that attempts to keep action moving at the pace of a film faces the icebox dilemma. How do you deal with making sense without pausing the action in between scenes to fill in the rationale for the string of exciting events? Remember, you are writing a book, and reader will expect to think more than when watching a film. With their mind engaged they are more likely to detect plots holes. So, the writer of a novel must take to time to fill in gaps in logic and avoid “ice box scenes.” When the reader gets hungry and visits the refrigerator for cold chicken, he should be questioning what will  happen next and not doubting the likeliness of what just occurred.

Movies have an advantage over the written word when it comes to presenting the emotions of your characters. For example, you read that a man “had his lips raised in a half-smile on one side while he eyes narrowed.”  Did you realize that he was smirking? How about “the woman’s lips curled up, but corner of her eyes remained smooth and unwrinkled.” That is the evil smile, which flashes across the face of actors to show you how devious the person is. If we see these commons facial expressions, we recognize them. However, discerning them from words is more difficult. But, the novelist has a secret sauce that moviemakers can only employ with difficulty— presenting the internal thoughts of characters with clarity and intensity.

In my previous discussion or writing movies versus novels, I described the opening Matewan, a quasi-historical movie ending with a violent massacre during a minor’s strike. The audience is introduced to the internal thoughts of an adolescent coal mining boy at the opening scene. This internal view was so brief that I didn’t even catch it until the end when the denouement was told from his viewpoint as an adult. However, I realized this adolescent was the character with the greatest change arc. I imagine most audience members also failed to catch this subtlety. Despite doing well with critics, Matewan fared poorly with audiences.

The same difficulty detecting the character’s internal view occurred when I viewed Mad Max 2 (known in the US as Road Warrior). I puzzled who spoke the opening and closing sequences of this movie. I immediately questioned “Whose head are we in?” only to be told that it was the feral boy. (This knowledgeable viewer had seen the movie too many times.) This feral boy only grunted and growled during the film, so his speaking voice was not obvious.

Viewers are used to movies shown from the omnipresent view. To accommodate the rapid pacing expected in a movie, the audience sees the actions of both hero and villains and any important characters. Internal thoughts are rarely voiced. If a movie protagonist is stranded alone, due a plague, a wreck on a tropical island, or an incident during the exploration of Mars, they will typically start talking to something with a face, such as a bust, a skull, or a blood painted volleyball as in Castaway. These conversations are essential for the audience to understand the plot.

However, the novels are not only allowed to move the plot forward via peeks of inside thoughts, they are expected to do this. (The only restriction is to avoid head hopping—moving from one person’s thoughts to another’s without a clear break.) Do not be afraid to use this one benefit to spice up the written word to your best advantage.

How often have you seen movies used as examples on how to write a novel? It’s a shortcut authors employ because familiarity with movies tend to be greater than books.

Movies only consume an hour or two of our lives at a time, and do not require the continued concentration and effort of reading. The plot of a movie is typically the length a few connected short stories or a novella. But, the difference between the two type of media begin at the start. I’ve heard repeatedly that a book must grab the reader in the first few pages. Because a movie has a slimmer plot covered in a shorter time, a book will almost never be as tightly paced.  However, the early attention grabbing requirement that we assume readers are applying to books means that an author has to shove what occurs for the first 10% of the movie into less than the first 1% of the book. Ouch!

Novelist feel forced to introduce the major conflict on the first pages, ignoring the need for portrayal of the characters who play out this conflict. Therefore, the reader is forced to figure out the normal behavior of major characters while reading about an abnormal event. The author must find some unobtrusive way to provide backstory, without shoveling it into the work in chunks large enough to choke on. However, this rarely happens. So, the reader may have to tolerate the initial conflict being shelved until the introduction to the characters occurs.

 The author has an even greater handicap because visual images and sounds portray a setting more rapidly in film than in the written word. Recently, I watch a fictionalized historical film called Matewan (very loosely based on a massacre occurring between striking coal miners and Baldwin-Felts detectives). There was a minute or so panning the disgruntled coal miners climbing out of the mine into daylight, and an immediate switch to the new crew in a cramped box car. This jump from one setting to another would be disconcerting in a book. Scene changes require description of settings, which means more words. During the Matewan scene in the box car, the next set of miners listen to the reading of company rules, which are obviously unfair based on the expressions of the newcomers barreling down the tracks towards the mine.

A modern book would start in the middle of the action—after the train stops and disgruntled miners attack the new replacements. But, only those with a prior understanding of the situation would not be confused by a movie opening in the middle of this skirmish. Instead, movie makers offer a bit of local color by showing the setting and close-ups of important actors, especially their expressions. This lets the viewer into their minds at the beginning. The boring info dump about the company rules remained in the movie even though this would be truncated to a few words in a novel. The movie-going audience is tolerant of a slower start because they expect less requirement to use their own imagination than a book asks from readers.

This is only the start of my discussion. So, as readers please be patient in this exploration of why it is not the wisest tactic to create a book based on the same principles that drive a movie script. And, if you are discussing how to write books, please keep that in mind.