Tests of Character

What does your character think is important?

All right, now, what does your character really think is important? For what, or whom, would they drop everything and run into battle (figuratively or literally)? For what reason would they disregard personal safety, need for food, etc.?

In my novel in progress, there is a point when the main character falls abruptly ill. This event galvanizes all kinds of people around him, and it's the kind of event that will show what these people consider important.

• The main character's mother cares about nothing more than saving his life - not particularly surprising.
  
• The mother's servant takes her wishes as his own, of course, and he has medical training that would cause him to act - but he discovers he cares very deeply for the main character and drops everything, hardly eating or sleeping for two days in order to get him through his illness.
  
• The main character's brother, by contrast, figures everybody is caring for the main character but nobody has noticed that there was something he was supposed to do, and now nobody is available to do it. He cares far more about the political situation than he does about his brother.

When we hit a catastrophic event in our stories, or even just a deeply important gesture (such as a touch from a person one is attracted to), it provides us with fantastic opportunities to reveal character. In fact, it's worth trying to achieve just this sort of test of character during the course of a story. We're encouraged to ask, "What is the worst thing that could happen from this characters point of view?" and then to try to have that happen. Why? Not only is it dramatic, but it provides a test of character and allows the character to become more deeply human (whether he/she is in fact human or not), as well as giving that character a unique opportunity to direct the plot. Tests of character are where plot and character come together to drive the plot.

If you're in the midst of writing a story, look for places where events could conspire to test your character and cut through to what he or she considers most important. If you're planning a story but have more information about your character than about the plot, look through your character's personality for places of weakness, those funny-bones or Achilles heels that could really use testing. Then use that information to guide your plot choices. Oddly enough, you don't even need to know how the character would react to being tested in that way - only that they should be tested. You can then wait and figure out what happens when you get there.

It's something to think about.

External and internal conflict

Ever since reading Janice Hardy's thoughts about the topic on Friday, I've been thinking about external and internal conflict. That very day I realized that the reason a story I've been writing wasn't working was that I didn't have both external and internal conflicts - only external. I found myself asking a question:

Why is it so important to have both external and internal conflicts in a story?

One reason is complexity. A story with only external conflicts feels somewhat shallow to me, no matter how thorny the external conflict becomes. I always like to have the sense that the protagonist is somehow at odds with the external realities of his or her situation.

Another is unpredictability. I always like a story that is hard to predict, and as Janice notes, when you have external conflict driving the story in one direction, and internal conflict driving it in yet another, "crashing them together," the story's direction becomes more difficult to guess.

Both of these are reasons I've thought through before, but this week the problem hit me from another direction, and I came up with a third.

It feels more real.

Now, why would that be? Maybe because it's plausible to think that most people have internal issues they're working through. On the other hand, why would it be so appropriate to have the protagonist dealing with internal conflicts that directly contrast with the external ones? Wouldn't that feel more coincidental? To me it doesn't. After much thought, what I decided was this:

An internal conflict that contrasts with an external one lets the protagonist fight directly against the author.

As a reader, I know that the external conflict is controlled by the author - an outside force that throws things at our beloved protagonist. I don't feel the same way about conflict inside the character, for some reason, even though I know the author is just as much in control of the conflict inside the character as they are of the conflict outside. I think it's because a well-crafted character will feel like her motivations grow naturally from personality, experience and other factors. Thus, so long as the protagonist feels like a real person, then her struggle with internal conflict, while dealing with the events of the plot, will take on additional dimension. Not only will the protagonist's choices be unexpected, but she will take on that quality that I love to feel when writing a character - the feeling that she is acting on her own against me and against what I might (as the writer) want to make her do.

I urge you to think through internal conflict as well as external. It will really make a difference to your story.

An interesting link about plotting

I just thought you might be interested in this - a very good discussion of plot from J.A. Konrath's blog.

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/