Perils of the Writer: Heroic Support and Infrastructure

Most of what I write essentially involves one or two key characters who, through choice or circumstance, have to go out and do hard, heroic things.  Of course, sometimes these hard, heroic things aren't exactly heroic.  They might be self-serving or even downright criminal. But the key thing is the characters themselves believe in the fundamental rightness of what they are doing, no matter what else the world tells them.

However, in most cases, they can't do it alone.  Even the most die-hard of "loner" characters have a deep bench of help and support characters to get the job done.  Batman can't Batman if he doesn't also have Alfred, Jim Gordon, Lucius Fox, Dr. Leslie Thompkins, Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson in the mix with him.

I've been thinking about the archetypes of these support and infrastructure characters, how I've usually expressed them in these works.  It's not been a conscious thing, a checklist of, "Oh, I need this"-- but when I look back at each works' set of dramatis personae*, I see most of the archetypes represented.  Of course, each of these things aren't limited to one character each: one character could fill many roles, and some roles can be fulfilled by multiple characters.  This is hardly a fully representative list of "this is what you must have". 

A Hero needs someone who knows the things they don't. Heroes that know everything are not particularly interesting.  It's good to have someone in their corner who gives them information they specifically need to figure out what do to.  Not necessarily someone to put the pieces together for them, but someone who can say, "Here are the pieces for you."

A Hero needs someone to tell them hard truths. Any hero that's worth reading about is going to stray from their path, get their moral compass out of alignment, or otherwise have a blind spot.  Someone needs to be there to smack them across the head and tell them the thing they won't tell themselves.  Things that they don't want to hear, but probably need to.

A Hero needs someone with authority. Much like the previous point is about keeping the hero in check, I think a hero needs to have to answer to someone, in one way or another, to keep them from just having carte blanche to do whatever.  An unrestrained hero is also uninteresting.

A Hero needs someone to patch them up.  This is twofold: someone to physically heal them when they get hurt, and someone to pull them out of the abyss when things go wrong.  The first is just common sense, and doesn't even necessarily involve a character so much as infrastructure.  But a specific character is probably more interesting.
 
Do not use this as a checklist: that would probably get you in a lot more trouble.  I may use the word "need" a lot in this, but take that with a grain of salt.  Above all, a story needs what it needs. 

There is one deliberate omission, something I was going to put, and then erased, but it's worth mentioning: Someone with loyalty.  I mostly erased it because, to a degree, that loyalty is implied in all the other elements.  But I also erased it because it implies that the loyalty to the hero is something that is deserved rather than earned.  The hero must earn that loyalty.  The hero must KEEP earning it.

Plus, the conflict that arises from a rock-like loyalty being shaken?  That's real juicy stuff to write.




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*- I always write up a Dramatis Personae for each book, mostly because I need a quick reference for the names of minor characters. 

A Deep Bench of Tertiary Characters

I have to confess, there's a small part of me that cringes whenever I realize I need another character.  Or characters.  Especially a character with a name.  Because I know, each named character adds a new dimension of complexity, and with that, the risk of losing a reader who doesn't want to keep track of too many characters. 

Usually, such a character first comes into the story on a purely functional basis: I need someone for Colin to talk to in this scene.  I need Jeric to have a peer group among the Tarian initiates. I need Lesk to be building up his own crew of neighborhood flunkies.  Serving the mechanical needs of the story, keeping the gears moving.  This is fine, of course, but in and of itself, rarely dynamic. 

So I put myself in the frame of mind of my theatre roots: make every role interesting.  Think in terms of casting: what would a great character actor do with this part?*  How can I make it more than just functional, but without going off on a tangent that has little to do with the rest of the story? 

On top of that, it's often in these tertiary characters that the biggest surprises of the writing process is born.  Something that starts as functional blossoms into a more crucial role.

One of my favorite examples of this comes from Deep Space Nine**: Damar.  Damar first shows up in the 4th season episode "Return to Grace", and his purpose is entirely functional.  He's the guy on the bridge of Dukat's ship who speaks, so someone can say those "Target at four hundred thousand, sir" and "Phasers ready" lines.  He's the personification of Dukat's whole crew, and little else.  But over the course of the series, he stayed at Dukat's right hand as Dukat became the de jure leader of Cardassia under Dominion rule.   And once Dukat's madness removed him from that position, there was Damar: now the puppet in charge, and the slow cost that had on his soul became a key storyline in the final season.  

Not too shabby for a character that starts out as purely functional.

And that, I think, is the key aspect when bringing any new named character into the mix: investing them with the potential to become something so much more.  I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've started a new scene and realized that the best choice of POV character for that scene is someone I hadn't even considered existing when I drafted the outline. 

The other key aspect?  Keep the names dynamic.  I know when I'm reading a book-- especially a sci-fi or fantasy book-- and there's some minor character named Vesslin and another one named Vettlan I am going to mix up which one is which.  Heck, when I was twelve and tried to reader Lord of the Rings for the first time, I couldn't keep Sauron and Saruman straight.  They were both bad guys with S-r-n name constructions.***

Right now on Way of the Shield I'm working on a scene where a functional character exists to bring a main character from Point A to Point B-- in a literal, "get him on a carriage and deliver him somewhere" way.  In writing the scene, I asked myself, "Who is this guy, and how did he get this job?", and in asking that, I found a common thread between him and the main character in the scene, which then helps build his story, and does a bit of worldbuilding work in the process.

Again,  not too shabby for a character that starts out as purely functional.

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 *- An interesting effect of the success of the Harry Potter movies is how it managed to get some of Britain's greatest actors to do little more than oddly-dressed cameos. 
**- I do use Star Trek examples a lot, don't I?
***- Tolkien's habit of giving the same character multiple names didn't help me much either.

Writing Minor Characters: The Story of Citizen #4

I believe that I'm somewhat unusual amongst fantasy/sci-fi writers, in that I cut my writers' teeth as a playwright.  Coming at writing novels from a theatre background gives me a different perspective on writing than most people, especially since I was also an actor.

I'm not going to pretend that, as an actor, I was much above "competent".  My presence onstage would not be a detriment to your show, but that was about about the extent of my skills.  So, many years ago, in my acting days, I was in an excellent production of Julius Caesar, playing "Citizen #4". 

For those of you unversed in the specifics of Julius Caesar, after Caesar has been murdered and Antony turns the public against the conspirators with his "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" speech, the public goes a little nuts.  Thus, four citizens are hungry for some blood, and they know one of the conspirators was a senator named Cinna.  They find another guy named Cinna, and proceed to beat the snot out of him, because that's good enough.  Citizen #4 gets to explain the logic behind that:

It is no matter, his name's Cinna; pluck but his
name out of his heart, and turn him going.

As an actor with only a small bit to do, you do try and make the most of it. Why?  Because it's who you are in that moment.  I was never a method actor, but I always took to acting with the idea that there's more going on than just your lines.  I recall this advice from Michael Caine*, talking about what a director told him when he was in a small part.  The director noted him and said, "What are you doing right here in this part?"  "Nothing, I'm don't have anything to say."  "Of course you do," the director said.  "You have amazing, brilliant things to say.  You're just deciding not to say them."

Doing this kind of acting crystallized something for me when I was writing.  I can't, as a playwright, write a part that would be no fun for an actor to play.  And as a novelist, whenever I write a character, even the most minor ones, I can't help but think about making it at least a little more interesting than it, strictly speaking, "needs" to be.

In Thorn of Dentonhill, there's a bit where Veranix runs into two mounted constabulary.  These two cops (or "sticks", to use the street vernacular of Maradaine) could have been just Cop #1 or Cop #2.  But where's the fun in that?  These are still two guys who got up that day, put on their uniforms, got on their horses and went to work.  These are two guys who work at night, as partners, in a tough neighborhood where most cops are in the crime boss's pocket.  But not these two.  These two are a couple of guys who have each others' backs and do their best.  These two guys would be the heroes of their own story.

Conversely, in Holver Alley Crew, at one point I jump to the POV of a character who hadn't appeared before and doesn't appear again, partly for the fun of seeing one of the main characters from a completely outside perspective.  She has her own problems and concerns, which have nothing to do with what intrudes upon her.  Her reality gets affected by the main story, but it stays her reality.  And, if I may say so myself, it's a fun bit.  It's more fun than had I written it from the main character's POV.




*- This was in a lecture he gave on video, it's not like he told me directly.