They're On a Role

by Dana Luther

Dana Luther is a freelance writer and critic now living in Evanston, Illinois. We're hoping she'll be a regular feature in Writer On Line.

Creating Characters: How to Build Story People
Dwight V. Swain
Writer's Digest Books
F&W Publications, Inc., Cincinnati, 1990

The Writer's Digest Sourcebook for Building Believable Characters
Marc McCutcheon
Writer's Digest Books
F&W Publications, Inc., Cincinnati, 1996

Writer's Digest has published a number of excellent books on characterization in the past decade, one of the most memorable of which is Orson Scott Card's Characters and Viewpoint (1988). Among others worthy of mention for structure and content are Dwight V. Swain's Creating Characters: How to Build Story People and Marc McCutcheon's Building Believable Characters.

The titles are very similar: both feature the building image. Their names may give the impression that both books present a clear, linear process, perhaps a step-by-step formula for characterization. (If only it were that easy.) However, the best feature of the books is that each ultimately leaves process up to writers. They are exploratory journeys rather than "how-to" textbooks. And each author recognizes the building process as a gradual, trial-and-error, character-and-plot relationship. Building here is an artful manipulation of materials - beginning with a foundation, then adding and taking away as the developing structure requires.

When I first read that the late Dwight V. Swain had been a newspaperman, foreign correspondent and pulp fiction author who had also scripted videos, I winced about his potential sample characters. I suspected that he would depend more upon type and action, less upon character, and perhaps not deliver a worthwhile book. But except for appropriate references to the detective genre, he's quite democratic, and doesn't suggest that other writers start with the kinds of characters he brought to life.

In his preface, Swain warns writers that he'll instruct only "barn-brush characterization," and that "subtlety" is their responsibility. He even says a little prayer can't hurt. Many writers, short on time, will be enticed by the idea of reading a thin volume (186 pages, plus reading list) organized on the basis of broad strokes to get the basics down. Despite his claim, in later chapters Swain does give many specific tips for making characters convincing, from background to dialogue to appropriate deviations from stereotype.

While independent of types from the genres he worked in, Swain doesn't draw much from classic literary characters, either. He depends heavily upon familiar characters from modern media. Many of these seem confined to an outdated twenty-year period. But most character examples, largely made up off the top of Swain's head, are well suited to the chapter subjects, easy to visualize, and often funny. Best, they are simple and memorable, and illustrate precise points.

In an easy, accessible style, Swain writes to a wide audience and doesn't condescend. This will prove encouraging for beginners. Early on he suggests that the best way to read the book is to skim first and then go back to each chapter on an as-needed basis; he doesn't recommend a linear approach. I tried reading the book both ways, and while I found it instructive and engaging each time, I'm convinced he's right. Imposing a particular structure on a process that at its best is fairly random is a waste of time.

The way Swain organizes content is useful if not linear. Better than the chapter titles, which are not necessarily transparent ("The World Within:1" and "The Dynamics of Disbelief," for example), chapter subheads will steer writers directly to what they seek, depending on the specific characterization problem the writer is tackling. These are set up in problem/solution format. For instance, for "The Dynamics of Disbelief," the subtitle is "How do you cope when readers don't believe in your characters and stories? You plug the gaps where belief leaks out." These tags are helpful for those who find themselves stuck on problems that they can feel but can't name. The subheads may be enough to encourage writers to resurrect their own failed characters who died of causes formerly unknown.

The thesis of Creating Characters is that a main character has "the ability to care." Something gets in the way of what he cares about, and his subsequent motivations and reactions, relative to his caring, result in plot. All of this drives how much "fleshing out" a writer must do. The character must be familiar enough to a majority of readers for them to identify with him, but different enough from stock to be an individual driven by a specific personal motive - his "private future."

Chapters Five, Six and Seven of Creating Characters are perhaps the best in the book. The first two look at the character's personal motive and goal, while the third explains the importance of emotion. All three deal extensively with methods for showing versus telling. Swain's way of explaining the show/tell problem is more succinct than many others I've read, and clearer than some entire books on the subject.

Particularly in Chapter 16, "The Dynamics of Disbelief," Swain suggests that a character whose goals are too unusual, whose intellect is too far above or below average, will lose credibility by alienating readers. Swain warns that when individualizing a character, writers shouldn't depart from stereotype in such a way that the departure is trivial, doesn't make sense in context, or causes readers to abandon their identification with the character.

Among the few drawbacks of Swain's book is a veiled datedness. I noted and didn't like several camouflaged signs of age that appeared in his language. At one point he refers to a male character's partner as his "girl." Similar problems surface elsewhere, especially in Chapter 15, "The Character Out of Time." He overplays his insistence that writers avoid archaic roles, mores, and ideals. It's a useful point, but I thought he protested too much on the need for currency and blundered a bit in his expression of it. He cites the "do your own thing" attitude as a sign that "times have changed" (p.165). The way it comes off in text, it sounds as though he thinks the phrase "do your own thing" is in fashion at the time of publication (1990). I even suspected that the out-of-touch "older writer of [his] acquaintance" given as an example might have been himself, disguised. Though some readers may find such things mildly distracting, they don't detract from the book's value.

Coming from an entirely different background than Swain's, Marc McCutcheon puts language first in his approach to characterization. The author of the entertaining Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in the 1800's, McCutcheon believes that writers spend too much time searching for the precise word. Most standard reference works either don't contain the words writers need or aren't organized in a practical way.

The Writer's Digest Sourcebook for Building Believable Characters is intended as a specialized thesaurus for writers who want to create the detail that helps characters become clear to both writer and audience.

McCutcheon's book grew out of his own and others' use of "cheat sheets" -customized lexicons for common descriptive language. Like Swain's book, the Sourcebook shouldn't be used as an exclusive springboard for generating characters. McCutcheon intends it to be used as a reference before a story is in progress. About seven-eighths of the book is just a big list of words organized into personality traits, expression and mannerism, language, clothing, and dwelling types. Still, it is a diverting read. I was tempted to try these lists immediately, and found myself picturing and laughing about the people they helped conjure. And even though I didn't need to, I learned a lot about hats.

The first eighth of the book, its heart, is a long interview featuring six current novelists who write in different genres. They answer questions about what kind of planning, inspiration, and names make memorable, successful characters. They're asked about descriptive features, action, flaws, consistent behavior, conflict, growth, dialogue, and showing versus telling. They also discuss do's and don'ts. Fortunately, theirs are disparate opinions, and thus rich as a whole.

The remaining elements of the thesaurus illustrate and support the subjects covered in the interview. First comes an exhaustive questionnaire intended to generate detailed knowledge about a writer's developing character. This isn't terribly original--I suspect that some version of this practice is common for fiction writers. (It's interesting, though; the questionnaire asks about everything from "military experience" to "mental disturbances.") Finally come the word lists.

I thought the Sourcebook ran away with itself when it came to names, dialects, and foreign speech. (Not to minimize the severity of a genuine and grave condition, but please tell me no writer will repeatedly refer to a diagnosis of "oligodendroglioma.") Although they are fascinating, whether or not these items would really become useful to a given writer seems to me largely a matter of hit-or-miss. Beginning writers, especially, might be tempted to pick and choose a number of elements and throw them together, as an inexperienced cook without a recipe might throw together the contents of a cabinet. After all, anyone can construct an apparent sonnet by randomly choosing fourteen lines from Shakespeare that follow the rhyme scheme and sound really good. But the result still isn't a sonnet.

-- DL