 Short Stories: May 30, 2012 Issue [#5068] |
  Short Stories
This week: Digging Into Character with Questions... Edited by: Jay's debut novel is out now!  
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Continuing our theme from last month about fleshing out antagonists... I think it's important to remember that truism once again, that no one thinks themself to be the villain of the story. However, we've all done things we regret and had bad experiences in our lives. Plumbing these depths by digging in and not being afraid of what might come up is an important way to find and create villains that matter to us-- and hopefully to our readers.
I think every adult and most teens have at least one story, an event with conflict and resolution that gives some context or meaning to their lives, their perspective. (Some of us have many more than one, of course! It's all in there.) I recently spent 25 hours, cumulative, driving with a good friend and colleague of mine on the way to a trade show for work. This is the third time we've made this trip, and every time we have, by necessity, needed to dig deeper into ourselves to find things to talk about in order to stay awake and focused on the road. Since we know each other very well and we've heard all of our sillier surface stories, it became necessary to pull out the big guns. The turning points, the before and afters, all of the things that make us who we are right now.
We got to a point where it became about answering questions which then needed to be expanded past what happened and into why it happened, and how. I'm not going to air any of my dirty laundry, or hers, but it was interesting to see where things would go just by asking pointed questions: adding a little kick to the conversation by asking a question in such a way that it leads an answer that has to be told as a narrative, rather than a fact check.
I've also recently begun work on a story campaign for a role-playing game called Dread, and some of my weekend conversation-trawling has given me loads of ideas. Dread is designed for custom storytelling; the mechanics are simple and, by necessity, cumulative. It takes an aggregation of decisions made by each character and places them in a physical space by using a Jenga or similar wooden-block tower stacking game as the equivalent of a dice roll. Every "pull" from the tower constitutes a major decision, and as the consequences start to pile up, so do the wooden blocks at the top of the pile. Needless to say, something terrible happens if you knock over the block tower, so it's really important to think through every major decision and its ramifications for your character.
The thing that interests me the most about this game, though, is the questionnaire the host of the game puts together. The questions are meant to be chosen by the host, and ideally, each player will answer a few questions that no one else will: their own, unique, set of circumstances which define their game character. The suggested questions lining the bottom of each page of the book are a writer's goldmine of pointed questions -- things like:
 Why did you give up your dreams of becoming an actor?
Why did you lie about the value of your house?
What is the one worst habit you can't seem to break?
Why will you never go swimming again?
How did you find your way home the last time you were lost?
Needless to say, these kinds of questions produce very different answers than "What are your dreams?" and "How much is your house worth?" Try using one of these to pry some deeper and darker stories from your characters-- you never know what you might find in there!
Until next month,
Take care and Write on!
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Feedback from "Experiments in Antagonism" :
Sil  writes:
I think the most compelling motivation I can think of for an antagonist would be the protection of one's own children. The second? Survival of self.
These are definitely good base motivations, and they should flesh out a character into someone nearly any reader might relate to in the right light!
Estes
thanks for the antagonist ideas in your letter!
I myself have been working on a piece in which I ended up liking my antagonist better than my hero! Now the piece has moved onto focusing more on my antagonist- is it acceptable to have a book use an antagonist as both flawed hero and the main enemy to both herself/and the other characters?
I don't see why that can't work, Estes. I think it's even possible to do this quite well. Certainly easier in a novel than a short story, but I think it's not uncommon to have good antagonists, who are so "good" (at what they do, anyway) you might want them to win!
peppery writes:
Hmm. The most compelling thing for my antagonists is usually vengeance of some kind. Something the protagonist did to them or a situation that affects their life because of the protagonist. And to answer your second question, I do struggle with conflict immensely sometimes. It's tough, but I get through it. Great newsletter, by the way.
Vengeance is a powerful motivator, and I think, in most cases, it's the one I tend to rely on most. It's maybe the easy way out, but another one of those paths we can all identify with and relate to, and find something of ourselves in it. Most of us have regrets. 
magicmayflower writes:
I'll maybe try the next challenge. Still getting into the swing of writing again. I have several stories I'm dragging my feet on. Look forward to them in the future.
Glad you liked it and I would be glad to see what you come up with! There will be a new Dialogue 500 challenge sometime after I get the current one judged and reviewed.
A.J. Barretts writes:
So true. You have to spend as much time and effort in getting to know all of the characters that populate your writing as you do the main character. Might even give you a different way to write from a new perspective. By the by love the dialogue 500 and the prompt this time.
I definitely have to mentally inhabit all of my characters-- even the horrible ones. Some of them really help to fill in what I want to say about my heroes as well. Glad you like the 500 as well-- I am just the humble host of a time-honored establishment.
BIG BAD WOLF is Howling  writes:
Sometimes you don't know if the hero is a hero, or a murderer.
This much is true, but the more interesting question might be "Why did our hero have to resort to murder, and how does it haunt him?"
PuppyTales writes:
Great article, J, and thanks for spotlighting my item! I feel like a lot of times the antagonist is even more important than the hero. Without Darth Vader, Luke would've been just an annoying, whiny kid. A good antagonist should bring out the best... or the worst... in the protagonist.
I think this is the closest to my personal feelings on the topic. While I love my campy, sneering, over the top villains, like Snidely Whiplash from Dudley Do-Right for example, I think I find a villain with layers of meaning-- layers of consequences from choices made, (like answers to questions such as those in this editorial for example)-- to be the ones that affect me the most as a reader and as a writer.
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