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LESSON 6 – Building Your Characters - Part 2

THE CRITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CHARACTER WISH FULFILLMENT

Every character has a secret inner wish (just like every reader does). This is an extremely powerful Deep Story tool that you can use to forge an equally powerful emotional bond between your characters and your readers.

Determine what your Protagonist’s biggest secret wish/dream is. Then build your story around fulfilling that wish/dream. And do it by forcing the character to face tasks that are in direct conflict with his/her normal personality.

This will force the character to:

1. Face his/her Inner Fear/Flaw/Wound.

2. Tap into hidden potentials s/he may not know – or believe- s/he possesses.

3. Let him/her experience both failure and success when trying to accomplish those tasks. (This will trigger a variety of emotional responses in both the character and in the reader.)

4. These emotional responses will forge/strengthen the emotional bond between your reader and your character

5. This bond will increase your reader’s emotional stake in your story and characters. This, in turn, will heighten the reader’s satisfaction when your character finally succeeds in obtaining his/her goal.

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HOW TO USE TASKS AND GOALS TO BUILD A RICHER CHARACTER

By identifying your Character’s Inner Fear/Flaw/Wound and deeply held Core Value, and developing his/her external traits and/or Q&Es, you have begun to build yourself an interesting 3-D character.

From the Deep Story perspective all of these character elements are critical to building a solid, believable character with depth. And all of them are tied to the Character’s underlying internal make-up.

But your characters live in an external world and so why not turn to that external world to aid you in adding more depth to your characters – and your story.

One technique you can use to do that is to the Character’s Story Goal and the Tasks associated with obtaining that goal to enrich the character you are building.

OK, that sounds good. But how do you do that?

Easy. But in order to do that you will need to establish a few things first. Such as:

1. Establish what the character’s external goal is.2. Determine what task(s)/risk(s) must the character face in order to

accomplish that goal.3. What is your character’s personality?4. How/where does that place your character at odds with the tasks that

need to be accomplished to reach the goal?

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COMBINING TASK, AND GOAL TO CREATE A RICHER, MORE DEEPLY TEXTURED CHARACTER AND STORY

A character’s Inner Fear/Flaw/Wound is an internal problem that creates an external problem for your character when it interferes with the character’s ability to relate or deal with others. Or when it hinders or prevents your character from obtaining the goal s/he is seeking. By combining that with your character’s selected traits that guide their actions and behavior, you are producing the characterization of a believable character that is unique to your story. And no matter how many characters you have in your story, each one of them will be unique due to their individual characterizations.

By deliberately combining characterization with the character’s goal and the tasks required to obtain that goal you will be able to create an unique and richer story that will pull your reader deeply into your story world. And, at the same time, it will cement the emotional bond between your reader and your character and their plight.

And believe it or not, this is a very easy Deep Story technique to master. You need to know four things:

1. Your character2. The Goal3. The Conflict (triggered by the character’s Inner Fear/Flaw/Wound and

personality/abilities)4. The Tasks

Let’s start by looking at Graphic 6.1 below using the Hollywood box office romantic comedy/adventure hit Romancing the Stone

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ROMANCING THE STONECharacter: Joan Wilder

Bookish, dreamer, insecure, romance writer

Goal: External Problem

Rescue her kidnapped sister

Conflict: Internal Problem

She is insecure and totally inept for the job

Tasks: Travel to a strange country by herself; trek across jungles and mountains, confront deadly kidnappers; rescue sister

Graphic 6.1

Joan Wilder’s characterization of a bookish, insecure dreamer is completely at odds with/in Conflict with – the Task that must be accomplished in order for her to obtain her Goal. In other words, the Tasks that will be required to obtain the Goal are in Conflict with Joan’s basis character.

The story was about her struggle to overcome her Inner Fear (insecurity) and her Passive Personality (Bookish Dreamer) by traveling (solo no less) to a dangerous country and undertaking an arduous physical journey to reach her kidnapped sister in time to save her life.

A story and characters become richer the more at odds the character’s personality is with the tasks required to obtain the goal. The more at odds personality and tasks are, the deeper the conflict. The deeper the conflict the character is forced to face, the deeper the story, the strong the emotional bond becomes with the reader. And the more the character is Forced to Grow Emotionally in order to reach the Goal.

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ADD A DASH OF WISH FULFILLMENT TO THE MIX

Remember the earlier observation that every character has a secret inner wish (as does every reader).

Another Deep Story technique that you can use to depth to your story’s characters is to start by determining what your Protagonist’s biggest secret wish/dream is. Then build your story around fulfilling that wish/dream. To add complexity and depth to both the story and your character force the character to face tasks that are in direct conflict with his/her normal personality. Once you do that you will have the makings of a deeply textured story with characters that are sure to hold your reader’s attention.

Let’s look at Joan again. She was a bookish dreamer who was very fearful and insecure. (What do you want? She was a writer.)

Her Inner Wish/Fantasy was for bravery, adventure and a dashing heroic lover. [Can you guess what the plot is going to be yet?]

She’s an apartment-bound romance writer who has a major external goal forced upon when her sister is kidnapped. And she is the only one who can save her sister from the deadly kidnappers.

The Tasks are Herculean. Joan is a New Yorker and a writer – so we have no doubts about how unphysically fit she is at the start of her journey. But, to reach her goal of saving her sister, she must undertake an arduous physical journey and face many life-threatening external dangers along the way.

And, since this is a romantic comedy, the writer threw in a roguish adventurer who is terrified of commitment and responsibility.

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And what do you have when you add up all of the above elements?

Total Wish Fulfillment + Exotic Adventures +Handsome Hero = Hit Movie.

FORGING THE CHARACTER BOND

Readers need to care about a character before they can forge an emotional bond with him/her. Forcing your character to struggle to overcome his/her Inner Fear/Flaw/Wound is definitely one way to get your reader to care about your character.

But there are also other techniques that you can use to forge that critical emotional bond between your reader and your characters. Graphic 6.2 offers you a selection of useful ways to use your characters to tap into your readers’ emotions by making them care about your characters.

TECHNIQUES TO FORGE AN EMOTIONAL LINKBETWEEN READERS/CHARACTERS

1 The character hides pain2 The character is willing to sacrifice self for others3 The character suffers an undeserved misfortune4 The character is loyal5 The character is brave6 The character is funny, witty, clever7 The character relates to kids, the underdog, the helpless8 The character is loving towards his/her family and friends9 The character solves his/her own problems10 The character feels pain11 The character shares a shameful secret12 The character makes sacrifices or gets by with little13 The character is generous14 The character has an easy and authentic charm or warmth

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15 The character takes responsibility for his/her actions16 The character confesses a secret fear or insecurity17 The character painful past is revealed by another character18 The character is liked by other characters19 The character is an underdog20 The character is plucky21 The character is an excluded outsider22 The character goes his/her own way, follows no one23 The character pulls him/herself up by his/her bootstraps24 The character is thoughtful and intelligentGraphic 6.2

Another Deep Story technique that you can use to increase your character’s appeal to your reader is by making life difficult for him/her. Readers like to see characters suffer and stumble, and occasionally take a hit or two. After all your readers’ life isn’t always a bed of roses. Every day they face problems, stresses, losses and set-backs, and disappointments. So when they encounter a fictional character who is dealing with the same problems (or very similar ones) they have to face, the reader has no problem relating to someone else dealing with the things they deal with. Even if it is a fictional character. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that they have something in common they can relate to.

Graphic 6.3 provides you with a few “Hard Knock” examples that help add believability to your characters in your reader’s mind.

Hard Knocks = Believability1 The character suffers an undeserved misfortune2 The character is lonely3 The character is worried4 The character is afraid5 The character has deep doubts6 The character suffered grief, or shame, or humiliation7 The character suffered a great loss or defeat

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8 The character is greatly disappointed9 The character is betrayed10 The character suffers from deep doubts (and tries to hide it)11 The character suffered a great heart break12 The character is confused13 The character is falsely accused14 The character is treated unfairly and is helpless to defend self15 The character is denied recognition or credit16 The character is frustrated, stymied, or harried by bad luckGraphic 6.3

CHARACTER RELATIONSHIP

Like the characters in your story the relationship between those characters need to be layered so that they have texture and depth to them. Just as people and characters are complex so are the relationships between and among them. It is this complexity that makes them believable.

You add layers, depth and texture to your character relationships the same way that you add them to the characters themselves. And this is through the emotional responses that take place between and among the characters in the scene (aka “Story Chemistry”).

Two characters may be good friends in a particular scene. And the dialogue between them can appear to be friendly and open. But people and characters are layered. What is happening on the external level can easily be quite different for what they are experiencing on an internal level. A case in point – the school bully.

As we have previously learned bullying is a well-established mask to hide a deep insecurity or sense of vulnerability in an individual. So, externally the person is a threatening, mean and nasty individual who uses aggression to intimidate others into bowing to his/her demands. At the same time, on an

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unconscious level this same individual is terrified that others will realize how weak and frightened he really is.

So, in one individual you have two different sets of emotions at work. The internal, or subconscious, level of emotions. And the external, displayed, emotions revealed by the individual’s actions and words.

And what about the bully’s victim? Verbally the victim can be agreeing to the bully’s demands. But internally he’s thinking about how he wants to rip the bully’s face off and stuff it into the nearest trash can.

Between these two characters you have shown their external verbal exchange in which the Bully aggressively appears to be in complete control while the Victim is fearfully trying to appease him. Yet, on an internal level the Bully is the one who is afraid and the Victim is filled with aggressive rage. When you reveal this layering to your readers you’ve turned a simple clichéd set of characters into two characters who have depth and texture to them. And they come alive for your reader.

So the Deep Story process is to apply this technique to all of your fictional characters. And you reveal this to your reader by your character’s words, actions, body language, thoughts and emotional responses.

Let’s take for example a parent’s exchange with their teenager. Let’s make it a mother/daughter breakfast exchange.

Mom is a June Cleaver wanna-be and Teeny is a Goth princess-in-training. Mom is in her element in her sunlit, bright yellow kitchen piling up a growing stack of hot pancakes with fluffy pats of melting butter. Just as she slides the last pancake onto the serving dish Teeny slinks in to grab a can of soda on her way out the backdoor, en route to her waiting boyfriend (with his 3’ silver nostril ring and purple Mohawk) idling in his car out by the curb.

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At the sight of Teeny Mom’s smile tightens a micro-millimeter. But, determined to keep the peace she brightly offers Teeny some of her still steaming, fluffy pancakes and a nice glass of healthy orange juice.

Teeny barely acknowledges her as she reaches into the fridge for her chilled can of sugar-ladened soda and sneeringly refuses Mom’s breakfast alternative. “Ew, gross,” Teeny responses as she moves towards the door and escape. Thinking to herself the whole time, ’When is she going to get a clue?’

And Mom’s contribution to the conversation is, “But I made them especially for you since they’re your favorite.” While thinking, ‘You ungrateful little bitch.’

For your readers that simple scene is filled with layers of expressed and repressed emotions and thoughts that reveals a lot about the relationship between the two characters as well as the ongoing tension and conflict that is simmering just beneath the surface words of their dialogue exchange. (We’ll go into this in more detail in Lesson 7 when we examine the Deep Story approach to creating and using dialogue to add additional layers to your story, the conflict and your characters.)

For now what you need to be aware of is the subtle layering that goes into creating vibrant and believable characters that your readers can bond with. Characters who will come alive for both you and your readers. And who, in turn, will add complexity and texture throughout your story.

CHARACTER ARC REDUX

Previously we discussed that the Protagonist’s Character Arc is the MC Story Thread/Throughline that is one of the four Throughlines that are woven

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together to form the spine of your story. And that by weaving these four major Story Threads together you add texture and depth to you story. In addition, you learned that the MC Story Thread/Throughline is vital to forging the critical emotional bond between your reader and your story world and characters. You’ve also learned the five mandatory “Cave Scenes” that form the basis of the MC Story Thread/Throughline. As well as the emotional significance of each of those five scenes and their placement in your overall storyline.

But what do you do if you are developing a series of books featuring your Protagonist/Main Character. If s/he completes his Character Arc in your first book – how are you to create a Character Arc for the rest of the books in the series? Particularly since the Character Arc is so critical to the forging of the emotional bond with your reader. Because, unless you do create that emotional bond with your reader, no matter how hard you work that story, and those characters, will fail to connect with your reader. And if there is no emotional connection between your reader and your story world, then you have not done your job as the writer.

That does not in any way mean that every single reader will form an emotional link to your story. And that is simply because of the fact that every single reader is a unique individual with individualized personal preferences and quirks all their very own. What it does mean, instead, is that the majority of your readers need to form that critical bond in order for your story to succeed on an emotional – and on a commercial - level. Which is why you are applying the Deep Story techniques to your stories.

And since you now know that the MC Story Thread/Character Arc is vital to forging that emotional bond with your readers – and if you happen to be writing a series – then you now realize that you are going to have a major problem after the first book since your Protagonist has completed his/her Character Arc and has completed his/her needed emotional growth as a character.

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If you are writing a mystery story, where your Protagonist often times doesn’t appear to complete a Character Arc, you are facing the same problem as the series writer. You have a Protagonist/MC who has already completed his/her emotional growth prior to the start of your current story. So how are you going to create a MC Story Thread/Throughline for your current story?

Especially since you need that particular Story Thread to forge the vital emotional bond with your Reader that is absolutely crucial to the success of your story and your characters.

That is not a problem for you now that you are a Deep Story writer because you are aware of the many layers that exist beneath the surface of your story/plotline. And that means you now have the capability to reach down into those deeper story layers and pull a story thread to help you create the needed MC Story Thread/Character Arc.

Only, instead of using your Protagonist, you will chose a secondary character – such as your Contagonist or Mentor – or even one of your other peripheral characters – to show the emotional growth triggered by your particular story. What is important for you as the writer is that you select the character in your story who needs to undergo/undergoes the most emotional growth as a result of the events that have taken place in your story world.

In Robert Parker’s Spencer mystery series, his Protagonist Spencer shows almost no emotional growth whatsoever over the course of the series. Who does grow emotionally in the various stories are the characters surrounding him. And that individual changes from story to story, depending upon the case he is working on. The same holds true for Sue Grafton’s P.I. Kinsey Milhone in her Alphabet series.

For romance and fantasy series writers you have several options available to aid you in crafting your MC Story Thread/Character Arc in your individual stories. In the series where you have the same Protagonist in the lead role,

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you can do what the mystery series authors do. And that is select a secondary character to undergo the needed emotional growth in your story. Or you can do what some romance and fantasy series authors do – select a different character to be the protagonist in the different stories. And thus you have a character who will need to undergo the necessary emotional growth in order to succeed in reaching the designated story goal for that particular story.

SELECTING SUBSTITUTE CHARACTERS TO CARRY THE CHARACTER ARC THREAD

If you are in a situation where you must substitute out your Protagonist in your story’s Character Arc thread what impact does that have upon the other Story Threads and the Protagonist’s relationship with the Contagonist?

As much as you may not want to hear this the reality is how that impacts your particular story is entirely up to you – and your characters. Depending upon your story and your characters, you may find that that change has little impact on your overall story. Or, it may force you to have to re-think your underlying story plotline to handle this particular character’s impact on both story events and character relationships.

But given your growing mastership over your Deep Story elements and techniques, the one thing that you can be sure of is that no matter how your story needs to change to accommodate this new wrinkle in your story, it and your characters and the inherent story conflict will be far stronger than any previous story or characters that you have crafted in the past. And, more importantly, with your newly acquired skills you will find it far easier to make those changes in your story and in your characters than before.

LESSON SUMMARY

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Every character has a secret inner wish (just like every reader does). This is an extremely powerful Deep Story tool that you can use to forge an equally powerful emotional bond between your characters and your readers.

Determine what your Protagonist’s biggest secret wish/dream is. Then build your story around fulfilling that wish/dream.

This will force the character to:

Face his/her Inner Fear/Flaw/Wound.

Tap into hidden potentials s/he may not know – or believe- s/he possesses.

Let him/her experience both failure and success when trying to accomplish those tasks. (This will trigger a variety of emotional responses in both the character and in the reader.)

These emotional responses will forge/strengthen the emotional bond between your reader and your character

This bond will increase your reader’s emotional stake in your story and characters. This, in turn, will heighten the reader’s satisfaction when your character finally succeeds in obtaining his/her goal.

By identifying your Character’s Inner Fear/Flaw/Wound and deeply held Core Value, and developing his/her external traits and/or Q&Es, you have begun to build yourself an interesting 3-D character.

Since your characters live in an external world you can use that external world to aid you in adding more depth to your characters – and your story by using the Character’s Story Goal and the Tasks associated with obtaining that goal to enrich the character you are building.

In order to do that you will need to establish:

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Establish what the character’s external goal is.

Determine what task(s)/risk(s) must the character face in order to accomplish that goal.

What is your character’s personality?

How/where does that place your character at odds with the tasks that need to be accomplished to reach the goal?

By combining task, and story goal you can create a richer, more deeply textured character and story

By deliberately combining characterization with the character’s goal and the tasks required to obtain that goal you will be able to create an unique and richer story that will pull your reader deeply into your story world.

In order to do that you need to know:

Your character

The Goal

The Conflict (triggered by the character’s Inner Fear/Flaw/Wound and personality/abilities)

The Tasks

Another Deep Story technique that you can use to depth to your story’s characters is to start by determining what your Protagonist’s biggest secret wish/dream is. Then build your story around fulfilling that wish/dream. To add complexity and depth to both the story and your character force the character to face tasks that are in direct conflict with his/her normal personality.

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Readers need to care about a character before they can forge an emotional bond with him/her. Forcing your character to struggle to overcome his/her Inner Fear/Flaw/Wound is definitely one way to get your reader to care about your character. Graphic 6.2 offers you a list of suggestions you can use to do just that.

Another Deep Story technique that you can use to increase your character’s appeal to your reader is by making life difficult for him/her. Graphic 3 provides you with a few “Hard Knock” examples that help add believability to your characters in your reader’s mind.

Like the characters in your story the relationship between those characters need to be layered so that they have texture and depth to them.

You add layers, depth and texture to your character relationships the same way that you add them to the characters themselves. And this is through the emotional responses that take place between and among the characters in the scene that you create your “Story Chemistry” that is so critical to pulling your readers deeper into your story world.

By revealing the character’s underlying layering to your readers you can turn a simple clichéd set of characters into two characters who have depth and texture to them. And they will come alive for your reader.

And you reveal these character layers to your reader by your character’s words, actions, body language, thoughts and emotional responses.

By layering your characters you can use a simple scene and fill it with layers of expressed and repressed emotions and thoughts that reveal a lot about the relationship between the characters in the scene. As well as the ongoing tension and conflict that is simmering just beneath the surface words of their dialogue exchange.

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As a writer you need to be aware of is the subtle layering that goes into creating vibrant and believable characters that your readers can bond with. Characters who will come alive for both you and your readers. And who, in turn, will add complexity and texture throughout your story.

And finally you now know how you can craft a strong Character Arc Story Thread in your series stories where your Protagonist has previously completed his/her own emotional growth. Or where your Protagonist barely changes at all in the series stories. And you do that by using the characters surrounding your Protagonist to carry the critical Character Arc Story Thread.

EXERCISES

1. Identify your Protagonist’s secret Inner Wish. Then do the same for your Contagonist and your Antagonist.

2. Decide how that secret Inner Wish will force your three characters to face their Inner Fear/Flaw/Wound.

3. Determine what actions you want these characters to have to face that will force them to tap into their hidden/undiscovered inner potential.

4. Determine how you will force your characters to face both failure and success as s/he moves towards the story goal.

5. What emotional responses will your characters display in the wake of their failures/successes?

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6. What impact do those successes/failures the actions/decisions that you characters make as they pursue the story goal?

7. How do those decisions/actions twist your plotline?

8. How do those decisions/actions complicate both your plotline and the characters’ relationships?

9. Using Graphic 6.3 can you develop a disadvantage/hard knock that will added an additional emotional layer to your Protagonist?

10. Look at the various relationships between the characters in your story, how can you layer in tensions and conflicts beneath the surface of their relationship that will add depth and texture to both the relationship and the scene in which it is playing out in?

11. For those of you who are currently working on a mystery or on the next book in your series – look at the various characters in your current story and determine which character needs/or does undergo the most emotional growth in the story.

12. Tied to #11 – determine what your Character Arc scenes are/need to be in your current story for this substitute character who will be carrying the story’s Character Arc Thread.