A version of this article appeared in FICTION WRITER magazine, June 2000 issue.
by David Poyer
Most writers begin with simple forms of story.
But as they learn the craft, some feel the urge to attack more complicated
themes in more ambitious works; to explore different personalities and characters;
or simply to create a more capacious fictional world.
I’ve written almost every form of fiction, from the short-short
through the multivolume series. But I have a long-winded muse.
She dictates lengthy books. And as time goes on she tends to assemble
more characters in each.
Getting into the heads of different kinds of people is
also a more effective way of telling a big story. One viewpoint might
cover a broken marriage. But it's difficult to present a revolution,
the decline of a family, or a major disaster without introducing multiple
viewpoints. Introducing characters with different values and narrative
perspectives adds richness and texture to our work, too.
This leads us to the braided narrative, a work in which
multiple characters follow separate plot lines which interact, and (usually)
converge at the end of the story. I've written ten so far, including
THE MED, THE GULF, THE ONLY THING TO FEAR, THUNDER ON THE MOUNTAIN, and so
on. I'm pleased with their popularity, but the real satisfaction came
from solving an artistic problem. It's all very well to put lots of
characters into a book. But once we have them milling around in there,
meeting and interacting and pursuing their separate yet related desires, how
do we ringlead this circus?
Now, I've been accused of having an "engineering" approach
to writing. (Usually by poets.) Actually, it would be surprising
if my engineering background didn't affect my approach to fiction. But
as any engineer will tell you, engineering doesn't guarantee a superior product
compared to craftsmanship or art. It’s only a more efficient, more
reliable way to get there.
This applies to writing too. There are analytical
tools that can help you build a complex story, rather than "discovering" it
through false starts and wasted effort.
Some will object to this right-brained approach.
But after 25 years at typewriter and keyboard, I know writing requires both
the right brain and the left, the visceral and the rational, the Apollonian
and the Dionysian.
These techniques won't make a novelist out of anyone
without an ear for dialogue, a fascination with character, an understanding
of point of view and narrative perspective, and what the late John Gardner
called a moral viewpoint. What they’ll do is save time, your most precious
resource. Time you can spend writing more books, or making that single
book better.
PRE-PLANNING
Now, I dislike the neologism "pre-planning" because it's so often used just
to mean "planning." But in this case it fits, because it describes what
we do before formal planning.
Most novels and stories begin with a seed. For
me, this can be a character I find interesting, or a scene that suddenly
assembles itself in my head while I’m driving. It can be a title, a
word, or a philosophical concept. Gradually other ideas, scenes, themes,
crystallize around it, and suddenly I’m expecting.
I call what happens between the seed and the outlining
stage “visualization.” It’s the most powerful way I know to gear up
before starting a book. The process involves a lot of sitting around
staring out the window.
Do you dream about writing? I occasionally wake
with a clear recollection of gazing on pages from the archives of the collective
unconscious -- pages far better than anything I've written. When I return
from one of these access dreams, and realize how much there is back there,
my conclusion is: Something powerful blocks us from it during our waking
life.
That something is the parent inside our heads who says
NO. For example, when I contemplate stepping off a bridge that has no
handrail, he tells me a) that this is dangerous b) contrary to the law of
gravity and c) likely to result in damage to myself. But in a dream?
We sail off the bridge with perfect confidence that we will fly.
I conclude from this that there's a part of our brain
that only operates when we're awake that gives us these NOs.
I'll be the first to admit the majority of these messages
are necessary. They keep us from stepping in manholes, or strangling
that annoying supervisor at work.
The problem is that we as artists have to deal somewhat
differently with our psyches than most people do. Sober and awake, we
have to do something Muggles do only in sleep or madness: Silence the critical
faculty, and gain direct access to the creative. That path will be
different for each of us, and maybe the editors of FW will let me dilate
on that in a future issue. But it’s to our advantage to do it, as much
as possible, before we start trying to put words to paper.
Once we have the key scenes visualized, we're ready to
proceed to planning. The first element of this is the character sketch.
CHARACTER SKETCHES
I often get asked, "Where do your characters come from?"
I don't limit myself to sea novels, but since they're
a significant part of my work I’ll derive my example from them. When
I have to introduce a Navy captain, I can think about captains I've served
under, captains I've known, captains I've heard stories about, and captains
I've read about.
This mass of experience forms what Saul Bellow calls
an arcanum: a known world within which one can set any type of story one
wishes. Conflicts of duty and honor, career and personal loyalty, man
and woman, youth and age, belief and disbelief -- I can set any of these
in a milieu I know intimately.
But though some minor details of my characters may be
Frankensteined, I believe deep characterization stems from motivation.
The question What does this person want? is far more important to me than
what the beginning writer generally obsesses about, which is, How tall is
he, what’s his name, what designer does she wear, what color are his/her eyes
or hair or skin.
The character sketch, then, should concentrate on the
subject's background and motivation. It need not be long. If you
feel comfortable with the character, a paragraph’s enough. But try
to include the central dilemma.
Here, for example, are the preliminary character sketches
for AS THE WOLF LOVES WINTER:
(SIDEBAR #1)
Now, this is IMPORTANT: During the course of your work the characters will
change. The protagonists you started with may blah out. Minor
characters will morph and steal the show. Don’t be bound by what you’ve
written the first time!
CHARACTER ANALYSIS
George Witte, my long-time editor at St. Martin’s Press,
gave me a simple but powerful tool years ago for analyzing (taking apart)
novels. For each major character, we ask:
What does the character want?
What does he/she do to get it?
What's the result?
Why should the reader care?
How does character conflict or braid
with others?
How is it resolved at the end?
In a book with a single major or point of view character,
a single narrative line, we can quickly outline the entire action proper of
the book by answering these questions. For a multiple-character novel,
we add more rows. As we add characters we also lay in points of interaction
among them. When the analysis is finished it resembles this, for my
Washington novel, TOMAHAWK:
(SIDEBAR #2)
This universe has four dimensions: Dan Lenson, my main
character; a Plowshares activist; the admiral in charge of the Joint Cruise
Missiles Office; an Air Force colonel; and a defense-industry reporter and
analyst. (There are others, but our space is limited). When they're
not interacting they're carrying on their individual lives.
Now this multiple-character chart begins to resemble
something familiar to students of economics and matrix algebra. It's
an array. If you change any one element in an array, such as a spreadsheet,
all the other elements will change too. In the same
way, if the novel’s carefully put together, each change in the narrative
line of one character will affect the others; maybe not in action proper,
but if for no other reason, for juxtaposition and contrast.
The narrative lines can’t proceed independently.
Why not? Because then you have separate novels that just happen to be
under the same cover. The reader would wonder why these people are in
the same book. Fortunately editors know this, and they may be kind enough
to point it out -- in your rejection letter.
What one character wants, and does, and tries, should
conflict with what the other characters want. This not only heightens
tension, it gives a flavor of real life. Not that all the characters
need to know all the others. #1 may know 3 and 4, but not 2 and 5.
Even if you don't want to work with a complete outline,
the character analysis will clarify the underlying structure of the book for
you.
FLOW CHART
Industrial flow charts show where intermediate steps
must occur to result in a finished product. Mine do exactly the same
thing.
Looking at the character analysis, and disciplining the
jumble of ideas, scenes, research, and life experiences in my head, I sketch
out each narrative stream. Following only one character, this starts
with her introduction and proceeds to her involvement in her individual and/or
general climax and resolution. I set it out in a series of linked boxes,
each box representing a chapter. Here’s an example from the work in
progress, a Civil War novel tentatively titled THE PARTING OF THE WATERS:
(SIDEBAR #3)
Here's another metaphor, if process engineering leaves
you cold: my "wooden boat" simile. The book’s built just like a wooden
sailing ship. First we lay the keel: the primary narrative line, that
of the character who’ll witness and comprehend the largest part of the action.
Next we add the “strakes,” the narrative lines of the
other major characters. If split off, each would form a nearly complete
novella.
At each point where the characters meet and interact,
we add the stringers. These tie the strakes together, giving ship and
novel unity, coherence, and strength.
These points of interaction need not be long or intimate.
They can be as simple as two characters seeing each other on the street.
But they can also be very powerful.
One of the most effective scenes in THE MED occurs after
Private Willard S. Givens dies trying to execute flawed orders. His
squaddies are carrying him to the medevac chopper. Commodore Sundstrom,
whose vacillation and careerism helped kill Givens, sees the litter going
by and calls the sergeant in charge over. Sergeant Cutford, who has
persecuted Givens throughout the book, says to Sundstrom, "He was my best
man."
To Sundstrom the body's just a marker in his campaign
to make admiral. But the reader knows "Oreo" Givens. He knows
how hard it was for him to find courage, and how wrong it was for him to die.
The juxtaposition conveys the irony and waste of war far more powerfully
than any intrusive authorial homily ever could.
THE OUTLINE
This carries us to the last step before we begin writing: the outline.
(Bear with me. This is the last piece of analytical paperwork I'll afflict
you with.)
Most professional writers do outlines. Length?
My initial outline for HATTERAS BLUE, 70,000 words with one point of view
character, was two single-spaced pages; that for THE PARTING OF THE WATERS,
with five characters at 120,000 words, is twelve pages. I write my outlines
by ordering the scenes I visualized and then filling in the links, referring
often to the flow chart and the character matrix. There may be one
sentence to a chapter, or paragraphs describing successive scenes. Here’s
a typical chapter description from my most recent book, CHINA SEA:
(SIDEBAR #4)
Once the outline’s done, I have everything I need to
start writing.
TYING UP THE BRAIDS
Near the end of a braided narrative, the reader expects
the till-then separate narrative streams to gradually converge, then merge
in a single climax or series of climaxes that lead not only to the resolution
of each character’s dilemma, but also illumine the theme of the work as a
whole.
Remember our matrix? Each character has been trying,
throughout the book, often in conflict with the other characters, to achieve
a solution of his or her central problem or dilemma, along with the other
obstacles we place in his path along the way. The resolution must address
whether or not he finds one, and how he changes as a result.
Note I didn’t say “how he succeeds.” In my experience,
simply having a character finally “win,” achieve his original goal and live
happily ever after, does not resemble life as we know it and is a pretty unsatisfactory
resolution in anything purporting to resemble serious fiction. Some
alternate resolutions could be:
• Realizing the original goal was impossible
and settling for less
• Realizing it (or he) was wrong and
changing sides in the crunch
• Getting what he wanted and just starting
to regret it
• Getting it but paying such a huge
price it’s useless
• Not getting it but coming close enough
to achieve something resembling happiness
• Not getting it but preventing any
of the other characters from doing so either
• Watching as one of the other characters
succeeds in his place.
Although you see me making a stab at it in the last column
of sidebar #2, I find it’s fairly useless to be too specific about resolutions
in the outline stage. I don’t know the character well yet; I don’t know
what will occur in the book; I usually don’t even recognize the theme until
draft 3 or 4. I muse about the resolution now and then during the first
draft, but don’t try to nail it down until I actually get there. My
characters often give me signals they could go different ways as well.
This element of uncertainty or unpredictability keeps me engaged, and if I
stay interested, chances are the reader’s going to stay riveted too.
Don’t worry if you’re not sure how it’ll all turn out. It generally
takes me six to seven drafts before I have all the bugs shaken out of the
ending.
FINGERS TO KEYBOARD, BUNS TO CHAIR
So the process of preparing to write can take me months.
But by the end of that time, the book is getting close to term. At some
point, the waters break and I tear into Chapter One.
I write my first draft from the outline with an occasional
glance at the character sketches. I continually update the outline in
the course of writing, as new ideas occur and as the characters grow and behave
in unexpected ways. This way, when I begin the day's work, I
can immediately resume seeing and writing down what happens, rather than anxiously
wondering what will happen. At the end of the day, I read the outline
of what I’ll write tomorrow. My unconscious works on while I snore,
and the next day I find the elves have whole paragraphs and scenes set in
type back there.
When I stall out, I know something’s wrong. The
character analysis and flow charts save me. I go back and review, looking
for the point where I got off track. When I find it, I update the outline.
Suddenly everything’s clear and the writing process, like a cleaned and reprimed
outboard, starts again with the first pull.
TOOLS, ONLY TOOLS
There's a lot of truth to the saw that writers are like
sculptors, except we have to create the marble first. Outlines, analyses,
flow charts, make it easier to create that all-important first draft.
But after that the work has only begun. Most novels are less written
than rewritten; refined, as James Dickey said, from “low-grade ore.”
Fiction is a more complex artifact than most beginning
writers realize. The novelist must operate on many planes, carry out
many functions, some contradictory. This isn't easy even for the old
hand. Character sketches, analyses, flow charts, and outlines are ways
of extracting and solving those problems outside the creative flow, so that
the writing itself can take place with as few distractions as possible.
Writing well demands every neuron I own. But the
truth is, very little of successful writing and publishing depends on "genius”
or "inspiration." So don’t wait for them to strike. Learn all
you can; work diligently, continuez, and one day you’ll realize you're not
"trying" to write that novel any longer. You'll have done it.
Good luck!
SIDEBAR #1: Character sketches, AS THE WOLF LOVES WINTER
W.T. "RED" HALVORSEN -- An old outdoorsman and retired oilfield worker,
HALVORSEN lives deep in the woods in the basement of his burned-out house,
alone except for a puppy. Once a noted hunter, he gave up both hunting
and drinking after his wife died in the fire he caused.
Ainslee THUNNER -- President and chief executive officer of the Thunder
Group. Can she hold the line at Thunder against a trio of outside investors
determined to force her out? It looks like she can -- until she's stabbed
in the back by one of her own executives.
Becky BENNING -- Thirteen, thin and introspective, a vegetarian, her biggest
concerns are her Barbie collection and her little brother, who's dying of
AIDS. Her life takes a sudden turn when she refuses to dissect a frog
in biology class.
Jammy BENNING -- Five years old and he knows he's dying. But he wonders
if the Wolf Prince can help him, “like in the story.”
Rudolf WEYANDT -- THUNNER's executive secretary and admirer. Ainslee
senses he's in love with her. It's true, he admires her. But Rudy
has more important plans: after twenty years of waiting, to finally gain
the presidency of Thunder for himself.
THE SILVER WOLF -- old and wary, he's survived hundreds of traps and ambushes.
He doesn't quite understand how he got to this strange new land. But
now it's his, and he'll defend his pack against anything and anyone.
ROD EISEN -- Halvorsen had to fire him once, when he was a kid and the men
caught him stealing tools. Now he's grown, a lantern-jawed, competent
man whose only flaw is that he's willing to do whatever he's told for pay.
Minor Characters -- J.M. Zias, engineer and electronics hobbyist who is
cornered by wolves; Leah Friedman, town doctor; Alma Sweet, HALVORSEN's daughter;
HALVORSEN's beersoaked cronies, Charlie Prouper, Mase Wilson, and Len DeSantis;
Jerry Olen, Eisen's second in command at the Floyd Hollow lease; old Dan Thunner,
long-retired founder of Thunder Oil Corporation; Lark Jones, the Thunner
bodyguard.
SIDEBAR #2: Character Motivation Matrix: TOMAHAWK
THE END
David Poyer is possibly the best known writer of American sea fiction
alive today. His most recent book is THAT ANVIL OF OUR SOULS (Simon
& Schuster, July 2005). Check out his work and career advice at
the Home Page location below.
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Poyer Home Page.