Authorial Punchbags: Thoughts on Sympathy and Dynamism

When you set out as a serious fiction writer, you'll soon be told that you have to make readers care about your characters. You'll also be told pretty shortly afterwards that the way to do this is to put them in jeopardy. Give them some problems, and away you go.

To an extent. Logically, a character should become more sympathetic the more woes you heap on them. However, there comes a point where the character's problems become excessive and their miseries actually start to make them less sympathetic to the reader.

Why? First, "pitiable" doesn't mean the same thing as "sympathetic" or, more accurately, "readable". A character who has been kidnapped by a villain and is now shivering at the bottom of a pit is wretched and deserving of pity. But reading about them is something of a chore. Once you've realised that they're cold and terrified, where is there to go? Chances are, they're going to die. They won't have the opportunity of doing anything very interesting before they die, so what's the point?

Consider the same character at the bottom of the pit, cold, frightened and hiding a piece of sharp stone. Sooner or later, someone is going to come to find him, and then he'll make his bid to escape. Will he succeed? The odds don't look good, but there's a chance. The only way to find out is to read on.

I think Thomas Harris realised this when he wrote The Silence of the Lambs. The kidnapped girl, Catherine, is more than just a puppy to be kicked: she comes up with a plan to escape, and is putting it into action when the final showdown takes place.

My own feeling is that - in terms of making a reader want to keep going - dynamism is just as important as likeability. A character who has a goal and a plan to achieve it is just as readable, if not more, than a character with whom we sympathise. Of course, a dynamic character with whom we sympathise is almost a sure thing in terms of audience enthusiasm - but the knowledge that we are reading about someone who, by their actions, will drive the plot forward goes a long way.

Plot Islands

Imagine that we are looking for a story like mariners looking for a lost island. The sailors scour the horizon, trying to pick out something, until one spots peaks of land rising above the ocean. As the ship draws closer to the island, the people on the ship see not just the biggest peaks of the island, but the lower parts that connect them. They can make out the details of the island: whether it is fertile or barren ground, whether there are trees, beaches and so on.

Sometimes, planning a story works much the same way. The writer doesn’t have a clear idea of the details, but knows what the major landmarks of the story are. These are the highest peaks of the island. Depending on the story, they might be action scenes, conversations or discoveries. They are, however, needed for the story to function. For example, the high points of a mystery might be the discovery of the body, the vital clue, and the revelation of who the murderer is. All of these are needed to tell the story properly and it wouldn’t work without them.

Once these are identified, it becomes easier to spot the things that connect them – the lower parts of the island. If we have to have a dead body in a country house at the beginning, it is unlikely that the middle part of the book will be set on a space station. Agatha Christie wasn’t a great author, in my opinion, but she was an expert in understanding the shape of a mystery story, and her best books did clever things with this expected shape to surprise the reader.

I’d also say that there are two sorts of high points on the island: action ones and ones relating to emotion and character. Sometimes they flow from each other and are part of the same thing (a villain is captured and confesses his villainy), but other times they are different scenes (two characters realise that they are long-lost siblings, and aliens invade). On occasion, you get a subplot that informs the main plot of the story or repeats it in a different form. I think once you start recognising these important points, you get a better idea of how to connect them in the most natural fashion, and it becomes clearer what the story is really about in terms of theme.

To further wrench this metaphor, it’s possible for two similar plots to have two quite different “islands”, depending on how the author wants to stress the story. Say a character is given a mission, but is then betrayed by his superiors and proceeds to take revenge on them. In one version of this story, the high points might be the action scenes where the character tries to carry out the job, when he escapes his betrayers, and when he takes revenge. In a more philosophical version, the peak of the story might come where the hero realises the wrongness of his career post-betrayal and wrestles with his conscience.  

While I don't consciously think of islands and peaks when I'm planning, I think this is close to the way that my mind works. In some ways, it's a process of discovering as you write, but it isn't flying blind: the details are guided by the big picture.

Teams and Teamwork

A fair number of novels have a team instead of a single protagonist, or else have a protagonist who is greatly aided by a variety of helpers. In the latter situation, the hero will often be a (comparatively) likeable, middle-of-the-road person, surrounded by specialists.

A lot of epic fantasies work this way, and it is perhaps because of this need to fit into a team that creatures like elves and dwarves only tend to ever do the stereotypical elf or dwarf thing. Similarly, you see this sort of technique in ensemble police dramas, where a group of experts investigates a case, or military stories where each character has a particular function (stealth man, tech expert, wacky comic relief and so on).

Such as these guys, who I think were in Ally McBeal

Series also tend to slowly work themselves in this direction. The second American Pie film (I told you this was a highbrow blog) is basically a "refinement" of the first: it contains more of what was entertaining in the first film and less of the boring stuff, so that more eccentric characters - who by definition tend to do one crazy thing - get more screen time. Inevitably, this has a caricaturing effect on a story, as more and more space is given to wacky characters behaving in a way that's been proven to entertain the crowd while the "normal" ones get increasingly sidelined. (It certainly moved American Pie 2 away from both Shakespearean technique and the Aristotelian unities, that's for sure).

Introducing the team

Setting up any group of more than three characters at once is tricky. Three is a natural number for comparisons, thanks to "more than" and "less than". With three people, it's easy to say "This person is X, this person is X plus one, and this person is X minus one". With four or more, there's a risk of confusion if you don't use enough description, and infodump if you use too much.

The first Dragonlance novel (another highbrow reference) deals with this rather well. In true Dungeons And Dragons style, a group of characters agree to meet at an inn. The book starts by describing different characters getting to the inn. Once a couple are there, the others arrive in ones and twos, so that there's no need to describe them all at once. They then hear some bad news and nearly get into a fight, giving them all the chance to show how they behave.

"We have a big tent."

Another good way of introducing a group is to show each of them using their skills to the benefit of the team. I've mentioned before that Pixar likes to introduce each lead character by showing him doing what he does best. Similarly, a group of spies could be introduced by showing them working on a job: one is installing a listening device, another is guarding the door, and a third is controlling the operation from afar. Note that the reader will expect that this is how they operate, and will be surprised if they don't take these roles again.

Numbers

Four and seven seem to be good numbers for teams. I don't know why this should be, but with four characters it's easy to see who does what, whilst keeping enough room for arguments, tension, splitting up and so on. Space Captain Smith and its sequels have four core characters, because no matter who is talking, they can clearly disagree with someone else.

Seven is also a good number. Within that number, you can still have clearly defined personalities and roles ("He was our clown", one of the Seven Samurai remarks when a comrade dies) but you can have more subtlety and overlap. In Alien, Parker and Brett are both engineers, but they have different roles (and look very different, too). Similarly, Aliens quickly whittles its team of around 20 soldiers down to a core group of about seven. Of course, with more characters comes the option to divide the group - especially useful if exploring a haunted house, it seems.

 Getting people to do things

It can be satisfying to make characters more accomplished as the story goes on, or just to make their lives easier, but each solution to a problem removes another reason for the reader to read on. This is also true about teams of characters: where you have a group, you have skills that can be pooled and (quite an important thing, I think) it's much harder for a character to feel lonely or isolated.

One way of getting around this is to give one of the characters a secret agenda. Perhaps they are being blackmailed into leading the others into a trap, or perhaps they are only allied with these guys out of necessity. Either way, it's easy to see how this could make a character feel alone, which is a good way of generating sympathy (don't overdo it, though) or creating tension as the moment as the moment of separation or betrayal approaches.

There's plenty more to say about this (I didn't even get started on my dislike of River Tam from Firefly, which I could talk about for ages). Character dynamics are important, and there's a fine balance to be had between over-emotive teams who start to resemble a support group, and a bunch of characterless chess pieces. I suspect, as with so much about writing, it's the balance that matters, and that practice makes perfect.

Successful Books That You Think Are Rubbish

A while back, someone pointed me towards a new novel. It had rave reviews from the critics and was considered an important addition to its genre. "Just read the first page," they said. "The prose is amazing."

It was crap. The prose was like bad poetry. It recited a string of cliches. It was mannered and unconvincing in what it sought to portray. The best thing I could think of was that old line attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "People who like this sort of thing will find this to be the sort of thing that they like".

So what do you do when you see something like this: when you feel that it's a ragingly obvious case of the Emperor's New Clothes? I can't say for sure. I can't give you a pep talk or cheer you up just like that, but here are some thoughts.


1. Luck. There is a lot of luck in this game, a horrendous, depressing amount of luck. In some ways, it's luck that got me published: although I maximised my chances by writing a good book, if I'd been truly unlucky, it would still be a good book that nobody would publish. Which isn't immediately a cheering thought, but it does mean that you may not be doing anything wrong.

I'll say it again: all you can do is maximise your chances of success.


2. This bad author isn't in direct competition with you. It's not the case that fans read three fantasy novels a year and then stop. Consider those streets in any big town where you get five or six restaurants in a row. Why are they close together like that? It's probably because one strengthens another: the presence of several restaurants makes people see that street as a place to go. It benefits all the restaurants to create that atmosphere. In the same way, the presence of several novels of the same sort, even the bad ones, gives the feeling of a healthy genre that is worth investigating.

Of course, the fact that Bad Book X got a vast advance isn't cheering. But then, nor is the fact that I didn't win the lottery this week.


3. If this book is massively promoted, it probably doesn't matter whether  it's good or bad. Fifty Shades of Grey, for instance, is generally recognised to be awful in every respect. But it was sold well to an audience who would buy it. Where huge advances and the lifestyles of the rich and famous are concerned, the stories we hear probably aren't very much like real life for even successful authors.


4. This book might not actually be as bad as you think. People's tastes vary, and just because they like one book that you don't, it doesn't mean that they'll never read anything that you think is decent (such as yours). There are people out there who think Cormac McCarthy is an amazing prose writer, after all. Horses for courses or, as Cormac would probably say, "God's own steeds throbbing with the fierce wordless love of brute fury for courses". And I'm sure the author or whatever it is you dislike actually worked at this thing just as much as you.


5. You have to keep on. That's all there is to it, really. You have to keep going and learn to shrug this stuff off. Yes, it's galling, but what else is there to do but continue? I'm sorry if that isn't the world's most inspiring thing to hear, but let's be realistic. You have to decide whether you are going to do this or not. And if you are going to, that means sitting down and getting on. You have to keep learning, keep practising, keep putting out work and learning how to make it better.

And then, when you do succeed, you can annoy everyone by pretending it was a doddle all along.

An Interview With... Myself?

Available at all good bookshops, and Amazon!

With the release of my new book, The Pincers of Death, I am delighted to have as my guest... me.

Q: Hello. How are you?

A: Er, fine, I suppose. Probably about as well as you are.

Q: So, a sixth book about Isambard Smith. Looking back, how's it all gone?

A: Pretty well, thanks! I've achieved the dream of being published, which is really something. I've hugely enjoyed writing the books, and I've met loads of great people through them - not least, discovering the UK's steampunk scene. I'd like to be richer, of course, and I'd like to be doing other, more serious, writing as well as the Smith books. But it's been brilliant, really.

Q: How carefully do you plan what you're going to write? And is the plot secondary to the jokes, or vice versa?

A: As the stories have gone on, both the setting and the structure of the books has tightened up. Space Captain Smith is a much more freewheeling sort of book than A Game Of Battleships. At that early point, I was happy to do all kinds of things to get a joke in. Now I'm more careful about the world-building. I'm very careful about the jokes, too. Often they hinge on one word, so they have to be written just right to work properly. You have to get the tone right, and you can't have people acting out of character.

Q: So there's a kind of consistency, then?

A: Yes. I didn't want to write the sort of totally wacky, surreal comedy where anything can happen so long as it's funny, like the Airplane films. There's a kind of insane internal logic to the Space Captain Smith world. You could write a guidebook to Smith's universe. While it would be mad, it wouldn't contradict itself.

Q: Are you writing satire, then?

A: Not really. It's more parody than anything else - nothing as grand as satire. That said, sometimes a sort of crude satire is inevitable. You can't really write about an idiotic tinpot dictator without including shades of Mussolini and Donald Trump, for instance, because they have those stereotypical attributes. I tend to find that most of my targets are extremists of one sort or another, and they have a lot of overlapping characteristics, both with each other and with real life maniacs. I think there are a fair few people out there (usually powerful ones) who would gladly side with the Ghasts, purely because the Ghasts are so vicious.

Q: Several times in the books, the characters refer to an "over-empire" or tyrannical world government in the past. Is there a detailed future history for the Smith novels?

A: Only a very vague one. I imagine that everything got much worse, and that some kind of bland tyranny controlled the world (and perhaps the Solar System) for a while, before it splintered into the various nations we see in the book. Smith's Britain and many other countries are having something of a Renaissance (in a backward, insular way!). Of course, if I ever sell the film rights and make a fortune, I'll claim that I had every detail of the books worked out from the very beginning. That seems to be the done thing.

Q: Will there be more adventures for Isambard Smith?

A: I hope so. I'm very wary of doing the same thing to death, however. Everyone remembers a comedy series that started off really well and just went on too long. I'd hate for the Smith books to end up like that. I think it would be interesting to write about some of the secondary characters. It would enable me to introduce a slightly different tone, and to spoof particular things. I reckon a book about Wainscott would be fun, and would be a great chance to parody that "Best super-soldiers evah!" thing you see in some military SF. But Smith isn't done yet...

Q: Well, thanks for letting me interview you, me.

A: My invoice is in the post.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pincers-Death-Space-Captain-Smith/dp/1910183245

https://www.waterstones.com/book/pincers-of-death/toby-frost/9781910183243

Tension

Tension is what happens when we feel the risk that something bad is going to happen. The threat doesn’t have to be violent, or even clear in its details, but it can hang over a story like a dark cloud. In The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, for instance, we know that the house is probably haunted and that there is something wrong with the heroine: the details of how these factors will collide aren’t apparent in the end. The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons uses tension as a sort of guessing-game: what method will the haunted house use to attack its next occupants? It’s rare to see a novel that lacks tension and succeeds, which is not to say that every story has to be a rollercoaster of terror, but that there needs to be something at stake and a threat to it for the reader to read on.

Characters at Risk

A lot of science fiction and fantasy films open with a massive battle, in which thousands of indistinguishable people are fighting. This isn’t tension: it’s grandeur. The aim – at least not in the sweeping overhead shots of a billion CGI knights charging into one another – isn’t to create tension as to who will win, because we don’t know anything about the sides yet and have no reason to care about them. It’s to overwhelm the viewer with the sheer scale of what’s going on. Personally, I wouldn’t suggest that writers attempt this, as it’s much more suited to a visual medium. Focusing on the struggles of one person, and his internal thoughts (which a film can’t do as well) will be much more powerful.

Some guys fighting some other guys

There’s no tension where there’s no risk. Take the not-very-good thriller Hannibal, sequel to the vastly superior Silence of the Lambs. Very quickly it becomes clear that Hannibal Lecter is an author’s darling (one of the biggest Mary Sues in literature, if you ask me) and will never be lost for words, let alone put in real danger. The other characters are the ones we wonder about. We see the same thing in the recent film Blade Runner 2049. There is an extended fight sequence between the two blade runners in an abandoned hotel. The trouble with this is that there’s absolutely no question that they will survive: in fact, everything about the characters, and every piece of marketing, suggests that they won’t just live, they’ll make friends. So get on with it! Stop smacking each other around and move the story on!

Fancy a drink?

Creating Tension

So how do we create tension? Firstly, something has to be genuinely at stake. That means, to my mind, that there has to be an objective, a struggle to get it that has the risk of genuine harm to the parties, and a side (or just a person) that we’d choose over the other. In other words, something to fight over, a fight, a person we’d prefer to win and a credible chance that they won’t. The fight doesn’t have to be literal, of course: it could be a fight for self-expression, or a difficult choice between two suitors, although having the problem personalised in a single villain does help to focus the reader. And of course, the more righteous the cause they're fighting for, then the more we'll want them to succeed.

One technique is to show the different parties converging on the prize, step by step. The reader will contrast their progress, raising the sense of urgency. Another trick – The Terminator springs to mind – is to show how they are progressively weakened and damaged by the contest. If every step forward by the heroes is accompanied by loss, who will get there first, and what will be left of them when they do?

But perhaps the best trick, for me, is to make the reader want them to win. We need to want the characters to succeed, and that means making them likable. They need to be fighting - really or metaphorically - for something we want them to have. They need to deserve what they're trying to get, and if there's a strong chance they may not get it, and get hurt in the process, the tension will appear.

Something to Ignore

I don’t want to talk politics here, but suffice it to say that I’ve never had much time for conspiracy theories. In particular, whenever I see the phrase “mainstream media” thrown around, I tend to assume that I’m dealing with a crackpot. However, there is a story that the newspapers do want to tell about publishing: while it's not a conspiracy, it’s always much the same story, and I suggest you get into the habit of ignoring it. It runs like this:

A debut novelist has got a record advance for a novel about (fill in the details here, but it probably won't be SF). The novelist, who will not be over 40, does something adorably quirky for a living (let’s say she makes cupcakes whilst riding around Oxford on a vintage bike). The novelist is very happy and the advance is in six or seven figures. Occasionally, the novelist will be a trendy young man or an older woman, or the author will look glamorous and seductive instead of a bit like Amelie.

Back off, man, or I use the spoon.

If I sound cynical about this (which I do), it’s because I don’t think it helps anything except sales of whatever paper it appears in. First, the chances of you, or me, getting a colossal advance are so small as to be not worth serious consideration. They’re up there with being hit by lightning or winning the lottery, and you don’t have to write a novel to qualify for either of those. Second, I’m deeply unsure as to what these huge advances actually mean. Is the publisher likely to make it back on this novel? If not, will it be tied to the author’s next work? And what will it do for the author’s long-term career? And is it some kind of loss leader to publicise either the author or the publisher?

I don’t know the answer to any of those. All I can say is that I’m suspicious about this story in its various forms, and I don’t think it’s healthy for writers to see this as the eventual destination. Of course, that's not to say that a million pounds wouldn't be nice. After all, if someone did offer me a million quid to write a novel or two, I’d take it, even if I had to be photographed selling cupcakes on a vintage bike.