Writing 21st Century Fiction by Donald Maass

Author:Donald Maass [Maass, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59963-404-3
Publisher: Writer’s Digest Books
Published: 2012-01-09T16:00:00+00:00

In any literary era, there are trends in characterizations. Whole decades have been defined by characters who were blithe, survivors, or edgy. The evolution of young adult protagonists makes this particularly clear. In the first half of the 20th century, children from Horatio Alger to the Hardy Boys were plucky and alert with derring-do. In the 1970s, pervasive problem novels celebrated teen angst. More recently, the norm has become snarky detachment. The sociological basis for these changes is fun to debate, but my point is that protagonists are subject to fashion.

For instance, in our time it’s highly fashionable for characters to be obsessed. Obsession can imply focus and strength of commitment, but it can also hammer us like a migraine headache. Sometimes it’s just a lazy label. When I see the word in query letters I groan, much as I do when protagonists are described as haunted by demons. Not again! Perhaps authors are reaching for a shortcut to make queries easier to write, but more likely they’ve adopted the latest stereotype.

Why do stereotypes fail? The obvious reason is that familiarity has a dulling effect. There’s a deeper reason, though. Stereotypical characters aren’t authentic. They lack the startling vividness of people who are unlike anyone we’ve ever known. In fact, I’ll go further. Here’s a counter-intuitive principle for you to consider: the more unlike anyone else you make a character, the more universal that character will become.

Are you anything like Aibileen Clark, one of the maids in The Help? Are you African American? Do you live in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962? Do you tolerate daily doses of overt racism? Do you ride in the back of the bus to work? Did your son die young? Do you have to scrape by, counting pennies to get by on your forty-three dollars in weekly wages? Do you bite your sharp tongue every day, groveling, dissembling, and lying to keep your job? Do you iron pleats and patiently potty train someone else’s child? Have you risked everything you rely on to assist an insecure fledgling author in writing a book that will enrage everyone? Would you bake feces into a pie that you serve to your employer?

I venture to guess that description doesn’t fit you. (Am I wrong?) Yet who among us hasn’t felt like an outsider, been treated unfairly, scraped by on too little, suffered in a job, yearned for justice, and contemplated revenge? Aibileen is all of us; but oddly, she becomes more iconic the more Stockett makes her different.

There you go. The secret of standout characters is their uniqueness. It can be developed in any number of ways, from their appearance to their opinions. Principles, perplexing quirks, and inner puzzles all can help but too often are shortcuts and substitutes for the harder work of building standout characters from the ground up. Why shirk? You take care with the real people in your own life, true? You puzzle through their odd habits and weird issues to get to the person inside.

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