A guest blog by David Heyman.

Gollum. It had to be him.

When I learned that this month’s theme was memorable characters, Gollum from The Lord of the Rings grabbed my imagination just as surely as if it was the One Ring itself. His was the first name in my head, arriving independent of any thought process or reasoning.

But why Gollum? Initially, even I wasn’t sure.

Sure – he’s a great character, as I’ll discuss below. He’s hardly my Favorite Character from Literature of All Time though. Heck, he’s not even my favorite character from The Lord of the Rings! (That would be Sam, and I have a soft spot for Gimli as well.) To discover why Gollum was my first choice, I ended up on a journey of my own- -and I learned quite a bit.

At the age of 8 or so I was first handed a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring by my grandfather. I was probably too young for the story at that point, but I dove in anyway. I’m pretty confidant I glossed over a lot of the songs and longer meetings, but I was still sufficiently enthralled to check out The Two Towers from the library and continue the story. Along the way, I had been assigning ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ tags to the various characters, taking a particularly strong liking to Frodo, Sam and Strider. There were hints of Gollum in that first book- -whispered mentions of a threat, enough so that I knew he would be a problem for our heroes when he arrived. I was prepared to hate him, the way I hated Sauron and Saruman and all the bad guys.

By the end of The Two Towers though, I found that not only did not hate Gollum, I kind of liked him. I felt sorry for him, I found myself hoping Frodo would find a solution to his problem that didn’t force Gollum (and Smeagol) to lose. This gave me my first real clue as to why Gollum was my go-to character choice. He was my first complex character as well as my first likable villain.

For my pre-adolescent brain, this was a game changer. Gollum was a bridge to more adult stories and motivations. He was the first step on a path that led me out of children’s books and into increasingly complex fantasy stories.

(As an aside, the timing for this could not have been better. I first read Lord of the Rings after I had seen Star Wars, but before Empire Strikes Back came out in theatres. Gollum sufficiently prepared me to accept and relish the more complex character Darth Vader becomes in the second movie.)

Gollum is an antagonist for Frodo, but he cares not a whit for the machinations of the main villains like Sauron and Saruman. In one sense, his motivation is much simpler and easier to understand: he simply wants has precious. Gollum’s love of the Ring to me is heartbreakingly pure: even as it destroys and corrupts him, he wants nothing from life other than to possess it, to look at it and appreciate it. To everyone else in the story the Ring is either a burden or a Tool. It may be part of his essence, but even Saruon needs the Ring in order to accomplish larger goals. Gollum alone seems to value to Ring for itself.

This made him fascinating to me as a new reader encountering this type of character for the first time. Because his motivation was both simple but also independent from the main story, he felt like a much more direct threat to Frodo and Sam. He was unpredictable, murderous and chaotic, not to mention clearly quite mad. Yet he was also sad, pathetic and at times even capable of kindness. Was it all a ruse? Was he really just a slave to the Ring, or was Gollum truly capable of redemption, of becoming Smeagol again? As a reader, Gollum kept me on edge because he was impossible to predict. He served his own agenda, his own master and whenever he was on the page, anything might happen.

In preparing for this blog post, I realized that Gollum has greatly influenced me as both a reader and a writer. I have a strong preference for ‘grey’ characters with complex motivations. I like my villains to be a bit tragic, to have some kernel of good inside them as well as having their actions come from a place of pain rather than greed or lust for power. I adore antagonists who operate outside the main plot, who serve no master other than their own needs. Even on the hero side I like a little dark edge there, some place deep inside where they resemble the villain more than they care to admit.

All of this creates more tension through unpredictability, which leads to experiences I like to read about as well as write.

I realize now all of that started for me with Gollum, once a simpler creature who found a most extraordinary present on his birthday- -a present that would transform him into a character for the ages, and my personal guide into more complex characters.

Dave writes both novels and short stories in the various genres of speculative fiction. His other passions include his family, gaming and reading about mountaineering. Sleep is added to the mix when needed. You can visit him at daveheyman.com

A Character You Can’t Refuse

April 7, 2016

fictorians

A guest post by Marta Sprout.

Who could forget the severed horse head in the movie The Godfather? That wasn’t the only memorable punch.

Mike Corleone from Mario Puzo’s The Godfather is one of my all-time favorite characters. The movie, released in 1972, grossed a whopping $134,000,000, over one billion dollars in today’s terms. The book sold over 30 million copies.

This story starts with the depiction of the powerful and mysterious Don Vito Corleone, the Godfather. When asked how he would make the seemingly impossible happen, he said, “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

Al Zuckerman from The Writer’s House has a great section in his book Writing the Blockbuster Novel about this character. I had the opportunity talk with Mr. Zuckerman about his book and what makes characters memorable. His insights and Puzo’s book are both excellent tutorials in top-level character development.

The Don’s son, Michael Corleone, does some terrible things and yet we like him. We are drawn to him as he is slowly pulled away from his own honorable world and into his family’s mob dealings.

Michael enters the film when he returns home as a war hero to attend his sister’s wedding. Even his uniform declares the different path he has taken from that of his Sicilian family. He knows bringing home an American girlfriend, Kay Adams, rubs against the family’s tradition of marrying an Italian girl. He disapproves of his brothers, Sonny and Fredo, and his family’s involvement in organized crime. Michael begins as a good man with a family that embarrasses him. Who of us couldn’t relate to being embarrassed by at least one family member? Michael’s situation is extreme and yet he is loyal, which is something we admire.

As the Don flexes his enormous power, he also demonstrates deep love for his family and we begin to understand this family’s extraordinary bond of loyalty. When the Don is shot and gravely wounded, Michael is the good son. He goes to the hospital to visit his critically injured father only to find him unprotected and helpless. At this pivotal point, Michael recognizes the danger and takes action. He uses a very clever and gutsy strategy to ward off an imminent attack thereby saving his father’s life. We can’t help but admire Michael’s nerve and quick thinking. And who could fault a son for protecting his helpless father?

However, Michael pays a price. He is beaten by a corrupt cop. We see a good man in a crime-infested world, but now the assault makes this a direct affront to him personally.

The story becomes even more riveting when the body count rises and Michael’s efforts to protect his father and his family gradually suck him deeper and deeper into the family business. We can’t fault him for striking back at a dirty cop. The Don returns home to recover under Michael’s watchful eye and we understand when Michael seeks to stop the hits on his family.

Michael becomes bigger than life as his impressive skills change how others view him. At first he is seen by his brothers as a kid and an outsider to the family business. Puzo uses the brothers shortcomings to boost Michael’s stature in our eyes. When Sonny is a hot-headed womanizer, Michael is patient, calculating, and faithful. Where Fredo is weak and foolish, Michael is unyielding and insightful. The Don, who is grief stricken about Michael having to take over in his absence, tells him, “I never wanted this life for you.” We feel the father’s pain and ache for Michael, knowing he is the only one who can save his family.

The critical element here is that Michael is above all competent. He gets the job done, decisively.

In time, he steps in to lead the family business, but he won’t discuss the details with his wife, Kay. In the end Michael is transformed from the law-abiding war hero to filling his father’s shoes as the new Don Corleone. Michael becomes godfather to his sister’s baby. Soon after Michael orders a hit on her abusive husband.

In the final scenes visitors pay their respects to Michael as others had done to his now deceased father. We hear him say, “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

The story doesn’t stop there.

There is a stunning moment when Michael allows his wife to ask him one question about the business. Kay demands to know if he ordered the killing of his sister’s husband. Without flinching he hugs her and says, “No.” It’s a lie and thereby the story has come full cycle. Michael is now the Godfather.

When a character changes so profoundly it’s engrossing and it was done one reasonable step at a time. Once the Don was shot, each step along Michael’s journey pulled him and us in deeper. His actions were understandable under the extreme circumstances. This is paramount: at each moment Michael is held tightly into his role where he can’t back out.

Eventually, he doesn’t want to.

The three things we learn from this: It’s often easier to make a compelling villain than a protagonist because we feel freer to show the villain’s complex dark side. In trying to build a protagonist a common mistake is to create a character who is so nice and thoughtful that he or she is bland and boring.

Another takeaway is that Michael’s desire to protect his frail father and his family is something that resonates with us. The beating he took and losing his first wife in Italy to a car bomb intended for him gives us empathy for him.

And most important: Michael has special skills. He gets the job done.

When we write characters, we balance two seemingly oppositional things: the character must have qualities that resonate with the reader and he or she must venture into areas the reader would never go and take actions that the reader could not do.

Therein lies the grounds for spellbinding characters.

MARTA SPROUT is an award-winning author. The Saturday Evening Post published her short story, The Latte Alliance, in their 2014 anthology Best Short Stories from The Great American Fiction Contest. Known for her hands on research with the FBI, CSI, Profilers, and SWAT, Marta is currently working on a major new series. Her hobbies of kiteboarding, scuba diving, and snow skiing are as much of an adrenaline rush as her thrillers.

Chaos For It’s Own Sake

April 6, 2016

Leigh Galbreath

Character Conflict Leigh Galbreath 2 Comments

When through-the-eyes-of-the-joker-jared-leto-talks-his-suicide-squad-method-acting-heath-led-874125 the topic of great characters came up, I really didn’t have to think very long to figure out who I wanted to write about. I love villains, and one of my favorites is the Joker.

Of course, when talking about the Joker, some narrowing down should be done. After all, he’s been with us just as long as his arch nemesis, Batman. His first appearnce was in Batman #1 in 1940. That’s over 75 years of insane villainy, and as one would expect with a comic book character t
hat old, he’s gone though a number o iterations. Add in television and film adaptations, and you’ve got every kind of interpretation you can imagine, from the downright psychotic to the ridiculously silly.

Since I’m not writing a book here, I’ll keep it simple and stick with my personal favorite, and probably one of the currently more well-known renditions — Heath Ledger’s depiction in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. It’s an obvious choice, I know, but completely ignoring the fact that Ledger’s work was so good that he won a posthumous Oscar for playing a supervillain, I’ve come to think of this character as one of my all time favorites because, unlike so many great villains, he is pretty close to an perfectly unbeatable bad guy.

The reason I say this is because of the character’s motivations. In the film, we’re given any number of ideas for what the Joker’s end game is. He wants to bring down the city by destroying it’s favorite son, Harvey Dent. He wants to destroy Batman. He wants to show the world that everyone is, in the end, just like him. He’s a gun for hire working for the criminals of Gotham. He wants to show the world that no one has control over their own lives. He just wants to watch the world burn.

Most of these explanations are given to him by the other characters. Nolan nicely shows us each of these as the story progresses. He turns Harvey Dent into Harvey Two-Face, but while he sends Dent out with a gun, he doesn’t seem to pay much attention to what happens after. He kidnaps people to force Batman out into the open, but then sends the whole city after the guy who comes forward to give up Batman’s identity. He sets up two ferries to kill each other to show that people are crappy when the chips are down, but while he seems disappointed when they don’t he doesn’t seem all that put out by it and proceeds to try and blow them up himself. He goes through the whole rigamarole with Gotham’s criminal underworld so he can get half their money, but then burns it all.

While that last one might support the whole watching the world burn hypothesis, the Joker never really commits to any of the ideas tossed around throughout the film, even the ones he gives himself.

In short, no one really knows what he truly wants except him, and he’s repeatedly shown to be a liar. He gives us multiple different stories on how he got his trademark smile. After the explosion that takes half of Harvey Dent’s face, he tells Dent that he’s doesn’t have a plan, he just likes creating chaos. But really, only an idiot could possibly believe the things he does are all spur of the moment actions. This man has a plan, probably many plans. We’re just not let in on any of them, and this is a huge strength.

One of the biggest blunders people can do with a villain is explain. We get origin stories, detailed psychologies, megalomaniacal monologues, and sympathetic backgrounds.

I don’t want to sympathize with a great villain. I don’t want excuses as to why they are what they are. I want to be afraid of the villain. I want to be seduced into thinking the villain will somehow come out on top. I want a villain that will make the hero work for every inch. And honestly, I so would not want to meet the Joker in a dark alley. Would you?

To get this reaction from the audience unpredictability is a major asset, and the Joker is unpredictability in all it’s face painted glory. He has no boundaries, is completely psychotic, hyper-intelligent, and most frighteningly of all, creative. And all the while, he’s having entirely too much fun.

To bring us back to why I think he’s a perfectly unbeatable bad guy is this — it doesn’t really matter why he’s doing what he’s doing. One of the things I love about many of Nolan’s films is his conscious decision to leave some of the story up to the audience. He did it with that contentious ending to the film Inception (is it a dream or not and does it matter?). He does the same thing with the Joker. He leaves the motivations up to other people, which is a fabulous choice, and one I’d like to see more often. I tend to go toward the trickster-ish agent of chaos turning everyone’s plans on their heads just to see what they do, but that’s just me. What could be worse that a character who doesn’t want to establish a new world, but rather simply wants the upsetting of the current one. Someone who wants to poke the hornet’s nest for the sheer joy of seeing the resultant chaos and watching how people react to it.

Can you really beat a character like? The idea intrigues me, and is one I very much want to explore.

So, anyone else got a favorite Joker or another fabulously unpredictable bad guy? Leave a comment and tell us why.

When All Else Fails, Bring in a Lizard: A Guest Post by Josh Vogt

April 5, 2016

fictorians

Character Craft & Skills Guest Posts Interview Josh Vogt The Writing Life Writing Tools No Comments

A Guest Post by Josh Vogt

Last year marked the launch of my urban fantasy series, The Cleaners, with Book #1: Enter the Janitor. The novel focuses on two main characters, Ben and Dani, as they work for a supernatural sanitation company dedicated to protecting the world from magical muck and Corruption (yes, with a capital C).

Now, I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. Gather ‘round close.

Dani used to be boring.

And I don’t mean to beta readers or anything. I mean she bored me. The author. That’s never a good sign. See, I needed a character to act, on some level, as the reader’s proxy into the weird world of the Cleaners, gawking at the absurdity of it, get the strangeness occasionally explained, and generally poking at things while asking, “Does this explode if I touch it?”

Dani did all that, but in such a bland manner, I had to stop almost halfway through the original draft when I started trying to find ways to kill her off. She needed to be a central character! Offing her would basically force me to start from scratch, which I didn’t want to do at all costs. But she, in that incarnation, refused to engage. She had no zest, no zing, zeal, oomph, spice, vigor, vim, liveliness…

*checks the thesaurus*

…or gumption. Let’s end it there, as I’m sure you get the point.

So I tried an old trick: the character interview. I sat down and imagined myself interviewing Dani, asking about her life, her passions, her fears, her neuroses, and any other quirks and tidbits she might be willing to offer.

And, boy, did I discover a lot.

First of all, I discovered her manic-obsessive fear of germs and dirt of all sorts, and how she lugged around gallons of sanitization gel to cope. I discovered her tendency to be a teensy bit foul-mouthed when stressed. I discovered she hated being pushed around and could push back just as hard if tested.

“Anything else?” I asked toward the end.

“I also have a pet lizard,” she replied.

I paused. “A lizard?”

“Yes. He’s a bearded dragon and his name is Tetris and I will rip out the heart of anyone who tries to hurt him. And then probably wash my hands for a month.”

“Why a lizard?”

My imaginary interviewee just grinned. “You’ll have to keep writing about me to find out, won’t you?”

Right then is when Dani came alive for me. Right then is when I became eager to stick her into scenes to see how much she could muck things up…and then do what she could to set things right. Because she had a pet lizard, which seemed so at odd with her original self. It presented a mystery (even a minor one) that I now wanted to unravel—and I started to see how other facets of her character could create personality paradoxes that might be both entertain and intrigue. I’ve since used this “mini-mystery” technique to give other characters extra layers, hinting at more convoluted mindsets and motivations than their surface actions suggest.

Now, since Enter the Janitor came out, readers have told me how they see parts of themselves, their friends, or family members in Dani’s antics. She’s not just a reader vehicle. She resonates for some. She makes others laugh. She’s even made a few people worry for her sanity. And I look forward to finding new ways for her to surprise not only me, but everyone who might’ve grown the slightest bit fond of this spitfire.

So maybe next time you want to liven up a character or scene, don’t follow the old adage of “bring in a man with a gun.”

Bring in a lizard, instead.

Dani’s adventures with the Cleaners continue in Book #2: The Maids of Wrath.

About Josh Vogt:

Author and editor Josh Vogt’s work covers fantasy, science fiction, horror, humor, pulp, and more. His debut fantasy novel is Pathfinder Tales: Forge of Ashes, published alongside his urban fantasy series, The Cleaners, with Enter the Janitor and The Maids of Wrath. He’s an editor at Paizo, a Scribe Award finalist, and a member of both SFWA and the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. Find him at JRVogt.com or on Twitter @JRVogt.