First I
would like to thank the lovely Kat Carlson, D.J. Niko and the not quite as lovely but
certainly very nice Jim DeFelice for their contributions to the blog over the
past month. Other guest bloggers will
appear on a staggered schedule. The
reason it is staggered is that there is
no telling when someone will hand in a blog post. Sort of like real life for editors at
publishing houses.
I'm
going to bounce back to our discussion of character for today's post. A lot of this is based on considering things
after I read comments and e-mails people send me. I think we might have overlooked an important
aspect to any novel. As we know, a good
novel must have conflict. But a
character must have motivation. The motive of your character is what will
drive their actions.
It's
easy to make a bad guy crazy and use that as justification for his
actions. Serial killers are, by
definition, psychopaths. They need no
justification. But most people aren't
really psychopaths. Put yourself in your
character's position. What would be the
motivation of a cop? Would it be simply
to solve the crime or are there deeper issues? What would be the motivation for a lawyer? A quick and easy paycheck or the search for
the truth?
That
doesn't mean your character cannot go through an evolution of motivation. They may start the novel with one goal, but
learn, over time, what's really important. There are a few instances of doing the explanation and motivation in
reverse order. To me, the clearest
example is one I've used before: Thomas Harris's exceptional character Hannibal
Lecter. In the early books, (and movies
for that matter), it's easy to write off Lecter's motivation and say he is simply a madman. Just a soulless monster who kills and eats
his victims. Happens every day. But wait. As we read the prequel, or in my case watch the movie, we see Hannibal
Lecter as a teenager in Europe during World War II and the horrific events that
shaped his life and turned him into the monster we first came to love in Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs.
Your
character's motivation is something you should put a lot of thought into. Understand what makes them tick and what
would drive them to do something. Will
it push your cop over the edge and make him break the law to stop the
killer? Will the motivation to save a
child turn a priest into a killer? I
have no idea, that just popped into my head.
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Think
about your motivation for things you do every day. My motivation for writing these blogs is a
fear of Patty Smiley and, to a lesser extent, Jackie Winspear. Patty, because I know what she’s capable of if
she is provoked and Jackie because of the accent. My motivation to write novels is quite simply
a love of writing, with a need for cash flow thrown in.
No one
said you only needed a single motivation to take action.
This
week's quotes are classics:
“It ain’t whatcha write,
it’s the way atcha write it.”
—Jack Kerouac
—Jack Kerouac
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one
ever becomes a master.”
—Ernest Hemingway
—Ernest Hemingway
