14

Structure-Enabled Characterization

The following is not an accident. Nor is it coincidence. If this is your first glimpse of the forthcoming principle, you may believe this is too good to be true, but it is both (good, and true).

The author Carol S. Pearson is credited with bringing forth a modeled flow of characterization in literature. In other words, character arc. This was first presented in her 1986 book, The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By, with influences from the likes of Joseph Campbell and Jungian psychology. Pearson is a psychologist, but she has a background in the academia of literature, as well as her work in the arenas of management and branding, so her model leans into an application within storytelling in a way that has fascinated writers seeking to understand what makes stories work.

It is no accident that her character model aligns almost completely with the four-part structural model we’ve just studied. That’s because nobody is making this stuff up. We are all coming at the same truths from different directions, landing on a singular yet flexible model for the natural phenomenon at its core.

Story is always a coin with two sides—one a dramatic arc, the other a character arc—so this parallel shouldn’t surprise. Exposition within a story exists as a platform on which character manifests. Action through plot is the window into character, the alterative being an essay-like vignette of a character, or in a more story-centric context, a literary novel.

The literary application looks like this, with the character contexts overlaid on top. Notice the symbiosis between the contextual missions stated within each box and the subtitle that appears above it relative to character.

The literary parallel of Pearson’s model leverages the middle four of her original six archetypes—orphan, wanderer, warrior, and martyr—as mentioned in the title of her 1986 book (she’s written many others since). But those are flanked at either end with two more archetypes, which actually lean in to embellish the entries that follow in a way that beefs up the literary parallel itself. Her first archetype was innocent, and the last was magician. All six should be viewed more as adjectives than nouns, or as analogous to an applicable human state.

As you review the criteria for the four sequential parts, as provided in the previous chapters, you’ll notice that the language of character permeates all of it. The action (dramatic context) is hero-centric. It deals with what the hero knows while contextually leveraging, for dramatic effect, what the hero doesn’t yet know, as well as referring the hero’s intentions in interacting with the threat while in pursuit of the goal along the way. This is where character arc comes in, because the hero’s decisions and actions reflect a shift from an original state toward a more evolved state.

THE CRITERIA FOR CHARACTER ARC

• PART 1: ORPHAN (OR INNOCENT): This first part of Pearson’s model is the biggest stretch of the four phases, because we tend to interpret the word orphan literally (and of course, she’s not suggesting that your protagonist is literally an orphan). Innocent is the better label here, but even then it isn’t meant literally.

  Pearson is suggesting that the hero of the story is presented in a pre-plot context, unconnected (at least directly, or if at all, only partially) to the forthcoming plunge into darkness, which fully launches at the intersection of Parts 1 and 2 (the FPP). Here in the setup, the hero is doing other things, with other priorities. We see who he is in this context, including any weaknesses or demons that will plague him once he’s facing a problem to which he must respond and with which he will ultimately engage and resolve. This is where we meet the hero untested by the forthcoming story, though perhaps battle worn from living a life that has, until now, dealt with other challenges.

• PART 2: WANDERER: Part 2 commences with the arrival of a problem or threat (or situation or opportunity) that calls for the hero’s response. Which is less than informed or fruitful, through the entirety of this Part 2 quartile. The hero is, almost literally, wandering through darkness while reacting to pressure and exploring options. Here is where the hero flees, hides, seeks comfort, confronts fear and outrage, and he often senses or sees at least a partial presence of something that threatens (antagonist or villain) with an increasing proximity. There is a sense of urgency and threat. Because we’ve come to know the hero from Part 1, we empathize with this somewhat helpless, victim-like state. Soon there will be specific things to root for, but here in Part 2 we are feeling for the hero, rooting for him to find hope or opportunity as he stumbles through this darkness. He is wandering, and the reader wanders with him.

What seems to be an exception to this is common on bookshelves and on Netflix, so let’s take a pause to consider it. Sometimes stories open in the heat of conflict, using flashbacks to fill in the blank spots of our understanding of how things arrived at that point. We see the hero embroiled in conflict, and we aren’t sure why. The flashbacks tend to lead linearly to a full explanation of how and why, which is, in fact, a First Plot Point function moment, usually arriving within its assigned target placement (at the 20 to 25 percent mark).

Here’s an example from the terrific film, (500) Days of Summer. I highly recommend that you see this film, and not just because it was a Golden Globe best motion picture nominee but because it is an example of how the structure unfolds behind a surface non-chronological narrative flow that seems to defy the principles, but actually becomes a workshop on applying them perfectly. In the film, Summer is the name of the hero’s girlfriend, rather than a season. The story opens with them deep in a relationship that is less than perfect, yet vicariously promising. It jumps around in time, forward and flashback (to a point you can’t be sure what is present day in this story), filling in a clearer picture of the path that has led them to this confounding place together, which is the focus of the chronologically later scenes. It builds toward something  . . . which is, in fact, the First Plot Point (FPP).

At about the 20 percent mark, there’s a scene in which the guy makes a reference to the future, and the girl, Summer, casually says that he shouldn’t count on it, that she’s not sure if she’ll still be around. That’s the FPP not only because of placement but because it fulfills the mission and criteria for a FPP by thrusting the hero down a new path, by changing everything, by giving him a specific problem and goal to work toward, and by showing us what is at stake and who is behind this threat and antagonism (Summer herself). It clarifies all those time-jumping scenes that comprise the story’s Part 1 set-up quartile, even though the actual exposition of some of them is after that FPP moment chronologically. It’s genius screenwriting, leveraging a complex and risky narrative strategy (part of the conceptual essence of the story), yet remaining solidly within the contextual four-part flow of story, as described here, and found virtually everywhere you look in the storytelling world.

• PART 3 WARRIOR: The word says it all: This is where the hero begins to engage more proactively. He attacks the problem at hand, and thus, the source of threat. (In (500) Days of Summer, we see that the hero has his work cut out for him to win this girl’s love.) This may not be immediately fruitful, but it closes the gap. The hero is more informed as new information is leveraged, as well as lessons learned thus far. This is where we really root for the hero’s forward movement, because our level of empathy, in proximity to hope, is even stronger.

• PART 4 MARTYR (OR MAGICIAN): In this final quartile, we bear witness to the hero’s summoning of courage and the conquering of inner demons that may have hindered the path thus far. This leads to an ultimate confrontation, fraught with danger and often riddled with stealth and deceit, within which the hero seeks to survive, by (as the reality television series, Survivor, says) outplaying, outwitting, and outlasting the elements and the threatening villain.

  Here in Part 4, martyr and magician are metaphoric descriptors. These labels don’t remotely imply that the hero must die for the cause or rely on surreal powers to survive, but rather, they suggest that she is willing to pay a high price to attain the goal at hand. Often it may feel magical in terms of how out of the ordinary it may indeed seem.

This becomes a guide toward evolving your hero across the four-part arc of the story. It’s intuitive and natural, leaving you the latitude to plug in any other facets of characterization—often through sub-plotting and the use of subtext—that you feel adds depth, dimension, and emotional resonance to the story.

In a mystery, for example, the detective is assigned the case—setting out with personal baggage they cannot shake, but perhaps will get in the way—with or without a full awareness of the reality he is about to confront. He is alone at this point (the orphan context), relative to the story. He is innocent of the darkness into which he is about to descend.

Then (in Part 2) things change. The case is now fully before them, and it is more daunting and complex. The victim deserves justice, and truth demands its day. This touches the detective at his core. This is important. But nothing comes easy. The detective wanders through options and negotiates deception and danger.

Then new information comes into play at the Midpoint, shifting the hero’s path from a Part 2 wandering sense of urgency (sometimes clueless and even victim-like) into a more informed Part 3 sense of pursuit. After the Midpoint, he becomes a warrior who attacks the leads and the obstacles and gets closer to the truth.

And then, earning a break through courage and ingenuity and perseverance (the transition between Parts 3 and 4), the hero accelerates toward a confrontation, both with the truth and with the object of the investigation. The story resolves as the hero does what must be done (martyr), achieving at a high level of skill and courage and wit (magician).

OTHER CRITERIA FOR CHARACTER

In the journey of most emerging writers, character is the story essence first and most often assumed and recognized. At a glance it may seem like an obvious opportunity to imbue the players in our stories with certain qualities and issues that mirror real life, while adding to the complex responses and emotional weight of what we, as authors, are putting them through in our fiction.

All of that is well and good. But it’s easy to go too thin or too wide with our characterizations, creating stereotypes and leaning too heavily into archetypes, which absolutely do weigh into how we cast our stories with characters of all stripes.

These high-level criteria might help you remain in the proper characterization lane.

• CHARACTER CRITERIA #1: DON’T CONFUSE TRAITS AND TICS WITH THE TRUE MEANING OF CHARACTER. If you stop with showing the surface eccentricities of a character without a deeper exploration, you are missing the opportunity to connect with the reader at a deeper level. Not maintaining eye contact, stuttering, not being able to sit still, massive ego, and insecurity issues  . . . all are the type of surface anomalies that paint a picture but don’t necessary show us who the character is at his core, or deep in a dark corner of his psyche.

  The real opportunity to show us the deeper core nature of a character is in the moment of decision or action. Is he courageous or timid? Does he act selflessly or selfishly? Does he hesitate or dive right in? Does he see the big picture or is he impulsive to a fault? This presents the opportunity to show a character arc across the four structural contexts of character (orphan, wanderer, warrior, and martyr/hero) by having the character decide and react to the moment of decision action differently as the story progresses. The timid become courageous and strong. The selfish suddenly value others, and so on. When the reader notices these types of changes, character arc is in play.

• CHARACTER CRITERIA #2: THE OTHER DEEPER TOOL OF CHARACTER IS BACKSTORY, which is the life experience that has created and shaped the character we meet within the story. This is an example of the past becoming prologue, if not literally, then as a context for the character we see in play within the story.

  This becomes a tricky proposition—it is the place where many new writers show themselves as such—because in genre fiction our stories are not about backstory, per se, but they are forward looking. The life story of a fictional character or the saga of a family over a span of decades is a literary novel perhaps, but is really not the stuff of a commercial genre novel. But you can harness the power of backstory through reference, implication, or short flashback. You can show just enough backstory to fill in the blanks—explaining why a character is shy, hesitant around the opposite sex, wary of power and societal structure—and build reader empathy as you do. A kid who grew up in a series of orphanages probably ends up a different breed of adult than one who was raised in a loving traditional home. When you use backstory correctly (think of that facet of the story as an iceberg, and as you know, we only see about 10 percent of an iceberg while the rest remains beneath the surface, hidden yet dangerous omnipresent), the story remains on the rails and in its lane, moving forward with a deeper understanding and emotional resonance (rooting for the hero) on the part of the reader. Which is precisely the point of it all.

These models and principles, which if anything are criteria driven—both for structural exposition and character arc—apply with powerful contexts that work within any genre of fiction. In an endeavor in which context is critical, this becomes a flight plan and a touchstone that will fuel the journey with the right things at the right times, while keeping you in the proper lane that allows you to avoid driving the story off a cliff.