Chiaroscuro is a Renaissance oil-painting technique that juxtaposed areas of brightness and darkness for drama and depth. You see it used with startling effect in the works of Rembrandt, Tintoretto, Rubens, and Caravaggio. Something similar turns up in Renaissance theatre, especially Shakespeare, in which buoyant comedy and grim tragedy collide with devastating impact (cf. Hamlet’s gravedigger, Macbeth’s porter, and Twelfth Night’s melancholy duke). High contrast makes for clear stakes and universal entertainment value. Drama, comedy, and suspense are baked into those plays because of their emotional chiaroscuro. They force audiences to pay attention because of the way our brains are wired.
Under Dr. Barry Arons, MIT’s Media Lab researched the “cocktail party effect” to gather information about people’s ability to listen to a single speaker during a loud gathering.37 His study identified ways humans sort stimuli and shift attention accordingly by analyzing attention and the ways different kinds of stimuli attract focus. The single biggest factor in attracting attention was grouping, in every variation:
• UNGROUPED & NOTICED: Difference, Disconnection, Disruption, Uncoordinated movement, Asymmetry, Incompletion
• GROUPED & IGNORED: Similarity, Proximity, Continuity, Movement in unison, Symmetry, Closure.
Given the lessons of human evolution, this data makes perfect sense. As pattern hunters, we notice opportunities or threats because they stand out, and they stand out because they are not grouped with all the things that are not opportunities or threats. Grouping can be qualitative or quantitative, but our brains are hardwired to notice when “one of these things is not like the other.” The black sheep in a field of white or the genius in a roomful of dolts. In a state of homogeny, things stand out by differing.
The conflict between opposing forces creates friction through a series of collisions. As they resolve their coexistence, that friction results in a new equilibrium. Opposing forces must work together or remain apart. There’s the rub.
Bombarded by input, folks sort through details via different groupings that do or do not interest them at the moment. They filter out the noise in favor of signal, paying attention only to what they deem significant.
As an author your job is to interest people, which means this instinctive trait provides the single most powerful tool in the author’s arsenal.
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing themselves.”
Leo Tolstoy38
We are visual primates. We form mental pictures when reading, so a few telling details can anchor the dynamics of a scene swiftly.
In the author’s arsenal, Contrast is the simplest, strongest, swiftest tool an author can use to generate energy and attention, whether that’s contrast between actions, tactics, traits, vibe, behavior, opinions, class, history, or skills. Every dynamic and situation is heightened by contrast (and paradox, its conceptual offspring). Contrast is how babies first see, why opposites attract, and the reason black text on white background has been the printing standard for so long: it’s clear and easy to process.
Contrast shows rather than tells, amplifying any effect because it differentiates with direct evidence. This allows readers to draw their own conclusions and closure, rather than explicitly stating differences between subjects, objects, or the actions that connect them.
While reading, the audience notes the status quo and immediately starts searching for the salt in the sugar, the ants in the pants, the grit in the pearl. A story begins the moment the ungrouped and grouped start making a mess of each other, so readers know to look for exactly that: something important to happen that can change things.
If everyone is gorgeous and rich and content at the story’s open, then why bother reading? With nothing to want or get or change, who cares about what these folks think or feel? In fact, how can we think or feel anything about a bland, homogenous pudding-scape? The difference between natures, nurtures, beliefs, and circumstances throbs under a story like a heartbeat.
Readers start listening for that heartbeat before they even open the book. Based on title, artwork, blurb, they gauge the type of ride the book will give them, the potential for powerful emotion, the depth of meaning possible in this combination of characters and contexts. To be honest, that’s the reason they choose one book over another: the significant contrasts and the emotional experience they promise.
Writers often refer to the need for conflict, tension, struggle, confrontation, but I prefer the word Friction because while it may involve outside obstacles and opponents, more than anything else it provides a source of energy and transformation. As my mother used to say, friction is what makes fights feel bad and sex feel good.
As social mammals, we’re instinctively attracted to energy in action, and dramatic energy arises from friction. The tension attracts attention because opposition presupposes conflict and transformation. We watch to see how the patterns will play out. As Brian Boyd puts it, “Differences…simplify character distinctions [and] maximize emotional legibility.”39
Friction builds up a charge between characters, potential energy that needs release. The greater the contrast between illusions and realities, thoughts and feelings, hopes and fears, the more emotional terrain the story can cover credibly.
For maximum drama and comedy in any pairing, television story departments will often divide paired characters into Straight Line and Wavy Line, a Hollywood version of Nietzsche’s Apollonian and Dionysian impulses.40
• Straight Lines impose order with intention. They invest and plan within rules. Sober and stable, in situations they are the cooked meal, the boat’s anchor, the civilizing drive. Like wire directing energy, they provide FORM.
• Wavy Lines unleash chaos on impulse. They gamble and improvise via rebellion. Intoxicated and intoxicating, in situations they are the raw ingredients, the boat’s sail, the wild urge. Like fire releasing energy, they provide FORCE.
Examples of wavy/straight pairings: Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd, Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac, Beloved/Sethe, Ford Prefect/Arthur Dent, Merlin/Wart, Annie Wilkes/Paul Sheldon, Jack Twist/Ennis Del Mar, Hannibal Lecter/Clarice Starling, Bertie Wooster/Reginald Jeeves.
Please note that these opposed modes aren’t necessarily intrinsic to a character’s identity. Some folks are sober at work and wacky in love. Attempts to change behavior can succeed or fail, and character transformation is dramatic. Different relationships or situations may evoke radically different interaction styles. The importance is the contrast between the people involved.
By situating relationships as opposition, in every scene you build energy just waiting to be released and amplify your characters’ emotional legibility. Contrast maximizes the payoff for your cast and your readers. Meaningful transformation of the characters and/or the world becomes inevitable because you’ve seeded the conflict in the roots of the story.
In general, humans avoid conflict, and yet people crave novelty. As Cron puts it, “We don’t like change, and we don’t like conflict, either. So most of the time we do our best to avoid both. This isn’t easy, since the only real constant is change, and change is driven by conflict.”41 The paradox of human evolution in a nutshell: risk-takers who need certainty.
Happily, stories allow us to experience the emotions of volatile and devastating situations without serious trauma. In a sense, all genre entertainment springs from this odd equilibrium, supplying emotional intensity without putting audiences in literal danger. A roller coaster can literally kill you, but no one has ever died from reading a genre novel. That’s some magic trick: all of the amazing feelings with none of the physical threat or personal jeopardy.
Stories allow us to play out our eternal struggle between hope and fear in a safe, controlled space. And because stories elicit real emotions, we get several benefits of risk with none of the danger.
Contrast allows friction that releases energy into the story, but only when opposites collide.
“The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.”
Confucius42
EXERCISE: Best Enemies
Much of entertainment is the ability to think oppositionally. Certain kinds of conflicting actions recur regularly within every genre and subgenre (e.g. demand/defy in Romance, save/doom in Thriller, attack/defend in Fantasy, conceal/reveal in Mystery, tame/unleash in Paranormal).
Let’s identify some contrasting pairs that you think would be fun to write. What kinds of clashing actions do genre fans expect? Which would you call overused clichés and which remain timeless, classic tropes in your stretch of the bookshelf?
1. Make a list of oppositional actions that recur in your specific genre or subgenre.
2. Using a thesaurus, take a classic action duo, and come up with a list of contrasting synonyms for each, linking them based on the most interesting and inspiring combos.
3. Using a thesaurus, take a clichéd action duo and identify a list of unexpected, off-the-wall synonyms for each that might reinvent the stale duo as something fresh and unexpected.
4. Make a short list of actions you instinctively dig writing. Note any actions that leave you cold, no matter how popular they might be. Do these actions appear in other types of book? How? When?
Knowing your own tastes and tendencies in types of contrast will help you develop your instinctive strengths, avoid weaknesses, and also reveal possibilities for long-term career evolution.
What do readers mean when they say a book is powerful…moving, forceful, dazzling, brilliant, or electrifying? Where exactly is the energy in a book? How do we provide fascinating grit for all those receptive audience oysters?
If we define energy as the active forces that drive your story, then a book’s mojo comes down to what happens—not within the pages, but within the reader. Shocking events and dazzling spectacle might shock or dazzle us, but then again, they might not. Unless we care about the events and spectacle, they’re meaningless. Stories don’t produce physical energy, they elicit emotional energy in readers. People care about characters, and characters give authors a way to tap that emotional energy.
We can’t just generate energy in a vacuum. We must allow the energy of all the characters to express itself on the pages in a way that evokes real emotions in readers. Through the magic of closure, the reader connects dots and becomes entangled with imaginary lives.
Henry James summed it up nicely: “What is character but the determination of incident, what is incident but the illustration of character?”43
The power of a story springs directly from the collision of characters and the journey through obstacles and opponents to achieve an ultimate goal. These collisions have explosive impact, releasing energy into the story via fission or fusion…characters brought together and torn apart: “[Subject] wants [object], but [obstacle].”
Drama flows from these moments of conflict: between opposing desires, between reality and delusion, between the past and the present, or divided loyalties. These moments are not just anecdotes or activities, they are events.
In this context, An event is any significant disruption of the status quo…the moment a change occurs with tangible effects on everyone present: rewards and insults, discoveries and reversals, decisions and disasters, deceptions and disclosures, accidents and blessings, meetings and separations, arrivals and departures that alter the flow of the story. In stories, an event always happens for the first or the last time to amplify the stakes and the sense of occasion. Events force the characters and the readers to stop everything and pay attention.
Most pop entertainment structures itself around events, building-building-building to each and then dealing with the aftermath before building to the next: workplace showdown, meet-cute, forbidden fruit, wacky arrest, hellish holidays, friend’s wedding, serious accident, first fight, madcap makeover, etc. Events change things for characters, alter their paths and perspectives.
Think of soap operas and sitcoms, popcorn movies and family sagas, comic books and reality TV; consider the kind of broad-strokes, event-driven stories they tell: births and weddings, fights and funerals, seductions and breakups, trials and punishments, diseases and miracles. Pulp entertainment pulses with stock events because they are clear and instantly dramatic. Audiences can dive into the flow at any point and swim along. Events create instant, fascinating context.
When in doubt, look for the WHAM. An event pops up wherever there is collision and conflict between two different ways of seeing the world: beliefs, values, priorities. The community chugs along, beige and bland, and then—WHAM—aliens land or teens elope or a corpse turns up at the playground. An executive has ordered her life perfectly and then—WHAM—she gets transferred to Istanbul, her partners embezzle, the media runs a damning exposé. An average kid surviving school and then—WHAM—accepted at wizarding school or diagnosis: leukemia or a maniac moves in upstairs.
The friction between expectation and events drives all stories. Noir legend Jim Thompson once said, “There is only one plot—things are not what they seem.”44 An event is contrast turned into context. It exposes the crack between how things seem and a reality we can now see. For example, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice piles events upon the characters (which I cover in greater detail in the appendix).
• The Bennets seem content until a wildly eligible bachelor shows up at Netherfield.
• Bingley seems to be courting Jane with serious intent until he decamps for London.
• Darcy seems cold until his proposal to Lizzy shatters the polite crust between them.
• Lizzy seems to loathe Darcy until a visit to Pemberley reveals unexpected warmth.
• Lydia seems silly and harmless until she elopes with Wickham and ruins her family.
Each of these events has drastic impacts on the folks involved and reveal unknown info. And even when the characters don’t cause the events, the events force them to make choices and take action in the world with serious consequences. I sometimes think of this as the tension between if and is…what could be vs. what exists in reality.
An event distills conflict into character growth much like bees turn pollen into honey.
When writing genre fiction, you must cultivate the habit of thinking eventfully, because these pivotal disruptions shape the flow of a narrative. If your characters are going to do significant things and inhabit a believable world, then you should have an idea of what they’re doing and why.
Please know that listing events isn’t plotting. You aren’t structuring your story, and I’m not asking you to make up a bunch of telenovela beats out of thin air. Think of it more as a gathering of possible ingredients. What would be fun to write with these characters in this genre? Certain genres have events built into them: mysteries love a murder, adventure revels in fisticuffs, thrillers thrive on a threat. Great genre writing gives readers what they want in a way they wouldn’t expect.
In fact, the genre and subgenre of a book often determines the emotional terrain it makes accessible. Audiences come to different story categories for different emotional rides. A story only succeeds to the extent that internal conflict becomes external action and external conflict creates internal action. In the words of acting teacher Sanford Meisner, “That which hinders your task is your task.”
Just consider the decisive moments you know will happen in the story and build from there. You only need three or four big events to build an entire novel. We don’t need to know character reactions or details yet, just the general context. Focus on the set pieces and big moments that will serve as tent poles for the story.
These events expose moments of explosive collision that release critical energy into the characters’ lives. Knowing your characters will make certain events obvious and having a couple events in mind will make it easier to see what your character needs to do and who they need to be.
“We struggle with dream figures and our blows fall on living faces.”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty45
EXERCISE: Event Planning
Dwight Swain and others have suggested that a book is little more than three or four pivotal events that lead to a satisfying resolution. Take a moment to think eventfully by brainstorming some of the pivotal collisions that might power your story. Look for the WHAMs:
• What are the dramatic, memorable events each character might face?
• How will they handle each of these events? Alone? In public? With someone loved or loathed? Knock them off balance.
• How is each the best and worst thing that could happen? Make certain the events force them to deal with incapacities and untapped strengths.
• Which events will force them to improvise on the fly, and which will allow them breathing room to react mindfully? Require high-stakes choices that change everything.
• BONUS ROUND: Imagine these events as the standout seconds in a film trailer for your story: pinpoint clear, compelling, memorable moments that will invariably hook an audience.
Look for the fun in these collisions. Create meaningful clashes and give characters opportunities to ditch their ruts. Caveat scriptor: Don’t get sucked into the idea of structure or plotting before you have a handle on the forces at play unless it inspires or assists your process.
To close the gap between book and reader, authors must tap the story’s energy, and that invariably comes from its characters.
Unfortunately, this is where art gets hard and the rubber meets the road: You cannot show energy. You can only show its effects.
We learn this lesson from physics: energy cannot be measured, only the impact of energy upon matter can be measured. When we say a car travels at 100 mph, we must gauge the relative speed of the vehicle in the context of its landscape. When a thermometer indicates the temperature outside is fifty degrees, we are observing the mercury’s rise relative to the scale beside it.
We can tell an audience what makes a character tick, but we can only show what they do and the impact of their choices. The unique charge and force that characters bring to a situation defines who and what and how they behave in every context—the fire in the wire. Energy gives them life and makes them stick. So for best results, the characterization process starts with, and all other characterization aligns with, that core energy to form the spine of the story.
Characters turn up in a story crackling with power like clouds before a thunderstorm. Readers may sense the currents or have a hunch about the danger, but they have to wait for the rumble, the strike, the aftermath before they can find out what will happen and where. All that invisible electricity reveals itself only as it shifts from potential to kinetic energy loose in the world.
Energy moves us. Readers experience real emotion because the person may be fictional, but the energy is real. The active forces that drive your story may shift or redirect, but they don’t take breaks. By definition, energy cannot stop and continue to exist. It exists by doing. That’s another truth we learn from physics: energy can never exist in stasis.
That’s why great characters straddle believable coherence and fascinating unpredictability. Audiences want to open a book and find a big glorious tempest that will satisfy them and surprise them simultaneously. Until the rain and lightning is released, nothing can happen, but in expert hands, readers have a front row seat for an electric spectacle.
Characters reveal the energy of a story by changing their surroundings. They are visible expressions of energy that allow us to observe forces at play. Want to know why characterization is so critical to fiction? What makes it so difficult and why so few writing guides dig into its challenges?
Characters are not faces, but forces.
They move us because they have power. They matter because they alter a world, revealing the impact of personal actions. Characters do things to the world around them…they make stuff, take stuff, fake stuff, break stuff. We evaluate their energy by assessing its consequences. We look to events to understand the people involved because the effects reveal the cause.
• Some events happen. (ACTIVITIES)
• Some events happen to characters. (ACCIDENTS)
• Some events are caused intentionally by characters. (ACTIONS)
Of these options, actions (intentional events) involve more people on the page and reveal exponentially more about their interactions. Activities waste time. Accidents all too easily can betray an author’s intentions, jarring the reader. Actions portray the effects of the characters’ invisible energy, making intention visible to readers, thereby providing much more narrative heft for an author.
By observing actions, we discern the underlying forces at work in a situation, which incidentally, is how we navigate our lives. We want to know who’s doing what and why. Everything else in a narrative is auxiliary, useful perhaps, but inessential. Actions cause reactions and thereby hangs every tale.
The central task of characterization is harnessing energy. A character flows through a story like a charge traveling over wire; they jolt the story patterns that connect with your audience, real patterns in their real lives. All the appurtenances of character: their aspect, their affect, their actions, and their tactics all reflect that vital force to make them feel like real people to your readers. The writer must find a way to reveal that charge.
Aristotle’s Poetics defines character (ethos) as “habitual action,” treating character as the pattern of behavior associated with an individual. He was writing about theatre, but in a larger sense he was describing effective storytelling. That habitual action requires a context, a place to play to an audience. Authors reveal characters to the audience by creating situations that test the limits of habitual actions.
Since we can only see the effects of energy, authors must depict actions, internal and external, that have significant, meaningful impact on other actions, other characters. Every moment of the story becomes a window into the forces at play inside its people and which will change their world.
Actions speak louder than words. They express essential energy. They show rather than tell. They make scenes sizzle with static energy that needs only a touch to crackle into dramatic life. Rooting characters in action allows every detail to multitask by maximizing coherence, impact, and efficiency of emotional characterization to stir up a perfect emotional storm.
Characters must do so they can be. Once a storm blows itself out and the rain stops, the lightning vanishes from sight again. The electricity remains still active and present, biding its invisible time while it builds again. What happens when any energy stops? It fails and fades. Characters ditto. Most story problems start here: being and doing are mutual and simultaneous. The moment characters stop taking action and risking consequences and making high-stakes choices, they stop seeming like real people and devolve into dark squiggles on the page…names doing stuff.
Aristotle teaches us that stories don’t depict human personalities, but human action, people wanting things and working past obstacles to achieve and/or acquire them. When you’re aligning all the various character components, the root, the base, the core of a character will always be the most direct, visible expression of the character’s energy in a story: action.
Characters are forces of nature because they are forces that express their own natures. They do stuff that matters. Their actions need to mean something and have consequences or nobody cares. If you plan to write 300 pages of names doing stuff, you might as well pack it in now and save yourself the carpal tunnel.
The root of character is energy and that energy reveals itself in action.
That means we aren’t going to kick off characterization with hair color or childhood memories. The place to start is with the energy that distinguishes a character and animates them. Tap that source. Unleash the storm. Find all the invisible, emotional forces crackling inside of your characters and give them spectacular steeples to strike.
“There is another world, and it is in this one.”
Paul Éluard46