Dynamic Characters (37 page)

• How do both revenger and target end up? Is the possibility still open for another round, even if only by implication?

An inverse variation on the revenge plot is the
atonement plot.
In this, the protagonist is the one who does the dumping on someone else, causing considerable harm. He then spends the rest of the novel trying to make up for that harm. Examples include Anne Tyler's
Saint Maybe,
in which Ian Bedloe believes he caused his brother's death and so devotes his life to raising his brother's children. Joseph Conrad's
Lord Jim
is also an atonement novel. For his one moment of cowardice, the protagonist pays with the rest of his life.

The elements of the atonement novel are the same as for the revenge novel: dumper, dumpee, plan to even the score, carrying out of the plan, personal costs and general results. The difference is that in the atonement story, you show us redemptive action from the point of view of the sinner, rather than punitive action from the point of view of the sinned against.

CLASSIC PLOT NUMBER SEVEN-THE TRANSFORMATION PLOT: HARRY CHANGES INSIDE

The
transformation plot
is what we dissected at such length in chapters twenty and twenty-one. A character encounters some heavy weather in his life, and as a result he changes.

Each of the previous six plot categories can feature character change. But it's not a
requirement.
Harry can conclude his chase, complete his quest, win his competition, lose the love of his life, make his sacrifice or take his revenge without being any different at the end of the book than he was at the beginning. The butcher's boy, Sir Galahad, Jim Brewton, Romeo, Norma Rae and Dirty Harry don't change during their respective stories.

In the transformation plot, on the other hand, internal change is the whole point of the fiction. It
is
the story. If you need to refresh your memory on how, when and with whom to construct this type of plot, reread chapters twenty and twenty-one.

CLASSIC PLOT NUMBER EIGHT-THE RISE-AND-FALL PLOT: HARRY GETS AN ENTIRE LIFE

The
rise-and-fall plot
is a large-scale plot, covering years (or even decades). Its basic outline is this: A character starts life near the bottom of whatever social heap you're considering. Through talent, corruption, betrayal, ruthlessness and/or sheer determination, he rises far in his world. But eventually his past sins and/or attitudes catch up with him. They bring about either a spectacular downfall or a spiritual emptiness that haunts his superficial success.

The rise-and-fall plot includes the Aristotelian tragedy, in which the protagonist is felled by a fatal flaw in an otherwise sympathetic character. It also includes the completely nonsympathetic protagonist who is a heel from the opening scene—but a crafty heel. The main point about the plot is that it has the shape of a long arc: rising trajectory, apex, falling trajectory. The shape itself has a satisfying symmetry for readers.

Within that basic shape, the variations of actual character, tone and events are legion. A sampler:

• Elmer Gantry
(Sinclair Lewis), in which Gantry rises to become a successful preacher, based both on hypocritical oratory and an intense attractiveness to women. The latter brings about his fall.

• Richard III
(Shakespeare), about a king who schemes and murders his way to the throne, and ends up murdered himself by a rival backed by Richard's more outraged subjects.

• The House of Mirth
(Edith Wharton), concerned with the nineteenth-century social rise of Lily Bart, who starts out a penniless orphan. The fickle venality of Lily's world, plus certain aspects of her own character, bring about her fall; she descends into poverty and dies in a charity ward.

• The English Patient
(Michael Ondaatje), an elliptically told version of the rise-and-fall plot. Throughout the 1930s, Count Almasy is a successful, respected explorer of the Libyan desert, living with great contentment the hard and solitary life he has fashioned for himself. When he falls in love with a married woman, he rises to heights of passion and intensity he never suspected existed. Then, as his beloved desert falls into the horror and chaos of World War II's African campaign, Almasy's life, too, declines into despair, then treason, then death and disfigurement.

It would be hard to imagine four more different characters than Elmer Gantry, Richard Lackland, Lily Bart and Count Almasy. Nor are the specific events of their books the same. But all share that same curving trajectory to their fascinating lives. If that plot shape sparks your imagination, some things to consider are:

• Do you want to cover a hefty chunk of time? Rise-and-fall plots don't occur in just a few weeks. You will, at least in flashback, be dealing with years (even decades).

^•
 Can you set your trajectory against a larger social background? All of the above rise-and-fall stories do this (using, respectively, nineteenth-century religious fervor, the demise of the Plantagenet dynasty, ''old New York'' upper-crust elitism and World War II). Weaving your plot from historical circumstances gives it scope, interest and significance. The arc of your character's personal life becomes a comment on the world around him.

• Where will your character start out? Usually this is somewhere near the bottom (illegitimate poverty, backroom local politics). However, it may be only at the start of his career (Almasy), or at a place that looks privileged to the rest of us but inadequate and demeaning to the character (Richard, after all, was born son to a king). Wherever he starts, depict it for us vividly, either chronologically or in flashback. We need dramatization of his beginnings in order to fully appreciate how far he's come.

• What will be the apex of his achievement? Can you create a single strong event to make this concrete? What did he have to do to get here?

• What causes his downfall? Whatever it is should be dramatized sufficiently so that the fall doesn't seem even faintly arbitrary. The protagonist caused it by his own choices.

• Where does he end up? Show us vividly, in some detail.

• Does anyone else profit by his fall? Who, and how? If it's another person just like him, that says one thing about the world you've depicted. If it's a better sort of person, that says quite another (Shakespeare, for instance, brings down Richard III in favor of the new Tudor dynasty—of which his reigning monarch was a member).

YET ANOTHER VIEW OF PLOT: STARTING WITH DESIRE

Perhaps none of these classic plots speaks to you. It's not that you dispute their existence, or don't see how they might shape other writers' thinking; they just don't grab
you.
You still have characters in search of a structure. Are there any other schemata that might appeal more to you?

There are hundreds. And, as you've undoubtedly already noticed in this chapter, it's possible to view the same novel from the vantage point of several different conceptual schemes. We'll consider just one more, in the hopes that it better fits your embryonic material. This time, we'll focus on a basic question we've encountered before: What does the protagonist want? Coupled with what he already has, the answer suggests a plot form. Actually, five plot forms, all starting from the protagonist's desire, as follows.

HARRY VICTORIOUS

Harry decides he wants something. It could be anything: a woman, a job, a million dollars, revenge, escape from his family, the presidency, a cure for cancer, to be left alone. He sets out to get it, encountering many and varied obstacles along the way. Eventually he overcomes these obstacles, gets his desire and retires from the battlefield satisfied.

This is the so-called
plot skeleton,
and it fuels much commercial fiction. Danielle Steel's heroine ends up getting the right man. James Bond ends up vanquishing the dastardly spy from the other side. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo end up defeating the evil Empire, awarded victory medals by Princess Leia herself. Readers crave heroes, and this plot gives it to them.

So, ask yourself:

• What does my character want?

• What's standing in his way?

• How can he overcome the obstacle(s)? The more inventive you are about this, the better.

^•
 How will I make his victory graphic and satisfying?

Once you know these answers, you'll have your basic plot structure and can concentrate on the memorable and individual characters who will inhabit it.

HARRY DEFEATED

In the second plot from, Harry wants something, fights all obstacles to get it, and either comes very close or, more commonly, does get what he wanted. But he can't keep it. At the end, he loses his heart's desire.

Why should anyone want to read—or write—such a downer? Several reasons. Sometimes, Harry deserves to lose (the rise-and-fall plot we discussed earlier). Readers are pleased that Richard III and Elmer Gantry don't triumph. We're rooting for the obstacles instead.

Sometimes Harry loses, but on such a magnificent scale that the experience is not depressing so much as cathartic. Defeat rises to the level of tragedy. This is what keeps readers returning for centuries to such tales of total loss as Euripides'
The Trojan Women
and Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet.
More contemporary examples such as Michael Ondaatje's
The English Patient
or Kazuo Ishiguro's
The Remains of the Day
also end in total failure of the protagonists to attain what they wanted. But, again, the emotional workout for the reader, and the wonderful writing, made both novels prizewinners.

And sometimes Harry's defeat isn't total. He loses his major desire, but gains something else in compensation—either something better, or some hard-won simpler contentment, or some abstract quality of wisdom. Charlie Gordon, for instance, in Daniel Keyes's
Flowers for Algernon
(made into the movie
Charly),
wants to be smarter. His IQ is subnormal, and he's willing to undergo a risky, experimental operation to raise it. The operation succeeds; in fact, Charlie Gordon becomes a genius. But he also discovers a world of unhappiness and complex double-dealings he never before suspected. When the gains from the operation fade away, Charlie reverts to what he was. He can't hang on to what he so desperately wanted, but at least in compensation he gains a simpler contentment.

If your character will lose his heart's desire, make sure you build into your plot some compelling reward for the reader who must suffer along with him.

HARRY WINS, SORT OF: THE PYRRHIC VICTORY

Here Harry fights the obstacles and achieves his heart's desire. But it turns out to be not as wonderful as he thought, either because the cost was too high or because he never really understood the situation in the first place.

A famous example is Scarlett O'Hara, of Margaret Mitchell's
Gone With the Wind.
From the opening scene, Scarlett wants Ashley Wilkes. Twelve years and one war later, she finally gets him, at which point she realizes he isn't her true love after all, and never really was.

Count Vronsky, on the other hand,
is
Anna Karenina's true love. And she gets him. But the cost is too high: her child, her reputation, her self-respect.

Will your material lend itself to an I-got-it-but-then-didn't-want-it-at-that-price plot? If so, one suggestion: Consider balancing the disappointment of your protagonist with the fulfillment of some secondary character(s). That way, you present a more even, accurate view of the world—as well as some sweetener for readers. Scarlett O'Hara, for instance, ends up discontented with what she has striven so hard to get, but Melanie Wilkes dies fulfilled. Anna Karenina throws herself under a train, but Kitty and Levin, the book's other lovers, flourish.

Of course, if your view of the world is so unrelentingly bleak that you'd rather not soften it, don't. But you will then have to compensate for the book's more limited audience with some other attraction: dazzling writing or startling plot or cutting social observations so telling that publishers can't resist the novel.

HARRY LOSES BY WINNING

The fourth plot form is a sophisticated way of writing about human desires. Harry wants something desperately. He strives to overcome all obstacles, attains it and is victorious. Then, after he has his heart's desire, we see him unknowingly set about trying to change it into exactly what he had before, which is the only thing he really knows how to deal with.

This is the plot of Dan Wakefield's
Starting Over.
Phil Potter wants a new start in life: new city, new job, new relationship. He gets all three. The novel details his move from New York City to Boston, his switch from public relations to teaching, his search for the ''right woman.'' Eventually he becomes a good teacher and falls in love. By the end of the book, his new wife has persuaded Potter to return to public relations, and the reader sees clearly that Potter's second marriage is doomed to exactly the same fate as his first, and for the same reasons.
Plus ga change, plus c'est la meme chose.