Who's on First? (part 2)
...so, maybe now we're on Second?
In my last post , Who’s On First? I wrote about creating your characters and making notes on them before you actually begin to write. I feel it is necessary to do so (even if only partially) because you need to go in knowing what makes your characters tick. I showed how this worked in my book Christmas House for the two main characters, Bret and Molly Small, and for the first secondary character, Hank. But, what about the “heavies,” the bad guys that—intentionally or not—create the road blocks our protagonists face?
For Christmas House, my first bad guy is a man named Art from Building Codes. Here’s a quick plot summary:
Bret and Molly are embarking on ambitious plans to open a Christmas destination with decorations, baked goods, and handcrafted Christmas gifts. This ties in with Bret’s new woodworking enterprise. They also want to start a family.
With so many plans on the table, Molly and Bret are busy. Any kind of project puts stress on a married couple, but the complications they face become considerable as the story progresses.
If their dreams are to come true, the house they’ve just purchased will need to be renovated to transform it into the business—called “Christmas House”—Molly wants. There are sketchy contractors, building disasters, and a codes man named Art with a stiff, righteous personal code of ethics. And there’s the City Council. They get to decide if the Christmas House will even exist.
Here are my notes on Art.
Art Crowley, Codes Guy (slightly older than Molly and Bret, about 40)
Sandy colored hair, stocky, a bit taller than Bret
Tidy dresser, friendly manner overall.
Knowledgeable, thorough, good at his job—a bit overbearing.
High standards for himself and for anyone he works with—a stickler
Some might call Art obsessive about his job, but the man has a strict sense of responsibility about doing things the right way, even when that puts him at odds with the people he has to work with. Especially because he has the power and duty to enforce the rules.
Molly’s first exposure to Art the Codes Guy takes place at Hank’s tree farm. She’d been scouting for his office, but so far she hadn’t screwed up the courage to make an appointment to see him. Now she is at the Christmas tree farm.
Hank was arguing with a stocky guy who wore a button-down shirt beneath a wool sweater and waved his phone around, pausing to point at it with his other hand before thrusting his pointer finger back at Hank.
Molly hated conflict, and that’s what this was, although she couldn’t tell over what. Then she heard the stocky man say something about changes Hank needed to make.
“I tell you, that was grandfathered in the day the new code was written,” Hank shouted. “It don’t apply to me, when are you goin’ to get that through your thick head?”
The stranger pointed to his phone again. “You’ve got to fix those beams, Hank. I’ve been tellin’ you for four years now!”
“And I’ve been tellin’ you back. No. I. Don’t. Those beams will be a long time in donkey years before that happens. Darn in, Art! I wrote that code! I am not doin’ anythin’ illegal in this city!”
Art slapped his cap on his head, looking like he wanted to put a fist through something—or at least arrest someone. He wiped his brow and panted a little as he stalked past Molly, who pulled back in alarm.
“I’m sure all of your property is in order, ma’am. Unlike some people!” he shouted over his shoulder and kept on moving.
Molly stared at his receding back, then recovered to walk over and greet Hank, who was muttering to himself. From what she’d seen, this was definitely a post-event-muttering-worthy scenario.
She tapped Hank on the shoulder in a friendly manner. “Hank? You okay? Um,” she glanced toward the gravel lot where the younger man was climbing into a small pickup. “Was that who I think it was?”
Hank blew out a cleansing blast of wind. “If you’re thinkin’ it’s Art, from the Codes Department, it is. Art Crowley, Codes Guy. Dang-fool Codes Guy. Never met a guy so stuck on rules and regulations he couldn’t understand a grandfather clause. He’s been pesterin’ me about a situation out here that: one, is not dangerous; two, is none of his business; and three, is specifically addressed in the addendum that immediately follows the regulation in the codes book: Hank shook his head and swiped at some dust with his hat. “Dang fool! Never has understood that addendum.”
Needless to say, what Molly saw didn’t do anything to make her look forward to working with Art, the Codes Guy.
By now, however, I’d done some thinking. Looking at the description of Art and how he did business, I realized that, as a home DIYer, I want the codes inspector to be persnickety. I might not like or agree with the specific nature of the code itself, but I want the inspector to tell me whether or not I—or the pros—have done the job right. While Art is so stringent it makes him intimidating to work with, that’s not really enough to make him the antagonist for my book.
I needed another baddie.
I toyed with various ideas—pitting the Smalls against competing entrepreneurs; a community unresponsive to their project that might petition to keep them from opening (not an easy sell, given who I was writing for); or just plain horrible contractors.
That last one made the most sense, but it seemed at once trite and tricky. Could a single contractor be enough of a problem? If not, could a group of them be cooperative enough to hold together as a single threat? Everybody has problems with contractors. They can with inspectors, too, but codes are codes, so the scale is weighted on the inspector’s side. Who wants the designated bad guy to win? I still needed another baddie.
The nefarious contractor was not a worthless idea. It had possibilities, and the best books provide multiple problems for the hero/heroine to overcome. I wound up giving the first-tier bad guy assignment to a crummy contractor. His personality was pretty well tied to the fact that he was supposed to be a bad guy, so I had fun with it and made him obnoxious as well as untrustworthy.
Not wanting to give everything away—I mean, I want people to read the actual book—I still had to work at finding a new bad guy. What was I looking for?
One way to begin was to go back to creating a character sketch. Full disclosure here: I did this in my head, but here is what it might have looked like if I’d written it down at the time:
Villain of the Piece
Should not be an obviously bad guy; most people would think of him either as ordinary or at most a pain in the neck; charming would be nice
Must be in a position to exercise authority/power over the Smalls
Probably older than Bret and Molly, allows him to be even more patronizing
Must have a plausible reason for what he does,
He can be bad to the point of officially illegal, or he can just be a crappy person (crappy is an official literary term).
This outline, though only a mental one, helped me find my new bad guy. He’d been there all along; it just took necessity to help me re-invent him to fit the bill.
Preliminary character sketches like these act as a framework for you to build their persona on. They focus your thoughts on what you need for your character to accomplish their role in your story. And while creating this sketch, more ideas will spring to mind for detail, scenes, even story arcs.
Also, you’ll realize that the traits you’ve given them both design and limit their behavior.
Your bully makes “friends” by handing them his backpack to carry and demanding lunch money afterwards. If someone complains, he makes sure they get home either bruised or wet or both.
In contrast, the sly middle daughter of your unsuspecting mother witch has come up with a way to avoid collecting herbs herself by swiping baked goods off village window sills and trading them to hungry midwives for their goods. She fast-talks her way past reason and suspicion to succeed. When the mother witch learns what her daughter has been up to, she teaches the girl a lesson by casting a spell on her that makes it impossible for her to lie or steal. When she tries, she ends up smiling at her intended mark and offering to clean their kitchen!
Does this work best when you plan it out before you write? Sure. But just as I had to do with my villain, you can do it on revision. Sometimes you must. But, as I noted in my first post, you can’t just plunk in things like “He was a skinny guy, maybe five foot nine, with dirty blond hair and a supercilious smile on his weaselly face.” You have to smuggle in the information without dumping it. Tie the description to the action so that it amplifies the effect. Stitch it in with their traits1. Like this:
Congressman Hastings rose from his chair and paced around his desk, smoothing back side curls which had sprung free from the morning’s pomade. He leaned against the front of his desk, hands slipping off the edge as he tried to brace himself. I didn’t trust the smile that curled his upper lip, nor the syrupy tone he chose to address me in. I steeled myself, planning my counter argument as he began.
Traits drive the character’s behavior. Characters drive the story. This is why knowing your characters well as early on as possible so important. This doesn’t mean characters can’t change, but you as the writer have to be clear on who, what, and how your characters are. The better you know your characters, the better they can bring your story home.
If you’d like to read Christmas House or any of my other books, you can find them in print or ebook format through online bookstores, including Amazon and Smashwords. (Look for RJ Minnick)
For more on smuggling and stitching, see my blog posts on the subject at Finding Robin’s Story. Look for: Smuggle and Stitch Part 1 and Smuggle and Stitch Part 2.