Imagine it’s a beautiful Saturday morning and a friend from work stops by and asks if you want to go hiking — something she’s never suggested before.
You think for a minute. Do you want to go hiking? You have no feeling about it, one way or the other. Absolutely nothing comes to mind to help you decide, so you just blink at her in uncomfortable silence. She wonders whether you’re on drugs, and the next day at work no one will look you in the eye.
Could that scenario happen? Of course not. Unless you are on drugs. Or, in classic movie style, have just been conked on the head and are suffering from amnesia.
Instead, what would happen is that your cognitive unconscious would instantly rip through relevant memories of the past and thoughts of the future as you make your decision . . .
“. . . There was that time you went hiking with your Girl Scout troop when you were nine. You rounded a bend, saw a sheer cliff, panicked, sat with a thud and inched back down the trail on your tush, whimpering. It was a mortifying way to find out you’re terrified of heights and since then you haven’t climbed so much as a stepstool.
But the last six times your friend asked you to do something you blew her off, and she might suspect that you don’t like her.
Besides, you don’t want her to think you’re a coward, or worse, not fit enough to head into the hills. She’s been so gung-ho since she got into shape that she’s been a little smug. But sheesh, it’s not like she did it to make you feel pudgy. Even though it does kinda feel personal. Maybe blowing her off is a good idea.
Then again, there’s that new cute guy in the office who seems to be single, so a little toning might be a good idea. And who knows, you even might get into better shape than your smug friend, and that would sure show her….“
Some of these thoughts would be conscious, some would not, and you’d process ‘em all so fast that your friend wouldn’t even have time to register your hesitation before you said, Sure! I’d love to go hiking!
The point: We evaluate every decision through the lens of everything that’s happened to us up to that moment. Whether or not we consciously ponder each memory, our prior experience is always at work just below the surface, shaping our worldview and driving our action.
As Faulkner so famously said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
This isn’t a metaphor, it’s a fact. It’s how our brain processes information. We make every decision based on how experience has taught us to decode the present.
You know who needs to do the exact same thing? Your protagonist.
To be very clear: I am not saying that your protagonist always needs to amble down a long memory train before arriving at every decision, but that said decision is always driven by what prior experience has taught her. Which is precisely why you need to know what that experience is.
And yet I can’t tell you how often, when I’ve asked a writer, “Um, why did your protagonist make that decision?” there’s a long pause, followed by a sheepish, “I, I, don’t know. I never thought about it.”
I’m not just talking about mundane things like going hiking on a Saturday, but massive, life-altering decisions: like why she moved to Antarctica, why she married her husband, or why she decided to become a doctor, a journalist, an assassin.
Sometimes the writer had vague, conceptual answers. She needed a change. She was attracted to him. She wants to help people. She’s more comfortable observing than participating. She’s a misanthrope.
The problem is, the writer drew these conclusions for the protagonist based on . . . nothing. At best, he had little more than a very general overview of what had actually happened to his protagonist before the story begins. So when pressed, he couldn’t come up with a single specific detail, a single image, a single event.
Try it out on your own life: you’re a writer. If someone asked you why you write, you could probably come up with the moment you realized that you wanted to be a writer. You could talk about what led up to it and what happened from then on — how it changed your life, the things you had to give up to pursue it, the things that it brought you, the lessons you learned, the way people treated you when you told them you wanted to be a writer, how it made you feel, and a million other things. All of those things affected your worldview, and probably your reaction to what you’re reading right now.
Now imagine you’re a character in a story. You try to think about your past and you can’t recall a single incident. Feeling panicked, you close your eyes and look back over your entire life and see . . . nothing, nada, tabula rasa. How would you know what to do? And, as important, why you’re doing it? You wouldn’t. Amnesia is paralyzing.
That’s why when you’re writing a story, you need to know the specifics of your protagonist’s past before you can chart their future.
Here are three helpful ways to tackle just that:
1. Remember a story is about something that is changing — and you can’t have an “after” without a “before.” So the question to ask yourself is, What is my protagonist changing from.
Not conceptually, but specifically. What old beliefs are holding him back? Where did those beliefs spring from? What happened that caused them? If you feel yourself slipping into the general – ala, his parents were always mean to him, and so he grew up to resent authority – make it specific, concrete and clear. The question is: what, exactly, did his parents do that was mean? How did he react? How did that shift how he saw the world, and himself? What did he do as a result?
To be sure you’re nailing the specific, use the Eyes-Wide-Shut Test: When you close your eyes can you actually see it? If not, it’s still too general.
This is crucial, because all story – like all life – is in the specifics. Think of the specific “before” as the yardstick by which your protagonist’s progress toward “after” will be measured. Nailing it allows you to experience that change through your protagonist’s eyes as you write. Otherwise, there’s a good chance you’re shoving him onto the page with amnesia.
2. Don’t worry about the things in your protagonist’s past that don’t impact the story.
All those checklists where you’re supposed to know your protagonist’s favorite color, whether they like their middle name, and if they’re a dog person or a cat person? They’re useless, because you end up with so much random, irrelevant information that one of two things tends to happen: Either you drown in TMI, which can be as debilitating as knowing nothing. Or you end up giving the reader TMI, and the story itself drowns.
The good news is that you don’t have to dig into every single thing that ever happened to your protagonist, counting past lives and womb-time. If a story is about a problem, then what you’re looking for are the specific past events – along with the consequences they wrought, the beliefs they engendered — that will come into play as your protagonist navigates the story question.
3. Make sure you force your protagonist to dig deep and admit all the things she’d really rather not.
In the fictional scenario we started with, the protagonist remembered a childhood hike that ended with a teary, terrified, and embarrassingly ignoble descent down a steep mountainside. We’ve all been in dozens of situations like that – humbling, humiliating, frightening. They often become our most closely held secrets. They’re not something we like to talk about, let alone ponder. Why? Because they’re painful, and tend to make us feel lesser-than. When, ironically, they’re what make us gloriously, courageously human. Which is one of the main reasons we turn to story: for the reassurance that we’re not the only one who’s made a spectacular fool of ourselves. And that maybe, just maybe, we weren’t such a big fool after all. Maybe the story will reveal that there’s another way of looking at it – a better, truer way. And maybe there’s something we can learn from it, even now.
So whereas in real life people tend to studiously avoid examining those moments, writers have to dig into them with gusto – even though it hurts like hell. Writing is hard, and this is why. We have to probe our characters’ original wounds, which probably means poking around in our own original wounds — no amnesia allowed. Flaws? Expose them! Fears? Unearth them! Secret desires? Ferret them out!
Will you dig up things that’ll make your protagonist wish she had amnesia? If you do your job right, absolutely! But at the end of the day, your protagonist – and your reader – with thank you for it.
Photo by Paurian via Flickr
About Lisa Cron
Lisa Cron is the author of Wired for Story: The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers From the Very First Sentence and Story Genius: How To Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste 3 Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere). Her video tutorial, Writing Fundamentals: The Craft of Story, can be found at Lynda.com. Her TEDx talk, Wired for Story, opened Furman University’s 2014 TEDx conference, Stories: The Common Thread of Our Humanity. A frequent speaker at writers conferences, schools and universities, Lisa's passion has always been story. She currently works as a story coach helping writers, nonprofits, educators and journalists wrangle the story they're telling onto the page; contact her here.
Another important note:
Your protagonist’s back story is like story research. You want to make it as deep, specific, and interesting as possible… but refrain from hurling every iota of it at the reader. We really don’t need your character to go into a pages-long flashback every time he decides whether or not to have lettuce on his sandwich.
What a great check-list. I love the eyes-wide-shut test.
Lisa,
Great advice for character development and motivation. Thanks so much for the reminder.
Terrific post! I love plot; character development is always a challenge, and I struggle to convey meaningful info about my characters–simple, quick, effective info–without stopping the forward momentum of my story. And writer mentors who advocate writing reams about my protagonist (what brand of chocolate does she like? what shampoo does she use? where did she vacation as a kid?) inspire only a sense of helplessness combined with irritation. I appreciate the recommendation to focus on what my character is changing ‘from’; that seems so much more do-able . . . and it’s a good reminder that I must pay attention to this question.
Great post! I’ve gone down many a rabbit hole thinking all the effort would end in a good scene when really all that was needed was to capture the essence, the feeling in a word or two. Sweaty noodleshop, for instance. This implies hot, hard work, something the protag doesn’t want to do, may even be running from. Two words. Much shorter than a scene, n’est pas?
Great post! There are so many memories, influences, and conditions that determine even everyday decisions. A writer certainly doesn’t want her character to go blank on the big ones!
Wonderful post! I love these two lines–they say it all:
“Will you dig up things that’ll make your protagonist wish she had amnesia? If you do your job right, absolutely!”
Thanks for the reminder about digging deep into what makes our character who she is.
Brilliant post, Lisa. Love your suggestion to ditch the standard character interview and instead probe around with these questions: “What old beliefs are holding him back? Where did those beliefs spring from? What happened that caused them?”
Thanks!
Every character needs a resume. How did she get to this point in her life? I try to interview my characters looking for flaws and uncomfortable situations for them.
Great post.
Huzzah! At long last, a reason to be grateful this is taking me so long! After I wrote my story, and it was initially rejected, my resistance to revision caused me to cast about for a project. Fortune smiled upon me when I decided to write a ‘prequel’ story. I feel like I know so much more about my protags pasts. In stumbled into a cure for their amnesia, and–hopefully–for my initial failing in that respect. It’s about time. ;-)
Love the questions, Lisa. Here’s to being better equiped for digging deeper!
While I understand this is a way that writers arrive at figuring out character motivation, I would like to add that not everyone remains solely attached to thought, conscious and unconscious, as the primary motivator for present and future action. There are people who are able to respond to situations pre-thought because they have recognized the limitations of the psychological mind and through seeking enlightenment have found a way to go beyond the mind; (this is what sets a mystic apart from the ordinary person who still believes thought has self-nature).
I’m just throwing this possibility into the mix because an awful lot of motivation I see in writing advice for character motivation these days is limited to the psychological realm, both for the writer and the character. Which makes it impossible for anything new to emerge, either for the character or–more importantly–for the writer. The brain is a mysterious and wonderful thing, but it’s nowhere near as powerful as the creative impulse which is the true source of inspiration.
As your examples show, everything about the future is based on the past. Therefore, the poor character you’ve described is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, even if the writer manages to finagle some “transformation” towards the end. Very claustrophobic, even to think about.
Thanks Lisa. This post is the proof of the pudding of why we are wired for story. And Jung believed it went even deeper than our own personal experiences. I agree with him.
Wonderful points. I do a lot of “tell me about your childhood” moments with my characters, but probably need to dig even deeper.
Great post, Lisa. And thank you for freeing us from the shackles of “what-is-your-character’s-favorite-color?, etc.
This is officially the best post on characters and plot I’ve ever read. And I can assure you, I’m making that judgement through a lens of all my past experiences of reading blogs, books, and conference notes on the topics.
This nails the problem many beginning writers have with their protagonists — and the one I used to struggle with the most. I had a moment of epiphany during my recently-finished manuscript when I was about 35K words in, and I was stuck. I had no idea what my protag would do next, or where to take the story.
Suddenly I realised he didn’t have a past. It was like he’d sprung into being like Athena, fully-formed from my head. The moment he had a personal history, the rest of the story all but wrote itself.
Thanks so much for writing this post!
Thank you, Lisa. This is an extremely timely post for me, as I’ve just realized, 21,000 words into my WIP, that my protagonist is much too flat. I know some things about her past, but not enough, and I suspect all of those events suffer from the “too general” syndrome. I think your suggestions are going to be extremely helpful as I dig into making her a better, non-amnesiac, character.
Great post. I know what you mean about getting TMI about your character and drowning in irrelevant detail. You have a good way of approaching the issue–you know it’s good writing advice when you think it feels obvious but only after someone told it to you! Thanks.
There are so many rich ideas here, I feel like I’ve hit the writer’s jackpot! Thank you for the wealth. I’m glad I no longer have to worry about my protagonist’s favorite color, since I know the gritty stuff that made her into a compulsive but loveable nut-case. :)
“All those checklists where you’re supposed to know your protagonist’s favorite color, whether they like their middle name, and if they’re a dog person or a cat person? They’re useless….” LOVE! So very, very true! However, I could see where you might stumble onto something that might be relevant & helpful to your story. The trick is to know what to include. Great post!
This makes so much sense. Beginner writers often add too much backstory. The backstory is often for us to know about our characters, and I see here how it helps them make informed decisions based on their experience. Just as we do.