Character Interactions

This could be seen as a companion piece of sorts to last week’s post about heist stories, where I pointed out that heist stories always work with a larger cast of main characters, because it’s necessary. This post is more about how to make character interactions more meaningful.

No character exists in a vacuum, first of all. Human characters wouldn’t survive that, anyway. But there’s a difference between having your main character make small talk with the people around them or buy stuff from the helpful merchant NPC and having your main character have meaningful interactions with other people. If that merchant NPC and the main character have been living in the same community for years and the main character is always buying from the NPC, it’s highly likely that they will be exchanging some personal lines in the process.

Let’s take, perhaps, an unexpected example: Agent 47 from the “Hitman” games. 47, even after the soft reboot they did in 2016, is the result of genetic experiments to create the perfect killer. The experiments succeeded with him, as it were. But even 47 knows people, first of all his handler Diana Burnwood. And the interactions between them, more often just in the form of calls, rarely in person, show that there is a personal connection. They know each other and they talk like people who have (at the time of the soft reboot) worked together for twenty years, roundabout. There is care on both sides - which makes the first mission of “Hitman: Absolution” so heartbreaking. Despite the fact that you don’t see them face to face that often and 47 is anything but a fully-functional human (although he has some amazing skill sets you wouldn’t expect from a killer), there’s clearly a real personal relationship to look at. Not a romantic one, not a close one, but a personal relationship between two people which has an influence on the way they talk to each other. Small remarks like ‘I know how you do love a challenge’ show that very clearly.

And that is the real point about making character interactions more meaningful. Some books about writing suggest that you should keep a dialogue to the necessary lines, just those things people talk about which are important for the story. I can’t subscribe to that. I want for the dialogue to sound more realistic - and a realistic dialogue includes a bit more than just ‘we’re leaving town tomorrow at noon’ or ‘twenty carrots.’ People talk about more than just the bare-bone basics. They talk about the weather, about the family, about something which just happened. At least they say something like ‘hello’ and ‘bye.’ And, if you spin it right, that is even a great advantage. You can deepen the characters this way, you can throw in little bits about their past, their family, their life. All by not just including the lines which are relevant to the plot. Remember: everything in a story should either serve the plot or the character development. A longer conversation might not always fully serve the plot, but it can very well serve the character development - of all characters involved, if you’re really lucky.

But character interaction goes far above just dialogue. Of course, characters interact when they talk. But they can also interact through gestures or actions. Every interaction between two characters should reflect their relationship, no matter whether it’s a good or a bad one. Interactions should be consistent in that aspect, so the audience will, in time, come to expect them. It gives the audience the feeling that they’ve understood the characters and make them feel closer to the characters they meet often. Signatures come in here as well, but I’ve already written about that and I’m not going to do so again.

Another aspect about interactions between characters is that they should develop realistically. For instance throwing characters together in a romantic subplot can feel very forced, if they haven’t interacted before or their interactions never suggested any kind of romantic interest. Too many writers, especially for TV series or movies, seem to ignore that point. They seem to think that merely throwing two good-looking people together will be enough (although playing the ‘will they/won’t they’ game for several seasons isn’t any better). What goes for romantic relationships also goes for other kinds of relationships. Friendships, enmities, work relationships, they all should evolve during the course of a story. It’s not just the main character who changes. The world changes as well, if only in little ways sometimes.

In most cases, your characters will not have completely the same relationships to each other at the end of the story as they had at the beginning. Friends might be closer after what they went through together. Enemies could be even worse enemies - or they could be on much better terms, depending on what happened. A love relationship can have come or gone.

Which brings me to another topic of character interaction. Very few stories seem to depict long-term (or at any rate already established) relationships. Romance stories are usually about two characters meeting and falling in love. Romance subplots are often drawn out to keep the audience wondering whether or not two characters will come together. Or the story portrays the tragic end of a relationship. I don’t really understand why, because a relationship which has already come together can be very interesting for a story. The characters are no longer in that dance of getting to know and getting to love each other. They should be more relaxed in each other’s company. They can deepen their relationship and they can expand it. I’ve had a lot of fun writing the relationships between Jane and Cedric (Knight Agency) and Jane and Cynthia (Black Knight Agency), once they were established. Having two characters who know they are together is interesting and allows for much more different interactions between them. Of course, those relationships aren’t the main point of the plot in this case, but I still do like them very much, because they add more depth to the characters.

Interactions between characters are an important part of every story and they should never be underestimated. Even small interactions can go a long way and it’s never wrong to add them to a scene to flesh it out some more and make the whole story a bit stronger.

A Few Thoughts About Heist Stories

Heist stories are interesting to read and can also be interesting and challenging to write, but they do come with a set of thoughts you should clear up before writing the story (especially hard for a discovery writer like me and, perhaps, the reason why I haven’t started Inez’ and Tom’s second adventure so far). Yet, I do like me some heist stories and there’s not enough of them around, if you ask me. So, here’s some thoughts on that matter.

First of all, make your main lead sympathetic. A lot of stories can do with a less-than-likeable main lead, but the heist story can’t. The main reason for this is that heist stories will challenge the audience’s morals. A heist is always a crime (usually a con or a break-in). If you want the audience to root for your main character while they’re committing a crime, you need to make the character sympathetic (it also helps if the other side is unlikeable or outright evil). In addition to being likeable, the main lead also should have a good reason for their crime.

A good example of that is the manga/anime series “Cat’s Eye” (see their Wikipedia entry) which revolves around three sisters doing late-night heists to assemble their father’s missing collection and, hopefully, finding out where their father has disappeared to and why. The sisters are not doing their heists simply for the money and they are nice girls overall, so the audience can feel safe, rooting for them. Both the personalities and the cause are a safe bet for the audience.

Second, despite the ultimate ending of the story, there should be trouble on the way. Like with every type of story, conflict (see my post on that) is essential for it to function. Heist stories often include finding the right specialists to pull a specific heist off. The main lead, no matter how good they are at their work, can’t do it all alone. Heist stories are team stories, not something for a single person to do alone. Even Colonel Clay didn’t do it by himself, he usually had help from his wives (yup, plural). And wherever more than one person is doing the work, mishaps happen. People can’t keep the timing, for whatever reason. People do things in their own time, which is not the same as that of the rest of the team. Someone makes a mistake (after all, the characters usually are human). And because of that, the conflict rises and the stakes go up.

This goes well with another important point. The main lead of a heist story usually has a mastermind personality, otherwise how could they plot such a complex plan? And masterminds are in danger of coming across as ‘too cool’ in the story. They usually expect everything and have backup plans for their backup plans. This talent, however, is not good when it comes to conflict, because the latter might fall flat, if the character can deal with it easily. On the other hand, your mastermind needs to be competent, otherwise it will look unrealistic for them to finally pull off that complex heist.

One way to do that is to have the bad things happen only for the mastermind to treat them as if they’d expected them from the beginning. That, however, can play into the ‘too cool for you’ problem and should be used sparingly. Besides - if the mastermind can deal with everything, how is the final heist going to be interesting for the audience? If the mastermind will always win, there’s no way the heist can go wrong, is there? But if a plan went awry before, perhaps even doing severe damage to someone or something, there is tension. Sure, audiences expect the hero to win, but there’s several different definitions for ‘win’ and that doesn’t mean all members of a team have to come out on top.

Another way is to make the conflict one on a personal level. Perhaps the mastermind needs to enlist the help of a person whom they hate - or who hates them. Perhaps they need to perform several jobs for those whom they wish to hire and those jobs are not exactly in their usual line of work. There are ways to take a mastermind out of their comfort zone as well, they just need a little more imagination. And a mastermind failing at something which, say, demands a specific skill outside of the mastermind’s skill set doesn’t make the mastermind look incompetent. It simply makes it clear that the mastermind is not a Jack-of-all-Trades - which means there is a chance they will also do something wrong in the actual main heist.

Then there is the other side. To make things harder for the main lead in any kind of story, the other side must always be stronger and better off. So whoever the main lead and his team want to steal from, they need to be able to afford the best security, the best technology, and the most ruthless minions. In the best case, the story boils down to mastermind versus mastermind, to a mastermind personality on each side. It boils down to a strange, real-life version of chess that way.

In addition, you have to juggle a group of people and their dynamics, it’s not just about the one hero and the side characters which assist. The heist will only work if a group of people works together, so there are a lot of interpersonal dynamics going on as well. It’s not just the ‘romantic interest’ or the ‘jealous best friend’ or the ‘friendly rival.’ It’s a group of people all of whom have their own motivation to work on this heist - past history with either the main lead or the enemy, monetary reasons, challenges they can’t ignore, personal feelings, and much more. All of the characters will need to get something out of the heist, will have their personal arcs to follow, so you as the author are looking at a team effort in more than one way there. The team needs to come together, the leader needs to smooth over ruffled feathers and deal with internal quarrels, the team needs to learn how to work smoothly together, and to rely on each other. Of course, you can have several leads in any other kind of story, too, but the heist story will only work if you have several leads working together.

Those are very much my thoughts on heist stories. They’re fun to read and can be fun to write, if you do a minimum of plotting yourself before you write them (even as a discovery writer).

Heist stories are interesting to read and can also be interesting and challenging to write, but they do come with a set of thoughts you should clear up before writing the story (especially hard for a discovery writer like me and, perhaps, the reason why I haven’t started Inez’ and Tom’s second adventure so far). Yet, I do like me some heist stories and there’s not enough of them around, if you ask me. So, here’s some thoughts on that matter.

First of all, make your main lead sympathetic. A lot of stories can do with a less-than-likeable main lead, but the heist story can’t. The main reason for this is that heist stories will challenge the audience’s morals. A heist is always a crime (usually a con or a break-in). If you want the audience to root for your main character while they’re committing a crime, you need to make the character sympathetic (it also helps if the other side is unlikeable or outright evil). In addition to being likeable, the main lead also should have a good reason for their crime.

A good example of that is the manga/anime series “Cat’s Eye” (see their Wikipedia entry) which revolves around three sisters doing late-night heists to assemble their father’s missing collection and, hopefully, finding out where their father has disappeared to and why. The sisters are not doing their heists simply for the money and they are nice girls overall, so the audience can feel safe, rooting for them. Both the personalities and the cause are a safe bet for the audience.

Second, despite the ultimate ending of the story, there should be trouble on the way. Like with every type of story, conflict (see my post on that) is essential for it to function. Heist stories often include finding the right specialists to pull a specific heist off. The main lead, no matter how good they are at their work, can’t do it all alone. Heist stories are team stories, not something for a single person to do alone. Even Colonel Clay didn’t do it by himself, he usually had help from his wives (yup, plural). And wherever more than one person is doing the work, mishaps happen. People can’t keep the timing, for whatever reason. People do things in their own time, which is not the same as that of the rest of the team. Someone makes a mistake (after all, the characters usually are human). And because of that, the conflict rises and the stakes go up.

This goes well with another important point. The main lead of a heist story usually has a mastermind personality, otherwise how could they plot such a complex plan? And masterminds are in danger of coming across as ‘too cool’ in the story. They usually expect everything and have backup plans for their backup plans. This talent, however, is not good when it comes to conflict, because the latter might fall flat, if the character can deal with it easily. On the other hand, your mastermind needs to be competent, otherwise it will look unrealistic for them to finally pull off that complex heist.

One way to do that is to have the bad things happen only for the mastermind to treat them as if they’d expected them from the beginning. That, however, can play into the ‘too cool for you’ problem and should be used sparingly. Besides - if the mastermind can deal with everything, how is the final heist going to be interesting for the audience? If the mastermind will always win, there’s no way the heist can go wrong, is there? But if a plan went awry before, perhaps even doing severe damage to someone or something, there is tension. Sure, audiences expect the hero to win, but there’s several different definitions for ‘win’ and that doesn’t mean all members of a team have to come out on top.

Another way is to make the conflict one on a personal level. Perhaps the mastermind needs to enlist the help of a person whom they hate - or who hates them. Perhaps they need to perform several jobs for those whom they wish to hire and those jobs are not exactly in their usual line of work. There are ways to take a mastermind out of their comfort zone as well, they just need a little more imagination. And a mastermind failing at something which, say, demands a specific skill outside of the mastermind’s skill set doesn’t make the mastermind look incompetent. It simply makes it clear that the mastermind is not a Jack-of-all-Trades - which means there is a chance they will also do something wrong in the actual main heist.

Then there is the other side. To make things harder for the main lead in any kind of story, the other side must always be stronger and better off. So whoever the main lead and his team want to steal from, they need to be able to afford the best security, the best technology, and the most ruthless minions. In the best case, the story boils down to mastermind versus mastermind, to a mastermind personality on each side. It boils down to a strange, real-life version of chess that way.

In addition, you have to juggle a group of people and their dynamics, it’s not just about the one hero and the side characters which assist. The heist will only work if a group of people works together, so there are a lot of interpersonal dynamics going on as well. It’s not just the ‘romantic interest’ or the ‘jealous best friend’ or the ‘friendly rival.’ It’s a group of people all of whom have their own motivation to work on this heist - past history with either the main lead or the enemy, monetary reasons, challenges they can’t ignore, personal feelings, and much more. All of the characters will need to get something out of the heist, will have their personal arcs to follow, so you as the author are looking at a team effort in more than one way there. The team needs to come together, the leader needs to smooth over ruffled feathers and deal with internal quarrels, the team needs to learn how to work smoothly together, and to rely on each other. Of course, you can have several leads in any other kind of story, too, but the heist story will only work if you have several leads working together.

Those are very much my thoughts on heist stories. They’re fun to read and can be fun to write, if you do a minimum of plotting yourself before you write them (even as a discovery writer).

The Women of Dracula

Recently, while reading an article which discussed what mistakes they hope the new BBC “Dracula” series will avoid (but probably won’t), I realized something about one of my favourite novels which I had never realized before, despite taking a class at college about vampires in literature which heavily featured Stoker’s book: the whole story hinges on the two female leads - Mina Harker (née Murray) and Lucy Westenra.

“Dracula,” for those of you who have only seen the movies and not read the book (it’s not an easy read, but I happen to like the epistolary style), starts off with Jonathan Harker on his way to Dracula’s castle and then switches focus to Mina, when Jonathan is about to be left to the three brides while Dracula makes for England. At that time, Mina is with her best friend Lucy and she is there when Lucy is first attacked by Dracula. She is already with Jonathan, though, when Lucy dies, turns into a vampire, and is killed by her fiancé and three other men. However, the group of fearless vampire hunters is only kept together through the two women in the story. You can define every one of them through their relationship to Lucy, even Mina and Jonathan. So let’s do that first.

Arthur Holmwood - Lucy’s fiancé

Quincey Morris - Lucy’s suitor

Dr. Jack Seward - Lucy’s suitor and doctor

Prof. Abraham van Helsing - Lucy’s doctor

Mina Harker - Lucy’s best friend

Jonathan Harker - the fiancé (later husband) of Lucy’s best friend

Admittedly, Jonathan is Mina’s proxy, but through her, he, too can be defined through Lucy. And Jonathan and Mina have no other connection to the other vampire hunters than Lucy. Without Mina knowing her, Jonathan and she would never join the group, the castle Dracula came from would never be found, the list of his houses in England never be laid open. The hunt on Dracula would be bound to fail, because none of the other hunters knows enough about Dracula’s background to trace him.

It’s also Mina’s inner strength and her strong mind (‘the mind of a man,’ which is meant as a compliment by van Helsing) which keeps the group focused after she has been attacked and infected. Without this move, it might have been possible for Dracula to escape with his un-life. Even though the other hunters were motivated, the motivation through truly-dead-and-buried Lucy wasn’t as strong as the motivation to save Mina from Lucy’s fate. So it is again a woman who drives this part of the story. And let’s not forget that it is Mina who kills Dracula with the bowie knife in the end - Dracula doesn’t fall through a man’s hand, he could recover from the injuries he sustained from the men, he falls through the hand of his intended next bride.

Lucy, on the other hand, gets a lot of bad reputation from those who interpret “Dracula” these days. She’s often shown as slutty or manipulative, but the diary entries of hers we see in the novel are far from that. She’s a naive, young woman who is thrilled for obvious reasons to find she has three suitors. It’s also quite clear that she is in favour of Arthur from the beginning - and he is the most logical choice for a young woman in those times. It is her sweet character which makes the three men who have fallen for her not fight over her hand, but accept her choice graciously and come together to help her (each of them donates blood and each of them is in it for her final death). She is so loveable that the two she doesn’t choose do not wish her ill because of this. This doesn’t make her a bad person at all. In addition, Lucy never chooses her fate - she becomes a vampire in her sleep: bitten when sleepwalking, sucked dry when unconscious. Not only does she have no choice, she isn’t even conscious while it happens. Lucy’s fate is a great example of the concept of ‘outer evil’ - people having a bad fate not for lack of morals or past sins, but simply because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Mina herself is often praised as a modern woman, while Lucy is seen as a traditional one for marrying the one most socially acceptable - a thought which ignores the difference in social standing between orphaned, lower-middle-class Mina and upper-middle-class Lucy. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Mina is engaged before Lucy, to a man who is from the same social class as her (solicitor/clerk Jonathan and deputy-headmistress Mina make a good pairing). Yes, Mina works, but she has little choice, given her background. In reality, both Lucy and Mina can be construed as being ‘modern’ or ‘traditional.’ It depends on the focus you put on them and on your definition of a modern woman. Mina as a working woman who also uses modern technology (typewriter, shorthand) can be construed as a modern woman who can take care of herself and doesn’t marry to be provided for. Lucy as a woman who mourns that society forces her to choose one of the three men who want to marry her (thus hurting two) can also be construed as a modern woman who doesn’t strive for traditional marriage (unlike Mina).

“Dracula” as a such is a book which thrives on ‘modern’ versus ‘traditional.’ Dracula is the old evil which comes from an old-fashioned country (the first part of the book, Jonathan’s trip, goes to great lengths to show how quaint and old-fashioned the area Dracula lives in is). The vampire hunters use modern means (phonographs, modern transport, telegrams etc.) to fight him and put an end to his old, dangerous ways. Dracula tells Jonathan about his own bloodline during a conversation. The only vampire hunter with a long bloodline is nobleman Arthur Holmwood. Jonathan and Mina both are orphans, van Helsing is a widower whose only son died before him, Quincey Morris is from a country without long history (the States), and Jack Seward is married very much to his work. None of the vampire hunters defines themselves by their blood, unlike the vampire (which is, of course, fitting).

But back to the women. Apart from Mina and Lucy, the only women who play a greater role in the novel are Dracula’s three brides who are introduced as overly and openly sexual through Jonathan Harker. They are ‘anti’-women compared to Mina and Lucy (before her change). They are openly sexual and they gleefully feast on the baby Dracula brings them (which goes against the ‘natural instinct’ of a woman to protect children). Yet, we know nothing of those women - not even their names. We don’t know where they’ve come from, how long they’ve been Dracula’s brides, how they’ve become vampires. They only exist to show Jonathan what he got himself into and what his host really is. And they turn up to greet Mina as their future sister, then they get killed by van Helsing. ‘What if?’ one could wonder. What if Mina became one of them? What if we knew more about them? What if we could see their interactions with each other?

It’s strange how I could read “Dracula” almost annually for years without realizing what central roles Mina and Lucy play in the narrative. Now that I’ve realized it, I can’t get it out of my mind again.