KN Magazine: Articles
It’s Your Book, but Don’t Leave the Reader in the Dust by Katherine Dean Mazerov
One of the biggest mistakes writers make is forgetting about the reader. While our lives and interests can certainly provide inspiration for a book or short story, we as writers often become too immersed in our own narratives or research, going down deep rabbit holes or diverging into the weeds of technical, overly academic subject matter that leaves the reader struggling to “get into” the story. What you, the author, finds interesting and compelling may not be to the people you are trying to reach.
Whatever you’re writing – a book, a short story, article, blog post—it needs to do at least one of three things:
Entertain: Aim to evoke emotion in your readers. Make them laugh or cry. Send chills up their spines. Help them escape from the stress and problems of the real world;
Resonate: Present a story where your readers can relate to or recognize the characters or plot in a meaningful way;
Enlighten: Educate your audience about an important issue, societal trend, or period of history.
As a career journalist, I have spent most of my life writing and editing newspaper and magazine articles, always with the underlying objective of giving people something they want or need to read. When I expanded my horizons into fiction, with a suspense novel partly inspired by events in my own life, I felt liberated by the opportunity to use my imagination to create my own colorful characters, comfortable, realistic dialog, and vivid scenes. I had fun with it. But in the back of my mind, I pondered the same “so what” question I’d asked as a reporter and editor: why would anyone want to read my book, and what will keep them engrossed in it?
For me, writing is equal parts art form and craft, a construction project that starts with that basic idea or vision—a strong foundation or premise that will provide the basis for a good page-turner. I love this process. Outlines, storyboards, even diagrams provide a roadmap for charting the story. I devote a lot of time thinking through an idea, then sharpen it with a basic outline that guides the storyline with a clear beginning, middle and end. There is no hard and fast rule on how to embark on a writing journey. Do what feels comfortable and enables you to write and tell the story. But know where you are going.
Then, hit the ground running with a first sentence or paragraph that immediately piques the reader’s interest, makes him or her hunger for more. In the world of journalism, that’s known as the lead; In fiction, it’s the grabber. This is no small feat. Whether you’re a seasoned, award-winning author or an aspiring writer, staring at that blank page can be daunting.
Start with a gripping scene, event, or key character using descriptive words that will capture and transport the reader into the story. Verbosity is not your friend here. Keep it simple but powerful. Use rich and scintillating words that will create a mood, conjuring up vibrant emotions and bold visuals that tell people your book is going to be a good read.
As your story unfolds, go back and review what you’ve written. Multiple times. Refine it. Perfect it. Writing is a fluid process. Look to your favorite authors or successful books to inspire empathetic characters, ambitious prose, and authentic dialog readers can identify with. And it doesn’t have to be fiction. In the 1960s and ‘70s, a literary movement known as “The New Journalism” emerged that combined research and investigative journalism with the techniques of fiction-writing to create powerful, descriptive prose, with detailed and riveting scenes and strong character development to tell stories about real-life events. The non-fiction novel.
One of the most iconic examples of this style of writing is Truman Capote’s 1966 book In Cold Blood, the true story of the horrific, senseless slaughter of a Kansas family by two ex-cons. Capote, of course, did not witness the crime, know why the killers did it, or what they did afterward. But his detailed reconstruction of the events and dialog from countless hours he spent with the killers in prison, exhaustive research of the crime scene, and retracing of the trail the killers left behind resulted in one of the most memorable crime books ever written. Here is his description of the hotel where the two killers ended up after traveling across the country following the slaughter:
In Miami Beach, 355 Ocean Drive is the address of the Somerset Hotel, a small, square building painted more or less white with many lavender touches…It is one of a row of little stucco-and-cement hotels lining a white melancholy street.
Instead of simply dismissing this destination as a seedy hotel in Miami, Capote took the time to flesh out the scene and describe the place in vivid, intricate detail, allowing the reader to really visualize and experience that setting and step into the story.
Good writing requires good organization—presenting the story in a coherent way that is easy for people to follow and understand. Which does not mean the narrative must be linear or chronological. That’s where transitions are so important. Authors need to employ problem-solving skills that enable them to figure out those all-important transitions that seamlessly take their readers from one scene to the next, present-day to flashback, character to character.
If you’re writing a crime, mystery, or suspense novel, it’s imperative to incorporate the right amount of foreshadowing, clues, and red herrings into the narrative that keep people engaged, allowing them to use their own imaginations and critical thinking skills to try and figure out the whodunit aspect of the tale.
And finally, combining all those elements to fit the story together so that it flows at a pace that keeps readers intrigued.
Ultimately, it’s your story. Your book. But keeping your readers top of mind throughout the process helps you move forward and stay focused on what’s important, creating not just a book, but an unforgettable literary experience.
KATHERINE DEAN MAZEROV is an award-winning journalist and the author of Summer Club, a suspense novel with a comedic twist where poop in the pool meets a body in the river. The former newspaper reporter and editor has been a magazine writer, worked in corporate communications for a Fortune 500 company and has written extensively on trends, market outlook, and emerging technologies for the global energy industry. She is passionate about writing, expanding her horizons along the way as a wife, mom, tennis player, skier, cyclist, and world traveler. She can’t imagine a world without dogs.
Writing Romantic Interests with Borderline Personality Disorder Fairly by R.J. Jacobs
Adam met Liz by chance in the aisle of a department store, and the two began a playful banter right away. Her laugh was airy and carefree, and she touched his arm while they talked. Before they parted ways, she said to him, “I know you want to text me, so why don’t you give me your phone and I’ll put my number in.” He placed his phone in her hand. Her candor was thrilling. Liz seemed so open and familiar.
They arranged to meet for a drink the following day. When Adam arrived at the bar, he spotted Liz easily despite the crowd; she was wearing a short, tight dress. She stirred her drink and kissed his cheek as he sat beside her. Her touch felt electric. Her eyes never seemed to leave him. Hardly an hour passed before they were at his apartment, turning off the lights.
The first three weeks of the relationship were invigorating; Adam felt energized and constantly turned on. He’d never had such great sex. Work seemed unimportant, and he often left early to spend time with Liz. He felt unusually protective when she mentioned her ex-boyfriend; thinking the guy sounded vain, even abusive. Fleetingly, Adam marveled at how quickly he and Liz had connected—in moments. The pace was dizzying. She texted a lot, and he noticed that when he didn’t respond immediately, she often asked if everything was okay. Or if he was mad at her. He found himself having to reassure her that he felt fine, and that the relationship was “great.”
“How great?” She would ask flirtatiously.
Something inside Adam began to tighten.
The next time he picked Liz up for a date, she seemed irritated at his being s a few minutes late. Adam noticed several magazines related to his hobbies on the coffee table in her living room, and that she’d stocked the refrigerator with his favorite type of beer. Over dinner, Liz wanted to decide on a vacation destination for the following summer, and had several ideas. When he told her he would need to check his work calendar, and that it was too early to decide, she bristled.
The following week, Adam realized he was woefully behind at work and needed to catch up. When he called Liz to suggest they postpone their date, she screamed and hung up. Startled, he immediately called back and when Liz answered, her voice sounded completely different. Sobbing, she explained that her doctor had phoned earlier to tell her that she had a rare form of cancer. “I’m sorry,” Adam offered. “What can I do?”
“Can you just come over so we can talk? I don’t want to be alone.”
An hour later, Adam arrived, and found Liz to be in a mysteriously positive mood. In fact, she didn’t seem to want to talk about her health at all. She wanted to have sex. The change seemed odd, and when Adam pressed for details, Liz was vague and annoyed. The tightening inside Adam continued. Her cancer diagnosis was never mentioned again.
A week later, Adam decided he decided he needed some space from the relationship, and explained to Liz, in the kindest way he knew, that he wanted to slow their pace and take time for himself. Liz turned over her chair as she stormed away. Five minutes later, Adam’s phone lit up with a text message from her. “I have something I need to talk about, too,” it said. Below was a picture of a positive pregnancy test.
Human behavior is inherently fascinating. Most of us have puzzled over the motivations of our friends and loved-ones, and, at times, been curious about the intent of our own actions. We want to be more effective participants in our relationships, but at times we’re at a loss for how they work. We ask questions like, “Why would (s)he do that?” and often in hindsight wonder, “What was I thinking?”
Certain diagnoses in particular are especially intriguing. Any time the subject of Borderline Personality Disorder comes up, curiosity and questions follow, and it’s easy to understand why. People with this diagnosis have an easy time capturing the attention and igniting the frustrations of people around them; they engage others and act out in ways that are intense and often destructive. They show a pervasive pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, affective states, and marked impulsivity. The pattern typically begins by early adulthood and is present in a variety of contexts (DSM-V, 2015). They are frequent characters in fiction. About seventy-five percent of those diagnosed are female, though research on males with Borderline Personality Disorder continues to come forth.
Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder, or BPD, lack emotional regulation and exhibit strong, sometimes wild, behavioral extremes in their relationships. Many times the goal of this behavior is to elicit the concern of a caretaker, but nowhere is the pattern more acutely observed than in their romantic connections.
In therapy, when patients characterize their exes as “crazy,” what do they mean? What is a romantic relationship like with someone who has BPD? Many people describe them as childlike and manipulative, constantly testing a relationship, often showing wild emotional swings when they sense real or perceived abandonment. Having little emotional regulation, they’re prone to tantrums. It can feel to people around them that “something” is missing, or didn’t develop; a critical sense of stability, of being fundamentally okay despite normal relational fluctuations, is distinctly absent. Their impulsive, acting-out behaviors are even more notorious for being self-damaging: recurrent suicidal behavior, self-mutilation, substance abuse, reckless driving, overspending, promiscuity, and intense and inappropriate anger are common.
What Borderline patients excel at is eliciting an emotional response. The clinical folklore among some therapists is, that if in the first session the therapist wants a romantic, inappropriate connection with the patient, he or she is probably Borderline. If that sounds circular and patronizing, it’s because it probably is. Even if the idea offends some, (I do think that a therapist’s awareness of his or her emotional response to a patient can help diagnosis and guide treatment. For example, our own reactions likely resemble the reactions of others around them, as well.) it does raise an important truth: Borderline patients are skillful at provoking.
Borderline Personality Disorder is fueled by emptiness and insecurity, and the misguided goal of all of this self-destructive and manipulative behavior, after all, is to gain stability and feeling cared for. One cruel paradox of Borderline behavior is that the backing-away response elicited from relationship partners is precisely the reverse of what the person desires: more love, assurance, and intimacy. The conventional thinking among many psychologists is, that when it comes to having a relationship with someone suffering from BPD, the best strategy is avoidance altogether. Or, as one friend suggested, “Run, don’t walk.” And most of the time, this self-protective drive comes from a very understandable source: frustration and fear. We sense right away that we want no part of the toxic behavior at hand, or worse, worry that we’ll reinforce it, making it more likely to recur.
Theatricality may distract us in other ways as well. It’s tempting to marvel at the foreignness of Borderline behavior, and in doing so, we may be miss the universality of the particular feelings themselves. The strength of the particular emotions at play—abandonment, sadness, emptiness—may be alien, but the feelings themselves are likely quite familiar. Truth be told, people with a Borderline Personality Disorder may fascinate us because we see ourselves in them. Fundamentally, all personality disorder diagnoses describe characteristics and ways of being that are simply extreme versions of common traits and urges. I’ve never heard someone say, for example, “I just love feeling abandoned,” or “I never wonder where I stand with people I care about. I never need assurance.” Tragically, the disproportionate reactivity of the Borderline patient obscures the underlying ubiquity of their emotional experience.
Given all the difficulties that exist in these types of relationships, why would anyone start a relationship with someone with a Borderline diagnosis? Contrary to my friend’s advice, not everyone runs, or even walks away. It’s important to note that while there may be intense and disruptive behavior, Borderline patients often have qualities that produce a rewarding romantic partnership much of the time.
Often warm and kind, they may also be described as fun, exciting, and passionate. Here, people often speak of the disorder in terms of its deficit, like any other organic or medical concern. Even in troubled moments, they will report seeing a flicker of deep recognition and awareness in their partner’s eyes, enough to know that the person they know and love is still there covered beneath their insecurities. I understand the notion of duality. I too have been taken aback and puzzled over the recklessness and irrationality (and astonishing immaturity) I’ve seen among otherwise very high-functioning people. Borderline patients don’t seem to have figured out how to keep their feelings, particularly their anger, in check. This juxtaposition between high and low-functioning can be shocking at times. We may ask ourselves how it’s possible that this composed, professional person, mother, from whom I received a Rockwellian Christmas card the year before, is acting the way she is.
Some are drawn to these patients because they have intense emotions and strong desires for intimacy—and because they themselves have precisely the same emotions and desires. This is often more challenging to recognize and contend with, because, again, the behavior of the Borderline patient positions them in such an obvious position of scrutiny and vulnerability. As it plays out, Borderline patients aren’t often offered much empathy. Many times, they describe feelings of being used, and often do allow themselves to be used by their partners, because of their neediness. Many times, their friends and family admit that if the patient’s acutely descriptive behavior stopped long enough that they could feel safe, they would run for the hills. Not much of an incentive to stop, even as BPD patients recognize they have worn out their supports.
In writing characters with similar diagnoses, it is often too easy to dehumanize the subject and make him or her out to be villainous and completely alien from the rest of us. But in order to craft authentic, believable characters—regardless of his or her psychological well-being— it’s important to understand that character’s psychology, and that it isn’t much different from our own.
In navigating relationships (and, perhaps, storylines) with Borderline patients, acceptance may be our best course. Learning emotional regulation as a couple may be helpful, as may be developing an understanding of common triggers and de-personalizing reactivity. Context helps understanding, and it’s important to bear in mind their (and our) story leading up to the beginning of the relationship. For the relationship to be successful, we have to accept that our partner really does need more emotional reassurance than most. And we have to look in the mirror to examine our own attraction to that particular person, at that particular moment in our lives.
It’s comfortable to believe we are in control of ourselves. We all maintain a self-concept and we tell ourselves that while we might be capable of some things, some behavior is beyond us. Writers develop our characters in the same way: by focusing on their traits. Then, we develop histories to explain them. We ask ourselves: Given who this person is, what would they do in this situation? But the opposite question may be more correct: Given the dynamics of this situation, what would anyone do? Would a “good” person be capable of aggression? Violence? An atrocity? As writers, we have a chance to create resonant plots when we can hold character constant for a moment and consider how an accumulation of circumstances bears upon a particular opportunity to act.
R.J. Jacobs has practiced as a psychologist since 2003. He maintains a private practice in Nashville, focusing on a wide variety of clinical concerns. After completing a post-doctoral residency at Vanderbilt, he has taught Abnormal Psychology, presented at numerous conferences, and routinely performs PTSD evaluations for veterans.
His novel, tentatively titled: Broken Surface, is scheduled to be published by Crooked Lane in 2019.
He lives with his wife Rebecca and their two children.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Column, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
The Joy and Heartbreak of Changing Series Characters / R.G. Belsky
Gil Malloy has been my best friend for the past several years. We’ve been through a lot, Gil and me. Happy moments, sad ones, career success, scandal, near-death escapes from killers, Gil’s broken marriage, a second try at that marriage and a few torrid romances for Gil with other women along the way too.
But its time for me to move on and say goodbye to Gil Malloy—at least for now.
Because I have a new BFF named Clare Carlson.
Okay, maybe this all seems a bit melodramatic for an author who’s only talking about a damn character in his mystery novels. But the relationship between a writer and his series character is an intense, complex one. We writers live with the character many hours a day; we direct what the character will do and say; and, more often than not, we wind up putting a good deal of ourselves into that character.
I wrote four books about Gil Malloy, a hard-driving New York City journalist who’ll do anything to break a front-page story. Gil is smart, talented, hard-working, outspoken (to a fault at times), irresponsible about most everything except his work and frequently can be a real pain in the ass. (I leave it to people who know me to guess which qualities of my own I put into Gil).
My new series character Clare Carlson—who makes her debut May 1 in Yesterday’s News—is a New York journalist too. But she’s a much more complex character. A onetime Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who is now the news director of a TV station, Clare tries to balance her old reporting instincts with the demands of being a high-powered media executive. She also has secrets buried in her past that come to light when she begins pursuing new evidence in the case that won her a Pulitzer 15 years ago—the disappearance of an 11-year-old girl from the streets of Manhattan.
Clare is slated for a second adventure with The Cinderella Murders in 2019.
The challenge for me of creating a new series character like Clare Carlson is to make sure she has some of the same qualities that made my readers like Gil Malloy. But not so many of Gil Malloy’s qualities that people feel she’s a kind of version of Gil in a dress. There were moments when I was writing Yesterday’s News when I decided to delete lines of Clare’s dialogue because I realized they were things Gil Malloy would likely say—not Clare Carlson. Then there’s the challenge for me too of writing a female character instead of a man and making that sound authentic. (No, I’m not just talking about sex scenes here, people!)
Of course, the good thing is that a fictional series character never really has to die. Lawrence Block wrote a series of Matt Scudder books early in his career that didn’t sell very well, went on to write other stuff—then brought Scudder back a few years later as a regular series character in A Stab in the Dark and the classic Eight Million Ways to Die. Robert B. Parker departed from his successful Spenser series to also write the Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall mysteries. Dennis Lehane started out by writing four mystery novels starring Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro before moving on to bigger stand-alone thrillers like Mystic River (although he did later bring Patrick and Angie back in another mystery novel years later).
My own first mystery novel featured a female reporter named Lucy Shannon. I then published four other mysteries without her before bringing Lucy back in my sixth novel. I also wrote a series of mystery novels in the early 90s about a TV reporter named Jenny McKay. Amazingly, I still get queries from fans who want to know why I don’t write about that Jenny McKay woman again. Of course, in real life, Jenny would probably be close to retirement age by now. But that hasn’t stopped me from working on a new project featuring the Jenny McKay character.
So, as I say goodbye to Gil and hello to Clare, I find myself overwhelmed by a lot of conflicting and mixed emotions.
I look forward to many exciting times in the future solving murder mysteries with Clare Carlson.
At the same time, like with any old friend, I look back with fondness on the wonderful moments I’ve spent with my pal, Gil Malloy.
Of course, like I said, nothing is forever.
Who knows …maybe one day Clare and Gil will even meet.
But that would be another book for another time….
R.G. Belsky is an author of crime fiction and a journalist in New York City. His newest mystery, Yesterday's News, will be published in May 2018 by Oceanview. It is the first in a series featuring Clare Carlson, the news director for a New York City TV station. Belsky's last book, Blonde Ice, was published by Atria in October 2016. It is the third in a series of books from Atria about Gil Malloy, a hard-driving newspaper reporter with a penchant for breaking big stories on the front page of the New York Daily News. The first book in the Gil Malloy series—The Kennedy Connection—was published in 2014 and Shooting For The Stars came out in 2015. Belsky himself is a former managing editor at the Daily News and writes about the media from an extensive background in newspapers, magazines, and TV/digital news. At the Daily News, he also held the titles of metropolitan editor and deputy national editor. Before that, he was metropolitan editor of the New York Post and news editor at Star magazine. Belsky was most recently the managing editor for news at NBCNews.com. His previous suspense novels include Playing Dead and Loverboy. Blonde Ice was nominated as a finalist for the David Award at Deadly Ink and also for the Silver Falchion at Killer Nashville in 2017. He was the Claymore Award winner at Killer Nashville 2016 and also a Silver Falchion Finalist in both the mystery and thriller categories. Visit him at http://www.rgbelsky.com/
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Column, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
Finding Your Voice / D.P. Lyle
So, you’ve sent your manuscript to an agent or an editor, and now you wait. Will they like it? Will they take you on as a client or publish your work? What makes them decide? Is it the unique premise or clever plot? Maybe the colorful characters? Or the snappy dialog and wonderfully-rendered setting?
No, the one thing agents/editors look for more than anything else is the voice. When they say they are searching for something fresh or something that speaks to them, they mean the narrative voice.
What is voice?
You’ll see many definitions. Mine is: voice is your distinctive way of telling your story. It comes from three things: knowledge, experience, and confidence. Here are some things you can do to help you acquire those tools:
Knowledge
Most things we learn along life’s journey come from others—an apprenticeship, of sorts. For sure medical school was that. So is writing. To write, you must read. Constantly. That will teach you what others are doing and how they’re doing it. Some writing will speak to you, other writing might not. You will gravitate to word choices, sentences structures, and the sound of some writers’ voices, but not those of others.
Your assignment: go to the library, your local bookstore, or even use online previews to read the first few pages of 50 books. Some will work for you—the operative phrase here is “for you.”
Take what speaks to you and embrace it in your own writing.
Experience
The great Australian writer Bryce Courtney often said that the secret to writing was “bum glue.” Glue your bum to the chair and write. So true. Write every day. Write your way. Copy the styles of the writers you like. Not that you will write exactly the same way but, rather, elements of their writing that work for you will creep into your own prose. This will evolve over time and before long—like riding a bicycle—you will be off and writing in your own voice.
Confidence
This, to me, is the key. Be fearless. Tell your story in your own words—your own voice. Don't worry about what others might think or whether it fits the so-called rules. Tell your story your way. Knowledge and experience breed confidence.
Art, Then Craft
Writing is an art and a craft. The art is the storytelling and the craft is making it cleaner and more publishable. Don’t let the craft kill the art. Don’t over-edit as you go. Write the story fast, write it your way, in your voice, then go back and clean it up. As Hemingway said: write drunk, edit sober. Get drunk on your writing, spill it on the page, then take a sober assessment and fix what needs fixing. Write fast, edit slow.
Repeat
Repeat the above steps throughout your career. Continue reading, writing, experimenting. Novels often seem so big that authors get tied up in the plotting, the juggling of characters and dialog, and this kills the creativity. Write shorter things. Start a journal and write scenes that come to you. Be fearless. Write your way. No filters. No critiquing. Just writing, and storytelling. Before long, what you learn will infest all your writing. It will become your voice.
In the end, your voice is yours. It’s personal. No one else has it. Only you. Let it out. Don't handcuff it or kill it. Let it guide you through your story. In the end, you will have your story, told your way. That’s always the goal, and it’s what agents and editors and, most importantly, readers are looking for.
D.P. Lyle is the Macavity and Benjamin Franklin Silver Award-winning and Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, Scribe, Silver Falchion, and USA Best Book Award-nominated author of 16 books, both fiction and non-fiction. Along with Jan Burke, he is the co-host of Crime and Science Radio. He has worked with many novelists and with the writers of the TV shows Law & Order, CSI: Miami, Diagnosis Murder, Monk, Judging Amy, Cold Case, House, Medium, Women's Murder Club, The Glades, and Pretty Little Liars. You can visit D.P. Lyle at his website www.dplylemd.com You can read his blog at writersforensicsblog.wordpress.com.
(To become a Killer Nashville Guest Columnist, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
Building Characters the Hard Way / Roger Johns
Before I turned to mystery writing, I spent nearly twenty years teaching in collegiate schools of business. During those years, I had literally thousands of career-oriented conversations with my students. In the beginning, I often asked them “So, what do you want to be?” Eventually, I realized that question focused on academic ambitions to the exclusion of other legitimate considerations, so I began asking, instead, “Who do you want to be?”
This question provoked a lot of thoughtful and very interesting responses. Intuitively, the students grasped that their fortunes as a something would hinge greatly on their fortunes as a someone. We were all aware of the stories about one professional or another whose life became chaotic and miserable because their character, or lack thereof, made them unsuited to the demands of their job. And we were also aware of the people who seemed to effortlessly withstand the rigors imposed by their chosen path.
The message in the question and the lesson of experience was easy to grasp: Who you are matters.
After I retired from the academy and took up mystery writing, I was several years and a lot of false starts down the road with my stubbornly unfinishable first novel before I realized that, as a writer, I had been ignoring the focus on who that, as a teacher, I had so relentlessly tried to cultivate in my students. It was a humbling moment. As a writer of plot-driven fiction, I had unconsciously decided that plot was everything and my characters deserved only second-class status.
Consequently, my characters were mere plot devices––hand-waving, dialogue-spouting, paper cutouts tricked up with collections of traits, and quirks, and occupations. But they were lifeless, and they were not up to the task of carrying the plot. The light went on when I eventually remembered those long-ago “Who do you want to be?” conversations.
Lesson learned: As it is with actual people, so it must be with fictional people––who they are matters.
Even after this evolution in my thinking, and despite all the writing classes, how-to books, and many hours spent with critique groups––all of which moved me closer to where I needed to be––I still struggled. Even though I spent a great deal of time and effort constructing what appeared to be complete characters with integrated, functioning personalities, the characters and the story didn’t play well together. The problem, as I ultimately discovered, was that I was creating the characters and the story more or less independently of each other. And once a character was created, it became impossible to see her or him as anyone other than the person I had already meticulously assembled and described in my character write-up. If the story didn’t call for that character, things tended to grind to a halt.
Eventually, the insights that all the classes and books and critique partners had been building toward finally hit me: (1) fictional people are built the same way actual people build themselves—one experience at a time, and (2) the authenticity of a character’s action in the present is determined by how that character was shaped by experiences in their past.
Lesson learned: Instead of populating my story with prefabricated characters, I would let the demands of the story call their personalities into being.
Things began to work much better at that point. Whenever a major character needed to act in a particular way, I created a corresponding experience in the character’s backstory––something that would make that action in the story’s present seem credible and authentic. Every important present action was paired with a character-shaping past experience. Eventually, I accumulated a critical mass of backstory and the characters’ personalities ignited and were strong enough to undergird an entire story’s worth of action. At that point, the characters were able to authentically carry the narrative forward.
Building as you go, however, is neither fast nor easy. It requires delving into the psychology of your characters and finding new and inventive ways to portray their past. You will have to get to know them as if they were real people.
And, as it is with so many things in life, the solution to one problem can also be the foundation for another. And such was the case here. With so much backstory, the problem became when, how, and whether to reveal it––how to keep the character’s action authentic-feeling without disrupting the momentum of the story.
The answer to this problem is, simultaneously, simple but not so simple. It turns out that backstory can be revealed in any amount and at any time, as long as you are careful to make sure that it serves the story but doesn’t become the story. This, I learned from reading a lot of books, by paying very close attention to what worked and what didn’t, and from the many mistakes I made as I dragged my own characters into existence. Here are some examples.
ACTION NOW, BACKSTORY NOW
Revealing the backstory as the action unfolds can be tricky because unloading the past as the character acts or experiences an emotion can easily sabotage the flow of the narrative. However, if done correctly, this process can produce a fully-fledged character very quickly, and pull the reader deep into the story.
In the first six pages of her debut novel, The Black Hour, Lori Rader-Day delivers a master class in action-now-backstory-now. Amelia, the character who emerges from those pages is so clear and her story so compelling, that putting the book down becomes impossible.
We see a physically damaged woman who cycles through panic, pain, dread, embarrassment, joy, irritation, anger, defiance, despair, determination, a fleeting sense of accomplishment, and ultimately fear––all within the confines of a short walk from her car, into a nearby building, up a daunting flight of stairs, and then along a hallway.
As Amelia makes this short journey, the author ties each of her physical actions and emotional responses to a bit of backstory. Cleverly, as the character moves forward in time, the snippets of backstory move backward in time. And as the character propels her hurting body along its excruciating journey up the staircase, the author reveals the backstory by going further and further down the memory hole.
From the outset, the reader is left to wonder at the source of Amelia’s physical pain and her seemingly endless pageant of emotions. Each short description of action and its corresponding physical or emotional response is paired with a brief but perfectly calibrated piece of Amelia’s history, and each pairing works as a self-contained mini-drama all its own.
The effect is mesmerizing, and by the time the seven-word revelation of the source of Amelia’s troubles is given at the opening of the second chapter, readers will feel as if Amelia is someone they’ve known forever.
It seems that the secret to success, here, was in keeping the action-backstory pairs short and perfectly matched, having the character experience a multitude of emotional responses in a very short period of time, and withholding the critical piece of backstory––the piece that explains Amelia’s seemingly bewildering blizzard of emotions––until the end of the sequence.
ACTION NOW, BACKSTORY MUCH LATER
Sometimes a character’s actions and the revelation of the critical piece of backstory that supports it can be at opposite ends of the book. Such is the case with the All the Missing Girls, by Megan Miranda. The reader learns early on that Nic Farrell, the main character, has made a puzzling decision before the book even began––a decision that ended a once promising career and spun her life into a lower, harder, and mystifying orbit. The reader, along with other characters in the book, wonders why she has done this. The critical piece of backstory that makes this decision make sense is not revealed until near the end of the book. That’s a long time to keep a reader in suspense, but Ms. Miranda pulls it off perfectly.
At every turn, Nic is portrayed as likeable, self-sacrificing, a bit tragic-seeming, and a little haunted. As an underdog trying to begin life anew, we root for her. But forces from her old life begin to intrude and we resent that. Nevertheless, she persists in trying to make the best of her new life. Then new forces rise against her and we resent that too.
From beginning to end, Nic is portrayed as a very sympathetic character, someone who is easy to care about and bond with and, most importantly, someone whose struggle looks familiar enough that we feel the need to know her, and are willing to stick with her until we discover what it is that caused her to make the decision that so dramatically altered her life.
As the story progresses, Nic’s backstory begins to invade her present in the form of someone she used to know or thought she knew. This continually reminds the reader that one of the main impediments to Nic’s new life is her old life. Every new revelation from the past serves to increase the tension she is feeling in the present. We experience with her that paralyzing fear that comes from being suddenly reminded of something bad we’d rather forget, or the dread that rises when old events seen in a new light reveal some unsettling truth.
While there are surely many ways to bridge a book-length gap between a character’s action and the justifying piece of her backstory, I found this one very compelling. The character was easy to strongly identify with, and other elements of backstory were added in a way that aggravated the character’s present troubles while building toward the critical revelation at the end.
BACKSTORY AS MISDIRECTION
Sometimes, backstory can serve double duty. It can justify a character’s present actions while it accomplishes some other story objective at the same time. In
Dark River Rising, my debut mystery, I needed a credible way for Wallace Hartman, my police detective main character, to miss the fact that she was being followed. This was going to be difficult because up until this point the reader had seen her as someone with exceptionally high situational awareness. So I had her fall under the spell of a long-ago memory. A drive through a neighborhood filled with personal history triggers a recollection from her childhood when her two brothers played a mean-ish trick on her. Wallace is in such complete thrall to the memory that she fails to notice something she ordinarily would have. The memory is brief but it’s the kind of transporting reminiscence that we all experience from time to time, and because it involves Wallace being the victim of a prank, the memory evokes sympathy and the reader feels what Wallace feels. The reason for this bit of backstory is revealed when the reader is made aware of the follower but Wallace is not.
This double-duty use of backstory worked because both Wallace and the reader experienced the misdirection. It also makes use of the fact that all adults were, at one time, children, and childhood is an endlessly fascinating time of life. And, for better or for worse it was, for most of us, the period that had the greatest impact on who we have become. Consequently, it can also be the richest source of material out of which to construct a character.
There are, undoubtedly, many other creative ways to present backstory that work just as well as the ones explored above, and you will surely find them, either in your own writing or that of others. But, as with any creative endeavor, there is a bit of art to go along with the science. Trial and error is inevitable and must be embraced. And not all of a character’s backstory needs to be revealed. But a character’s response to a challenge of any significance will eventually have to be justified by something from the past. Otherwise, the reader will be baffled as to why the character acted as she or he did. Why does one character, faced with a home invader, calmly aim and fire at the invader while another character cowers or flees or calls 9-1-1? The reader will want to know.
As an academic, I developed the capacity to go on forever about, literally, anything––fictional character creation, included. So, if you’re inclined to share your thoughts and experiences on this topic, I would love to continue the conversation. Please write and let me know about your journey to discovering the characters that propel your fiction.
Roger Johns is the author of the Wallace Hartman Mysteries—Dark River Rising (2017) and River of Secrets (2018)—from St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books. Please visit him at www.rogerjohnsbooks.com, and email him here.
(To become a Killer Nashville Guest Columnist, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
How Writing Nonfiction Made Me a Better Storyteller / Charles Salzberg
I honestly can’t remember the first time I decided I wanted to be a fiction writer. Maybe it was soon after I learned how to read. Or maybe it was the first time I realized the magic of the written word, that it could take you places you’d never been, and take you away from places where you didn’t want to be. But of one thing I’m sure: as a shy kid, I took refuge in books like The Winning Forward Pass andThe Adventures of Robin Hood, and later, novels like Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day,The Adventures of Augie March, and J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and Bernard Malamud’s The Natural. They saved me by showing me there were other worlds and other people with problems to overcome. It was all very dazzling and I wanted to be able to create a world I wanted to live in, instead of the one where I did.
I was an English major in college, and after a short detour that took me to law school for a year, I found myself needing a job. A friend suggested, because I read a lot and because I could write, that maybe I ought to become a magazine editor.
Sure. Why not? And so I managed to get a job in the mailroom and New York magazine, in its heyday, with writers like Tom Wolfe, Nick Pileggi, Nik Cohn, Gail Sheehy, Pete Hamill and John Simon, writing for a magazine edited by the legendary Clay Felker.
It didn’t take long to realize I did not want to be an editor. They were overworked, and seemed chained to their desks, while the writers, who popped in and out at odd hours, seemed to be having all the fun. That’s what I wanted to do, and so after three months I quit to become a freelance magazine writer.
The choice was odd, because I’d never wanted to write nonfiction. In fact, I looked down on it. What was so hard about going out and interviewing people, or watching an event, and then writing down what you heard or saw? That wasn’t very creative. Now writing fiction, that was the real accomplishment. But writing fiction wasn’t going to pay the rent, and so, somewhat reluctantly, I became a magazine journalist.
It turned out to be the best thing I could have done, because I learned so much about writing fiction from writing nonfiction.
The first and most important thing I learned was that fiction and nonfiction writing aren’t much different. Nonfiction, especially in those heady days of the New Journalism, used fictional techniques. Scenes had to be created. Dialogue had to be spoken. And, a cohesive story, with a beginning, a middle and end, had to be told. And so, writing magazine articles allowed me to sharpen my fiction writing skills.
Another important thing I learned as a journalist was to scrupulously keep to a word count. That means, making every word count. It means going over your copy numerous times to make sure there’s no “fat.” It means looking critically at every word, every phrase, and every sentence, to make sure it’s necessary. This, as it turned out, became a very valuable skill to have as a novelist.
Another unexpected bonus was having to go out there and meet new people, people with interesting jobs, people different who thought different from me, people who were different from me. And so, for instance, there was the time I had to write a story about a skip tracer, a profession I knew nothing about. But once I did, I decided to give that profession to Henry Swann, the protagonist of the Swann series.
I also learned important research and interviewing skills, which came in handy when I’d research novels. For Swann Dives In, I interviewed a rare book dealer. For Swann’s Way Out, I learned about the art business and the movie business. And for my latest novel, Second Story Man, I learned burglary techniques by reading about the subject and interviewing cop friends.
In the end, I developed a well-earned respect for journalists and I’m pretty sure I’m a much better writer for my experience not making stuff up.
Charles Salzberg is the author of the Shamus Award-nominated Swann’s Last Song, Swann Dives In,Swann’s Lake of Despair,Swann’s Way Out, and Devil in the Hole, named one of the best crime novels of the year by Suspense magazine. His latest novel, Second Story Man, was just published. He teaches writing the New York Writers Workshop where he is a Founding Member, and he is on the board of MWA-NY. Visit him at www.CharlesSalzberg.com.
(To become a Killer Nashville Guest Columnist, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
Character Naming: A Very Important Process / D.P. Lyle
How important are character names? Do they make or break a story? Can a name suggest a character's personality? To answer these questions, let me share something I learned from a master of crime fiction—-Elmore Leonard. It was many years ago at the now-defunct Maui Writers Conference that I met Elmore. He was one of the featured speakers. As fate would have it, I had the opportunity to sit and chat with him about writing for about 45 minutes on two separate occasions. I used that time to not only get to know this gracious and funny man but also to pick his brain.
He is known as the master of dialogue, and for good reason. Every writer should read his work as each is a textbook for dialogue writing. But, I was more interested in his characters. They are always deep and complex and so well drawn. So I asked him if he did character sketches or exactly how did he create such wonderfully flawed people. His response was that, no, he didn't do character outlines or anything like that but rather he would spend weeks, sometimes months, thinking about a character. At some point, the character’s name would evolve. And once he had the name, he knew the character.
The beauty of this struck me instantly. What he was saying is that he lived with these characters for those weeks and months until he knew them. And once that familiarity was established, the name appeared. Basically, he mentally created character sketches. The results were classic crime fiction. I mean, could Chili Palmer be a neurosurgeon? No, only a loan shark. Linda Moon is, of course, a lounge singer, and Raylan Givens is the perfect name for a US Marshall from the coal mines of Kentucky.
So what's the take-home message? Live with your characters, get to know them, and the name that fits will come. I'm sure, like me, you've named characters and began writing a story only to realize halfway through that the name you chose just simply didn't work. The reason? You didn't know the character well enough yet to know what that character's name must be. But, if you live with the character for a time, a better name will appear, one that fits the character like old jeans.
I’ve always believed that your protagonist should have a short, clean name. One that pops. One that’s easy to say, and type.
You’ll likely type it more than any other name in the story, so don’t make it long and complex. Mort works better than Mortimer. Unless, of course, the character is a Mortimer. A longer, tongue-twisting name might even annoy your readers. So, keep it simple, if possible
Also, it’s wise to have only one name per character. For example, let’s say Admiral Adam Jones, Commander of the Pacific Fleet appears in your story. If you call him Adam, Jones, Admiral Jones, the Admiral, the Fleet Commander, etc., you risk confusing the reader particularly early in the work while they are trying to sort everyone out. So call your protagonist Jones and maybe Admiral Jones and stop at that. Obviously, in dialog this might change as one or more characters might know him as Adam, but in the narrative keep it simple. Choose one name and stick to it.
Same goes for your main characters. Are you going to use their first or last name to identify them? Will you choose Adam or Jones, in the above example? This choice might be determined by the type and tone of the story, by local and cultural norms of the setting, and by the time period of the story. For example, in the South, we tend to call folks by their last name. In the end, it’s up to you, but whichever you decide, be consistent.
In medicine, blood type O-negative is termed the “universal donor” because it’s least likely to cause a reaction and, if in an emergency situation where blood must be given quickly and without going through the matching process, it’s the safest choice.
Is there a “universal” character name? You bet. Elizabeth. Think of all its iterations: Bette, Beth, Betty, Betsy, Liz, Lizbeth, Lizzie, Lisa, Liza, Libby, Lea, Lettie, Bee, Bess, Bessie,
Eliza, Elise, Elsa, Ellie, Etta, Ilsa, Izzy, and others. Each of these evokes a different feel for the character.
Choose your character names carefully. You’ll be living with them for many months, even years.
D.P. Lyle is the Macavity and Benjamin Franklin Silver Award-winning and Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, Scribe, Silver Falchion, and USA Best Book Award-nominated author of 16 books, both fiction and non-fiction. Along with Jan Burke, he is the co-host of Crime and Science Radio. He has worked with many novelists and with the writers of the TV shows Law & Order, CSI: Miami, Diagnosis Murder, Monk, Judging Amy, Cold Case, House, Medium, Women's Murder Club, The Glades, and Pretty Little Liars. You can visit D.P. Lyle at his website www.dplylemd.com You can read his blog at writersforensicsblog.wordpress.com.
(To become a Killer Nashville Guest Columnist, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
"Based On" or "Inspired By" a True Story? / Manning Wolfe
When I give my PowerPoint presentation, “Legal Issues for Authors,” I’m often asked if my legal thrillers are based on actual events that happened to clients in my law firm. I always stutter a bit when answering this question because the answer is yes and no. Attorneys already get a bad rap for qualifying every answer, so I try to slip in an explanation without too much legalese.
While all of the books in the Texas Lady Lawyer Series are based on true stories, they are not the factual series of events that actually occurred in each case. Is that “inspired by” or “based on”? Where is the line?
Terms Defined:
A story that was “inspired by” actual events is primarily fiction, but the writer gets the idea from something that took place in reality. The resulting novel takes its inspiration from the true events without claiming to represent anything that may have actually happened. The characters are usually original to the novel or only vaguely resemble the real-life participants.
A story “based on” actual events is more exact. Sometimes the names of the people and places are retained. Unlike a biography where some degree of accuracy is expected, the story is based on reality, but liberties are taken. The core elements, such as events, themes, and main characters serve as representations of themselves, but time may be compressed or secondary characters pressed into an amalgamation for efficiency.
Examples from Published Books:
With these standards in mind, my legal thrillers are inspired by truth and launched from actual events. I use the legal facts that are in the public records or media and stop short of revealing anything that was confidentially shared by a client. In other words, I use the truth as a jumping off place to tell the story of re-named characters that are fictional when the novel is finally published.
In Dollar Signs, my clients were two brothers who signed a billboard lease without realizing there was an option in the fine print to purchase the land under the billboard. In reality, the brothers didn’t bring the lease to me until the sign company sued them to obtain ownership of the land through a technicality in the law. In a meeting one day, the younger brother said, “Why don’t I just burn the damn thing down!” Of course, he didn’t, but the idea stuck with me and when I wrote the novel, it begins with the brother burning down the huge billboard and hanging off the catwalk dangling above the cars below. Merit Bridges, the Austin attorney in the Texas Lady Lawyer series takes over from there to take on the Goliath corporation and defend the brothers.
In Music Notes, the second in the series, Merit Bridges represents a down-and-out guitarist, Liam Nolan, who’s slain near the Lady Bird Lake with his own Stratocaster. The probate that develops after his death involves a young University of Texas student who believes that Liam is his father. In comes the villain, a music manager out of Los Angeles, and trouble ensues. In real life, my client, in this case, was the estate of the musician who had died. I changed the name of the famous guitarist and disguised his illegitimate son. The court records are public and used in the plot, but the majority of the story is fiction. The battle over the assets is exaggerated from the true story, but the law used to solve the probate issues is similar.
In the upcoming Green Fees—to be released in the Spring of 2018—Merit Bridges represents a young golf pro who dreams of playing the PGA tour. I won’t expand on the legal issues here, as the book is not yet published, but the true story involved a contract between a golf sponsor and the young pro as the jumping off point.
Bottom Line:
In all three books, the stories “inspired by” true events are developed “based on” a true story. The jumping off points and settings are true in all three cases, but the development of the story, characters, and resolution are all created in my imagination.
Manning Wolfe is an author and attorney, with one foot in the business world and one foot in the creative realm. Her business experience, combined with her vivid imagination, manifests in quality services for clients, as well as compelling storytelling for readers.
Manning writes cinematic-style, intelligent, fast-paced action-packed legal thrillers with a salting of Texas bullshit. She is writing a series of Texas Lady Lawyer novels based on her main character, Austin attorney Merit Bridges. Manning’s background as an attorney has given her a voyeur’s peek into some shady characters' lives and a front row seat to watch the good people who stand against them. Visit her at www.manningwolfe.com.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Column, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
Strong Heroine or Weak Woman? / DiAnn Mills
Whether my source of entertainment is a novel, movie, or vibrant play, I want to experience a strong heroine. Who wants to get involved in the life of a weak, whining woman who never changes or grows and needs someone (usually a man) to rescue her? Readers want to slip their feet into the experience, and that means providing them with a superior adventure.
I write romantic suspense, and a strong heroine guides my stories. In High Treason, CIA Operative Monica Alden was assigned to help protect a Saudi Arabian prince. She battled bad guys and cultural differences todo her job. Determining who she was and what mattered to her took time and patience. Because of what Monica learned in critical life experiences, she changed and grew into a survivor who was strong and independent.
What characteristics make a strong heroine? Let’s start with what it’s not:
It’s not brains or beauty.
It’s not an ivy-league education.
It’s not her skills as a crack shot or a master of self-defense.
It’s not her profession.
Instead, she must possess a tight grip on tenacity to solve a problem or reach a goal.
So how do we writers expand beyond cardboard characters into women who step off the page with real courage?
The following are ten ways to create a heroine who leaves a dynamic legacy that makes readers want to return to your novels again and again.
Build a heroine who has a credible backstory that motivates her into action. Show how her past experiences shaped her mentally, physically, and spiritually, propelling her into a remarkable main gal. She’s the true heroine in chapter one, line one.
Establish a feminine heroine and assign her a meaningful name that fits a startling story world. She’s not a woman in a man’s clothes. A cutesy name may have fit when she was three years old, but not as an adult who is ready to beat down the doors of hell to solve a crime or save someone from a vicious crime.
Incorporate a heroine’s physical attributes into her character. Include how the physical world affects her behavior, goals, strengths, weaknesses, and flaws. For example, a heroine who is seen as inferior may have a difficult time proving her value. Her sacrifice to prevent a crime may be her own life.
Place her in a setting that is totally antagonistic. Every scene should have the setting working against her. The result forces her to be a stronger heroine. For example: Heroine is in a working environment where she must team up with a person she detests.
Discover her physical problem or goal and why it matters to her and the world around her. Ask yourself, why is my heroine the only person on the planet to step into this role? What does she have to lose? What does she have to gain? What will it take for her to accept the problem and put her skills to the test?
Create a psychologically well-rounded character. This means developing a distinct personality and ascribing great communication skills. She’s a character who experiences realistic emotions and uses the lessons of the past to form who she is today. The heroine’s not perfect, nor does she have complete control of her emotions. Give her thick skin and a soft heart.
Unearth her internal struggle and how she will triumph over the issue. The struggle must be faced head-on in the climax and overcome to reach her goal. For example: Heroine was betrayed in her backstory and innocent people were victims. Now she’s hesitant to trust. Force her into a situation where she must trust or not survive.
Provide reasons why your reader will care about the heroine. What is it about her starring role that is endearing? Create sympathy for her in the first sentence and build on it throughout the story. Drop your heroine into a story in which her goals—and the way in which she achieves them—captivate readers.
Ensure your heroine is never a victim. She may have been victimized in the past, but she survived, and now she’s on guard with anyone who exhibits harmful traits. The heroine is focused on the world around her.
Show how the heroine uses her skills and acquires new ones to journey through her story with success. She is constantly filling her brain with new information and striving to improve her mental and physical skills.
The heroines in today’s novels must have the ability to ride the winds of peril while entertaining us with a powerful story.
What traits do you believe are essential for a strong heroine?
DiAnn Mills is a bestselling author who believes her readers should expect an adventure. Her titles have appeared on the CBA and ECPA bestseller lists; won two Christy Awards; and been finalists for the RITA, Daphne Du Maurier, Inspirational Readers’ Choice, and Carol award contests. Firewall, the first book in her Houston: FBI series, was listed by Library Journal as one of the best Christian Fiction books of 2014.
DiAnn is a founding board member of the American Christian Fiction Writers, a member of Advanced Writers and Speakers Association, Suspense Sister, and International Thriller Writers. She is co-director of The Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference and The Mountainside Marketing Conference with social media specialist Edie Melson. She teaches writing workshops around the country. DiAnn is active online and would love to connect with readers on any of the social media platforms listed at www.diannmills.com.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Column, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
Context and Character in Fiction / R.J. Jacobs
Motive is the intersection of fiction writing and psychology. Authors and psychologists are interested in it for the same reason: we want a basis for understanding human behavior, particularly when it contradicts our expectations of the way that people might normally act. To construct a plot, an author must devise credible characters who behave plausibly. There must be reasons why characters do the things they do— without sound motives, the story suffers. It lacks the resonance of authenticity. It feels untrue.
This is especially the case when characters act aggressive or violent. Outside of literature, psychologists often are asked to speculate about the reasoning or mental state of criminals, particularly after a highly publicized crime. They’re asked to verify that someone was “crazy”, not only to better understanding the event in question but for reassurance, as if a binary distinction between “crazy” and “not-crazy” could make malicious intent easier to spot.
If only such distinctions were possible. It turns out that we all (authors, too) commonly commit what is referred to as The Fundamental Attribution Error, which means we tend to underestimate situational influences upon others’ behavior while overestimating the contribution of their traits or disposition. In other words, we focus on who someone is, rather than on their circumstances. A wealth of social science literature suggests that this process, while intuitive, is inaccurate.
So why does it continually happen? A lot of data exists on that as well. Essentially, this tendency exists because we tend to observe others from a different perspective than we observe ourselves. When judging our own behavior, we observe the situation, not our own person. We might say, “Everything was happening at once,” because our attention focuses on our surroundings.
At the same time, an outside observer would see things differently. Their attention is centered on the person causing the action. They might say, “He seems like an angry person.”
Each person’s behavior tells his or her story, and behavior is contextually elicited. But conceding the influence of circumstance is not to disregard the potential for an individual to be pathological. To be sure, some mental health conditions are characterological. Certain people, for example, harm others for their own benefit. Some people have no moral directive. The vast majority of violent behavior, however, is not executed in so wanton a fashion.
***
Is explaining behavior through situational dynamics the same as making excuses? What about personal accountability?
Feeling states and behaviors are natural consequences of our environment. In therapy, I’m sometimes surprised when people expect to feel good despite the circumstances of their lives. Sometimes, I want to ask, “How did you think you could live that way and not feel anxious?”
In some ways, the notion of a person adapting to the environment is so apparent that it’s taken for granted. One simple example is the shift in style between a person’s home and work environments. If an effective litigator, for example, maintained a professional style with her children or in a leisure setting, most people would view her as socially inept. Given the role expectations of each environment, her behavior would naturally shift. The pace of her speech, her body language, and tone of voice would all adjust without her thinking about it.
A patient recently told me about going through with her wedding despite numerous reservations: “I was twenty-one. What does anyone know at that age? Three years before, I was in high school. I should have known that taking two Xanax meant that I shouldn’t go through with it. I was such a zombie, two of my bridesmaids were making bets on whether I would fall over. I knew I wasn’t in love with him the way that most people are when they get married.”
Her tremendous insight into her own feelings, even at the time, couldn't dissuade her from proceeding. When I asked what made her go ahead with the ceremony, her response was clear and immediate: “I didn’t want to disappoint everyone. Growing up, I’d told my family that I wanted a big wedding and they had gone out of their way to make everything perfect. There were five bridesmaids, a huge reception already paid for; people from all over the country had made travel arrangements. There was no way I could back out.”
She knew the wedding was a bad idea, but the situation dictated her behavior.
Understanding the external pressures on a person in her position is easy. What would be harder to understand, for example, would be the preternatural self-possession of a twenty-one year old halting her wedding in the face of extreme expectations.
Perhaps the study most notable for investigating the power of situation versus character is the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Phil Zimbardo in 1973. (Social psychologists have a reputation for playing tricks on people and then publishing research). By randomly assigning participants either to play the role of prisoner or guard, Zimbardo hoped to shed light on the nature of brutality. Was it the product of evil, sadistic people, or were the institutional roles responsible for the behavior? Or, put another way: Did people make the place violent, or did the place make people violent? He converted the basement of the psychology department’s building into a mock prison and simulated a penal environment where the “guards” were instructed to treat the “prisoners” with standard criminal procedure. They were fingerprinted, booked, stripped naked and deloused while the guards carried whistles and billy clubs. Prisoners were given prison clothes and bedding. Zimbardo found that almost immediately, each group adopted behavior stereotypical for its role. Everyone, including the experimenters themselves, became caught up in the situation. The students assigned to be guards began to taunt and act imposingly, while those assigned to be prisoners began to break down and to rebel. This became something like a feedback loop, in which submissive prisoner behavior seemed to further elicit aggression from the guards. Originally planned to last two weeks, Zimbardo concluded the experiment after six days as a result of extreme behavior on the part of the participants (several left the study even earlier) and because of ethical questions raised by colleagues.
So which specific factors increase the likelihood of aggression?
Aversive experiences such as pain, uncomfortable heat, an attack, or overcrowding all heighten arousal. When hostility is sensed within a group, the group is seen as even more hostile when the space is crowded. In stressful circumstances, aggression cues (the presence of a gun, or witnessing a violent image) can function to ignite hostility. When people’s motivations are strong, and they expect to meet their goals, they become frustrated when their wishes are blocked. Add in an aversive experience and an aggression cue, and a stage is set for violence.
It’s comfortable to believe we are in control of ourselves. We all maintain a self-concept and we tell ourselves that while we might be capable of some things, some behavior is beyond us. Writers develop our characters in the same way: by focusing on their traits. Then, we develop histories to explain them. We ask ourselves: Given who this person is, what would they do in this situation? But the opposite question may be more correct: Given the dynamics of this situation, what would anyone do? Would a “good” person be capable of aggression? Violence? An atrocity? As writers, we have a chance to create resonant plots when we can hold character constant for a moment and consider how an accumulation of circumstances bears upon a particular opportunity to act.
R.J. Jacobs has practiced as a psychologist since 2003. He maintains a private practice in Nashville, focusing on a wide variety of clinical concerns. After completing a post-doctoral residency at Vanderbilt, he has taught Abnormal Psychology, presented at numerous conferences, and routinely performs PTSD evaluations for veterans.
His novel, tentatively titled: Broken Surface, is scheduled to be published by Crooked Lane in 2019.
He lives with his wife Rebecca and their two children.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Column, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
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