The Chaos Character

 A character type I’ve noticed a lot in recent reading is what I call the chaos character.  Not only does the character create chaos around him by his actions, he fills many pages as he flounders about the main character or characters as they try to move forward toward their plot goal for the book.

Last night, the novel I read was peppered with the antics of a chaos character— an elderly uncle who kept appearing where he shouldn’t be so the other characters would have to stop what they were doing to keep him safe, or he would bring in new characters who might be involved in the mystery so he was making things more complicated and tainting the investigation.  

Did his almost constant presence improve the novel?  No. The plot turned into chaos to the point that no one was moving forward, and the plot had to solve itself by having the killer just announce his guilt.  A slight dose of this character could have been used for humor.  Instead, he proved to be nothing more than page filler which destroyed the mystery.  

Can a secondary chaos character work? In a small dose, yes.  In my TIME AFTER TIME about reincarnation, my hero and heroine are visiting a powerful psychic who is trying to help the hero convince the heroine that reincarnation is a real thing.  Everything is going positively until a medium friend of the psychic wanders in and blurts out information about the heroine’s mother that emotionally destroys the heroine. 

I used this chaos character, not only to mess up the hero’s plan, but, more importantly, to allow the hero to finally discover why the heroine is so reluctant to accept reincarnation.  After her mother’s sudden death, she was preyed on and badly hurt by a fake medium so that anything remotely resembling spiritual explanations or events freaks her out.  The main characters must move past this to find their happy ending.

A chaos character can be used as an important character, mostly as a villain.  The Joker from BATMAN is a chaos character as well as a psychotic killer. Loki from THE AVENGERS is also chaotic. Thor and the viewer can’t tell what Loki will do or whose side he will take. As a comic character, both Joker and Loki can be over the top in a way that a novel character can’t so care must be taken in how this type of character is used.

A bit of chaos can add humor, danger, or misdirection, but too much creates a mess of a novel.  

Rolling the Monster Dice

 All Julie wants is to be a professional dancer, but, when danger strikes near her several times, her family moves overnight from Atlanta to the small island where her parents came from, and she finds herself in a weird Stepford Wives community of perfection and strange secrets.  What is going on, why is her whole family lying to her, why can she produce electrical energy from her hands in times of danger, and how can she return to dance? 

The author rolls the monster dice and uses the results—the characters are fae/fairies even though they are nothing like any fae ever written.

~*~

Ann is starting medical school, but she’s distracted by the ghost of her father who appears before her several times.  Meanwhile, she’s noticed two men following her.  

The author rolls the monster dice and uses the results—the characters are aliens from another planet.

~*~

Mary is developing weird powers.  She can make light bulbs explode when she’s angry, and she’s starting to read minds.

The author rolls the monster dice and uses the results— Mary is a born vampire.

~*~

These are recent examples of books I tried to read where the author seems to be setting up unusual paranormal creatures and situations, then, out of nowhere, calls them by a common monster name although nothing about them is like any of the folklore of that creature.  

Beyond the sheer annoyance at the out-of-nowhere identification of the characters and the total lack of knowledge at what these traditional creatures are, these books are wasted opportunities at offering something different to readers jaded by too many vampires, fae, and aliens among us.  

When you are world building, make up your mind whether you will follow, at least partially, the tradition of some creature or whether you will make your own creature, and stick with this decision instead of randomly redefining established creatures. 

Character Change and Backstory

QUESTION: My main character used to be a bad guy, but now he’s not.  He’s gone elsewhere and changed his name.  How much of his past should I include?  Do I need to write scenes from his past?  Will readers believe he has changed?

If his past (backstory) is important, and it probably should be, you don’t have to include scenes of that past unless you think the reader wouldn’t understand him or his backstory is really complex.  Usually in a case like this, his past life must impact his present one, and backstory scenes are interlaced with the present day.  

Remember that every time a scene from the past is inserted, the reader stops dead to get his mind into the past then must stop dead again to get back in the present.  This kind of back and forth is not a good thing in popular fiction like fantasy.

Backstory can be inserted easily enough during present time scenes through dialogue, thoughts from the main character, and events.   

He could be in a tavern to meet another character and hear a drunk nearby talking about his former identity's bad-ass behavior and think — “He'd piss his pants if he knew he was sitting a few bar stools away from me."  Then you could have another character say, "But (insert former name here) was decent enough.  He'd never fight around civilians and that time he rescued the child from the burning house instead of taking the money.  You wouldn't see (insert new bad guy's name here) do that." 

Sooner rather than later, you’ll also need to tell the reader why he chose to change.  Again, it need not be a huge info dump.  

As to whether readers will accept a bad guy as a good guy, part of this is determined by genre expectations from its readers.  A truly despicable character would never be accepted as a hero in a romance, but, elsewhere, readers have a lot more forgiveness about this.  In your reading of the genre you are writing, do you recall characters who switched moral sides and did it work and why?  

Two superhero movies I can recall where the bad guy turned into the good guy are MEGAMIND and DESPICABLE ME. The change in their characters was the story. 

And think also of Magneto in the X-Men series.  As a bad guy, he is morally and emotionally complex, and he's helped his former friend Charles Xavier more than once to save the day for everyone's sake. 

Usually, bad characters who change sides have already shown they are capable of good behavior with the bad behavior.  That makes it more believable.  A psychopath who changes to become a hero is totally unbelievable.

The trick is making your character's choices and changes believable.  If you do, the reader will accept them.  

Time Travel: The Never Mind Factor

"I hate temporal mechanics!"  --Chief Engineer Miles O'Brien, STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE

“What did you do this time, Barry?”  Oliver Queen, THE FLASH

The biggest problem with time travel as a plot device, beyond the mind-numbing paradoxes, is the “never mind” factor when the author uses time travel to fix things.

Something really horrible happens to the main characters, more than a few die, evil starts taking over the world, and life as we know it is about over, then one of the good guys uses time travel to go back before it starts and stops whatever the original cause of the whole mess was.  Everything returns to exactly the way it was before the story started.

In other words, nothing really happened because nothing changes.  I always say “never mind” then something rude about the writing.

That “never mind” moment means you are cheating the reader of genuine experience.  If unhappiness, danger, and death no longer can be trusted to have meaning, the reader may stop caring when permanent changing moments happen.

The reader can also feel cheated to the point she no longer trusts anything you write, and may very well say “never mind” when your next book is out.

What Goes into a Novel

If you're not sure about how to construct a novel, you need to take a novel or two apart.

You do this by going to your keeper shelf and finding several books of the type you want to write.   These books should be fairly recent, no more than a year or two old.   Pick one by a familiar name writer.   Another should be by a fairly new writer with a few books out in that genre.

Here's how you take each novel apart.  Start reading the book with a pen and notepad beside you.  After each chapter, write down the major plot points and events that happened in that chapter.   When you're done, you'll have a good overview of how much goes into that size novel.   

Do this for several novels.   If you know of a book that is close to how you imagine your book’s plot, be sure to take that book apart chapter by chapter, as well.

Some writing instructors go so far as to say you should analyze the amount of dialogue, narrative, character interiors, etc. To do this, take a number of different colors of highlighters and code each color for a specific aspect of the novel (dialog, interiors, love scenes, etc.) then highlight away.    

You need only do this for a few chapters, and you can make copies of the pages if you don't want to mess up the book.  You can usually find the first chapter or two on the author's website or Amazon.

This type of analysis is especially useful for series romances from Harlequin and Silhouette.

I did the chapter analysis of a Dick Francis suspense novel before I started my first suspense, and it was an eye-opening experience about how much goes into a novel.

I know a few writers who have actually used the chapter by chapter analysis of another book to write their own.   The result wasn't suitable for selling but few first novels are, and the writer learned a lot about constructing a plot. 

If you think your copycat book is sellable, remember that, if you followed the plot and other elements too closely, you may be guilty of plagiarism which is a very bad way to start a writing career.  

Too Stupid to Live

 Readers of romance use the term "too stupid to live" (TSTL) to describe a character, usually the heroine, who does incredibly dumb things to further the plot.  

These characters are equivalent to the scantily clad bimbo in a horror movie who leaves a locked house to wander around outside bellowing, "Is anyone there?"

Of course, the really stupid or lazy person is the author who didn't bother to create a logical plot.

You're not sure if the heroine is too stupid to live?  Here are some examples.

A heroine may be too-stupid-to-live if she

Doesn't change her lock or improve security after a serial killer breaks in her home and leaves a threatening note.  Nor does she consider staying elsewhere.

Sends her guards home after the so-far-inept police decide they have captured the serial killer.

The heroine gets hot for the hero and does something about it when the bad guys are near.

The trained assassin is sneaking up on her professional bodyguard so the heroine, with no fighting training, attacks him herself rather than yelling a warning.

The "Full Moon Killer" is savaging locals.  The creepy guy next door reeks of Nair, wears flea colors, and buys large boxes of Milk Bones although he doesn't own a dog, but the heroine isn't suspicious because "werewolves don't exist."

The heroine has an entire troop of bad guys after her, but she doesn't call in reinforcements, seek help from the police, or tell the hero she's in trouble.  

She has the only copy of some incriminating documents, and she doesn't make copies, or put them in a safety deposit box in her bank.  Instead, she leaves them in her apartment.  Under the bed.  

The heroine's blind date drinks really red Bloody Marys, has a bad overbite, and stares at her jugular vein instead of her large boobs, but she isn't suspicious because "vampires don't exist."

The bad guy asks her to meet him to exchange the documents for the hero, and she goes without back up or a weapon.

Bad guys are after the heroine so she picks high heels instead of running shoes because she'd rather die than be unfashionable.

The heroine starts a verbal battle with the hero while they are trying to sneak up on the bad guys.

Someone is trying to kill her so she wanders around outside and in the cavernous mansion she’s staying at.  

What can you do to avoid a TSTL character?  If you need your stalker-chased heroine to appear on national TV, don’t have her on the kiss cam at a nationally televised football game.  Instead, have her save a child from a burning car, and the rescue is caught by someone with a cellphone.  If she must do something stupid, have her know that it is stupid or dangerous yet make all other options worse or impossible.  

As Forrest Gump said, “Stupid is as stupid does.”  This applies more to the writer than the character.  

The One Conversation Conflict

 A common flaw in a story is the one-conversation conflict.  That's a problem that can be solved with one honest conversation between the characters.

Some novels, particularly romances, are driven by this conflict through the whole story because the two main characters simply won't ask questions or tell each other the truth.  (Use your words, people!)

This kind of conflict is based on misunderstanding, not on important emotional issues.  It reflects badly on characters by making them appear immature, and, for most readers, the promised happily ever after appears unlikely with two such shallow characters.

It also reflects badly on the writer who hasn't bothered to work on the plot and conflict.  

A one conversation conflict can work well in a scene, or as a means to hold back a valuable clue in a mystery for a short period, but it should only be used judiciously and not as a major part of the conflict structure of the novel.  

Examples of a bad one conversation conflict: 

"Oh, she's your younger sister, and that's why you were hugging her."

"So you were taking dance lessons for our wedding, not dating someone else."

"You're a vampire, and you were out getting a snack?  That's a relief.  I thought you weren't home at night because you were sleeping with someone else!"