TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY: ADDING DEPTH AND COMPLEXITY TO YOUR STORY THROUGH CHARACTER AND PLOT
by Joan Kilby

As romance writers we have two main jobs: to entertain our readers and to touch their emotions. We accomplish this with a complex, believable plot and memorable characters who portray a range and depth of emotions that people can relate to.

Character=Plot / Plot=Character

Individuals behave in certain ways because of who they are. The choices they make under pressure and the consequences of their actions determine the plot.

Primary: hero and heroine. Romantic love, also friendship, etc
Secondary: best friend, child, parent. Range of emotions.
Tertiary: Walk-ons or minor characters with small role. No deep emotions.

To create a strong hero and heroine you need to know their inner goals and motivations. Inner goals stem from defining characteristics, eg need for security. Every trait can be both fault and virtue. In developing your characters explore the ramifications and potential for conflict arising from these traits. The hero and heroine's opposing goals and the deep emotional needs that fuel them, drive the story and determine the plot. But all characters have their own story within the context of the central romance. Secondary and tertiary characters add depth and breadth. They don't have to be appealing or likeable but they should be interesting and true to life.

Developing Character and Plot: (chicken and the egg theory, or what works for me)

a) Walk your characters through a typical day (week, month, year) pre-story. Define their lives by what they do, wear, live, etc. Determine not only what they do but how they feel about their lives.

What are some of the things your heroine can encounter?
* work—boss, coworkers, workplace, tasks;
* leisure—recreation, gym, sports, entertainment;
* possessions—car, furniture, music, books; miscellaneous-shopping, banking, neighbourhood, neighbors, relatives, friends, setting, pets.

Don't worry if you can't pull everything out of the air all at once. It takes time to know a character. You have to see them react to the people and situations they encounter. Along the way you can fine-tune your character as you fine-tune your plot. For example, in THE CATTLEMAN'S BRIDE, my hero, Luke, is so self-reliant he finds it hard to connect emotionally with the people he cares about, starting with his daughter but including the heroine. His goal is to reestablish a relationship with his daughter and to keep her safely in his care. Everything he does (action), every decision he makes (emotion), is done with that goal in mind. His goal drives the story. To keep her safe, he wants to leave the cattle station where he's manager. The heroine, for strong personal reasons of her own, needs him to stay. Instant conflict.

Once you have these basic elements, you can work from there, using plot points to illustrate character traits. Or should you use character traits to determine plot? Chicken or egg? I don't believe there's a hard and fast rule. When I develop a story it's not a linear exercise. More like a meshing of ideas. A bit of plot followed by a bit of character, then vice versa, in a gradual weaving together of story elements.

Do what works for you. Do what works for the story.

Now, back to adding interest and complexity to your story. How do we create an interesting and entertaining story? Suspense, humor, unpredictable plot complications, cast of memorable characters.

* Subplots. Weaving subplots of 2 and 3 characters in with hero and heroine's story allows you to show the hero and heroine interacting with a variety of people in different and interesting ways. Its important that 2 and 3 plots/characters have an impact on, or relevance to, the main plot/characters. To develop subplots, think of all the cross-links there are between characters: hero/heroine, hero and secondary, two secondarys, etc. As an aid to visualizing these relationships, draw a web, naming characters and drawing lines between them. Write in the main conflict/bond/other. The more cross links you have, the greater the complexity of your plot. The stronger the emotional tie between each character, the greater depth your story will have. When I do this sort of thing I think of my stories as mini-soap operas where all sorts of juicy stuff is going on at once.

* Move the plot forward. The phrase implies action. Not background noise like making coffee but actions or events which cause new behaviour, action, thoughts or feelings to occur. The most interesting and significant actions are those which result in emotional change.

* Create events/incidents which have a magnifying effect. The event is meant to affect the main character but has ramifications for other characters. These incidents are where the 1 and 2 plotlines intersect. (refer to diagram)

* Suspense. Set up situations where the outcome is uncertain but rests on a decision/action taken by the hero or heroine. Don't resolve this immediately. The more difficult the decision the longer they'll take to decide and the greater the implications for themselves and other characters. Draw out the resolution through several scenes or chapters. Delaying resolution can in itself affect other characters.

Tension and suspense also comes from gaps in the characters' knowledge and expectations of each other. Not misunderstandings but preconceived ideas and prejudices that take time to overcome.

* Unpredictable plot twists. A story becomes more interesting when you don't know what's going to happen next. Unpredictable plots are based on unpredictable characters whose reactions to events aren't always what you'd expect. Which leads me to:

* Unusual character traits. Lots of people have a cat or dog but how many have a pet hamster? Janet Evanovitch's character Stephanie Plum has a pet hamster, Rex. Rex lives in a glass aquarium and sleeps in an old soup can. Stephanie tosses him a few hamster nuggets and tells him about her day pouring out her frustrations and fears. Through Rex, Evanovitch characterizes Stephanie and shows her vulnerable side, injects humor and pathos (when Rex is in danger), and gives the reader a break from the fast paced story.

Everybody has idiosyncrasies. Use them, work them into the plot. Just don't create too many unusual characteristics or the reader will find it hard to relate to your character. Ask yourself these questions. Does this unusual element have emotional significance? Does it contribute to the plot?

* Seemingly opposing personality traits. I say seemingly because your characters must have inner consistancy. Another example from Evanovitch's Stephanie Plum novels is Ranger: ruthless bounty hunter and health food nut. His insistence on tofu and bean sprouts at first appears to be an amusing irrelevance until he explains to our cheese burger-scoffing heroine that he needs to eat healthily to maintain his iron man physique so he can capture the bad guys.

* Have more than one thing happening at once. When you're plotting a scene, think of ways you can combine events to create greater interest. This usually takes the form of two people with opposing goals each trying to turn events to their own purpose. This can be a source of humor if that's the type of story you're writing. For example, in TEMPORARY WIFE there's a scene where Veronique is trying to enlist Ernie's (a secondary character's) support for something the hero doesn't want her to do. Ernie has a crush on Veronique and lets her have her way, all the while worrying about Burton's reaction.

* Humor

* Transfer information through emotional development and character exploration. In other words, showing. Action, where it's physical or emotional, always makes the story more involving for the reader.

EMOTION/CHARACTERIZATION

For a character's emotions to affect the reader, they should be ones the reader has either felt herself in one form or other or can imagine feeling, ie, universal. Universal emotions pack the greatest emotional wallop when they are life-altering. As much as everyone knocks bride and baby stories you've got to admit the themes of marriage and birth meet these criteria.

So when I talk about characterization I'm concentrating on emotional makeup because this is the most interesting aspect. Say a heroine gets straight A's in high school. Okay, she's smart but does anyone really care? But if you find out she's the apple of her father's eye and is so afraid of disappointing him that she cheats on her exams, then the situation becomes interesting and opens up a whole range of possibilities about how she feels about her behaviour and the emotional consequences if she's found out.

So how do we achieve emotional depth and complexity?

* Show the biggest possible range of emotions. A variety of emotions gives the ring of human truth to your story. The longer the book the more important this becomes. It goes without saying that the number one emotion will be the love between the hero and heroine. I won't dwell on it except to say that it helps if you can illuminate the growth of their feelings via the emotional plots of secondary characters. The writer can show the full range of emotions and life crises through secondary characters because they can be any age and in different stages of life. Not every character will have a crisis but their story should revolve around something appropriate for their age/profession, etc.

* Make the emotions significant. Emotions which pack a punch are things like love, hate, envy, jealousy, guilt. Big emotions are those which lead to characters taking action either to avoid feeling or to gain love, friendship, etc.

* Secondary characters have feelings too. When you're developing your cast of characters, think about the different types of relationships they have with the hero and heroine and each other, and what emotions they'll evoke in the reader. Using secondary characters you can weave stories within stories to create a many layered novel that imitates life. For example, the heroine's mother-in-law in TEMPORARY WIFE plays a pivotal role in the heroine's motivation. Her development from a fearful widow to an independent woman, deserves, in fact, requires exploration because even at the end, the heroine's feelings about her future are determined in part by what happens to the mother-in-law. When I was plotting that book I worked up a character arc for the m-i-l for both action plot and emotional growth similar to what I did for the hero and heroine.

* Give your characters honest emotions. Don't make your heroine feel something that's out of character just to get her to do something essential to the plot. That's contrived. And don't make her overreact to a situation in the mistaken belief that you're achieving emotional intensity. That's melodrama.

* Match the depth of your character's story to their importance in the book. Again, this is dependent on the length of the book. In a category novel a secondary character may have a significant story but you don't have as much space to develop it so you have to decide what to include and make it fit the confines of the overall story.

Tertiary characters, or walk-ons, may or may not have their own story. Another example from TEMP WIFE is the hero's boss who throughout the story is trying to give up cigars. It has no bearing on the plot or anything else but it made him real, added humor and an extra layer of interest. Every time we encounter him we get another episode in his battle to stop smoking. In a similar vein are the ever-changing hairstyles of the receptionist. In a minor way these characters and their individual stories create suspense and therefore interest. Will the boss be successful at giving up smoking? What will the receptionist look like next time we see her? Even the honor student and her father could work into a sub-plot that could be drawn out the length of the book. Every chapter or two we learn a little more until finally the issue is resolved.

* Emotional intensity is something that builds over the course of the book. As the writer you must know your characters intimately and most essential, like them. Only then will you feel the intensity of their emotions and be able to convey to the reader the importance of what they're feeling and experiencing. It helps when the emotions involved are the big ones we've talked about earlier. Sometimes the more understated an emotional event is, the more impact it has. As long as the readers' knowledge of and emotional investment in the characters has grown to the point where the reader feels what the character feels. That is emotional intensity.

* Give your character emotional choices. These can take many forms and result in loss, gain or even consequences through inaction.

* Show contrasts in the emotional atmosphere. For example, the same event makes one character happy may make another sad.

* Make the emotions personal. The deeper you take the conflict on a personal level, the more difficult the emotional dilemma and the stronger the readers' interest in the outcome. In other words, a page-turner. This is why developer/ environmentalist stories rarely work. The conflict is abstract and intelluctualized.

* Probe emotional depths. Don't shy away from strong emotions. It's human nature to avoid uncomfortable situations but as writers we need to confront what our characters are feeling and write them through their crises rather than avoid the issues.

* Emotional subtext. Have things going on under the surface that the reader is aware of but not all the characters are. For example, a hero might feel a love he can't express and his actions, designed to prove that love, are misinterpreted by the heroine as something completely different. The reader feels the hero's pain though the heroine is blithely unaware.

* Ambivalent or contradictory emotions. A character may not know exactly how they feel, or they may have several reactions to an event which contradict each other. This contributes to intensity as one emotion plays off another and leads to actions which may or may not be appropriate. This could be someone wishy-washy or it could be the sign of a complex character. It will depend on whether it's a primary or secondary character experiencing the emotions.

To sum up, know your characters and make them complex enough that they will feel a wide range of emotions. The more important the character, the deeper the emotions and more universal. Where character and plot intersect, events occur which evoke emotions only that character would feel. The more unique and complex you make your characters and the events that comprise their story, the more memorable your book will be.

©Joan Kilby