"Messed-Up, Untidy" Characters

Via Curiosities at The Millions:

Richard Russo: "My fictional Eliot [Spitzer] would be complex, would contain paradoxes. He would not be a hypocrite. My Eliot would believe with his whole heart in his crusades against the corrupt and the powerful and the privileged, even as he worked studiously to undermine his legacy. Fiction can accommodate such paradoxes, provided they're explained."

I'm sorry, fiction cannot be stranger than truth. Complex is a buzzword so overused that it has lost all meaning. A complex is a personality trait reflected backward, reversed, folded back in the opposite direction. For example, an inferiority complex(ed) comes off as a superiority act.

Therefore, what is more complex than a self-righteous hypocrite?

Ah, the "banality of evil" again. The "intellectual" take waters it down to "illicit sex" and says that Spitzer's worst crime is "cluelessness," "blowing it."

Oh, so he's just like the rest of us, right? How banal.

Yes, some people like reading the banal, but that's not where the money is in this market.

But I don't mean to jigger the facts; fictive Eliot will do exactly what the real Eliot has done, only my guy almost never imagines getting caught.

How can you say that when he signed into the hotel under the name of a well-known close friend and benefactor? He was setting up this close friend and benefactor to get framed for his (Spitzer's) own illegal activity.

First, I'd like to know how you are going to square this fact with your Spitzer never thinking about getting caught. Second, I'd like to know how you are going to characterize your Spitzer as a basically good man (no worse than rest of us) who just happens to do a shockingly vicious, despicable, stomach-turning thing like that TO A FRIEND AND BENEFACTOR!

Not banal. Not banal at all.

Real-life Eliot has few friends, we're told, the natural result of what some people like to call his arrogance, though my Eliot has never thought of it in those terms until now.

These are fellow Democrats who have had to work closely with him over the years. Like the Republicans who have had to work closely with John McCain, they are known to hate him but are very reticent to admit that to the press, let alone be quoted as to why. That MEANS something, because these are the people who know these men best. And their fear of speaking up about the "steamroller" is a red flag.

But you discount it. Again, fiction cannot be stranger than truth. Your Spitzer must be congruous with that fact. Nothing in the story that doesn't belong there, no extra pieces of the puzzle. It all must fit. This isn't religion, where you can just throw up your hands and say, "Well, it's a mystery."

And then the call girl must call in immediately afterward to let her handlers know she's OK and that he wasn't "difficult" this time. Just "illicit sex," right?

Now you know why very few people read literary fiction anymore: the banal ain't entertaining, and most people read to be entertained, not to be edified by the reduction of everything to the banal.

Make your characters make sense. To real people.

Richard Russo's fictional Eliot Spitzer - whom he himself says is a "messed-up, untidy" character - makes no sense at all. And it's remarkably like the fictional character many have made of the real Eliot Spitzer. A con artist who fooled the whole world with his crusader act.

The great Gatsby was great, for he loved greatly, purely.

But, especially considering how this foil of Gatsby recently tried to frame his friend and benefactor, the Attorney General of New York should go back and make sure he didn't steamroll innocent people into prison.

Make sure your characters make sense. Don't try to preach some doctrine, or you'll end up warping your characters into nebulous, banal messes like this.

     

Distancing Characters in Fiction Writing

Though you ordinarily want reader intimacy, sometimes it's best to keep the reader at arm's length — either from the story or from a character (even perhaps the protagonist) or both.

For example, especially in the opening of a novel, you don't want to the reader to feel accosted by something off-putting that is too close for comfort. He hasn't been hooked yet and may put the book down. So, if the story is grim or gruesome (especially in the beginning) or rattles the reader's cage, some authors distance it from the reader with a subtle reminder that it's fiction. Other writers, like Steven King, never pull back, except in the opening. For example, in the opening of Carrie, he pulls back by relating the rain of stones on Carrie's mother's house in the form of hard fact, but in a distancing way, as newspaper articles about the event.

Writers often do this when a story brings reader into a confrontation with the pure will to evil. The story needn't be too unreal: it may just as well be too real. For example, the story might turn the reader's world upside down by showing how evil pulls an image-switch with goodness. The reader can perplex on you and refuse to suspend disbelief, because what he's reading is a little too true and unsettling.

If a character is chillingly evil, the author might refer to him in impersonal and distancing terms instead of by character name or through a pronoun.

Distance is also good for a deliberately unrealistic, bigger-than-life character you simply don't want to diminish, like Sherlock Holmes. Or say he's an assassin — not the type of person you'd call by his first name.

Conventional wisdom says the reader feels closer to your lead character if you call him by his first name. You keep the reader at arm's length from a male character when you call him by his surname. But, be wary of trying to distance a woman or child by using their surname. Writers almost always get on a first-name basis with women and children (which is patronizing). So, referring to a woman or child by surname is so unusual that it overdoes the distancing, alienating the reader from a child or female character.

Multiviewpoint novels often call the protagonist by his first name and all other characters by their last names, even in scenes where they are the viewpoint character. This first-name label then becomes a literary "white hat" to designate the good guy.

The more you use any name, the more you distance that character. So, using pronouns as often as possible creates intimacy. In dialog use direct quotes and just enough s/he saids to avoid confusion about who's talking.

Using a subordinate character as a narrator — an Ishmael or a Watson — is a distancing device. Using a frame is another distancing device.

     

Fictional Character Theory

Fictional characters aren't exactly like real people. For one thing, they are simpler than real people. This is largely because when we look at a real person, we seldom see her "being herself." Instead we see the image of herself that she projects. But when we look at a fictional character, we usually see her true self. We get into her head.

Also, our view of a real person is almost always distorted by prejudice. It's colored by the impressions left by what people have said of her. It heavily depends on her reputation, which may or may not be appropriate. It's biased by many things, such as her status with respect to us. None of these influences blur or shape our view of a fictional character.

At any given time, a real person plays a part in multiple stories. These include the story of her life at home, at work, and with her friends. These stories overlap. This confusion of plots and influences complicates every choice, making it difficult to sort out a real person's actions. Also, real people often compartmentalize, adapting their projected image to the environment like chameleons. All too often this results in stunning logical contradictions in their belief system, situational ethics, and inconsistent behavior. Indeed, Adam invented political correctness by eating the apple just to agree with Eve! Most people do this twenty times a day. They behave like weather vanes to avoid conflict. (Good fiction is blessed break from that.) So, real people are often "complex," well-nigh impossible to figure out.

We love fiction because fictional characters are possible to figure out! Because they engage in conflict. In fiction we see the real person, not her image. In fiction no irrelevant aspects of character cloud the picture. In fiction no false information or self interest warps our view. In fiction one story at a time is told. So fictional characters are simpler and more sharply defined than real people. They are the distilled essence of real persons.

We see who they are through their actions.

     

Distancing

Though you ordinarily want reader intimacy, sometimes it's best to keep the reader at arm's length — either from the story or from a character (even perhaps the protagonist) or both.

For example, especially in the opening of a novel, you don't want to the reader to feel accosted by something off-putting that is too close for comfort. He hasn't been hooked yet and may put the book down. So, if the story is grim or gruesome (especially in the beginning) or rattles the reader's cage, some authors distance it from the reader with a subtle reminder that it's fiction. Other writers, like Steven King, never pull back, except in the opening. For example, in the opening of Carrie, he pulls back by relating the rain of stones on Carrie's mother's house in the form of hard fact, but in a distancing way, as newspaper articles about the event.

Writers often do this when a story brings reader into a confrontation with the pure will to evil. The story needn't be too unreal: it may just as well be too real. For example, the story might turn the reader's world upside down by showing how evil pulls an image-switch with goodness. The reader can perplex on you and refuse to suspend disbelief, because what he's reading is a little too true and unsettling.

If a character is chillingly evil, the author might refer to him in impersonal and distancing terms instead of by character name or through a pronoun.

     

Use inner conflict to evoke reader empathy.

Inner conflict is essential for two reasons. First, without it you have melodrama. Second, without it your character doesn't evoke the necessary emotional response from the reader.

For example, without inner conflict, you have something like a fairy tale or Godzilla. There's no inner conflict in deciding what to do about Godzilla. Your characters aren't deeply involved, so how can the reader be?

But if your character suffers inner conflict, he evokes reader empathy. Readers strongly identify with characters through empathy. That spell of identification is what securely hooks the reader and induces the Fictive Dream. Without inner conflict, a character in dire straits evokes, at best, pity. Worse, if the character is flawed, like Humbert in Vladimir Nabakov's Lolita, we will loathe him unless you show inner conflict in him.

You can improve a love story, for example, by introducing a cause of inner conflict. What if both are serious about their religion and their religions clash? What if one is a Montague and the other a Capulet?

The stronger the inner conflict, the greater the drama. In fact, with strong inner conflict your story needn't have titanic antagonists, the fate of the free world at stake, or explosive action. A corporate executive may bilk stockholders for billions with less inner conflict than you or I experience in pocketing a quarter of extra change from a cashier. Yet a poor man may agonize over stealing a loaf of bread to feed his children.

Because of his inner conflict, that poor man's story has more potential drama and success than the corporate executive's story does. So, even in a story of pure fun, like the Indiana Jones trilogy, Steven Spielberg gives us moments of great inner conflict that involve us in the important decisions Indy makes.

     

Creating Conflict in Character and Desire

To create conflict, you need three things: a main character, a goal for her or him, and opposition.

In carving out the characters of your protagonist and antagonist, connect each one's deepest desire to his fundamental difference from the other.

Shakespeare gives us an elegant example of this in Hamlet and his foil, Laertes. Hamlet is a man of honor — bona fide honor. Laertes is a man of seeming — for looks only, a fraud. If each were a note of currency, which would you honor? The bona fide one? or the counterfeit?

Let's see how this fundamental difference between these two characters plays out in how they behave.

HAMLET

Hamlet's honor is intact, so he needn't steal the semblance of it from others by dishonoring them. To the contrary, he liberally bestows honor on others. To preserve his honor he is modest, thoughtful, scrupulous, polite, gracious, humble, and obedient in all that he should be. His honor is so fine that he avoids being the cause of others doing something dishonorable, even against his own best interest. For example, he avoids causing the spies Rozencrantz and Guildenstern to betray the confidence of Claudius and Gertrude. His honor is so important to him that he accepts the semblance of dishonor rather than dishonor himself. In short, he is a man of respect.

Shakespeare shows us that Hamlet's honor manifests itself in all these ways to express itself as the character trait of respect — respect for God, his mother, himself, the throne, his office, the law, the bounds of morality, friendship, and all people, even the lowly. Above all, in sharp contrast to the rest of the court, Hamlet respects Truth. He does this by refusing to go along with the rest in acting out a fiction — namely that nobody knows everybody knows (a) that Claudius seduced the Queen and assassinated the king to get the throne and (b) that the royal marriage has disgraced the House of Denmark by violating a law — the one against incest (which the other characters act like they either don't know about or forgot about). In other words, Hamlet won't take part in this mass mockery of everybody offstage — the people of Denmark, the papacy, and the outside world.

In this way Shakespeare shows that respect is the outward sign of integrity. And he makes Hamlet's respect stand out in high relief against those occasions when he denies it to those enacting a mockery. Which is the antithesis of respect. Indeed, the perfection of respect for Truth expresses itself in Hamlet's courageous mocking contempt of those engaged in mockery.

LAERTES

Laertes just keeps up the appearances of being a man of honor. So, (a) he is a fraud and (b) being all for show, outward appearances are all that matter to him.

Though he loudly talks the talk of an honorable man, when nobody's looking, he doesn't walk the walk. Shakespeare warns us about this at the start: when Laertes is away in France, his angel-faced mask comes off. He is an impulsive, rash, loud and debauched phony who demonstrates extravagant disrespect for everyone and everything, even God.

The ultimate disrespect is to treat others as objects, not as human beings in their own right — to treat others as objects you own, objects you may use like a tool, with utter disregard for their rights and feelings and for the consequences to them of how you use them. And Laertes is a character who demonstrates this pathological personality at every turn:

• The moment he sees that Hamlet doesn't contest Claudius' assumption of the throne and puts up with his belittling sermon before the court, Laertes shows that, to him, his sister is but an object to exploit. To free her for sale to some husband with a promising future, he busts her relationship with Hamlet by cruelly telling her that Hamlet doesn't love her and just wants to deflower her.
• He shows that his extravagant display of love for his dead father is phony when it disappears the moment he gets what he wants from Claudius. Without a thought about the fatal consequences to his supporters, Laertes turns, thus betraying those he got to support him in his revolution.
• He is so crass and devoid of human feeling for his sister that he even upstages her at her funeral to exploit her as but a tool yet again — this time as the pretext for a spectacularly melodramatic show of grief to get attention and look good before an audience.

In other words, in Laertes Shakespeare shows us the character of a pathological narcissist. He and Hamlet are the antitheses of each other at every point, standing out in sharp conflict of both character and desire.

Since Hamlet loved Ophelia, and since Laertes' grand-standing display of grief at her grave uses her, it sets him off like a firecracker. Thus, at her grave, Shakespeare has the personalities of Hamlet and Laertes clash, even before Laertes and Claudius have a chance to carry out their plot to kill Hamlet.

So, in great stories, it isn't only the desires that clash, it's the personalities they spring from. As Lajos Egri says, mix a skeptic with a militant believer and you have a conflict.

     

The M.I.C.E. Quotient of a Story

All four elements of a story (milieu, idea, character, and events) are in all stories. They aren't all equally important in all stories, however. Depending on what the story is about, the relative amounts of each element should vary. That is, a story contains four types of information: information about the milieu, about the idea, about the characters, and about events.

To the extent that a story is about its milieu, the information in it should be about the milieu. In other words, the amount of information about milieu should be proportional to the importance of milieu in that story. In his excellent book, Characters and Viewpoint, Orson Scott Card calls the relative importance of each story element the story's M.I.C.E. Quotient -- its ratio of Milieu : Idea : Character : Events. And so, in a milieu story the milieu predominates. In an idea story the idea predominates. In a character story character predominates. And in an events story events predominate.

Often, it's a bit more complicated. A milieu story might also place a good deal of emphasis on events. In other words, its M.I.C.E. Quotient could be something like 4:1:1:2. Therefore, it should be composed of about four times as much milieu material as idea or character material and about twice as much event material as idea or character material.

Note that this principle contradicts the widespread belief that all good stories are character driven. Not so. In fact, you can actually wreck idea stories, milieu stories, and even events stories by too much emphasis on character.

For example, note that Agatha Christie's idea stories feature characters like Inspector Poirot, a fairly shallow main character with but some eccentricities to spice him up. If she delved too much into his character, she'd no longer have a whodunnit, but rather a story about Inspector Poirot.

     

Sympathetic Fictional Characters

Our human sensibilities can be turned on and off like a light switch. For the most part they are off for people we don't know. This is adaptive. Can you imagine what life would be like if we became as emotionally involved in the death of a stranger as in the death of our mother? What if you lived in Africa, where there are a thousand ways to die and by the time you're twenty, dozens of people you know have met untimely death? When you are flipping through television stations, scenes of mass havoc evoke no emotion from you, do they? Why? Because you don't care about those people.

So, every storyteller must get her audience to care about the characters. News photographers use art to get you care. As a writer you do this by gaining the reader's sympathy for your characters.

We more readily sympathize with some types of people than others. We more readily sympathize with the underdog in a sporting event. Charities, for example, focus on children because they know that we sympathize more readily with children than adults. So, all it takes is an artistic two-second shot of a poor child to elicit sympathy and win contributions. But only a masterful author can get people to sympathize with an imprisoned criminal. And sympathy for him must be earned the hard way: we must get to know him.

This is why your typical made-for-television movie begins with scenes of the happy family beginning another typical, happy day in their home . . . before the disaster befalls that is their story. In this way the scriptwriter lets the audience get to know the characters. She induces the audience to like them. Then, when disaster occurs, we care and we sympathize with their loss. Boom — when the experience thus takes on an emotional dimension, we become involved. Like any dream, at some level we know it's just a dream, but the emotion makes it seem so real. We want to see this family overcome catastrophe, and that is why we watch the movie.

This isn't the only way, or the best way, to get your readers emotionally involved in a story. In fact, this "happy-opening" device is overused, especially on TV. But it gets the job done efficiently.

Though you must elicit reader sympathy for your protagonist, you often cannot do so immediately. For example, you may have to set up the situation for him as Shakespeare does in the opening of Hamlet. Or, your protagonist may not be a character the reader will readily sympathise with. But, since you have only minutes to hook your reader (if that), touch his emotions immediately. In the opening plunge some character he can readily sympathize with into a situation that evokes emotion.

The essence of sympathy is favor. The surest way to get it is to make the reader feel sorry for this character. You can do this with any situation that makes the character suffer physically, mentally, or spiritually — such as humiliation, loneliness, oppression, danger, deprivation, or cruelty.

When your protagonist isn't a character the reader will readily sympathize with, open with a sympathetic character that you can transfer reader sympathy through. Mario Puzzo gives a masterful example of this device in The Godfather. Don Corleone, the Godfather, is anything but a character the reader can readily sympathize with. So, the story opens with a man who seeks justice from Corleone against men the courts let off for assaulting his daughter. Our sympathy (favor) is transferred through him to the Godfather with this noble cause.

A character needn't be admirable to be sympathetic. He may be downright reprehensible, as the Godfather, or pathetic and wretched.

     

The Importance of Character

One important reason people read fiction is to read about people. Daily we encounter people saying, doing, and experiencing things we don't understand. Human nature puzzles and intrigues us. The desire to get into other people's heads is universal, and fiction is a portal. This desire is more than curiosity. It is true interest, programmed into us by our genes. For, understanding human nature is crucial to survival in our species.

In fact, readers are more interested in characters than action. They quickly lose interest in even the most exciting action if it doesn't involve characters they care about. Yet this doesn't mean that action is secondary. In fact, you can have a story without characters, but you cannot have a story without action.

There is no value in joining the age-old argument whether character creates plot or plot creates character. It is like the age-old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. You cannot take the character out of the action any more than you can take the action out of the character.

There is really nothing wrong with either position on the question of which is more important, plot or character. It depends on whether you consider it from the audience's point of view or the author's. Moreover, in all honesty, like their disdain for science, much glorification of character and disdain for exciting plot-action is the vanity of artistes (pronounce ar-TEESTS) with delusions of being smarter than those whose more successful, popular writing they devalue.

You cannot have a story without action. But you can indeed have a story without characters, one that interests an audience. An example of such a story is a news story. So is history. Fairy tales, too, can hardly be said to have real characters. Aristotle merely acknowledged this fact. But he didn't say that such a story will be a blockbuster! It certainly couldn't hold a reader's interest for 400 pages.

Journalists know that, though unnecessary, characters do add interest. That is why fiction-writing techniques invaded journalism: they sell the news for maximum profit. So, thirty years ago you got the straight poop in a news story. Today you get the facts sprinkled among the bits of information in a human interest story. For example, thirty years ago, you read that 1,000 people in Smallville lost their jobs and that this event greatly affected the local economy. Today you read the story of one of those people. It is a story that evokes sympathy from you for him or her. The addition of this character to the story adds "human interest" (often a euphemism for drama) and sells much more news than a story without it. That's why fiction-writing techniques in journalism exaggerate a story's weight: the motive is profit, not altruism.

A great writer's characters tower above the rest much more than their plots do. But that doesn't make character more important than plot. Only great writers penetrate the facade over human nature to show us the human race as it really is, not as our collective illusions would have it be. Only F. Scott Fitzgerald shows how sickeningly nearly everybody treats the great Gatsby — not prime-time TV. Only Shakespeare shows the whole court of Denmark ignoring the elephant in the middle of the room, persecuting Hamlet as crazy for seeing it — not prime-time TV. TV is cozy; great literature, profound. So, though the hallmark of a great writer is ruthlessly true-to-life characters, a novel with a weak plot is at least as boring as a novel with weak characters.

You cannot create a plot without a general idea of the characters who will perform the actions that move it. And you cannot create a character without a general idea of what will happen to him. So, you start with a premise that establishes the rudiments of both.

     

The Rule That Your Main Character Must Change -- Part 2

As I said yesterday, what must change about your main character is his or her emotional state. This change is a natural result of rising conflict.

The hero decides on a course of action to fix his problem. Obstacles frustrate his efforts. Each intensifies the conflict, causing him to choose a new course of action. In other words, "the plot thickens." If he gave up, you would have no story. So, mounting obstacles test his desire. They up the ante, increasing his determination to achieve his goal.

That determination is what changes. That's what "grows from pole to pole." Think of it as mounting desire, a growing hunger and thirst. It grows from being relatively mild to the point of being desperate. This change readies your character for the final conflict.

And, as Shakespeare tells us through Hamlet, "The readiness is all."

In the end, Hamlet's determination has increased to the point that he is ready to do anything to achieve his goal. Ready to die. Suddenly all his inner conflict is gone.

Spielberg shows us the same thing in the Indiana Jones trilogy. When the bad guys throw an obstacle in his face, Indy just becomes more determined than ever to achieve his goal. He gets to the point that he will even swim in hot pursuit of a German submarine!

In all seriousness Shakespeare does likewise. Each of Hamlet's soliloquies shows increasing determination. Each shows what Hamlet is ready to do at that point. In the beginning Hamlet meekly takes Claudius' belittling sermon, willing only to demonstrate the passive resistance of refusing to break mourning for the dead king. When he is absolutely certain of Claudius' guilt and that the court is willfully blind to it, he becomes openly rebellious. In short, the mounting opposition he encounters, climaxing in the court's obdurate refusal to know what Claudius has done, drives him to keep seeing and raising the bet with bolder and bolder action. In the end he is ready to walk into an ambush for the evidence he needs to justify justice.

Claudius too grows from pole to pole this way. Before the beginning, he made an obvious mistake by not killing Prince Hamlet right along with King Hamlet. But he wasn't willing to risk losing the affection of the Queen. In the end, he has been driven to the point that he is willing to do anything. Rather than blow his plot to kill Hamlet, he lets the Queen drink the poison he intended for her son.

She too grows from pole to pole in determination to have things her way. In the beginning she was willing to overlook the betrayal and destruction of her husband but not her son. In the end, she will do anything to keep what she got, by covering her guilt. So she joins in discrediting Hamlet by the abysmal act of screaming that he was attempting to kill her. She thus caused Polonius' death. For, when Polonius, who could not see that she was in no danger, cried out in alarm, Hamlet justifiably killed the presumable assassin hiding behind the drapery in the Queen's bedroom. But she dumps her guilt for that on her son, too.

All Shakespeare's characters are thus driven by rising conflict. The ultimate example is Macbeth. In fact all characters in all good, dramatic stories are thus driven by mounting desire in the face of mounting opposition.

So, an essential change in the habits, beliefs, or attitudes of your character may occur, but need not occur. If your hero starts out a drunk, his mounting desire will make him ready to give up drinking, as a necessary step in achieving success. In the end he'll be sober, but that doesn't mean you must use a character who begins drunk. For example, from beginning to end, Hamlet is solicitous about his reputation. Though he does sacrifice it, his dying request is that Horatio salvage it for him. No change there. From beginning to end Hamlet is so dismayed and miserable that he'd rather be dead, but he fears death throughout, risks but tries to protect his life throughout, and holds suicide a sin. No essential "character change" there either. None whatsoever. Only an ever increasing hunger and thirst for justice.

Opposed by an ever increasing terror in Claudius and Gertrude that needs to escape justice.

Spielberg adds a profound postscript. In all three Indiana Jones stories, Indy is driven partly by a desire for "fortune and glory." In the end, however, he always avoids destruction by resisting desire. When the Ark of the Covenant is violated, he is as desirous of violating this privacy with his eyes as everybody else, but he shuts them tightly and avoids the wrath of God. When he acquires the prized Shankara Stone, he really wants to take it to a museum. But he returns it to where it belongs, where it has the power to bring life, instead. And, when the Holy Grail is an inch from his grasp -- well, that was a close one. His father had to bring him back to his senses by warning him to "Let it go."

     

The Rule That Your Main Character Must Change

We often hear that characters are changed by the events of a story. James N. Frey holds that your characters must "grow from pole to pole." These are often misunderstood statements. By them, we do not mean that a character's "character" must change in the same way we would mean that a person's "character" changes. A behavioral or attitude change may occur, but that isn't necessary.

For example, in The Last Crusade, both Indiana Jones and his father change. In the beginning, neither understands the other. Indy resents his father for not paying more attention to him as a boy. His father, an intellectual with his head buried in ancient books, found his son "uninteresting." During the story they each learn some lessons. Indy learns that he shouldn't envy his friends who had doting parents, because they violated their children's privacy with as much control as attention. He learns that his upbringing thus respected him as a sovereign person and fostered his ability to make decisions and think for himself. It's what made him so well able to take care of himself. On the other hand, Indy's father learns that he is very ignorant of many things. He learns much from his son. He learns that Indy has valuable knowledge -- knowledge about the real world, knowledge not got from books -- and that his son is anything but dull and boring. Most important, he learns that you must show people you care about them. In the end they have grown into deep understanding and appreciation of each other. (Though Spielberg humorously makes you wonder how long this lesson will hold.)

In many great dramatic stories, however, no such fundamental change in the attitude, beliefs or behavior of a character occurs. Let alone one that goes "from pole to pole." Your character need not change from a coward to a hero, from sobriety to drunkenness, from simplicity to crookedness, or from brazenness to humility. Shakespeare's characters, for example, typically do not undergo such a transformation.

In fact, strict adherence to the myth that "character change" is necessary results in much contrived (and therefore weak) fiction that sacrifices meaning and drama to somehow teach the hero some lesson along the way.

As Frey says, what does change, and what must change, is the character's emotional state. This change is a natural result of rising conflict.

More on this tomorrow.