Lawrence Block - Writing the Novel

Ordinary? Scarcely that. But so real that I sometimes have to remind myself that Wolfe and Goodwin are the creations of a writer’s mind, that no matter how many doorbells I ring in the West Thirties, I’ll never find the right house.

That’s characterization. It was the ability to create characters readers could care about, too, that made Charles Dickens a monumental popular success. While Oscar Wilde might have remarked that only a man with a heart of stone could read of the death of Little Nell without laughing, the truth of the matter is that readers did not laugh when they read that scene. They wept.

Some novels depend rather more on characterization than do others. In the novel of ideas, the characters often exist as mouthpieces for various philosophical positions; while the writer may have taken the trouble to describe them and give them diverse individual attributes, they often have little real life outside of their specific argumentative role in the novel.

Some whodunits rely on the clever intricacy of their plotting to hold the reader’s attention, stinting on characterization in the process. Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason mysteries can be compulsively readable, but does Mason himself ever emerge as anything more than a forceful courtroom presence and a keen legal mind? Agatha Christie supplied her Hercule Poirot with a variety of attitudes and pet expressions, but I’ve never found that the little Belgian added up to anything more than the sum of these quirks and phrases. He serves admirably as a vehicle for the solution of brilliant mystery puzzles but does not interest me much as a character.

On reflection, it seems to me that even in these categories — the novel of ideas, the plot-heavy whodunit — my favorite novels are those in which the author has created characters to whom I am capable of responding strongly. Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon is a brilliant novel of political and philosophical argument; I find it ever so much more effective because the lead character, Rubashov, is so absorbing a human being. And, while one of Ms. Christie’s Poirot mysteries will always do to fill an idle hour, I’m a passionate fan of her Jane Marple stories, not because their plots are appreciably different from the Poirots but because Marple herself is such a fascinating character, warm and human and alive.

So characterization is important in fiction, and especially so in the novel. The argument is hardly a controversial one. With that much established, how does one go about creating characters with whom the reader can identify, characters he’ll want to spend time with, characters whose fate will be a matter of concern to him?

A first principle of characterization may seem fairly obvious, but I think it’s worth stating. Characters are most effective when they are so drawn that the author can identify with them, sympathize with them, care about them, and enjoy their company.

At the risk of sounding like an armchair psychoanalyst, I would suggest that all characters are to a greater or lesser extent a projection of the author’s own personality. I know this is true in my own writing. While all my characters are not like me by any means, they are each and every one the people I would be were I clothed in their particular skins. In other words, when I create a character I work very much in the manner of an actor playing a role. I play that character’s part, improvising his dialogue on the page, slipping into his role as I go along.

This is most obviously the case with viewpoint characters; indeed, it’s commonplace for readers to make the mistake of too closely identifying an author with the attitudes and opinions of his novel’s narrator. But I know that in my own writing, this identification is true too for the subordinate characters, the villains, the bit players, for everyone who puts in an appearance. I do most of the work of characterization from the inside out, playing all the parts myself, writing all the dialogue, and walking all the characters through their paces. Naturally, in any given novel there will be some characters with whom I can more readily identify than others; it’s generally true those are the characters I do a better job with.

It’s important, I think, to play around with the idea of a character before plunging into a book. Occasionally in the past I’ve rushed to get a first chapter written without taking the time to figure out who the people were, letting the characters define themselves on the page. This was the case with Deadly Honeymoon; I was concerned with a plot and incident and dramatic effect, and so I began writing the book with no clear picture of the bridal couple who served as the book’s joint leads. I think the book might have been a good deal better had I known more about my characters before I began.

With Tanner, I had an abundance of time. After I’d first been taken with the notion of writing about a permanent insomniac, as I explained in the preceding chapter, I read something in an encyclopedia indicating that the British royal house of Stuart survived to the present time, with the current pretender some sort of Bavarian princeling. I thought this was splendid, and decided my insomniac could be plotting the restoration of the House of Stuart to the British throne.

That didn’t go anywhere, but it gave me this image of Tanner as a devotee of political lost causes. I thought of him from time to time and figured out other things about his character. I decided he’d have lots of time on his hands, not having to spend eight hours a day sleeping, and I thought he could put that time to use by compulsively learning one language after another. This sort of scholarly devotion seemed to fit the occupation I decided to give him — I had him write theses and examination papers to order for students with more money than industry.

Tanner’s gradual evolution over a period of a couple of years was such that, when Providence provided me with a plot, my character was all set to go. It was easy to plot the book to suit the particular character I had already created in my mind. And that character, quirky and highly individualistic, was one with whom I could identify profoundly, because for all our differences Tanner was very clearly a projection of the author. He was precisely the person I would have been had I been wearing his skin and living his life.

Another series character of mine illustrates the manner in which one can adapt and define a character to suit the requirement of author-identification.

Two things inspired the creation of Matt Scudder. First, it was an opportune time for me to do a detective series for Dell Books. Second, I’d just read On the Pad, Leonard Shecter’s excellent book with and about Bill Phillips, the New York City cop, admittedly corrupt, who’d collected evidence for an investigative commission and who had been tried and found guilty of the murder of a call girl and her pimp. What struck me was the notion of a corrupt cop, living with and on corruption, running his own hustles, and functioning all the while as a very effective policeman, breaking cases and putting criminals in jail.

As I began working on the character, I realized that the cop I had in mind might make an absorbing character, that I might very well enjoy reading someone else’s interpretation of such a character, but that he was not a character with whom I could identify sufficiently in order to write books about him myself. I’m not comfortable using viewpoint characters who function within a bureaucracy. For one reason or another, I’ve always felt more comfortable from the point of view of an outsider. I didn’t feel at all sanguine about my ability to render a crooked cop believable, let alone sympathetic.

So I let my imagination play around with Scudder, and then I sat down at a typewriter and began writing a long memo to myself about the man. I decided he was something of a burnt-out case; he had been a cop, had lived with wife and children in the suburbs, and had been both a proficient detective and a man to whom small-scale corruption was a way of life. Then, while thwarting a tavern holdup while off-duty, his ricocheting bullet killed a small child. This led poor Scudder to an agonizing reappraisal of his own life and enough existential angst to drown a litter of kittens. He left his wife and kids, moved into a monastic hotel room in Manhattan, quit the police force, picked up the habit of visiting churches and lighting candles, and became a serious drinker. Occasionally he would earn money as an unofficial and unlicensed private detective, using his contacts in the NYPD and investigating cases with the special sensibilities of a hip and hard-nosed cop.