Hitler Liked Dogs; Creating Nuanced Characters

If you've been following the American presidential election at all, you might have noticed a pattern in the political process, a pattern that has always been there, but has sharpened in the last twenty years. Politicians -- and their campaigns -- no longer debate issues, they demonize their opposition. And this isn't simply between parties, it happens within the party itself.

Look at the Democratic battle. If you like Bernie Sanders, Hillary is a lying scumbag and the worst possible option for president. If you're a Republican, your competitors are "losers." And this is not the fault of the politicians. I repeat, it is not their fault. If they don't do this, if they do not go "full negative," it is very difficult to win. (Everyone would suggest that Obama is the exception, but in 2008 during the primaries, his camp vilified Clinton.)

It is unfortunate that the electorate finds this negativity so compelling, but it does. Here in Canada, our new PM, Justin Trudeau, had only been in office for a few days before the Conservatives started taking shots at him. Days. Not years or even months. Days.

The Importance of Nuanced Characters

This is also true in fiction. There are still many writers, particularly those who write genre fiction as I do, who insist on having "evil" characters and "good" characters. It's one thing to find this extremism in politics, it's another to find it in a novel. It suggests that the writer either doesn't understand human nature or has a very narrow view of the world, neither of which is helpful for producing stories that not only make us think, but give us a better understanding of human nature.

The purpose of any story is to help us understand ourselves and our world and our place in it. It isn't simply to provide entertainment. If the only goal is entertainment, then the story will be simple, and not in a good way. (Think about all those empty blockbusters that we see during the summer, the ones with great special effects and laced with a story we forget as soon as we walk out of the theater.)

That's not to say that every character needs to be an anti-hero, either. Generally, you want your protagonist to be likable, but you also want to be able to identify with that character. That means flaws.

The flip side to that means your antagonist must have moments of likability. Or in the very least, you must provide some understanding of why said character is acting in such a manner. Most novelists do well enough presenting flawed heroes. The same is not true for their "villains."

I cannot tell you how many books I've edited where my first message to the authour is to create more nuance in their characters. At first, this sounds like a daunting task, but it's really not. All that's needed is more thought about what the character is like. Some authours use a sheet listing characteristics, some create a bio or resume, others do an entire family background. Whatever works. In my case, I try to emphasize at least one point of honour for every villain (I don't love that term, but you know what I mean) in at least two scenes in each novel.

Hitler Liked Dogs

For example, if I was writing about Hitler, who was indeed a vile human, I would have a scene with him caring for his dogs. The reason we do this isn't to make Hitler look good, but to emphasize his humanity. What we're looking for is the contrast, not between good characters and evil characters, but the contrast of good and evil within the character.

This develops nuance. It also makes your story more unpredictable. If I know that character A always acts a certain way, the story becomes predictable. And boring.

Ultimately  the reader is looking for is someone they can identify with, someone who reminds them of themselves. When a critic says that the characters "leap off the page," this is what they're referring to.

I don't think our politics are going to change any time soon. But it is possible for the electorate, for us, to do a better job communicating with those who see the world differently. We writers need to do a better job of this as well. Not only to create better stories, but to help our readers see the depth in the world and in people that the twenty-four hours news cycle will never show us.

Listen, we live in an age of memes and six second vines and 140 character opinion pieces. As writers, we need to do a better job pulling people out of the cycle of false dichotomies. It's true that some people are more helpful than others and others are are more selfish. But we're all human.

And there is nothing simple about being human.

Artists Are Neither Politicians or Propagandists

I probably shouldn't be writing this post. Not with my debut novel about to break and three more in the series due out next year. I shouldn't be writing this because there's a very good chance I'm going to upset some people, people who might be potential readers. It might hurt my sales and someone who might have enjoyed my work will never give it a chance.

What I should do is shut my mouth and post something that won't offend anyone, something that will get eyeballs and clicks and possibly entice someone to check out my other work.

Except, I'm not going to do that. I'm an artist, not a politician. And when artists decide that sales are more important than what they're trying to say, they aren't artists any more. That's not to say that everything an artist writes or paints or creates needs to deal with serious political or societal issues. Hey, that's the same kind of bourgeois attitude I ripped the other day in my post about Star Wars. Writing coaches suggest that every writer will explore two or three themes in their life, and that all of their work will revolve around those themes, whatever they are. Sure, they could be things like class issues or equality or religious bigotry, but they could also be themes like the importance of family, certain political issues, or sibling relationships. It could be any number of things that an artist feels passionately about, whatever it is that draws them back to the empty canvas.

The choice of theme is not important. What's important that we never censor our opinion on that which gives our work life. As soon as we do that, we might as well print ads for a car company, because we aren't acting as artists anymore. As soon we allow our concern about our sales figures to edit our work even a little, we've taken our first step to becoming a politician. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a politician or believing that you could make a difference in you ran for city council, but you can't be both.

ROBERT B. PARKER

I grew up in a small, white town circa. the 1980's, and the only thing I knew about the gay community was that they were sinners, perverts and gross. That's what I'd been taught. Don't get me wrong, my parents are extraordinarily kind, so were the people in my church, but as I didn't know anyone who was gay, and as there were no positive representations in the media (Ellen "Degenerate" Degeneres, remember that, ugh!) was still years away from getting her first sitcom on ABC), so I believed them. My stance tempered into my twenties, though I still believed it was sin. Still a perversion. Until I met Mr. Parker.

Well, I didn't meet him in person (That would have been great!), but I met him through his Spenser detective series, still my favourite all these years later. In his series, there was a minor recurring character, Lee Farrell, who was gay. He was tough and kind, a good cop. I'd never even fathomed that someone gay could be a tough cop. (Gay people were "fairies.") That didn't make sense. But it was my favourite series, and so the more I read, the more I started to question what I'd been taught.

That's right, my first positive gay role model was a fictional character.

I learned, years later, that Parker had two sons and that both were gay. Farrell was a secondary character, but for a diehard conservative like me, he was the first to crack open the door to my worldview and offer me a different look at the world. That single character would lead to further reading, and as I got older, I rejected my earlier notions about homosexuality. In fact, equality (a rejection of my misunderstanding of feminism as well) with regards to sexuality and gender and race is one of the prominent themes in my books.

THEMES ARE NOT STORIES
But a theme is not a story. As strongly as I feel about equality and class and serving the less fortunate (I'm pretty much a weight-lifting hippy), I write action-packed dystopian fantasy novels with a lot of violence and weapons. The themes originate organically from my story. Sure, idiots like Trump drive me crazy, and the Republican party in the US, as it stands now, makes me gasp in disbelief. That said, but I have a number of conservative friends who've read THE LAST ANGEL (Advanced Reader Copies) and loved it. I know a number of conservatives who loved Parker's books, too.

When theme dominates your story, you've sold out in the other direction. Instead of becoming a politician, you become a propagandist. Ken Follett has become guilty of this the past decade. After writing the brilliant PILLARS OF THE EARTH (1989), he wrote the sequel 18 years later, WORLD WITHOUT END (2007). It was completely unreadable. Essentially it was an essay on why he was right, and anyone who disagreed with him was an idiot. There was nothing organic about it. Understand, Follett is a leftist Atheist. Aside from not being an Atheist, I generally agree with his worldview and I was still massively offended. I've been known to say a time or two on Facebook that "you're an idiot if you think this way"(Trump, yup), but never in my stories.

Art needs to be prismatic, and the only way that happens if we explore our deep seated passions, the ones that will become our themes, and allow the story to bloom from them. As soon as we allow the other voices into our heads ("this will hurt your sales," or "people should believe this!") we lose the very thing that not only gives our work power, but the thing that defines us as artists.

It probably wasn't smart for me to tell you that I'm a hippy. Or that I dislike xenophobes like the popular Trump. Or that I'm a feminist who features minority characters in their stories. It probably wasn't the smart thing to do, and I imagine it can only hurt my sales this year. That's okay. The only reason I was able to write this series (four written in the past eighteen months) is that after many years I finally stopped worrying about what others might say. As soon as I stopped listening to those voices, my work took shape in a way I hadn't expected.

Why?

Because I'm an artist, not a politician.

-Steve

Obama Will Survive the Doom Prophets(reprint)

Authour's note: My apologies, but a condensed version of this column appeared in the Welland Tribune on April 17th, 2009. I posted the lengthier version here after its initial printing, but then needed to pull it off to double check the proper release date. Enjoy.

-Steve

I paused on the sidewalk outside the pub. A chalked sign announced what I was hearing over the speakers.

"Obama's inauguration. Live! C'mon in."

I glanced in through the window. On the big screen television above the bar was the new president. Beside me, two men in suits and overcoats had stopped to listen. About ten feet away, three men wearing yellow hard hats were leaning against the brick next to one of the speakers, smoking and listening. I listened for a while before continuing down the street to work. People stopping in the street for a presidential inauguration speech? A live presentation in a pub? The last time I'd seen a spontaneously diverse gathering like this was the aftermath of 9/11. Before that, the first Iraq war. Both times, however, the distinct feelings of outrage and fear had been palpable. People united by their anger. Today the scent was entirely different, and it left me feeling strangely buoyed and positive. A president who inspired people, I remember thinking, what a change.

For most of us, the commotion and excitement of Obama's inauguration feels like a long time ago. Less than two months after Obama's visit to the Canadian capital, where people lined up as early as 4am hoping to catch a glimpse of the new president, the news these days are flooded with Doom prophets. From moderates like Peggy Noonan "weightless administration" to extremists like Rush Limbaugh. ("I want him to fail.") Despite Obama's weighted comments about having patience with the economy in his inauguration speech, it seems that the apocalypse sells better than reality.

The Republicans have always done gloom better than the Democrats. Following 9/11, the promise of another imminent attack was used to pass the Patriot Act, which limited individual rights more than any other bill in the last Century, secure "suspected terrorists" in Guantanamo Bay without trial, and start an endless war on a sovereign country that has led to an incalculable loss of life. All this in the name of Doom.

The problem facing the Democrats is that appealing to people's fears is a good strategy. The only silver bullet for them in the past thirty odd-years has been the economy, which Clinton both helped turn and then rode to a popular two term presidency. With the current economic climate however, Obama faces a dual challenge for his time in office. The first is to convince the American public that they are safe, a surprisingly daunting task when you consider the last fifty years, but not terribly surprising when you understand the politics of fear.
From a very young age, we are conditioned to be aware of abnormal -- read negative -- behaviour. We are taught, for example, that people are selfish, when humanity is by far the most cooperative species on the planet.

Every day people open doors for one another, wait patiently in line, smile and say hello, offer a word of kindness, and wait for the traffic light to change. The examples are endless. Yet our tendency is to remember the rare times when those things do not occur. "She cut me off." "He completely ignored me." And so on. The difficulty for Obama will be to convince the American people that they are safe, without saying, "Of course we are. Look at the facts." Accepting that in the past twenty years, the number of deaths due to terrorism is somewhere under 0.0001 per cent of the population, we begin to see how effective the doom prophets can be.

The other problem for Obama is that he cannot use Clinton's strategy, "It's the economy, stupid." And while it was a Republican government that enacted the greatest deficit in U. S. history, the old Conservatives continue to bang the drum of the apocalypse by misstating Obama's proper Keynesian response as "liberal big government." This past month, an op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal proclaimed, "Obama's Radicalism is Killing the Dow." Michael J. Boskin, the economics professor who wrote the article, unsurprisingly chaired the Council of Economic advisers under the first Bush. Another old prophet of doom.

Unfortunately, the constant bleating from the back rows is starting to gain traction. Obama's approval rating sits at 61%. Still high, but it is the lowest it has been since his inauguration. The honeymoon is over. For most leaders, especially Democratic presidents, the task ahead would be daunting if not impossible. Obama, however, has one advantage. We saw it through the campaign. We witnessed it during the inauguration. And we're seeing it now. It is Obama's ability to appeal to our "better" self. To, as he said recently, not mute the public's anger, but "channel" it. To help us notice what we should notice. This counter-intuitive ideology, however, is something that only the great leaders can communicate.

What Obama understands better than most is that genuine influence is much more than getting people to do what you want them to do. It means people finish what you started because they believe. This is the essence of faith. And as Annette Simmons writes in her book, The Story Factor, story is the pathway to faith. People must own their changes, must own their story, because they value their own conclusions more highly than yours. Other methods of influence -- persuasion, bribery, or fear -- are push strategies. Story is a pull strategy. If your story is good enough, people -- of their own free will -- come to the conclusion that they can trust you and the message you bring.

In the turbulent times of the early sixties, JFK challenged our view of government with these words: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Martin Luther King, another leader to whom Obama has been compared, inspired a country to revolutionize its social patterns with his vision, "I have a dream." Their stories became our stories. (The power of their influence was great enough to affect a young Wellander, who would later pass those tales on to his son.)

The question for us then, is whose story are we going to choose? Apocalypse Now... or Hope for Tomorrow?

In purely rhetorical terms, as great as Kennedy was, Obama is better. And like Kennedy, his appeal spans a wide demographic. In the coming years, he will need every ounce of those abilities if he is to overcome the prophets that will be barking their message at every opportunity.

The criticisms from Wall Street notwithstanding, until we learn whether the stimulus package worked, Obama's influence remains more felt than political, more art than science. That is not a criticism. While administration and policy are important, the leaders who create new stories for us are the ones who truly affect our lives. I hope that he is re-elected. I hope we choose his story. If only so we can re-discover that feeling we all had the day he was inaugurated. The day we stood outside the pub to hear something we hadn't heard before: a leader bringing people together, without the scent of fear.

That said, if the economy does not recover as quickly as we need it to, he might still not win a second term, the doom prophets will not allow it.

The Audacity of Hope-lessness

He's there again. Curled inside the subway entrance, his emaciated body prone, his hand clutched tightly around a bottle. The other arm is tucked under his head as a pillow, his faded sweater draped over his still form like a flag. I pause, as I always do, and then walk past. It makes me feel, but I can't identify the emotion. Pity. Compassion. Anger. Indifference. Every time it's different, and it worries me that a sad sight would make me feel something other then sad. Must our response to the world always emanate from our own selfish projections? Must it always be about me?

It's been a long day and I try not to think about it as I head down the long flight of stairs to get to the train. It will be good to sit down. This past week I received a few emails, but none that touched me so deeply as one from a dear friend, who had read my blog and, in her own way, echoed the comments of others. "How am I to find hope, as you say, when my life seems only to return to the same troubles and heartaches, time after time?"

The train arrives and it is surprisingly empty. I take a seat near the back and ease into it. Two women drape themselves into the seats across from me, carrying their conversation onboard. Their voices are loud and angry, but when I close my eyes, I am able, for a time, to ignore them.

I'm thinking about my friend, and about the many who have written me, not just this past week, but the past few years, telling me their story and asking the same question, if phrased differently, about hope. How do we find hope in a world that returns, as it were, to the same rotten pool, year after year, century after century, civilization after civilization? Despite our accrued knowledge, the human condition has changed little. Moreover, if history teaches us anything, it is that while the world changes, people do not. We all want joy. We all search for love. And we all need hope. And yet, no matter how rich our country, no matter how high our education, too often hope remains an ideal. Very rarely does it enter into our life as anything approaching reality.



"That bitch needs to be shot."

I open my eyes, no longer able to block out the conversation from the two women, who are cursing and complaining about their day at work at so loud a volume I find my hand groping for the remote. The train is two stops from home, but the force of their negativity is so stifling I nearly ask them to be quiet and complain somewhere else. Not everyone wants to share your anger. We all have problems. I take a deep breath and swallow my frustration. I've had days like that, too.

Two seats over is a copy of the morning newspaper. On the cover is a picture of Sarah Palin, but it isn't another Lenscrafter advertisement. She photographs well (with one exception), and she is always smiling. But listening to her is difficult. The words from the "pit-bull with lipstick" seem quite in contrast with her smiling pictures. Not particularly eloquent, she is forceful and direct and, beneath the looks and smiles, seems every bit as vicious as the dog in her now infamous "joke."

In the middle of the paper is another article about Obama, about the man "selling" hope. No doubt "Obama-mania" is, as one writer expressed, a "runaway train", with the finances and smooth workings of a machine-like campaign. And Obama himself, who uses the word "hope" perhaps more than any politician in recent memory, at times feels as abstract as the theme of his campaign. But is he real? Does he really believe in hope? Or is he merely a projection of that which we all long for?


The train squeals to a stop, and the two women leave, still complaining, their voices carrying until the doors hiss to a close and washes the subway in blessed silence.

If hope were easy, it would never hold the thematic weight of a presidential campaign. If hope were something endemic to the nature of humanity, it would not capture our imagination to the extent that it does. And it certainly would not hold us in its wake as such an integral, if mysterious and hidden, principle for a better life. That said, as difficult as it seems to find hope in our lives, the audacity of hopelessness seems equally shocking to me.


The train stops for the final time, and I wearily climb the three flights of stairs to the surface. The sky has begun to fall, and the tall glass buildings outside the subway seem almost liquid in their reflections. I pause at the hot dog stand just outside the exit. They remind me of times when I was young, when my friends would come over during the summer months, when we would play basketball in the driveway and the carport would be filled with the sounds and smells of hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill. I'm still deciding if I should have one when a man in his mid-forties wearing a gray suit and red power tie steps in front of a woman in line and orders before she has a chance. The look she gives him could scald a small planet, but he blithely ignores her and takes his time fixing his food. The look on his face is as empty as his actions. I shake my head, my decision made, and head toward my car.

Unlike many, I do not believe hopelessness to be merely a reflection of our education or circumstances. Hopelessness is a reflection of our attitude. It is true that often it is hard to find our way, when unmet expectations and disappointments crowd our life. People lose hope (especially as they age) because, like the woman at the hot dog stand, they realize that things will never really change. That people will be selfish. That people will disappoint us. That life will never be truly easy. And that the distractions so easily available in our culture are probably worth more of our time than the relationships around us, the ones that too often break our hearts. Hopelessness, I think, is a direct result of our loss of faith in humanity. The Enlightenment taught us that humanity was progressing, that we were becoming more civilized. More just. More humane. But any casual glance at history, and at the world around us, reveals otherwise.

The church has done it too. Religion has often taught that to follow a particular viewpoint, a particular creed, is what we need to keep us safe and give us hope. If not now, then certainly in the afterlife. We hold fast to these creeds, cling to them as if our lives depend on them, because, in so many ways, they do. It is the way, seemingly the only way, we can justify the extremely un-relational tendencies in our lives. We pass the broken woman on the street corner, ignore the news about the poor, and then hand out tracts and pamphlets and argue with strangers to promote "God's love." And yet, in those small, still moments, we wonder why the darkness still follows us, don't we?

The day has turned to twilight, and the heavens burn a bright orange as the sun sinks low for another day. I hunch forward, pulling up my hood, eager to be home. I remember what it is like to be without hope. I remember because I still wrestle with it at times. What I've learned however, is that often my lack of hope is a result of my own unwillingness to spend my life for those around me. It seems a paradox, but I've learned that the only way to find hope, is to give it away.


My car is alone on the street. I'm the last one to go home tonight, it seems. About ten feet from my car, an elderly couple is crossing the street. They walk slowly, holding hands. At the sidewalk, the man gently helps his wife up onto the curb. She smiles at him, and her smile says more than words could convey. I watch them shuffle past me, their hands gripped tightly, their bodies leaning together, until they pass from view. My stomach clenches, and I can feel the emotions rising inside me. I shake my head, breathing deep, happy to have witnessed such a tender moment.

Hopelessness asks one simple question: "Why bother?" A person of hope has only one answer: "I exist to love the people around me. It is who I am. More importantly, it is why I am."

To my knowledge, serving others is the only way to stay off the inevitable treadmill of self-perpetuating disappointments in the endless search to "have more" and "get more." And accepting God's help is the only way I know to keep us on the right path.

The truth is that we will never find the life we seek through our successes. Not through our accomplishments or even the recognition we receive in the moments we are unselfish. Hope, real hope, the kind that breathes into your life and fills your soul, exists only when we accept what it means to be human. So long as our lives serve to echo the love that God offers to us, so long as we do all we can to give encouragement and love and yes, hope, to the people around us, we will know what it means to walk as we were meant to walk, and to live as we were meant to live.

My car starts easily, and for a moment, I am still. I breathe a prayer of thanks for my job and my life, for those who have made my life possible.

There is an audacity to hopelessness that most of us do not like to admit. Some days I prefer to dwell on what isn't. On what I've lost and on the failures and disappointments in my life. It's easier then working on this thing called hope, and this other thing called humanity. People may never change, but we can.

You have much to offer the ones around you. Over the years I have no doubt that you have faced discouragement, that people have cut you down and cut you off, that loved ones have abused your love and taken advantage of you. I understand it because I've been there too. We all have.

My prayer then, this week, is that you will realize how much God loves you. Not one we so often create, the one we remember from our childhood, with all the petty rules and harsh vindictiveness of humanity, but the Creator who is so much greater than we could ask or imagine. The One who loved us so much that for a time, He joined our race to help lead us toward home. Toward a life of hope. More than any religion, precious is this understanding, this understanding of a God who longs to extend his love to us, and to those in our lives who need it most. I believe it is in those moments, when we are able to ignore the pressing urge to serve ourselves, when we see in others what we so desperately long for in our own lives, and when we push through our own struggles to offer just a bit of light to those around us, that we will find our path, and hope will come home to stay.

-Steve