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flashback to Sam's days in Vietnam. He remained aloof from the
men in his platoon, acting as if he weren't actually there (because
he wished he weren't). Some crisis on a dangerous reconnais-
sance, however, forced him into emotionally risky affiliation with
someone else, and Sam rose to the occasion. You give us this in
a flashback. This flashback both helps us understand Sam better
and prepares us for his eventual reconnection with his daugh-
ter after Martha's behavior has become desperate enough.
Or maybe a war scene wouldn't fit with the tone of your
novel. So instead you show us Sam in a more domestic crisis,
perhaps involving his aging mother, who has to move into a nurs-
ing home. When the situation is heated enough, Sam comes
through. Not before, and not happily but he does come
through.
Even small parts of scenes can foreshadow your character's
ability to become whatever you eventually have him become.
Though Elizabeth Bennet dislikes Mr. Darcy for most of Pride
and Prejudice, we believe her eventual change of heart toward him
for two reasons. First, we see that Elizabeth is capable of changing
her opinion when there is real evidence: In earlier scenes she
revises her opinion of George Wickham, Charles Bingley and
Charlotte Lucas. Second, we see that she has a high regard for
behavior that is ethical, generous and self-effacing. When Darcy
behaves in those ways about Elizabeth's sister's disastrous elope-
ment, it's not difficult to accept that his behavior would have an
effect on Elizabeth's opinion of him.
Foreshadow your protagonist's major change by (1) showing
he's capable of other changes, and (2) showing values he holds
that make changing his mind plausible.
WHY DOES THE CHARACTER
ACTUALLY CHANGE?
This is the easy part. The character changes because of the events
of the plot. You already know those. If you've shown us what the
character is like in the beginning, and you've convinced us she's
Under Development: Your Characters at Midstory 87
capable of change, the story events will form a pattern that makes
change seem inevitable.
The key word here as it was in complex motivation is pat-
tern. In real life people sometimes undergo real change as a re-
sult of one experience, even if the experience seems trivial to
outsiders. In fiction, however, unless the single event is a pretty
traumatic one, character changes should be the result of re-
peated, convincing experiences the character is forced to live
through.
For example, Martha's first attempt at running away from
home probably won't significantly change Sam, her father. If
it did, his uncommitted fatherhood wouldn't seem sufficiently
uncommitted. Instead, Sam tries to rationalize the whole thing:
All kids ran away from home at least once, Sam thought,
picking up the newspaper and raising the sports section be-
tween himself and Jane. Running away was normal. Why,
he'd done it himself at fourteen, he and Tommy Bannister,
although of course then there weren't all these drugs on the
street. Still, Jane was overreacting. Just like she always did.
Martha had learned her lesson look at her tear-stained
face, for Chrissake and it wouldn't happen again. Kids just
went through stages, was all. Jane should accept that, learn
to roll with the punches. . . . The Pittsburgh Pirates looked
very good in spring training.
It will take repeated problems with Martha your whole novel,
in fact to really force Sam into change.
In a short story, again, you must work faster. The experience
that causes change might appear to be a single, small-scale event.
In James Purdy's story "The Beard," for example, a seemingly
trivial incident an adult son shows up for a visit home sporting
a new beard causes repercussions that unravel the whole fam-
ily. Here, what makes the changes plausible is not the story event,
which is merely a catalyst, but the careful creation of the patterns
of family tension. A reader gets the impression that just about
anything could have set this family off. They're primed for con-
frontation. And how is that conveyed? Through a pattern of re-
peated confrontations, both past and present.
88 BEGINNINGS, MIDDLES AND ENDS
The guideline here is to ask yourself, "Am I presenting the
kind of experiences that make the reader think, 'Well, yes, if this
event happened to that person, he probably would behave like
that. I might not, but he would.' "
REPLACING AN OLD MOTIVATION
WITH A NEW ONE
The outcome of all this dramatization of motive, preparation for
change, and depiction of story events is to replace a character's
initial motivation with a different one. That is, the character
started out wanting one thing and somewhere in the middle
switches to wanting something else (which will prepare nicely for
the ending). Sam starts out wanting to be left alone, uninvolved
in his daughter's problems; he might switch to wanting desper-
ately to rescue Martha from self-destruction. Elizabeth Bennet
starts out wanting to promote her sister Jane's happiness and to
annoy Mr. Darcy; she switches to wanting to marry Mr. Darcy.
It can be helpful to stop somewhere in the middle of your
novel to list these motivation switches on a piece of paper. What
did each character want in the beginning of the book? What does
he want now? Is it still the same desire? Do you know? If you
don't, give it some serious thought.
This advice applies to short stories as well as to novels, with
the difference that in a short story the change in motivation usu-
ally comes at the end, not in the middle. In a short story you may
not have the space to show your protagonist acting on his new
motive, but he usually at least becomes aware of it at the end.
When Carver's unnamed heroine thinks, "My life is going to
change. I feel it," that implies a change in motivation, although
one whose specifics Carver doesn't choose to explore.
A SPECIAL CASE OF MOTIVATION:
VILLAINS
Everybody loves to hate the bad guy. But not all bad guys are
created equal. Some arouse a lot more hatred, or fear, or anger
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