“Seven Pounds” or About Character Motivation

Last week, courage was on my mind, specifically whether or not Evan Quinn was courageous.  Then I saw the movie Seven Pounds, starring Will Smith.  Smith’s character, Ben Thomas, put a new spin for me on the question of courage and what could motivate someone to do something courageous.  Specifically, guilt.

Guilt is an emotional experience not explored much by writers and screenwriters.  Fyodor Dostoyesky famously explored it in Crime and Punishment.  The movie The Machinist stands out for me because the main character played by Christian Bale physically manifested the psychological and emotional effects of guilt.  Guilt is unpleasant.  Guilt is painful.  But Ben Thomas in Seven Pounds showed me what an interesting motivating factor it could be for a character. 

Ben Thomas’ experience in the movie grabbed me around the throat and shook me.  Will Smith was nearly unrecognizable as Ben, but his performance was brilliant.  He captured the character’s pain on his face, the character’s courage in his choice for himself.   It reminded me of two characters in the Perceval series, characters I created and maybe I need to pay more attention to the guilt that I have given them.  Maybe it’s not Evan’s courage or lack thereof I need to focus on, but his guilt.  As it stands now, Evan represses his guilt, but maybe I can play with that more than I have.  The other character doesn’t repress his feelings, and Evan reacts to that by working harder to repress his own.

Which brings me to the whole issue of a character’s emotional being and what to do with it.  Emotions motivate behavior.  I tend toward showing behavior to reflect the character’s emotion rather than stating how the character feels.  That doesn’t always work, however.  For Evan, I also use his thoughts and how he responds to the world around him to reflect his emotions.  Stepping back, it’s also possible to use description of location to reflect a character’s emotion, how he sees it, or the use of color in the description to create a tone or atmosphere that reflects the emotion.  Dialogue and choice of words can also reflect the character’s emotion.  Much care and thought needs to go into this in order to be accurate and true to what the character is feeling.  Emotions require respect in the writing.   The wrong word will create the wrong impression, the writing will fail.

I had not seen Seven Pounds in the theater because its advertising campaign annoyed me.  When the DVD came out, I continued to pass it by until last week.  Now I am so glad that I watched it.  A reminder that as a writer I need to pay attention and be ever on the prowl for ideas for character development…..

On Courage

Last night as I was falling asleep (or tossing and turning, depending on the point of view), a portion of the climax scene for the Perceval novels came into my mind, playing out like a movie.  No, I’m not going to describe it here (smile), but what came into my head upon waking this morning is this: is Evan Quinn a courageous character?  Or is he actually a wuss?  And then, how does a writer create a courageous character without sounding preachy or goody-goody about it?

What is courage?

When I looked up “courage” in my handy dictionary, I found an interesting word history.  It comes from Middle English “corage” which came from Old French: “cuer,” the word for “heart.”  To have courage is to have heart.  Well, the definition is “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere and withstand danger, fear or difficulty.”  But it also takes nerve to be courageous and a strong heart.  Courage does not mean the absence of fear.  Courage is the ability to act despite fear.  Using fear as a motivator rather than a paralyzer.  Courage is something most people believe they don’t have and don’t think about it, especially in the midst of an action that is, in fact, courageous. 

It takes courage to express oneself honestly and create original, fresh writing, share that writing with others through publication (or a blog), because the writer is sharing her soul, her innermost imaginings and heart for others to read and experience.  This is true for artists in general.  And every occupation has something that is fear-inducing and requires facing that fear and doing the job anyway.  Performers suffer stage fright but perform.  Conductors (and other musicians) also suffer stage fright but they conduct.  Having that fear, that edge, can also be a good thing.

I haven’t decided yet whether Evan is courageous or actually a wuss.  My imagination gave me only last night some of the material I need to figure that out.  He is very much a human being with flaws and strengths, and a heart.  I trust that by the time I arrive at the climax of book 5, Perceval’s Choice, my imagination will have provided me with more material so I’ll know the answer and will be able to write the ending to that book and the series….

Language Grows

An interesting note in this week’s “Time” magazine on pg. 15:
“1 million: Number of words in the English language according to the Global Language Monitor website. The millionth word? Web 2.0.”

Dictionary publishers celebrate! The question now is: just how many of the words are actually used on a daily basis?

What’s in a Name?

Plenty, for fictional characters.  I’ve been working on a short story with a female protagonist.  Names for characters don’t always come to me quickly, and I’ve been waiting for hers to pop into my head, or to have some defining characteristic trigger name possibilities.  Yesterday I realized that I thought of her as “She,” without a specific name.  This is a new experience for me.  I prefer my characters to have names.  But she’s happy with “She.”  Now, so am I.

Naming a character is as important as naming a baby, especially main characters, their adversaries, and the main supporting players.  They need names that give them an appropriate presence, one that will stand the test of time for them, like a real person.  Minor characters that might only appear once in the novel, briefly, such as a hotel concierge, a store clerk, etc. often are not named unless they have a relationship, however superficial, with a named character.  Evan Quinn in Perceval often asks people their names and addresses them by name no matter who they are, so it is revealing of his character.  And challenging for me, although I don’t spend a lot of time thinking up those names.

Choosing a character’s name requires time to determine who the character is.  Details that influence name choice include gender, nationality and personality.  I also consider the emotional resonance I feel for the character, and how the name might reflect on the character.  I collect names.  I have a file of names that have caught my eye, and as I’m thinking about a character, I’ll read through that file to see if any of the names match the character.  If not, I’ll consult books of names also.  Sometimes I cannot find a name and must live with the character for awhile before trying again.  It is not a process to be rushed.

A couple of examples of the process from Perceval: Joseph Caine and Randall Quinn.

I saw Joseph Caine as a radical, a rebel, but compassionate, a natural teacher and creative.  He was Evan’s father’s best friend, a world famous composer, a dissident in the American Underground, and Evan’s godfather and mentor.  He’s also dead.  His death resulted from his dissident activities when Evan was ten, so I started to feel a Biblical resonance for him, as in “martyr.”  But I realized that he wouldn’t be religious, and might actually be an atheist.  The Cain and Abel story nagged at me for weeks and I finally decided to use Caine as his last name.  I’ve always liked the name Joseph, and especially the sort of “everyman” nickname of Joe, so I used that name for him to reflect the sense of a regular guy betrayed by Americans or his “brothers.”

Evan’s father, Randall, proved more difficult.  I already had the last name from naming Evan.  I’d chosen Quinn for its hard sound at the beginning, its one syllable and Irish origin.  Evan’s ancestors were Irish immigrants who’d settled first in Boston, then moved west with the homesteading movement, settling in Iowa or Nebraska, but then later moving to Minnesota.  I also wanted an Irish name to connect with another character with an Irish background.  The first name took me a couple months to find.  I stumbled onto the name when I was writing a flashback memory of Evan’s about his father.  I kept thinking of his father as being “randy,” the kind of guy who sexualized everything, a misogynist, but a brilliant writer.  From “randy” to “Randall” was a baby step.  Randall is a name I don’t particularly like, that sounds formal and heavy.  But it suits Evan’s father, especially the nickname Randy.

In Perceval and subsequent novels in the series, some of the character names have meanings, others I chose because they fit the character’s personality and I liked the name.  For fictional characters, names are important and need to reflect who they are to help make them memorable to readers…..