Designing a Narrative Part 2, Creating a Cast
Welcome back readers to part two of my Designing a Narrative blog. This time, I want to tackle the topic of creating a cast of characters that are believable and sympathetic. Characters who elicit an emotional response through their words and actions, or lack thereof.
Last week, I was on a real writing rampage with Clocktower. Thing were going good and I had the biggest advantage a writer (or any artist) can have while working: momentum. I was pushing past the weekly goals I set for myself and it felt good. While I was writing, my mind thought back to a line I heard from season one of ‘The Mandalorian’. It’s a small line, maybe most people didn’t even care to listen to it because it doesn’t affect the plot of the episode. But I think it’s the most important line in the entire series. In a conversation with the titular Mandalorian, Werner Herzog’s character, ‘the client’, says the following:
“The Empire improves every system it touches. Judge by any metric. Safety, prosperity, trade, opportunity, peace. Compare Imperial rule to what is happening now. Look outside. Is the world more peaceful since the revolution? I see nothing but death and chaos.”
Why is this line important? What does it establish about the character’s intentions and beliefs? What does it tell us about the greater world that they occupy? These are important things that actions and dialogue answer for us about our characters.
As much as I loved the original Star Wars trilogy, one of the major things it lacked was any sort of image of what life was like under Imperial rule. To be fair, this wasn’t the point of the story. The Empire existed as a megalithic entity. An opponent that was set up from the outset as nothing but pure genocidal evil. The imagine of the Empire that is painted in the original trilogy is one of totalitarianism and oppression, where all people are in constant fear of suppression or extermination.
While this worked for a three-part narrative whose focus was on one character (Luke) and his hero’s journey, subsequent entries in the series were greatly damaged by their inability to reconcile the problems that cropped up from having a government that seemingly had only dissidents in population. This issue became so pronounced in the sequel trilogy that the Imperial remnant, or “The First Order”, is essentially played out as a comic-book antagonist. It is simultaneously led by the completely incompetent, yet is somehow able to utterly steamroll any resistance with ruthless efficiency. The characters that populate this act in ways that aren’t natural for the situation they occupy. Nothing the characters do make sense, and as such, both the narrative and the characters themselves suffer.
This is why Werner Herzog’s character, in this twenty-second monologue, does so much for the larger story at hand. Here is a character who fiercely believes in a system. He doesn’t just believe in it because it makes him rich or immensely powerful, though this may have been the case. Here, Herzog is at his lowest. Forced to hide out on a muddy backwater. He and his soldiers scurry around like the last rats on a sinking ship. He could have abandoned this life. He could have just walked away. And a shallow villain may have done just that, but Herzog has conviction in his beliefs. Conviction that is backed up by (most likely) solid facts. Imagine an empire that did what he said it did. Improved every metric of every world it touched. It is easy to see why such an Empire would have such fervent soldiers and citizens. Especially considering that before the Empire was year after year of Galactic war and suffering.
What I’m trying to get at here is that in less than half a minute of speaking, Herzog does more for the credibility and believability of the Empire than over ten hours worth of movies that came before. This is the essence of character. Someone who has beliefs, and acts in accordance with those beliefs. If he is a hero, perhaps he has a belief system that is challenged and ultimately is changed by the hardships he experiences. If he is a villain, perhaps the challenges and hardships he experiences only further his zealotry—leading him to come to the conclusion that an open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded. In either case, both conclusions are relatable and believable. We see it in the world around us every single day.
It might surprise some readers to learn this, but the very last character I created in Okey-Dokey Sensei was the character of Eiko. In the first draft, she did not exist. The story followed a completely different, much darker narrative than the final version that you all have read and (I hope) loved. It’s funny for me now, because Eiko has by a wide, wide margin, become the most popular character in the book. I get messages all the time from people telling me that they love every scene that she is in. She acts and behaves in a way that seem erratic as first, but as her character is explored, becomes more and more understandable and by the end she has really won over the hearts of the readers.
Even when I introduced Eiko in the second draft, she only appeared in one chapter and then never appeared again for the rest of the book. I remember rereading that chapter one night and saying to myself, “This is it. This is the key to the story.” Eiko pushes Martin in a way that I think only a woman can push a man sometimes. She is the wrench thrown in his daily life that spurs change. A dynamic force that interrupts the flow of Martin’s daily routine. So with every rewrite, there would be a new Eiko chapter, until finally she was present at the concluding four chapters of the book as the secondary protagonist and, depending on who you ask, the real hero of the story.
Well, that about wraps this one up. I hope this exploration of character has helped anyone looking to create their own cast and has struggled with motivations and actions of the people inside their stories. What are some characters you all have loved or hated from books, film, or TV? There are so many iconic characters in the world of fiction. Let me know in the comments!
