Building A Fictional Character And Narrative With One Exercise
I read a while back, and forgive me but I don’t remember the source, that for something to be considered true in fiction, you must repeat it three times. I sort of agree with that, but there’s more to it.
The cat is pink.
There’s a pink cat.
You must see the pink cat.
We’ve hardly got a powerful description there. I might have convinced you to briefly see a pink cat mentally, but it’s unlikely you have a crystal clear, high definition pink cat in your mind.
So let’s talk about laying the foundation for building something real with fiction.
How To Make Your Fiction Realistic
The best way to write realistic fiction is to read a lot of non-fiction.
Better yet, find someone you know who’s a natural storyteller. I don’t mean the campfire stories. I mean the guy down the pub who always has a wacky-yet-entertaining tale to tell about his exploits.
When you find someone like that, you’ll have the basis for realistic fiction. Copy what they do. You’ll make your own observations, but here are some things you’ll discover:
- Many sentences are uttered as cliff-hangers (hard to explain)
- Every description is a multi-sensory experience
- Not an example of bragging or gloating (These guys never big themselves up, even when they’re talking about an exploit)
- Everything is larger than life (it doesn’t just smell bad… it smells like (the worst thing ever)
- A lot of tangents and transitions
Like I say, you’ll find your own storytellers and draw your own conclusions. But bear the above in mind because they’re your framework for how to describe things and keep people hooked.
Let’s move on to the exercise that’ll help you build realistic fiction.
Your Event Is Multiple Events
We go back to the technique I mentioned in the intro of this post. You mention something three times and then it feels real to the viewer.
Throw in a lot of sensory information and this technique works, but it can be better.
Here’s what you need to do – and you’ll notice almost all genre fiction does this.
Think about a general character arc for a stereotypical character.
Think about your one inciting event and your “final showdown.”
Then realise that the two things are mirrors of one another.
Think Simba in The Lion King – he watches his father die. This is an inciting event. But the final showdown is essentially him becoming his father. Writing the wrong and equalling the equation.
From a narrative perspective, you’re telling the same story twice. The father dies, the son becomes the rightful king.
One retelling is the rejection and the fear. The second retelling is the equalling of the equation.
What you also need to notice is that every other major event in Simba’s narrative is also a reflection of a single event.
That’s how your book is.
I’ll use a stereotypical genre example so I can show you.
Crime Novels Are One Event Told Over and Over
Crime is the second biggest market for fiction behind romance. I’m using it in this article because romance is so obviously a case of the principle that I thought I’d try something new.
The most popular crime fiction is for women in the “housewife zone” demographic. By far and away the bestselling novels have a similar theme and protagonist.
It’s always about girls being victimised by a serial predator. The hero is an anti-hero; a dark brooding guy and the villain is always a creep who wants to rape, kill or otherwise affect a series of girls.
This series starts with girls who are unrelated in every way to the protagonist, and draws closer to him as the story progresses.
Throw in some problems with alcohol, authority and probably a string of failed relationships, and you can have multiple bestsellers from the above template.
(Crazy that I give this stuff away for free.)
Anyway, what strikes you about that template?
It’s the same thing over and over again.
From the minute you lay eyes on the devilishly flawed detective, he’s put into a series of repeats on one event.
A girl is made victim.
Most crime books are a series of repeated scenes. Witness the aftermath of an event. A clue is found there. False lead. Set up for next victim. Witness the aftermath of an event and then you repeat.
From a narrative perspective, you are repeating the same thing over and over again.
Give It To Me In A How-To Style
Most times, you’ll get this three-repetition rule and it’ll be boring and pedestrian.
- The person anticipates the event
- The event happens
- They recollect the event
This is eerily unrealistic and uninspiring when it comes to a species of animals (that’ll be us) whose entire lives tend to revolve around reliving moments in our minds.
So instead of being boring, think about our crime guy.
He’s a detective who investigating some abducted girls.
This happens 5 times in a book. The first victim is a prostitute and the last victim is his girlfriend.
The list of scenes you could have:
- He sees the aftermath – a body, burgled house or whatever
- He uses his Sherlock Holmes deduction skills to put him in the mind of the abductor/victim
- The abductor sends him a taunting message about the event – confirming the above
- His boss asks for a report which he can’t bring himself to write
- He remembers back his childhood when someone abducted his little sister (TROPE ALERT)
- Turns out his assistant dug up an old report about some guy who did the same thing a few years earlier
- Next girl missing – they learn this from a 999 call they recorded
- Later, there’s a news clip playing on the TV in the bar
- He tells his girlfriend to be careful and do something which she totally won’t do (foreshadowing)
- Literal foreshadowing when victim three is taken and he imagines his girlfriend being taken
- Throw in a cheesy nightmare
- One of the clues reminds him of something else
- Showdown where he literally sees it happening
Etc.
The point is to take the one event and then pull it into different directions for originality. At the same time, you slot in the place where your character arc takes them.
From disaffected and emotionally detached to the opposite or vice versa.
Tell The Same Story Multiple Times, Just Raise The Stakes
Like I said, our lives consist of us reinforcing our reality maps with rationalisations and environmental data.
If you want your fiction to seem real, then tap into this well.
To go back to what I said about natural storytellers, here’s an important point: a lot of those guys have terrible grammar and poor vocabularies. The ones I know couldn’t write a book. They couldn’t even write a page.
That doesn’t matter though, because ultimately a good narrative is what drives a story of any length. A narrative is simply a set of events and reactions to them. A character arc is simply a set of reactions to the same event that show growth or development of a character over time.
You put your character into the same situation and he behaves differently = character growth.
Raise the stakes each time the same situation occurs and you have a strong narrative.
Put the two together and you have a winning formula.