Understanding What Comes From A Character's Crazy Mind

In order to write compelling characters, you have to understand something about people.

It's something deep.  Something foundational.  You have to really be able to understand what motivates your character.  What drives them to do the things they do.  What makes them tick, and what ticks them off.

If you don't understand those things about your character, or aren't in the process of discovering them and looking for them, your character will just be a placeholder, made to do arbitrary things to serve the plot.

TRUE CHARACTER is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure--the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature.

--Robert Mckee

The phenomenal Anne Frasier asked a question, several years ago, on her blog.  Are authors broken?  It generated 50+ comments, and has lingered on my mind all these years later, because it got me looking within myself.

I grew up in a fast and confusing fashion.  The long shadows of old secrets darkened the world around me, even when I was too young to understand that.  What I understood what the shadow of the darkness, and what I grew up wondering about was the why. 

My mom was undiagnosed bipolar when I was growing up.  I didn't understand that.  I don't think she did either.  It took a lot of strength and courage for my mom to face that when I was an adult, and I feel it's even delicate to share about that now, but her situation affected me on a deep level.

I didn't grow up surrounded by women who went to college.  I didn't grow up surrounded by women who had independent careers.  Most of them had family businesses they ran with their husbands - my parents included. 

Many women I knew had also gotten pregnant before getting married.  Back then, people did the right thing.

As with all things, there were varying degrees of happiness to be found amongst those people.  Closer to home, I could only say that things weren't usually what I'd call happy.  There was a problem, and I could never quite put my finger on it as a kid, but I grew up expecting the next problem.  I grew up waiting for shoes to drop.

Like the night I woke up, and instantly, in the dark, in the middle of the night, knew something was wrong.  I found myself running down the stairs, starting the register a distant noise that wasn't right for a nighttime sound.  I found myself pounding on a locked door, yelling, "Let me in."

My parent, inside, screamed back, "Let me out!"  Someone was in there, they were being attacked.  There were bangs and thumps and my heart was pounding with fear.  In the days before 911 and cell phones, there wasn't much I could do.  When the lock finally clicked off and the door opened, I expected the attack to follow.

Instead, there was my parent, alone.  Hallucinating after taking an overdose of pills.

What followed was the long drive to the hospital, the drama as they tried to fight off hospital staff, four days in intensive care, and then a mandatory admittance to a hospital in Penetanguishene.

Now, some might think that it's wrong of me to share about this here.  That it's private business.  I don't do this to shame anyone.  You have no idea how strong I think my mom is.  My grandfather died in a mental institution when she was so young, and she barely remembers him.  My grandmother had issues of her own.  There was a rape and a half-brother my mom had that the truth didn't come out about until I was 16. 

If I were to try to tell you what I even know of my mom's story, it would take weeks.

These days, someone doesn't make the cheerleading squad or football team and they're killing the competition or in therapy for how unfair life is and everyone should excuse their behavior.

My mom got her education, she went to college when I was young, and she's spent decades at the helm of a successful business.

Me?  Man, I looked at the world around me when I was young, and I didn't want that.  I may not have really known what I wanted, but I knew I didn't want to find myself in a trap I couldn't get out of.

Motivation.  The motivation in my life came deep and young and over many years of not being sure what was wrong, but knowing something was, and wanting to escape but feeling compelled to fix things.

You see, my motivation affected my choices on so many levels.  I surrounded myself with clean kids by going to church, although I was raised somewhere between agnostic and atheist.  There was no way I was going out on Saturday night and getting drunk, and there was no way I was getting myself chained down by getting pregnant.

Simple people might have called me a prude.  Or a snob. 

The truth is, I was a person constantly working on making sure I wouldn't get trapped anywhere I didn't want to be.

And I still find myself, on many levels, anticipating problems.  I spent so many years on alert for the pendulum swing that comes from living with a bipolar parent** that I still watch for the problems, all the time.  At work, in general life, at home.

This is part of why I'm a stickler for doing the right thing, and part of why I'm not big on secrets.  Secrets have a way of biting you in the ass sooner or later. 

And doing the right thing?  With everything my mom and her siblings endured as kids, where were the teachers?  Where were the people who should have realized they weren't eating because they didn't have food?  Why didn't anyone care enough to do something to help them?

It's so easy for people to turn a blind eye to abuse, neglect, and to people with real, serious life problems.

I don't respect that.  Certainly not if it's a situation where you're witnessing the problem day after day after day.  I know I can't solve everyone's issues, but I also know that when I worked in the school system, I was bound by laws to report concerns, and if I had them, I did.  From the kids who weren't eating at lunch and snack time to the kid who told me he was going to slit his throat.

And to this day, if I see someone who is negligent, or someone who I think is being mistreated, I'm not going to keep my mouth shut.

It's part of who I am.

Yeah, I went through some crap as a kid.  But I didn't let that be my excuse to do drugs or screw around or become an alcoholic.  I let it be my motivation to get out and get an education and do things with my life. 

Because, like my mom, I'm stronger than all that shit, and that's nothing I'm ever going to feel ashamed of because of people who are weak and careless.

Believe it or not, I'm far more relaxed now than I ever was as a teen or young adult.  Part of that comes from a sense of security.  I married a man who's as complicated and, at times, confused as I am.

I could tell his story, but all it serves to explain is how I understand what drives him.  How I understand what his priorities are.

Every single day, I see him making his number one priority trying to give the kids the understanding and patience he feels he never got as a kid.

Giving them room to make mistakes and the security of knowing they're still loved.  That they won't be discarded the way he was.

Some people use their pains and problems as an excuse to bully others.

Some tap into it and use it as direction, to help them avoid making the mistakes others made that hurt them.

Those are the strong people, the people of substance.  The people worth knowing.

And if you understand what motivates me as a person, you understand why I think that.

I still find myself wondering about that old blog post of Anne's, and if the best writers must be broken people first.  Is it possible to understand anguish, torment, the depths of the deepest grief if you have not experienced these things? 

Is it possible to understand compassion if you have none?

I was talking to Brian about this yesterday.  Other than grammar and punctuation, the most common thing I seem to comment on in texts I review is about content.  It needs to advance the plot or reveal pertinent information related to the plot or central characters.  If it doesn't, it almost always can be cut.

It all ties to motivation.  It ties to the very depths of what motivates people to do the things they choose to do.

And if you want the characters in your stories to resonate with a sense of believability, you need to understand what drives them.

Or at the very least, be on the journey of discovery, trying to peel off the layers to get to the core of what makes them tick.

The trouble with too many contemporary novels is that they are full of people not worth knowing. The characters slide in and out of the mind with hardly a ripple. They levy no tax on the memory; they make little claim on the connecting power of identification. They make only the skimpiest contribution to an understanding of the human situation. They leave you cold.

Norman Cousins

** I don't mean to lay everything at my mother's door.  My dad's problems are, in many respects, far more complex and damaging.  The real issue is that he's never publicly owned them, and because of that, I can't talk about them, to this day.

Well my father put a shame on me. Said he wouldn’t put his name on me. Said he wouldn’t be the first in his family Who’s son cried when he was born. Well he died the day i got a gun. Said that he was proud that I’s his son that that was right there in his plan I’d grow up and be a man. And there was a tear. I saw it in his eye. He said he couldn’t think of a better way to die
And the Lord came down and put a spoon in my mouth. It tasted so bitter, but I couldn’t spit it out. It tasted like the money that my poor mama made. When I went and stole it, cause she took it to the grave. And there was a note clenched in her right hand, Said boy if you wanna live, better die like a brave man.
I don’t wanna die in the middle of the night, I want a brave man’s death. I don’t wanna die in the middle of the night, I want a brave man’s death. Spittin gasoline, burnin my teeth, getting salt on the fields of my past. And the sword will come down with a milky white flash And I’ll get my brave man’s death at last.
I had a woman. And she had some kids. She said she loved them, I never did. Just the way that they feed And take away what was young. But my wife’s a muscle that can do what needed to be done. And the day that she died, her cup was fully drained. She said take hope my love, that life was worth the pain
I don’t wanna die in the middle of the night, I want a brave man’s death. I don’t wanna die in the middle of the night, I want a brave man’s death. Spittin gasoline, burnin my teeth, getting salt on the fields of my past. And the sword will come down with a milky white flash And I’ll get my brave man’s death at last.
I had a heart that’s willin but a back without a bone. My body’d go to war, but my head would come home And I always had a knife in case a real man came along. He turned his head and his life was gone. So I hold it in my heart, yeah I hold it in my heart.
No, I hide it in my heart, cause it’s tearin me apart. The last thing that he said to me was blood was on my hands
Oh god, I wanna die like a man.