Free Creating Characters: How to Build Story People by Dwight V. Swain Page A

Earth’s hope for the future, or it’s the plague that will bring down civilization as we know it. He may stand firm for abortion rights or loathe it as cold-blooded murder of the unborn. He dotes on hot fudge sundaes, or detests them because he believes they give him pimples. Noodling for catfish is great sport, or a species of insanity that may end with a water moccasin chomping on your biceps.
    Be sure, however, that a character’s attitudes fit his noun. A policeman has one set of attitudes, a lawyer another, a criminal, a third. Same for teacher and student, boss and worker.
    Attitudes are products of conditioning, as we’ll see in Chapter 8 . Meanwhile, just bear in mind that they’re not one, but many.
    Taken collectively, grouped together, they constitute an entity commonly called point of view: a character’s generally habitual, to-be-expected reactions to whatever aspects of life and the world that come to his attention in the story. (Note that here I’m using “point of view” in its general meaning of outlook or opinion—not in the technical sense of “viewpoint character,” the person from inside whom the reader experiences the story as it happens. That approach is correct when you’re setting up your material for presentation to your reader. But the writer himself needs to be aware of the thinking and feeling of all his story people, each and every one, not just that of the key figure.)
    Each major character’s attitude is something that you as a writer need to understand, though not on a definitive level, necessarily. That kind of study would call for long-time scrutiny. The broad outlines will be enough, with occasional sidetrips into the swamps and bayous of personality to add color and interest.
    In particular, you’ll need to become aware of the special areas of mind and thought that your story brings into focus.
    You can do worse than to term this collective pattern your character’s dominant attitude .
    Thus, in a romance, Female Lead’s dominant attitude very well may center on the way she sees—and, in action, reacts to and behaves towards—men. Are they dominating bullies, like her boss? Frail reeds, in the manner of her hopeless, helpless uncle? Eternalwomanizers who zero in on every passing skirt? Shadow images of her boastful, bragging brother? Potential sources of security via marriage? Tender father figures in whom she can find solace? Romantic heroes to thrill and excite her? Stalwart partners for a lifetime of warmth and peace? The list could go on and on.
    In a science fiction story, in contrast, Hero’s dominant attitude very well might revolve around his conviction that the human race is doomed—or will only be saved—by continued psychic interbreeding with superior aliens from beyond the galaxy.
    The suspense novel character? Perhaps, cynically, he looks out on a world of potential victims. Whoever he meets, male or female, he always sees johns or suckers. Or, conversely, he naively finds good in the most hardened villains and stands convinced that he must capture them in order to help them see the light. And the character in the tale of the occult may be totally conditioned by his belief in clairvoyance or reincarnation or the Great God Ptath or the writings of H. P. Blavatsky.
    Nor is application of this principle limited to genre fiction. Mainstream books abound in which characters live in the past, or are forever racked by jealousy or greed or family pride or worry or the compulsion to do the right thing no matter what the consequences. Sholem Asch offers excellent examples in his best-selling East River . Moshe Wolf Davidowsky is an orthodox Jew striving to practice his faith in the new world and pass on Old World traditions to his children. His every action and thought are dominated by his attempt to follow his religious beliefs. Patrick McCarthy, in turn, reflects his Irish Catholic upbringing in his violent hatred of Jews. Can such conflicting values survive when