I came across a really nice mention of my writing book by a writer named Jennifer on her blog, Conversion diary.
“I almost didn’t buy blogger and editor Ray Rhamey‘s book because I had that typical consumer’s bias against self-published books, but I’m so glad I didn’t skip it. Probably more than any other book I’ve read on writing (and I’ve read a lot), this one made me feel like I could truly get inside an editor’s head. Most helpful were the pages at the end where Rhamey reprints actual first pages from submitted books. He first asks you, the reader, to consider whether you’d turn the page if you were to come across this book. Then he shows the pages again, this time with his edits. Having that “hands-on” practice helped me understand these concepts much better than if he’d simply lectured about them. If you’ve ever considered writing a novel, memoir, or any narrative prose, you need to read this.”
Here, from the Storytelling section of my book, Flogging the Quill, Crafting a Novel that Sells. is “ Haunt characters for stronger storytelling.”
When I was in Hollywood, working at breaking into screenwriting, I took courses. One was Robert McKee’s excellent workshop. Another was from a different screenwriting guru, John Truby. McKee’s was all about structure (as is his highly recommended book, Story). But Truby got into other aspects of storytelling, including characterization.
An idea from his course that has stuck with me and proved useful is his notion that characters should have a “ghost.” We’re not talking about a haunt from Casper the Friendly Ghost, but a powerful, transformative event in a character’s past that, whether consciously or not, affects his current behavior.
A now-clichéd example is childhood abuse suffered by a serial killer. It’s a true-to-life ghost, but nowadays is becoming ho-hum. Authors now work to make their character’s abuse more unique and horrific than competing killers, but it remains a standard serial-killer ingredient. And it is used to motivate the behavior of other troubled characters, and rightfully so—abuse is a powerful “ghost.”
A violent ghost such as abuse is a good motivator for an antagonist, but I look for other things to trouble my characters. I’m most concerned with finding ghosts for my protagonists. I seek to write about flawed characters, and for me a ghost is one of the best ways to create a weak spot in a character.
My character ghosts are usually deep-seated and not necessarily conscious. The primary requirement is that it—the past event—still influences behavior. I don’t necessarily make my readers aware of the ghost, certainly not early on. But, to have credible motivation, aspects of the haunt need to be revealed along the way. If conquering the ghost is part of the character’s final epiphany, then it will be revealed.
Here’s a tragic ghost for one of my primary protagonists. Jake shot and killed his wife in an unsuccessful attempt to save the life of his five-year-old daughter who his wife, in the grip of psychosis, kills. He deeply loved her, and the event was so traumatic that he has no conscious memory of it. He knows the facts—they were all in the police report—but he cannot recall what happened. It is, however, the content of a recurring nightmare.
More than that, this ghost has caused a kind of fugue in Jake—his emotions have shut down entirely to prevent further emotional injury. If you don’t love someone, they can’t hurt you.
This ghost in Jake’s past affects everything in his day-to-day life: his relationships with other people, especially women; how he reacts to small children; and how he lives his professional life. He is an ex Secret Service agent turned mercenary, able to kill without conscious remorse or hesitation. Note that I said “conscious”; his ghost affects even his reaction to killing, and leaves him feeling nauseated after he kills.
Jake has an unconscious desire to break the thrall of his fugue and to conquer his ghost. When cracks begin to appear as a result of what happens to him in the course of the novel, he is eventually drawn to widening them and, finally, taking a gigantically risky route to conquering his ghost. When it is at last exorcised, his behavior changes, and that affects the climax of the story.
In a different novel, a coming-of-age story, the sixteen-year-old hero is haunted by the death of his father. It is more conscious in this story, but still an event that affects his thinking and motivates behavior, especially during the climactic conflict.
I urge you to find a ghost for your most important “unhaunted” characters, even if you’re already into your project. You may be surprised at how it can change your character’s reactions to the events and barriers you throw into her path along the way.
For what it’s worth
Ray
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© 2010 Ray Rhamey