DYNAMITE DAD

PEOPLE WATCHING:   The Skill of Character Development

A Call to Grow Up.

                 When people ask my brother, Andy, what he recommends to new writers, he usually says three things:   (1) keep writing – write about anything and everything,  (2) visit new places – keep traveling both near and far,  and (3) study people – pay attention to the people around you and take note of what they say and do.  This week, I’m still talking about the benefits of people watching.

                 From my earliest days, one of the people I watched most closely was my Dad.  I have many memories of Dad, but one sticks out in my mind from my high school senior year in Trona, California.  Dad was the only dentist in town and active in community service.  For many years, he served on the local school board.

                Trona is an isolated, small town, located deep in the Mojave Desert.  The principal employers in the area are the local mineral processing plants and the railroad.  The surrounding desert is studded with old mines and active prospecting sites, where stashes of dynamite have been abandoned, ready for the taking by curious teenagers.

                During one school board meeting, the recreational use of dynamite by high school students became a hot issue.  Recently, someone had blown up a small bridge at the Trona golf course.  (It wasn’t me.)  The local golf course was just one big sand trap.  It had no grass, but Dad sometimes played it.  In that board meeting, Dad waxed a bit hot under the collar on what should be done about this problem, until another board member interrupted to say, “AlDean, your son is one of the ringleaders.”

Looking West From Trona
Past the Old Trona Golf Course
Toward T Mountain in the Argus Range

                That stopped Dad cold.  Until that moment, it had never occurred to him that I might have dynamite.

                I confess.  I was guilty as charged.  For several years, my friends and I had collected dynamite.  With the hard caliche layer in our desert soils, the use of dynamite was common both in construction as well as in mining, and dynamite didn’t scare me.  I had researched the use of dynamite in a large university library while I was staying on campus at a week-long, youth conference for high school kids.  Along with learning the basics of setting a blast, I had researched safety issues.

               What could go wrong?

                I was late that night coming home from football practice.  We lived in Pioneer Point, north of Trona.  As I walked in, I saw Dad sitting on a straight-back chair in the living room, facing the front door, staring at me.  This was unusual.  I had never found him waiting for me before.

                “Come here and sit on the couch,” he instructed curtly.  “We need to talk.”  His unblinking eyes were stone hard, and I could see his cheek muscles tensing as he gritted his teeth.

                 Uh-oh.  My thoughts raced as I tried to think of what I might have done.

                “At the school board meeting tonight, someone said you were one of the kids using dynamite around town.  Is this true?”

                “Yes, but I never blown up anything around town—just out in the desert.” I never lied to Dad.

                He proceeded to tell me what a numb-skull thing that was.  He said I would get myself killed or, worse yet, kill someone else.  “What are you thinking?” he finished.

                “I never blow up anything that is worth anything to anyone, Dad.  Just big rocks out in the desert and old abandoned cars and other desert junk.  Things like that.  And I am always careful.”

                Dad glared at me, shaking his index finger.  “Do you have any dynamite right now?”

Looking East from Pioneer Point
Toward the Searles Dry Lake Bed
And the Slate Range Mountains

                “Yes”

                “Where is it?

                “Hidden out in the desert.”

                That stopped him for a moment.  “Well, get rid of it.”

                “Dad, how am I supposed to do that?  I can’t just put it out on the curb for the trash collector to pick up on garbage day.”

                Dad stared at me for a second in thought.  “Well, this weekend, go out into the desert and blow it all up.  Just be careful!  And, don’t get yourself killed.”

                “Okay, Dad.  I’ll be careful, and I’ll get rid of it.”

                His face relaxed a little, then stiffened again.  “And do not tell your Mom about any of this!”

                I’m not sure now who came with me that Saturday.  It might have been my good buddy, Ed Rockdale, who lived just down the street from me, but that weekend we had a blast blowing up 50 or 60 sticks of dynamite in some of the largest explosions we had ever engineered.

                A good dynamite blast is a real science.  Depending on how well the charge is set, the blast can range from just a loud boom with a sharp shockwave to a spectacular explosion throwing debris hundreds of feet into the air and significantly altering the face of the landscape.  The size of the explosion doesn’t necessarily depend upon the number of sticks of dynamite used if the charge is set deep in a confined space.  We usually rationed out the dynamite, but that Saturday we experimented with new variations on our normal blasting procedures and were rewarded with some spectacular results.

                Saturday evening, Dad asked me if I still had any dynamite.

                “It’s all gone,” I answered truthfully.  I did do more dynamiting while away at college in another state, with dynamite purchased from a construction company, but never again at home.

                After that, Dad never brought up the subject again.  In Dad’s economy of words, the topic of dynamite was forever behind us.  He was never backward about letting me know when I had messed up, but then, once the issue was resolved, the subject was in the past forever.  Dad didn’t hold my mistakes over my head, and even as a teenager, I felt he truly respected me.  I know I truly respected him.

                As I grew into adulthood, with a family of my own, Dad became one of my best friends.  I always valued his wisdom and advice.  I miss him a lot, now that he is gone.  I know that everyone thinks they have the best Dad, but I’m pretty sure that I did.

 

LOOK WHAT I DID

WHY DO WE LIKE QUIRKY CHARACTERS?

Is there a right way to develop a character?

            Recently, I attended a writer’s workshop presented by the St. George 2014 Book Festival on the Dixie State University campus.  Among many great presentations, I attended a class by Dean Hughes called  An Effective Writing Process.  Mr. Hughes has been writing for several decades and has published more than 100 books, both fiction and non-fiction, for all ages.

            Mr. Hughes explained eight rules of writing.  Rule One is don't start writing until you know the main characters.  He said the story comes out of the characters, so invent each key character first.

            Do a summary of each character’s life and personality--really get into the character’s head.  Even though much of the character’s summary will never get into the story, a writer needs the summary to accurately and consistently describe what the character thinks, says and does, because that controls the direction the story will go.

            By the way, one cure for writer’s block is to reanalyze (even rewrite) key character summaries.  Another cure is to take a break and get something to eat.

            Character development is a critical writing skill that is handled differently by different writers, but much of the strength of the story is built on the reader’s love (or hate) for the story’s key characters.  What is the best way to create a protagonist that readers will bond with or an antagonist that readers will loathe?  The correct answer depends on the writer’s personal style and writing skills.

            Working together, my brother Andy and I are co-writing The Dimensions in Death series, a young-adult horror series--the third book, FATAL GREEN, comes out this year.  As the story develops, I am fascinated by my brother’s thought processes and writing techniques.  In connection with the issue of character development, Andy has shared the following insight into his personal style:

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A Few Thoughts on Character Development

(Or what I DID by the seat of my pants.)

By A. L. Washburn

            Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is the technical name for what we laymen refer to as a multiple or split personality.  It is a controversial diagnosis with some experts believing it is not real, or maybe even therapist induced.  (Isn’t Wikipedia wonderful?)  I bring this up, because I sometimes believe I may have a form of DID, though I have never seen a therapist.  (I was going to say, “Where is the fun for a writer in having a mental disorder if you get it fixed?” but then I worried that someone with a real mental disorder would be offended, and yes, I think that people with mental disorders are the most likely readers of my stuff.  Whatever.)

Andy on the Fly
Las Vegas NV Airport

            When I’m writing, I believe I have multiple personalities all battling to get out, or at least take control of the writing process.  And, most of these personalities, wait, no, all of these personalities are younger than me; healthier than me; and without a doubt, thinner and better looking than me.  The sixteen year old personality is especially keen to take over.  He must not have caught a look of me lately in the mirror.

            It is from these disparate and distinct personalities that I form the characters I write about in my novels.  To some extent or another, everyone I write about, or maybe I should say, everyone I write for is down inside my id somewhere. (Damn, I am esoteric!)  So, when I write about different people I am really just writing about some part of myself.  I am the young, good looking, high school football star, Cal. I am also the middle aged, overweight, balding, mean and obnoxious Mr. Samuel. (Both are characters in PITCH GREEN.)

            In real life, I am not young or good looking, but neither am I mean or balding.  I’m only a little obnoxious.  But both these characters are inside me.  I only need to bring them out and put them in the story to write about them.  I am not writing about people I observe, though I love to observe people.  I am writing about myself.  No matter how different or unique each character is from the others, I’m there.

            Of course, this begs the question: What about the female characters?  (My sons will stop reading right exactly at this point.)  If I were cool, and politically correct, I would claim to have female personalities along with male personalities.  But I’m only cool, not politically correct, and no matter how deep I look inside me, I do not find a woman, or even any female-type being.  My wife will confirm this.

            This does not mean I cannot write for the women in my story.  Women are people (which sounds so patronizing), and people overlap as people, so I don’t have a problem writing from a woman’s perspective, as long as I have women, like my wife and daughters, who read what I write and then tell me when I have it wrong.

A microscopic view inside
 one of Andy's brain cells.

            This means, analogous with the way I write for guys, when I write for women, I look out their eyes at the world that is being created for them.  So, if I’m not part woman, (there are bullies from my high school days who claim otherwise), the women that I write about are part me.  (I said I was esoteric.)

            The way this works, evidently, is the guys I write for are looking out my eyes as I write. But as I write for the women, I am looking out their eyes. Weird, huh?  But, that is the way it works, and for me, it works pretty well. So far, I like the characters that grow up on the pages of my stories.

            Whether or not this means I have DID, I don’t know.  Though it is probably indicative of a need to at least go to therapy.  Yea, well, I’m still not going.  Why mess with all those extra personalities?  I need them to keep my id in balance as well as when I’m developing new story characters.  After all, that’s how I write.

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            Now, while drawing on multiple or split personalities may not work well for all writers, I agree with Andy that it doesn’t hurt to be a little bit crazy and that a whole lot of creativity can come out of being in touch with the crazy side of your own id.

            Taking the character development process a step further, I got some good pointers in a class on  Plot, Character and Conflict presented by Teri Harman at that same Book Festival workshop mentioned above.  Ms. Harman has published a young-adult fiction series of magic and wonder (BLOOD MOON, BLACK MOON, and STORM MOON)) and writes a book column for ksl.com and contributes regular book segments to Studio 5.

            She said that key characters (both good and bad) must be compelling in at least four fundamental ways.  So, when you summarize a character’s life, as Mr. Hughes advises, be sure your summary includes strong descriptive words and in-depth explanations in each of the following four character categories:

            1—Be REAL—create a whole person with real strengths and real flaws (give the person a balanced history with both good and bad experiences), maybe a person with poor coping skills in certain situations.

            2—Be UNIQUE—create a personality that is different, quirky and interesting, and depending on whether your building a protagonist or antagonist, make a person who is fun or crazy, lovable or scary, timid or wild, etc.

            3—Be FLAWED—create an emotional or moral expectation that exceeds the person’s current commitment level or capability to comply; allow the person to disappoint herself as well as others, but then allow the person to learn and grow.

            4—Be COMPLICATED—create both an internal as well as external conflict of good and evil; allow the person to be spontaneous, out of character when under stress, surprised by her own actions in new situations.

            In Andy’s esoteric musings above, he mentioned that he loves to observe people.  So do I, especially when they’re unconsciously showing part of their crazy side.  Next week we’ll speak to the benefits of people-watching as that might help us polish our character-development skills.