Characterization, Part 4

February 19, 2009

The other day, Million Monkeys had a post about backstory. A couple of us got into a discussion/digression about how much of what you know about your character ends up on the page.

The conclusion: a lot less than you know.

The example Jon provides is our favorite aged wizard, Albus Dumbledore, who JK Rowling outed a year or so ago in an interview. God only knows what the question was, but she commented that she'd always thought of Dumbledore as being gay. The media, which apparently had nothing better to do, went a little nuts over this.

I rolled my eyes, wondering why she'd said it. Was she being honest or did she think a statement like that would create a little more furor over the books, which were already plenty popular.

I also thought, "Well, she would know, wouldn't she?"

Now, just last week I finished re-reading "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." Starting last summer I've been re-reading all the HP books in order and, as you can see, I've got one more to go

Nowhere in these books is Dumbledore's sexuality in question, hetero, homo or any other variety. Partly this is due to the fact that, for the most part, the HP novels are told from the point of view of Harry Potter. In the first book Harry's 11 and by the end he's what, 17? 

When I bother to muse over this question at all, I would note that except for the students in the later books, the faculty of Hogwarts seems made up of nursing home fodder. The only bit of romance suggested among faculty is between Hagrid and Madame Maxime. (And has anyone bothered to even remotely think about the sexual logistics of Hagrid's parents, a giantess and a muggle father? Okay, don't go there). In Half-Blood Prince, Harry and Hermione do briefly speculate whether the school's librarian had a thing going with the school's caretaker, Mr. Filch. But aside from that, there's no mention of Dumbledore's love life, previous relationships, current relationships or sexual proclivities. Neither is there similar mention of such things with McGonaggal, Flitwick, Sinistra, Sprout, Slughorn, Mad-Eye Moody, Umbrage (although she's clearly got an infatuation with Fudge) or the divination professor whose name momentarily eludes me. (Ah, Trelawney!)

That's not unexpected, actually. Students don't necessarily register teachers that way. They're inclined to think of them as not having lives outside the classroom, especially when they're younger.

And yet, I can attest that schools can be a hotbed of, well, leave it at hotbed. In fact, one of my son's teachers a year or so ago left her husband because she'd had an affair with the principal of the school. School never seemed so interesting when I was a student!

But it does bring us back to a couple more Hogwarts adult characters. First, Remus Lupin, who seems to have no sex life at all either until he apparently falls in love with Tonks, marries, and then the two of them are killed at the Battle of Hogwarts. Yikes!

And then there is Severus Snape. Ah yes. His underlying loyalty to Dumbledore and in a very odd way, to Harry Potter, was because he was in love with Harry's mother, Lily Potter. And he felt Voldemort betrayed him when he responded to Snape's revelations about the overheard prophecy by killing Lily and James. (Apparently Snape was okay with Voldemort attempting to kill Harry, who was a year old at the time).

So clearly JK Rowling spent some time thinking about some of the underlying relationships and romantic inclinations of her characters.

Yet, for the most part, they didn't end up on the page. (And weren't there enough pages anyway?)

I think it's a good idea to know a lot more about your characters, especially your main characters, than what ends up on the page. You should know if their parents are alive or dead, if they get along with them, if they have siblings, what everybody does for a living. You should know their sexual preferences and quirks, their favorite foods, their dreams and aspirations, fears...

Because it informs their decisions and actions. It helps take a 2-dimensional cutout and turn him or her into a three-dimensional human being. It can, with a carefully chosen passing comment or observation, give your characters more depth.

Does anyone really need to know that my character Derek Stillwater's parents were missionary doctors and very conservative from a religious point of view? Not necessarily, although I address this issue in the fourth book. Is it important for the reader to know that he had a brother, David, who is a physician for Doctors Without Borders? No, although I do mention it, because I don't want Derek to seem as if he's living in a vacuum. Do they need to know his parents now live in assisted living in Florida and his father has Alzheimer's? 

There are a lot of other facts and things I know about his character. And plenty I don't know that if I have an opportunity to write more books featuring him will be revealed to me. But I do think it's important to know more about your characters than the readers do.

One of the key questions I ALWAYS ask myself about my main characters is: if they weren't doing what they're currently doing, what would they be doing? What's my character's dream job?

How about you?

Cheers,

Mark Terry