Instant Dramatica
Musings from Armando Saldaña
Mora
I, Main Character
There seems to be some troubles defining the Main Characters in stories with multiple
narrators and I'd like to comment on the matter.
First, a brief discussion of the nature of the Main Character, and then some practical
tips to work in stories with multiple narrators:
The worst part of pitching a project for TV is when the Network Exec pulls out a
demographics chart and says: "Our public is made in 45% of farmers, 21% of
secretaries, 19% of housewives, 12% of hydraulic engineers and 3% miscellaneous", at
this point the Exec gives you back your project synopsis and says "The public has to
identify with the Main Character, so make her a farming secretary married to a hydraulic
engineer."
The other possible mistake comes from thinking that the Main Character doesn't have to
resemble the public, but must act exactly as the public would act given the same
situation. (Thank to George Lucas, if I'm ever in a laser sword fight now I know what to
do). I believe that the mistake of the Main Character identification with the public was
first introduced by Aristotle (or by someone who translated him badly from the original
Greek) and was coined by the 18th century critics.
The mistake is basically this: You don't identify with the Main Character, but rather
involve with his troubles on an emotional level. I mean, no one on his right mind would
say: "Gee, I'd love to be Oedipus!"
I know that we all came out of the first Rocky walking like Sylvester Stallone, but
none would trade his life with a beat-up south Philly Italian boxer, we were only happy
that Rocky was able to solve his problems. Because we cared for the guy, but doesn't have
to agree with him. How we do this? Because a complete story works a every psychological
level of your brain.
Let's look at Hamlet. He's what is called a "Tragic Hero", that means a
character that we care about, but who begins with the wrong idea. In the pure rational
plain, Hamlet is a complete idiot. He has something important to do, but instead wanders
on the hallways, hangs on on cemeteries and pretends he's crazy. "Whether is nobler
for the soul..?" "WOULD YOU DO SOMETHING? YOU LITTLE JERK!!... AND CUT THAT HAIR
TOO!"
But in the emotional level we learn of his conflict, of his feeling of being powerless.
We fear his father and feel compelled to him at the same time. In the emotional level we
understand Hamlet's inaction. The objective throughline, main character throughline,
obstacle character throughline and subjective throughline each works at a different level
of the mind (I've seen that lot's of guys in this discussion group are into psychology, so
here it goes):
The Objective throughline goes to the rational parts and forces them to analyze and
synthesize the story problems, logic for a rational solution. The Main Character
throughline is the view of the Ego (more in a Freudian term than in a "transactional
analysis" term). The Obstacle Character throughline has heavy Super Ego and/or Id
issues (That is why is so easy to use a Super Ego Guardian [like Obi-wan-Kenobi] or a Id
Contagonist [Like Hannibal Lecter] as an Obstacle Character) The Subjective throughline
works like the "Adult" in Transactional Analysis, struggling to find an balance
between the emotional parts of the mind. So, the main character identification, doesn't
come from a character that resembles oneself, or one that acts like oneself or about who
is the narrator. The identification comes from learning the emotional view the Main
Character has on the problem.
That was a not-so-brief discussion about the Main Character, so, about the multiple
narrators: The first and easiest way to work this would be to form one story, encode it
and weave it using the multiple narrators revealing in each view new information about the
story, I believe Melanie and Chris call this the "Building Size" or
"Changing Scope" technique. Some of the information could be Red Herrings
(changing importance or giving false information) or play with anyone of the spatial
techniques of story weaving. You can play giving your narrators archetypal traits and
focus on the difference the traits make on the narration: the same scene viewed by the
skeptic and the sidekick would seem as two different new scenes. Remember, using this
techniques, you'd have to weave the Main Character scenes colored with the narrator point
of view, but all the information about your Main Character emotional troubles should
remain clear. An example I liked of this techniques would be a movie called "To
die for". Here the main character has all the wrong ideas and acts in the worst of
ways, so you need many points of view (the movie has about ten narrators) to understand
all the implications of the problem.
You may also want to write subplots or parallel plots in your novel. Each of them
should be treated as a complete story with it's own Main Character even if in the weaving
stage you give more emphasis to one story over the others. Here you can play with the
meaning of each story. Try this: make the OS problem item in one story the OS solution in
other story, if you have a Domain of Physics, Concern of Obtaining, Range of Morality and
Problem of Disbelief in the Objective throughline in one story, give that same Domain,
Concern, Range and Problem on the Subjective throughline on another story. If you have a
scene order of "Learning-Understanding-Doing-Obtaining" in one story, try and
get an order of "Obtaining-Doing-Understanding-Learning" in another story. Have
fun, but a word of warning about this wacky techniques: they all must serve your novel. Do
the storyforming and do some encoding to see if this works as a subplot, if it doesn't,
throw it away. Remember that each of the subplots could be told by multiple narrators.
Hope this works for you. As usual, post any doubt you have about this derangement. By
the way, I was quoting Hamlet from memory and from a cheap Spanish Translation, so forgive
me if I'm not too accurate. Incidentally, here is how the famous monologue looks in
Spanish:
Ser, o no ser, ¡esa es la pregunta! ¿Qué es más elevado para el espíritu, sufrir
inerte los dardos y flechas de la fortuna infamante o oponer el brazo contra ese torrente
de injusticias y luchar?...
