BUILDING THE (TOO-) PERFECT PROTAGONIST

by Gar Anthony Haywood

One of the questions we writers get all the time is:

"Is your protagonist you?"

I've heard a lot of different answers to this question, some long and some short, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone just come out and say what we all know to be true:

"Of course he is!"

Because really, is there ever any doubt?  Why create a heroic character --- especially one who triumphs in the end --- if you can't live vicariously through him?  And how can you live vicariously through a character who's totally removed from yourself?

Has any card-carrying 'Rati ever read a Charlie Fox thriller and not seen Zoë Sharp herself doing all that ass-kicking?

I didn't think so.

Sure, we take pains to disguise ourselves, giving our protagonists attributes we don't actually share, but we're in there, all right.  Fiction is a game of pretend, and part of the fun of writing it comes from putting yourself at the center of the action, in the guise of a bigger and better you, facing enemies and dangers larger than you could reliably handle in the real world.  With ourselves as the underlying framework, we build a protagonist built for heroism, endowing him with strengths and powers we either lack altogether, or do not possess in sufficient quantity to tackle the task at hand.

But there's a limit to this process.  Unless you're writing pulp, or some kind of retro-crime fiction that harkens back to the days when "realism" was a dirty word, you never want to follow such fantasies to their extreme.  You know what your perfect protagonist looks like, but he's not anybody you could actually use in a story supposedly grounded in a non-fictional universe.

God bless Ian Fleming.  He got to have his cake and eat it, too, creating the ultimate male protagonist in James Bond, agent 007, at a time when scores of readers were still willing to forgive such laughable affronts to realism, common sense, and the sensibilities of women.  Try writing a series about such an ingenious, indefatigable, sexually flawless protagonist as Bond now and see how many rejection letters you collect.

Still, whether you can use him or her in your fiction or not, it's always fun to imagine what kind of protagonist you could build were the sky the limit.  Unencumbered by any restrictions suspension-of-disbelief might demand, what would he look like?  What would his powers be?

Or should I say, what would your powers be?  Because your protagonist is really you, remember?

When I created Aaron Gunner, the Los Angeles private investigator I've now put at the center of six novels, I drew the line at giving him only one thing my "perfect" protagonist would possess that I, sadly, do not: a red Ford Shelby Cobra, my favorite sports car of all time.

But I could have been much more generous to Gunner than that.

If I were building him according to my own personal wants and needs today, independent of what I thought readers would be willing to buy, this would be his basic profile:

1. Height/Weight: 6'-2"/220 lbs.
   
   Just big enough to give someone thinking about throwing down on him reason to think twice.
   
   
2. Physical attractiveness: 7.5
   
   This is on a scale of 1 - 10, 1 being Homer Simpson and 10 being Denzel Washington.
   
   
3. Sexual prowess: 8
   
   Again, this is on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 basically means any song featuring the words "all night long" in its lyrics could have been written about him on a typical Tuesday in March.
   
   (Sorry, ladies, I know you think this stuff is silly, but we guys really do fantasize like this, especially those of us with serious performance anxieties.  You dream about chocolate and warm baths, we dream about making Gisele Bündchen forget she ever even met Tom Brady.  What can I tell you?)
   
   
4. Annual income: $95,000
   
   Enough to live comfortably without losing sight of his humble origins.
   
   
5. Place of residence: 3 bedroom home in Ladera Heights (Los Angeles, CA)
   
   Because every man should have an expansive view of his city, and a spare bedroom to put all his toys in.
   
   
6. Could be a Jeopardy champion in the category of: World history
   
   
7. Aptitude in the kitchen: 7
   
   Where Bobby Flay would be a 10.  Not good enough to win any cooking contests, but capable of making any first date memorable for the food and drink alone.
   
   
8. Languages spoken fluently: 3
   
   English, Spanish and Japanese
   
   
9. Musical instruments played: 2
   
   Piano and guitar.  Self-taught.  No pro by a longshot, but he could join the band at any concert and not embarrass himself.  And every once in a blue moon, can rip off a jam like this:




10. Hidden talent: Expert magician.
    
    And I don't mean card tricks.  I mean "How the hell did he do that??" stuff.

And so on and so forth.  You get the idea.  A ridiculous character, to be sure, but someone it might be fun to be for a day or so, just to see how it would feel.

So what about you, my fellow 'Ratis?  Using the 10 categories above as a jumping off point, what would the profile of your "perfect protagonist" look like, if suspension-of-disbelief was not a consideration?

THIS CAN'T POSSIBLY END WELL . . . (OR CAN IT?)

by Gar Anthony Haywood

The other night, the wife and I caught the last forty minutes or so of the classic film THELMA & LOUISE on television.  The story of two BFFs on the run from the law after a weekend getaway from the troublesome men in their lives turns deadly, it's a movie I greatly enjoyed when it was first released in 1991.  The late Callie Khouri's script is fantastic and the two leads, Geena Davis as Thelma and Susan Sarandon as Louise, are simply brilliant (not to mention gorgeous).

Iron-willed feminist that she is, I expected my wife Tessa would be a fan, but just before fade-out, she surprised me by demanding we turn the movie off.

Turns out she can't stand how it ends.

If you've seen the film yourself (or have just watched the clip above), you know that its big payoff is a flashy suicide: With the law fast closing in, and facing an almost certain future behind bars, the girls decide to show all the men who've ever wronged them one final, giant-sized "Fuck you!" by taking a flying leap (actually, it's a driving leap) into the Grand Canyon.  Better to die in a blaze of glory than go on living as a second-class citizen under the oppressive, sexist thumb of the Man.

Those who have found this ending to be extremely satisfying --- and there are many --- would probably describe it as a happy one.  After all, aren't Thelma and Louise breathlessly fist-pumping as the curtain falls, having left Harvey Keitel and a small army of lawmen holding nothing but dust in their wake?  Haven't they escaped the injustice of going to prison for a crime they committed only in self-defense?  In driving off that cliff, rather than surrender and submit for the ten-thousandth time in their lives, aren't they realizing the ultimate dream of oppressed people everywhere: self-determination?

Well, yes . . .

Except that they fucking die!

That's your happy ending?  Victory in death?  Really?

Oh, hell, no.  There's nothing "happy" about that ending at all.  Suicide under any circumstances is an act of desperation; it's a capitulation to forces making life too unbearable to hold on to.  And yet, this is not to say the ending to THELMA & LOUISE is not a perfectly fitting one.  In fact, one might argue it's the only ending to the film Callie Khouri could have written that would have been true to all that came before it.

But was it?

Were there other, equally authentic but far less tragic ways to bring the saga of Thelma and Louise to a close Khouri could have devised instead, had she been motivated to try?  Or was this a story that simply demanded the downer ending it was given?

I don't know.

For all the love I have for Roman Polanski's CHINATOWN (actually, I prefer to think of it as Robert Towne's CHINATOWN), the ending to that film has always left me asking the same question: Was that really the best Towne could do?  Was there really no other way to bring Jake Gitte's conflict with Noah Cross to a satisfactory conclusion other than to have Cross --- as evil and twisted a villain as has ever darkened the silver screen --- win?

Again, I don't know.  The only thing I do know is that, had Towne not chosen to take the path he did, he might never have written one of the greatest last lines in movie history: "Forget it, Jake.  It's Chinatown."  And that would have been a tragedy.

Personally, I think both Robert Towne and Callie Khouri nailed the endings to their respective films, whether viable, more upbeat alternatives were available to them or not.  But I don't believe the same can be said for every screenwriter (or novelist) whose film (novel) ends on a similar, fatalistic note.  Sometimes, a writer runs his ladies off a cliff, or has his private eye taste the bitter taste of defeat, simply because finding another way out of the jam he's placed them in is too terrible a thought to contemplate.

Readers call authors to task all the time for slapping happy endings on books that don't logically point to one, and with good reason.  But affixing sad endings to stories that don't necessarily require them is just as egregious in my opinion.

Like the old saying goes: "Tragedy is easy.  It's comedy that's hard."

Questions for the Class: Can you think of a book or film that ended badly more out of obvious convenience than necessity?

PORTRAIT OF THE STARVING ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

by Gar Anthony Haywood

In the years immediately following high school, there was nothing I wanted to do more than write comic books.  My best friend Larry Houston was a terrific artist and, along with Don Manuel, another artist friend of ours, we were absolutely certain it was our destiny to become rich and famous comic book publishers, ala Stan Lee at Marvel.

We managed to publish and sell two issues of our own fanzine, THE ENFORCERS, under the Graphics2000 banner, before both our money and youthful  innocence ran out.  Here's what the second issue of our mag looked like:

Anyone who's ever tried to mix friendship with business could have probably predicted how things would work out for Graphics2000.  Larry and I found 2000 things to bicker about, mostly dealing with creative control, and one night over coffee I just pulled the plug, telling him I preferred remaining friends to our becoming spiteful enemies.  I don't remember a lot about that parting-of-the-ways conversation, but I do remember this:

We were sitting in Larry's parked car outside my apartment building, reviewing our reasons for wanting to write and draw comic books in the first place.  All along, I'd thought his reasons were the same as mine --- because he and I were artists placed on this earth to create.  But it seemed I was mistaken.  Larry didn't give a rat's ass for "art," he was in this thing for the money.  His ability to draw was an asset, not a gift, and only a fool would waste a viable asset doing something strictly for art's sake.

Wow.  You could have blown me down with a feather.

I was precisely the kind of fool Larry was talking about, and I pretty much remain that same fool today.  I suppose it's no coincidence that Larry has gone on to build a successful and lucrative career in animation, leveraging his artistic talents to great economic effect, while I have. . . well, written a dozen critically-acclaimed crime novels that have barely managed to keep my kitchen cupboards stocked with corn flakes. 

Needless to say, I never thought my high-minded choice of art over commerce would prove so absolute.  I always thought I'd find a way to become both rich and creatively unfettered.  Such a parlay is not entirely unprecedented.  But writing only what I've wanted to write, with an indifference to what publishers will buy that almost borders on contempt, has not served me well by any fiscal form of measurement, and I wouldn't recommend it to any newbie author as a game plan for success.

Still, I've tried my hand at writing with one eye on the marketplace and the other on the page a number of times, and nothing good has ever come of it.  I don't often hate the process of writing, but I'm always at my unhappiest when I'm writing something intended to fill a niche, rather than satisfy an itch.  The responsible adults among you with bills to pay and children to feed are right now thinking, "So fucking what if he's unhappy?  Better unhappy than homeless!"  But that's only a reasonable response if you assume I'm capable of doing my most saleable work regardless of my enthusiasm --- or lack of same --- for the material.

Ever hear the old expression "If it hurts, you must be doing it wrong"?  Well, that's how I feel about writing.  Writing's difficult and, yes, even painful on occasion --- but it's not supposed to be misery.  The message I heard most clearly in Stephen's most recent post here regarding the mixed emotions he's had while writing his latest book is, "I DON'T WANT TO BE WRITING THIS BOOK.  I'M NOT ENJOYING THE PROCESS."  And that, I think, is what we all feel when we put the cart of commerce too far before the horse of our own personal aesthetic.  (Which, by the way, I'm not suggesting Stephen has.  It may be that what he's been experiencing is merely the stress that comes with writing the best damn thing one's ever written.  I wouldn't put it past him.)

I'll state for the record again that I'm not advocating writing with zero attention paid to profit.  That's no way to keep baby in new shoes, nor your agent answering the phone.  I'm simply arguing that you can't write as well as you're capable if what you're writing has too much to do with external demands and not enough with internal ones.  That way lies madness, my friends, and I've heard enough "successful" authors, having made that devil's bargain, wail about their conflicted souls to know it.

One final end note: Larry Houston and I are still great friends, more than thirty years after I broke up our Graphics2000 partnership.

Guess we artistes can't be wrong about everything.

Questions for the Class: Writers, how do you deal with the constant yin-yang pull of commerce versus art?  Readers, can you tell when an author is writing more for profit than for love?  What are the signs?

THE THINGS WE DON'T PUT IN

by Gar Anthony Haywood

Several weeks ago, I wrote a post here describing how reluctant I've always been to write about my own real life experiences.  The reasons I gave were, a) I don't think those experiences are all that fascinating; and b) I don't think they're anybody's business but my own.  That's a rather selfish attitude, I admit, but then, I've never been a subscriber to the idea that nothing great ever comes of art that doesn't require one to open up a vein.

This isn't to say I don't believe a writer's best work has to involve some measure of self-reflection.  I do.  I just don't think a reader needs to know the intimate details of a writer's life in order to fully connect with his work.  If a writer's done his job right, a reader should get the benefit of his life experiences without the writer having to spell those experiences out.  Whether I choose to write about specific events in my life or not, the world view those events have left me with can be found in everything I write, and I wouldn't have it any other way.  Narcissistic exhibitionism is the point of all this writing-for-publication business, after all.

And yet, for all our desire to share our unique world perspective with perfect strangers, to reveal our true selves by way of literary expression, there is a limit to what most of us will lay bare.  We set these limits for all kinds of reasons, both personal and commercial:

This is humiliating.

This won't sell in Middle America.

My agent will want me to cut this.

My (brother/father/cousin Bill) will know this is about him and will never forgive me for writing about it.

Whatever our reasons for the omission, we all withhold something from the reader, and sometimes this is to the benefit of our writing and sometimes it's to the detriment of it.  I think what determines which of the two it is is how central what we choose to omit is to the person we really are.  Trying to write around ideas and principles we hold dear is like trying to paint around the proverbial elephant in the room; it can create an artificiality the reader can't help but sense.

I don't know if I've been guilty of such artificiality myself, but I have come to realize over the last several weeks that there's a part of me I've never allowed to color my writing in any substantial way, and not simply because the opportunity to do so hasn't presented itself.  No, this is something I've deliberately shied away from, something I've convinced myself has no proper place in the kinds of stories I write.  In my personal life, I make no bones about it, but in my professional one, I've treated it like a small physical defect best turned away from the light.

Here it is:  I'm an unrepentant Catholic.

Whoa.  Where'd everybody go?

Well, anyway, for the benefit of those still here, the word "unrepentant" in the confession above can best be defined as follows: "Content to remain a card-carrying member while reserving the right to be guided by conscience and not the Vatican."

Whether that makes me a good Catholic or no Catholic at all is a discussion for another day --- and another blog.  My personal belief system is only germane to this post as an example of something that defines me as an individual, yet has never been given much of a voice in my writing.  Religion is such a divisive subject, I've made it a non-issue in my work so as to avoid turning anybody off.

But what kind of bullshit is that?  I've gone on record many times decrying self-censorship where profanity is concerned; I think writers who try to pass "friggin'" off as a perfectly acceptable synonym for "motherfucker," just to keep all those book-buying cozy readers from fleeing the room screaming, are calculating, disingenuous weenies.  And yet, here I've been, dodging matters of faith with equal intent, and with the same commercial considerations in mind.

Well, not anymore.

Writers are always trying to find their "truth," the specific story or stories they alone were put on this earth to tell.  And it's finally occurred to me that, if I ever intend to find my truth, I'm going to have to empty the larder and throw everything I've got into the pot.  Writing with restraint is no longer going to cut it.

Anybody expecting me to suddenly become the Tim Tebow of noir is going to be sorely disappointed, however.  I have no interest in writing Sunday sermons disguised as crime fiction, nor in saving anybody's soul.  I don't like to read religious screeds, no matter how subliminal, and I sure as hell don't want to write them.  But neither do I intend to go on treating my core beliefs like a dirty secret, while writing to be loved by everyone and despised by no one.  The time has come for me to find out what kind of work I can produce when I'm no longer worrying about revealing too much of the man behind the curtain.

They say the truth will set you free.

We'll see.

Questions for the Class: Does your writing reflect everything and every one you are?  Or are there things about yourself you choose to keep separate from your work?  Readers, what writers, if any, have you read who handle matters of faith with the right balance of heft and subtlety?



THEY DON'T KNOW HOW WE DO IT

by Gar Anthony Haywood

Several months ago, I wrote a guest post for Timothy Hallinan's fine blog regarding the "writer's process."  Those last two words are in quotation marks because, as all of us here clearly know, there's no such thing as a singular "writer's process."  Every writer's process --- his way of getting words on paper so that they form a publishable manuscript --- is different.  Asking me to describe "the" writer's process is like asking all the Iron Chefs how to make a soufflé with the expectation of getting only one answer.

Anyway, one of the areas I touched upon in my post for Tim's blog (Tim's one hell of a writer, by the way; his novel THE QUEEN OF PATPONG is not to be missed) was where we writers get our ideas.  Big surprise that, huh?  Because that's always the first thing readers and others who don't write for a living want to know: Where the hell do we find all those incredible stories?

The question is usually posed as if the answer must be some deep, dark secret.  I think what the people who pose it are generally envisioning is a vast network of hidden depositories --- lockboxes that only we writers know exist --- in which Great Ideas are kept.  We surf to the Great Ideas website, login using our writers-only password, find a lockbox nearby and then slink off under cover of night to open the box and withdraw the Great Idea inside.

Voila!  Our next book is practically in the can!

(Oh, if it were only that simple. . .)

Naturally, there is no such network of lockboxes.  There are no hidden Great Ideas.  All our Great Ideas are right there out in the open for anyone and everyone to see.  Here's how I explained what I mean in my post for Tim's blog:

A Non-Writer and a Writer are walking down the street.  Both take note of a mismatched pair of running shoes dangling from their bound laces over the back of a vacant bus bench.

The Non-Writer thinks (if he or she thinks anything at all):

"Hmm.  That's funny.  I wonder what that's about?"

The Writer thinks:

"An all-clear sign left by one criminal conspirator for another."

"A poor man training for his last marathon before cancer takes his life has just boarded a bus and left his only pair of running shoes behind."

"A grifter's wife, throwing his worthless ass out again, has just tossed his clothes out of the window of their fourth-floor apartment, starting with shoes she's been careful to tie up in mismatched pairs just to twist the knife."

You see?  And none of this is particularly deliberate.  It just happens.  It's how our minds work.  We see or read something that piques our curiosity and runaway extrapolation occurs.  Mind you, it isn't always great extrapolation (as the three examples above probably indicate), but every now and then, something genuinely wonderful results from it.

So where do I get my ideas?  Everywhere.  The thing is, they're only "ideas" because, as a writer, I'm able to perceive them as such; what the Non-Writer dismisses as mere background noise I latch onto as seedlings that could grow stories in a hundred different directions.

Go figure.

I was thinking about all this yesterday during my thrice-weekly bike ride to the gym, because I caught myself finding Great Ideas in damn near everything and everyone I encountered.  Such as:

• Two police cars, one unmarked, the other a black-and-white, splitting off to cruise my 'hood in two different directions.

My first thought: Watch one of them pull me over.  On my bike.  Always trying to keep the Black Man down.

(Well, okay, this wasn't a Great Idea, it was just paranoia.  And no, neither cop gave me a second look.)

But my NEXT first thought was:

They're after the wrong guy.  Somebody's called in a false report, claiming they've witnessed a crime that never actually occurred, because. . .

• A long line of cars waiting at a Metro line rail crossing for a train that, it seems, is never going to come.

My first thought: Persons unknown have hacked into the Metro transit system, and this harmless traffic snarl is just a dry run for. . .

• Two old men, one at least twenty years older than the other, circling a car for sale sitting in a dry cleaner's parking lot: a classic, perfectly restored '64 Chevy Malibu.

My first thought: They're father and son, and the son intends to gift the car to the old man because it reminds them both of the son's mother, who. . .

• A homeless man stretched out on the sidewalk, unkempt but totally coherent, lighting a cigarette with theatrical flair.

My first thought:  This is a goddamn shame.  Exactly how and when did homelessness become something undeserving of America's outrage?

(But I digress.)

My NEXT first thought:  He learned to light a cigarette like that in Europe as a young man, when he served as a valet to. . .

• A pair of ornate, wrought-iron gates, flanking a quiet residential street;  open now but clearly once intended to close off the sidewalk on both sides to unwanted visitors.

My first thought:  Those gates weren't meant to keep people out.  They were meant to keep people in.  During World War II, this street led to a private hospital, where a former surgeon in the U.S. Navy was conducting secret experiments on. . .

And that's how it goes for me, all day, every day.  Springboards for stories are everywhere.  My wife sees a car at the curb, coated with dust and sporting a windshield crawling with parking tickets; I see the corpse going to rot in the back seat, behind the tinted windows that only days ago had served as a curtain for the last sex act the deceased will ever know.

Most of these Great Ideas of mine are anything but, and I forget about them as quickly as they come to me.  But some stick.  They grow and gather momentum, almost of their own volition, until I'm too drawn in to do anything but massage them into a full-blown narrative or die trying.

So there you have it: My answer to the dreaded "Where do you get your ideas?" question.  I don't go looking for them; I just stumble upon them, my writer's intuition (think of Superman's X-ray vision) enabling me, countless times a day, to see beyond the hard outer shell of something ordinary to the infinite and extraordinary possibilities lurking within.

But hey --- if anybody wants to create that secret network of idea lockboxes?  Sign me the hell up.

Questions for the class: Readers, what's the best answer to the "Where do you get your ideas?" question you've ever heard?  And writers, I'm not going to ask where and how you get your ideas --- that would be too easy.  But I am curious to know how often you come up with one too good not to keep.  Once a day?  Twice a month?  Exactly how efficient is your own personal idea-generating mechanism?