In a story I recently handed in to Marvel Entertainment featuring one of their primary characters, Iron Man (image appearing here completely copyright, etc to Marvel, of course, no rights of any kind implied), I was struck by how much thought and development I felt compelled to put into the antagonist, because so much of that detail would never actually appear on the page. ‘Pithy’ bits of dialogue that in my early ruminations I assumed would have to make the page (to make readers understand the character sufficiently to care) got scratched out by me as I went along, and then, to my surprise, a few lines got trimmed further by the editor. On reflection I immediately saw my editor was on the money, too.
It’s a case of the old iceberg rule, I guess; there’s a quarter (or whatever) fraction sticking above the water that can have almighty impact, but that quarter only exists because the majority supports it from hiding below. You will constantly see this topic discussed in ‘how-to’ books and web-pages on writing, and sometimes it seems impossibly exaggerated; I mean, do you really have to write a biography of a character to use them in a story? It seems unnecessary when you consider that in the good, old, real world (yeah, I know, THAT place!) you might work with people for years in an office or a factory or a brothel and you don’t know anything about the formative incidents that shaped them, but you probably do know exactly how they’ll behave in that environment, so why bio every single character?
The answer is: Excellence and the power of choice in fiction. In fiction we artificially string a series of incidents together leaving only the ones that matter in to tell a tale of cause and effect that delivers a theme and an emotional experience that largely works around a character evolving from one emotional condition to another. The writer has the power and responsibility (nice buzzwords, those, gotta use them in a comic some day) of economically choosing just enough incidents to convey the protagonist’s challenging journey; so if you know your antagonists and supporting characters well, you can introduce some fantastic, intriguing, events, events that seem to mirror our own real world effectively, and thus make the whole story more convincing, more emotionally involving and a ‘better story’ even to the reader that knows zip about story theory (and that is who you’re writing for, the person who is entitled to a damn good story, your reader).
Example? Well, let’s stick with the office parallel. Fred, in your division, applies for a promotion. He’s a guy you liked, and you don’t care who gets the job. But then you hear the quiet-mannered Joan has also applied. Unh, oh. No one knows much about her, but they do know that her boyfriend, Gomer, used to be Fred’s. Fred and Gomer did not split on good terms, in fact Gomer stalked Fred a while.
Suddenly, Joan asks you to lunch and says after her interview for the promotion Gomer walked out on her saying he was going back to Fred and she thinks Gomer told Fred the interview questions which he was then able to use because his interview was the day after Joan’s. Joan thinks you should help her put in a formal complaint because you’re on the anti-corruption advisory committee. Yowsa!
Now you got story choices galore, just by setting a few things down in concrete, and allowing your characters to bring the same quicksilver properties of life – that constant state of flux – to your story. It can be daunting, but it’s a liberating discovery, and you will find that certain choices just radiate with moral and ethical challenges for your protagonist – the juiciest stuff you could ask for.
