Hey, ho, let’s go!
Reading Assignment for this class: “The Beginning of My Life” and “The Coming of Shadow” chapters from Teardrop Road, and the novella Seeds of Tarako.
Writing Assignment for this class: The assignment from Class 14 is due today. Send it to jesseteller (at) yahoo (dot) com. Remember to rate and review your performance at the bottom of the assignment.
Motive
It’s the number one thing they say you need to think about when you’re acting on the stage. They’re always talking about, “What’s my character’s motive?” I guess acting in movies is the same. In this scene, what is my character’s motive, and motive is extremely important. There’s a tug of war kind of thing going on between these two forces in your character’s life, motive and trauma. Sometimes trauma will inspire motive, but for the most part what you’ll be told is that readers wanna read a book where the main character is proactive. They do things and they make things happen. Not reactive, reacting to other characters’ actions and the things going on in the plot. You’re gonna be told that proactive is always the way to go, so that’s what we’ll talk about.
You read “The Beginning of My Life.” It’s a story about the night me and my wife got together for the first time. It was a wild night. And my DID made it a really intense one for her. A few alters had a thing for her, they really cared about her. Bekah and I had spent a lot of time together recently, and they had been obsessed with her the whole time, so there was gonna be something. So we plan a party and during the party, different alters are driven by the same motives but have different proactive ways to get that motive accomplished.
Shadow’s motive is to show her how fun it would be if she was dating him. So, he’s doing things like laughing with his friends. He’s doing that thing where one of his friends is talking to him, and he’s looking at her across the room and smiling, or rolling his eyes, or shaking his head at the things he’s hearing, as if she and he are having a conversation and not the people he’s with.
I’d say most of the people in this room have done that or had it done to them. It’s pretty classic flirting.
She was rooted on the loveseat. She wasn’t going anywhere. Taking sips of her wine cooler and making faces. She was having trouble with how strong the wine cooler was. So Shadow is being proactive here and he is saying this is what I want, this is how I’m gonna get it. He’s got motive, and he’s being active about pursuing it. Readers wanna read about this. They don’t want stagnant characters, at least they say they don’t.
A lot of times readers have no idea what they want. This is a trap you’re gonna get into, and I’m gonna take a moment to step aside from what I’m talking about now and address this. This is a trap you’re gonna get into. Don’t ever listen to readers about what they want to read. I had a friend who asked, after they finished a series, they asked if their readers wanted more from that world or the new project they were working on. It’s a totally unfair question, and it always leads to disaster. The readers loved that series, and so of course they want more of it. But they have zero idea what their other option is, because they’re not in the head of the writer. So the writer decided they were going to write more in the same world that tied to the same characters from the first series. It was a disaster. It’s what the readers thought they wanted, but it was a disaster.
The writer was very unhappy with the reviews they got. They were very unhappy with the sales they got. They made it two books into the trilogy and abandoned the project. It wasn’t what they were excited about writing, so it couldn’t possibly go well. They decided to lock themselves up and write the other option.
Of course, it went perfectly. It was a wild success. Most of the reviewers who read it raved about it. And for a very long time, it was at the top of everybody’s Top Ten posts. The book was a major success. But this author had another problem. It was supposed to be a standalone, but people enjoyed it so much that they asked for a sequel. The writer decided to turn it into a trilogy instead of a standalone. The novel was 900-1000 pages, so they had just committed to 1800-2000 more pages of story. And it just wasn’t there. They’ve been struggling to write the second book in the series for a very long time now instead of working on the next idea they have. They fell into the same trap a second time.
It’s like a musician asking their audience, do you want a remix of the song I just released? It was a hit and you loved it dearly, do you want a remix of the song I just released, or do you want me to write a new song? It’s simply not fair. It’s not fair to the reader or the listener. Because nobody knows what the next song is. All they know is that they love the first. They’re always gonna ask for the remix.
When you write a successful book, you have to have the confidence to know that the reason it’s successful is because you wrote it. And your next book has the potential to be just as successful. Your next idea could blow the first out of the water. Do not look for the interest of your reader. Because they have no idea what you’ve been inspired to do.
A similar thing happened with my editor. He edited Legends of the Exiles. And it takes place on the mountain, which is a section of my world. I wrote a very large series based on this culture. This was the first book he was editing that had anything to do with the mountain, and it was a book of four novellas.
He fell in love with the mountain. It’s a barbaric culture with powerful men and powerful women, and when he read that book, he fell in love with that culture and decided that all my work was gonna be about the mountain somehow.
Well, the very next book I gave him took place in a completely different country with a different culture. It had nothing to do with the mountain. His comment was, when he started talking to me, how is this related to the mountain? I said with the exception of these three characters, it’s not. And those three characters are displaced from their society. It has nothing to do with the mountain. It’s about something else entirely.
He made the argument that everything needs to be about the mountain. All of your work needs to be about the mountain. I just told him to get to work. There’s no sense in arguing with people who love the mountain. You’re not gonna change their mind.
Well of course I changed his mind. He fell in love with the book he was working on. But here’s my point. Let me wrap it up for you. He wanted that book that he was working on to be about the mountain. He had read two chapters, he had edited two chapters before he got ahold of me to chastise me and tell me that all my work needed to be about the mountain, even though he had zero idea what he was talking about.
So, don’t listen to what the readers want, because it’s not fair to them and it’s not fair to you. They have no idea what other project you’re building, and they have no idea what their real options are. We can talk about Taylor Swift again if you want. We can talk about how her record label said they wanted her to stay country and she wanted to be pop, so they went back and forth against each other. I’d rather you just take my word for it, but if you’d rather listen to Taylor we can do that.
Okay, back to motive and being proactive. Shadow was proactive here. He’s actively moving towards his goal. Then we get into Artist. Everybody calms down and there’s a story that’s supposed to be told. Off go the lights, on goes the candle. And Artist starts telling the story.
I remember the story. It wasn’t that bad. I remember the point of view character was a girl about ten years old, and her mother’s water broke and she’s giving birth, but they’re in the wilderness, and this is in the 1800s. And so, she has to go and run and get the doctor or the midwife.
Well it’s night time and there’s a wicked rainstorm going on, and lightning, and the area is haunted by a deformed, large, monstrous evil man, inbred and just dangerous. And so, she’s running to get help with a small pistol she barely knows how to use. She gets the doctor and they’re coming back, and it’s a dirt road, so the road is all mud, and the carriage gets stuck. Midwife is traveling with the doctor and she jumps off. The midwife and the girl run through the mud and the rain to get to the cabin while the doctor fights with his trapped carriage.
Midwife gets there and they have the mother on the kitchen table. There is an older sister and the younger sister. The midwife is getting the baby, and the whole place is lit by candle light. The baby is born. The baby starts screaming as the lightning goes off, and when the lightning goes off, you can see that the massive, mutated, inbred mountain creature is standing outside the window. You have a full view of him, his faced pressed against the window, and he’s looking in at the baby.
Only the young girl sees him, and she screams. At this very moment in the story, and I had worked the story really well, there’s a lot of tension in this story. In this very moment of the story, somebody’s outside my door, they bend and they look in the window as they knock on the door pretty hard. They have long shaggy hair and they’re not attractive, and everybody in the room screams. I screamed just like a little girl. There was this amazing moment. Guardian almost jumped up and pulled a knife to defend Bekah. Everybody freaked out. He came in. It was one of the greatest things that could ever have happened to the story, except it did end the story. Anyway, Artist is crafting a story for Bekah. He’s paying all his attention to her as if she’s the only one in the room. That is motive and him being proactive.
Then there’s Guardian. Guardian is not being proactive here. He’s being reactive. Big difference. Guardian is sitting in the floor after everybody has calmed down from the crazy man outside my window. Guardian is sitting there waiting for a chance to show some kind of affection, some kind of display to Bekah. He is waiting to react.
Now, this is not necessarily bad for a piece of writing. A lot of people will tell you that it is. They’ll tell you that all the characters need to be proactive, but that’s just not how life works. There’s no reality to that. In life there are people who just react to things in certain situations. You’re all doing it right now. You’re not interrupting me, interjecting me, explaining how I’m wrong, which would be proactive. You’re being reactive. You’re taking notes and you’re listening to my lecture. Does that make you bad characters in your own story? No. Including reactive characters in a book only adds a sense of realism, because not everybody is go, go, go all the time.
The simple fact of the matter is there’s no one way to write a character all the time. You’ve gotta mix things up. If you’re gonna have proactive characters, you’ve gotta have reactive characters as well. In order to create a believable world your story can take place in, not everyone can be go, go, go. Some people have to be waiting. And that’s what was happening with Guardian in this reading.
Guardian’s sitting there, looking at the whole party, afraid things are about to die down. And he hasn’t displayed any affection towards her yet. Well, what ends up happening is she has to go to the bathroom, but she’s too drunk, because she’s halfway through one wine cooler. She’s too drunk to get up and do it herself. Guardian gets up, he’s the definition of chivalry’s not dead. He gets up and he helps her to her feet, takes her to the bathroom. Gets her back to her chair. And that one act right there, because he waited outside the bathroom to help her back to her seat, that one action sealed the moment.
The entire night, and the relationship, started there. Well, how can that be? The story needs to be taken over by somebody who’s proactive rather than reactive. Well, like I said, there’s no one way to write. There’s lots of different kinds of people in the world. In this particular case, one of them is reactive.
Even though he’s a reactive character, his motive is still very plain and is still very clear. Guardian wants to express affection to this girl that is appropriate for the level of their relationship. That is his motive. He’s just being reactive about achieving it.
Now we’re gonna talk about something completely different that’s also related to reactive and proactive characters. Let’s talk about the chapter you read called “The Coming of Shadow,” because sometimes characters are proactive and reactive based on the trauma they have suffered.
Trauma
Motive is important. We also have to talk about trauma. A lot of your character’s actions will be defined by their trauma. Your characters have to have motives, things they want to do, plans they’ve made. The problem is, that can’t be the only thing that creates your character, and your character’s actions and personality. They have to be led by their hang ups, too. We talked about this earlier. You had to sit down and write a conversation with your character. You had to ask their likes, not their dislikes, weaknesses, not their strengths. That whole thing was building toward this next point. Your character is also designed by their hang ups. A lot of times their actions are not because they want something, but because they’re too broken to take what they want.
In “The Coming of Shadow,” we can start to see trauma being the thing that causes and sparks action. The manipulative and evil character Siren is not getting the answers she wants. She wants to know what he talked about in therapy. She has to have as much control as she can over his therapy. So they’re laying in bed, when she’s not getting the answers she wants, she rolls over and lays her back to him.
Now at this point he has no motive. He’s just trying to relax after therapy. He doesn’t wanna tell her what is really happening inside his mind. He doesn’t wanna tell her about the therapy he’s gone through. But she knows how to manipulate, so she rolls over and puts her back to him, and a trauma response kicks in. His actions are now dictated by his trauma.
The motivation of not telling anybody what had happened in therapy is thrown away, and it all becomes about reacting to trauma and he immediately thinks she’s mad at him. He can’t have her mad at him after therapy, and he can’t have a woman mad at him at all, which is part of the mess that is the life he’s lived to this point. So immediately what happens is he starts to explain to her what was discussed in therapy. He does so in a flat, monotone voice at a regular tempo and without any kind of flair at all in description. It’s just, this is what happened. Bare facts. That alter is called Informer.
The story’s told. It’s been put out. It has no effect on Informer, but the story’s out. The one the story is about comes forward. That is a trauma response. It’s not their motive to have this child anywhere near this particular woman. She’s too manipulative. She’s just a nightmare. But the trauma of having told the story twice that day caused this to happen. This is a reaction, but it’s not based out of motivation. It’s based out of trauma.
The characters are gonna have to do something on a regular basis, not because they have the motivation to do that thing, but because out of trauma they are doing that thing.
So out comes Child. He doesn’t wanna be there, but that’s where he finds himself. You can tell he doesn’t wanna be there by certain things he’s doing that are all reactions of trauma. He’s hiding his face. He’s talking quietly. He assumes he’s not gonna get what he wants. All of these actions are reactions to trauma. He starts talking about his favorite color, she’s asking him all these questions. These are actions he’s taking that have nothing to do with motivation.
Well the next thing that happens is she asks him how old he is, which immediately means that she has the theory that they have DID. And out comes Shadow. Shoves her off the bed, she runs across the room. He’s up on his knees. He’s threatening her. He’s cussing. He’s asking for a cigarette. All of this is reaction to trauma, it’s the trauma of discovery. The character is acting, but not on motivation. He threatens her bodily harm if she mentions the Child again. And when she does actually mention the Child, Shadow moves in to physically harm her or scare her.
And that’s when Guardian comes forward. Guardian is motivated by protecting something weak. In that moment, in that situation, she was weak. This is motivation. He sees a thing, he reacts to it, he’s being proactive here, not reactive. It has nothing to do with the trauma of rejection. It has nothing to do with the trauma of discovery. This is all about Guardian being proactive and being driven by the motivation to protect her. And then he’s driven by another motivation, and that is to get ahold of Bekah. He wants to call her. He wants to talk to her. Siren wants to get in the way of that, but she can’t. And he makes the phone call, gets ahold of Bekah, and talks to Bekah.
Now it’s important that we look at this in a certain way. Because there is a way we can define this that’s more generalized but doesn’t have us thinking about our characters in the way that we should. We could say, if we chose to, that Adam (the Child) was motivated to come out because a story about him had been told. And that was his reaction. We could say that. But I want you thinking trauma instead of the word motivation. I want you thinking trauma. It creates a more specific way to evaluate your scene.
Shadow is motivated to shove her off the bed and scream at her because he’s protecting the Child. But that doesn’t help us. It doesn’t help us understand our character more. It doesn’t help us understand the scene. And it doesn’t help us intricately break down what is happening in our scene for further understanding in all of our writing. So we have to break down behavior into these two things: motive and trauma. We also have to break it down into action and reaction. These terms give us tools with which to understand our characters more and understand what’s happening in the scene.
This was a pretty scary night for me. All I knew is what pop culture had taught me about DID. I’d seen the movies and I’d read a couple books. But never had I imagined anything like that was happening inside my mind. I remember blacking out. And I remember at some point hypervigilance. There’s a movie called Primal Fear. It’s one of Ed Norton’s first movies. And this character has DID. It scares the hell outta me.
That night as we were putting things together and we were taking things apart, as more and more alters were coming forward to talk, it was just water falling out of my mouth. I remembered this book, it was a fantasy book by a company called TSR that was at the time the company in charge of the game Dungeons and Dragons. The book took place in a desert world called Dark Sun. And the main character in this book had DID. I think he had like six or seven different alters. I remember I started reading it and everything’s fine, everything’s cool, I’m enjoying the book. He’s at a table, I think he’s gambling. Somebody pulls a weapon I think, and he stands up, he pulls his sword, and he slices the table right in half. And a cold, dark, alter comes out that is only there for killing. And I closed the book and never picked it up again. That is a trauma response. If I had written about that in my book and you had read it, it would’ve been a trauma response.
When we talk about “Riders on the Storm,” I picture motorcycles and motorcycle riders on wet pavement with rain in their faces. And every character is riding that darkness, they’re riding that wet pavement, and they have that rain in their face. This is my challenge to you, do not hate your villains any more than you love your heroes.
If you don’t understand your villains, and you despise them, I can help you through that. We’re gonna get there. But I want you to picture your story as a ride across the US of dozens of bikers going from East to West, West to East, doesn’t matter. They’re all riding together.
You have a protagonist (god, I hate that word) in the very front. And every character in the book rides behind them. All ride a powerful bike. Your Adam rides right next to your Guardian. That Shadow pulls up beside Siren. And on the highway from the beginning of your story to the end, you have Shadow shoving Siren off the bed and demanding a cigarette. You have Guardian making that phone call. Every one of them is important as the next.
I’m in my room right now with two sleeping dogs. The lights are turned off. I’ve just been carried away by Jim Morrison’s “Riders on the Storm.” If you know anything about Jim Morrison, you know how that is possible. The room is lit only by my wife’s laptop. And I can tell you that in this story, both dogs, my wife, and me, share the same burden. We ride the same road, through a storm, and that storm is your procrastination, your declaration of writers’ block. That storm is your day job. My dog Jordai is riding with lightning behind him as he fights his way through your self-doubt.
Everybody in this classroom, and everybody in my house, we’re all riders on the storm. And the storm is everything you bring to this class that gets in our way. And Sadie, my Rottweiler, she’s willing to ride her Street Bob, it’s Harley. My Rottweiler, she demands a Harley Davidson, and she chose the Street Bob. Lightning slams the ground beside her, and she keeps riding, because she knows she has to get me through this lecture. She’s an important character in teaching you this concept.
And here it is: Every character in your book is a rider on the storm. And the girl’s gotta love her man. She’s gotta take him by the hand. In the story of this lecture, Sadie is just as important as The Grad Student, who is just as important as my wife. Some of them will pull to the front of the biker gang, some will drift back. You always have somebody in the back of the ride making sure that no one’s left behind. I guess that’s probably me.
I just know the storm, that’s all. I know the rain and the slickness and the way the bike feels between your legs. And I know what you’re facing, because tonight I’m facing it too. You’re gonna have things get in your way that are gonna make you not wanna work. It’s gonna be your day job and the hours you’re putting in, other assignments that you have, dinner, that’s the slick road. That’s the blinding rain. That’s the concussion you feel in your chest when the thunder rolls. But we all have to get there.
Every character you write and everyone in this class right now, everyone in my house right now, we’re all trying to get you there through your book. And all of our motivations, and all of our trauma responses, are the bikes that we’re riding. The protagonist out front, I guess that’s you, every one of you, they’re driven by the motivation. For me, the bike that rumbles under me is, on this particular night, a trauma response. I’m writing this lecture to distract me from some darkness that’s going on in my life right now, but we’re still getting there.
Jim Morrison says there’s a killer on the road, and if you give him a ride your sweet family will die. I guess that’s what I’m going through right now. This lecture dies if I let the trauma I’m suffering get in the way of teaching you how to ride through your book. I can’t give the killer a ride, so here I am, sitting in the dark, in a tapestry-covered room with a wife taking dictation. The rest of this area surrounding her is pretty dark but her face is glowing. Kind of like a light house.
My current situation reminds me of the light house of Alexandria. It’s one of the great wonders of the world. It was a massive lighthouse. They kept the bonfire going at the top. Lighthouses now have amplifying glass, they spin and they throw the lights in a twirling motion, but Alexandria, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t a light for the rest of the world. It was a light for just the people in the sea. That’s what’s getting me through this lecture, is the glow of my wife’s face.
She’s my lighthouse of Alexandria. My wonder of the world. And not only are there sheets of water slamming in the face and blotting out all sight, but you’re also being blinded by wicked licks of lightning. So many things get in the way. As I’m writing this lecture, I’m dealing with drama and pain from over two and a half decades ago, and I’m just trying to get through. So partially I’m motivated by I guess wanting to get through this, but really the work I’m doing on this lecture tonight is a trauma response. It’s me reacting to trauma. Because the painful thing I’m dealing with, while I’m writing this, is so great that I need a break from it. So I’m choosing to work and give myself that break. So everything I’m writing now is all a trauma response.
I guess my first lesson to you when I talk about character would be, there are no throwaways. There are no characters that are less important than another. Your protagonist is always going to be the bike out front. But even the Sadies of your story are needed. You’re putting together a motorcycle gang of a story. They’re all riding through the lightning and the rain of the plot that you have decided. Respect every character you write, because they are a rider on the storm.
Writing Assignment
I would like 2-3 pages of a character in your story, doesn’t matter if it’s a main character or side character, describe a trauma from their past that is not in your story, and why it caused them to act as it did in your story. I would like it to all be dialogue, it can be a monologue of just your character talking or it can be a conversation between you and your character. Due in three class periods.
—Prince
Jesse Teller 
Leave a comment