The Good, the Bad, and the Protagonist

The agony of protagonists. Imperfections. Perceptions. Heroics. Do our characters exist as gems of virtue, only mildly flawed? Or are they hewn from the quarry of reality unashamed?

Too real, and nothing compels. Anyone defying believability unhinges that delicate suspension of disbelief. Not knowing the finer points of this tightrope walk dooms our protagonists to an indiscriminate fall to failure.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

I’ve been wanting to write a book for a long time but I feel like my main character is too bad of a person to be the good guy. It’s a good story, don’t get me wrong, but the more I think about my main character, the more I wish he had good guy standards, like not drinking, swearing, and smoking. It’s a Western, so it comes with the territory. Is there a such thing as a good guy who can truly be good? Thanks!

—Ava Gonzalez, Houston, Tex.

In lousy fiction, make your good guys as good as you want. We don’t care. And by ‘we,’ I mean ‘we.’ In good fiction, there are none good. I’m not advocating the raw, gritty, hardboiled route. Overcompensating is an endless loop, an inefficient parlor trick. Pare down the excess, whether it be toning down raunchy curses that would curl Satan’s ears or de-glorifying exaggerated acts of saintliness and kindliness that would make Jesus puke.

On to the meandering philosophical question: What makes and breaks the good of a good guy? I’ll present two protagonists and let you be the judge of the goodness of each.

Buford O. Brokelahoma

Buford strode into the bar, chest puffed out so far that it arrived a good five seconds before the rest of him did. He clenched his belt buckle, using it as a shield to ward off the sin and temptation floating around in the sordid establishment. With one hand, he supported his hefty frame while situating the uneven barstool beneath him, making sure he sat in just the right spot, avoiding any need to readjust. Couldn’t look weak here. Not in front of similar rabble, not much unlike the many foul souls he’d locked up the week prior.

A sheriff’s life wasn’t much to envy to begin with, but Buford’s pledge to chastity and the like made it downright unbearable. Not for him, but for everyone else. He grimaced at anyone who dared swear a curse. He rudely swatted cigarettes from people in mid-smoke. He made a show of ordering a tall glass of “white milk, with none of that devil’s alcohol.” He openly polished his already polished badge, noting that he wanted to make it so shiny that its glint would scare off ne’er-do-wells from ne’er-do-welling.

Jack A. Rakescrow

Rakescrow hated drinking, so he drank more to forget how much he hated it. A crumpled piece of paper lay next to his whisky glass. Six strokes, keeping count faithfully until the seventh glass. Got a little hazy after that. He was hazy to begin with, drenched in a cloud of his own cigarette smoke before he could summon the sense to order his first round.

The insufferable Sheriff Buford Brokelahoma snapped him out of his stupor. Someone’s cigarette butt pegged him in the cheek, courtesy of the Sheriff’s well-timed flick.

“Shi—“ he started, but Buford’s agitated pug-like expression halted him. “S’watch what you aimin’ at, Sher’f. Been a long day.”

“I reckon. Bein’ a vigilante gotta takes it’s toll, I reckon.”

“Takes more doin’ the right thing than jus’ pretendin’. Chasin’ down mur’drurs ain’t worth riskin’ the pay, right? Keep t’them tax cheats and curfew brekkers in line and keep me to my real man’s work.”

That should have gotten more of a rise from Buford, but everyone’s attention swiftly turned to a raving drunk, more raving and drunk than the rest. He had a rusty firearm to the throat of an off-shift singer, the one who brought in more business from various hotel rooms than she did on the rickety stage here. Looked like a scuffle gone out of hand, something to do with theft. Apologies and begging weren’t cutting it.

Rakescrow hollered, just enough to get the assailant to stick out his head and see who yelled at him. Gave Rakescrow just enough room to thread a sudden bullet through the crowd and into his head. The woman retreated, silently sobbing, too shocked to shriek. The dead man was discreetly taken away as hushes seeped back into the bar.

“Damned fool nearly cut off my drinks for tonight.”

“Couldn’t’ve hit ‘em together, Jack?” goaded a sneering Buford. “They both of ‘em deserved it, God as my witness.”

“God ain’t yer witness.”

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and traded on NASDAQ Stock Market. 

Mistakes. Everybody’s Making Them

If you write, you make mistakes. If you make bad mistakes, you’re probably a bad writer. Can’t simplify it further.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

To Writing All Wrong: What are some common mistakes that I can avoid making as an aspiring author, especially when it comes to mechanics?

—Michael Alan Mitchell, Egg Harbor Township, N.J.

Easy. Just stop writing. Won’t make any mistakes that way. Oh, you mentioned mechanics? Drat.

I think I’d be more willing to lend mechanical advice to an aspiring grammarian or someone aspiring to pass English 101. Buy a grammar book. Take a class. If you’re iffy about mechanics at this stage, then I’d stop aspiring to be a writer and start getting cozy with the dashingly boring technical details of the language. Good luck.

Let’s fast forward and assume you’ve done this already. I’m sidestepping it anyway. As I conveniently ignore your inquiry into the mechanical nature of everything, I’ll be happy to address your question.

Common Bad Mistake #1: Redundant Redundancies.

This should make sense, right? Right. If it were easy, everyone would do it. And everyone does it. Whether it’s the unnecessary multiplicity of word within paragraph or unintentional lamemphasis (“They couldn’t see within the thick dark. It was so dark, it made all other forms of dark look like sunlight, such was the darkness.”), weaker craftsmen tend to drive home an idea with a dim-witted hammer. Writing isn’t made excellent by force alone. Other examples include:

“a dark night” – as apposed to a light night.

“raging tempest” – fantasy writers, raise thy hands in guilt.

“a quick bite” – never heard of a long bite, not even in my vampire fiction excursions.

“fat loser” – self-explanatory.

“exact same” – they mean the same exact thing.

“kneel down” – tried kneeling up once, to no avail.

“poorly-written Christian fiction” – you can just say Christian fiction.

“wicked stepmother” – your readers assume they get a bad rap anyway.

You could also look up “tautologies.” If you have to look that up in a dictionary first, you’ll be forgiven.

Common Bad Mistake #2: Circumventing Redundancies.

Oh, you thought the use of “charming cottage” was clever? Not when I catch a mention of “cozy cottage” dozens of pages later. Your thinness of image betrays you. If you’re going to stick with the image, either stick with it or make your point and move on. Don’t be slick in trying to change it up to avoid “sounding” redundant. Heed Admiral Ackbar’s advice: don’t trip into this readily available pitfall. “Spacious house?” Better not call that sucker a “sprawling house.” “Bristly beard?” Stay bristly my friend, because we’ll bristle at mentions of a “prickly beard” three pages later. Skilled speaker, “silver-tongued?” Don’t turn him into a “golden-tongued” anything. That’d be weird.

Common Bad Mistake #3: Using Clichés

If it’s not wholly original, it’s a cliché. Don’t use it.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and lightly seasoned with kosher salt and rubbed sage.

Don’t Park Here

I was hoping someone would email me about how I could improve “dinosaur fiction.” Didn’t happen. What did happen: an email about the finer points of describing a character in a novel.

Character description is a delicate art, too often clumsily handled when tried deliberately. In some instances, the work beckons that you park on the description lot. That is, if your work beckons for failure.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

My name is Cindy Kennedy. My question is about descriptions. What’s the best way to describe your main character in your novel? I’ve seen a couple of ways to do it, but I’d like to know the best way.

You’re right. I’ve only seen a couple of ways myself. The wrong way and the right way. That’s your couple.

I want to see what you think of my main character description so far, if you don’t mind:

     Lynn sighed, wiping away a lock of her platinum blonde hair. Her sad blue eyes stared back at her from within the mirror. She never liked her round face nor her chubby hands. They weren’t pretty. She held them to her ruddy cheeks, trying to press her face downward and make it thinner, but it made her plump lips look like a fish puckering up for a kiss. It wouldn’t work like that, she found, unless she got a replacement set of lips as well. A single tear coursed down her cheek and to her stubby chin. She hated that too.

Let me know what you think. Thanks!

—Cindy Kennedy, Flint, MI.

You’re cheating here, Cindy. You’ve turned what should be a travesty into a plot point. The plot may turn out to be a travesty too, but my crystal ball’s been on the blink as of late. I’ll get back to you on this.

I won’t elaborate on the wrong way to describe characters, since countless others already put that on display for their audiences. As for the right way? Simple. Tell the story. But wait, didn’t you do just that here? If you’re advancing the plot with a description, that’s not ingenuity. That’s contrivance. Don’t do that.

Weak writers will pause to describe; strong writers will forge ahead with the narrative and work the descriptions into it.

For example, instead of this:

     “Robert had a lanky frame, something that didn’t work too well for him, being a pilot by trade. His flowering red hair made him quite a standout, and it gave him fits when he tried stuffing it into his cap.”

Go with something like this:

     “Robert strained to cram his lanky frame into the cockpit, a feat that still took some doing, even after a decade of piloting. After getting himself situated at last, he awkwardly stuffed his flowering red hair into his cap, an ordeal that took even more doing.”

You get the drift. In the first example, nothing “happens.” We’re in descriptive stasis. While you can glean the same details from both, you’ll find more vibrancy in the second example. And you can do that sort of thing without conjuring up some contrived way to describe your character.

We could go on and on here, touching on “description through dialogue” and its cheesiness, along with how everything I just said here doesn’t apply to description of scenery and setting.

Tell the story. The description will come. Be creative and work it in there on the fly. Keep that bus moving. Don’t stall your readers by insisting they know what someone looks like all at once. Do your job the right way, and we’ll get it.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and found on your nearest baby free range.