Bowen on Fiction 2 - Character

Are the characters, then, to be constructed to formula—the formula pre-decided by the plot? Are they to be drawn, cut out, jointed, wired, in order to be manipulated for the plot?

No. There is no question as to whether this would be right or wrong. It would be impossible. One cannot ‘make’ characters, only marionettes. The manipulated movement of the marionette is not the ‘action’ necessary for plot. Characterless action is not action at all, in the plot sense. It is the indivisibility of the act from the actor, and the inevitability of that act on the part of that actor, that gives action verisimilitude. Without that, action is without force or reason. Forceless, reasonless action disrupts plot. The term ‘creation of character’ (or characters) is misleading. Characters pre-exist. They are found. They reveal themselves slowly to the novelist’s perception—as might fellow-travellers seated opposite one in a very dimly-lit railway carriage. 

The novelist’s perceptions of his characters take place in the course of the actual writing of the novel. To an extent, the novelist is in the same position as the reader. But his perception should be always just in advance.

The ideal way of presenting character is to invite perception.

In what do the characters pre-exist? I should say, in the mass of matter (see PLOT) that had accumulated before the inception of the novel. 

(N.B.—the unanswerability of the question, from an outsider: ‘Are the characters in your novel invented, or are they from real life?’ Obviously, neither is true. The outsider’s notion of ‘real life’ and the novelist’s are hopelessly apart.)

How, then, is the pre-existing character—with its own inner spring of action, its contrarieties—to be made to play a pre-assigned role? In relation to character, or characters, once these have been contemplated, plot must at once seem over-rigied, arbitrary.  (Note: Fiction based on relationships, i.e., the tensions within them.)

What about the statement (in relation to PLOT) that ‘each character is created in order, and only in order, that he or she may supply the required action’? To begin with, strike out ‘created’. Bettter, the character is recognized (by the novelist) by the signs he or she gives of unique capacity to act in a certain way, which ‘certain way’ fulfils a need of the plot.

The character is there (in the novel) for the sake of the action he or she is to contribute to the plot. Yes. But also, he or she exists outside the action being contributed to the plot.  (Note: Character must be as true to life as possible. The work of empathy is like an asymptote.)

Without that existence of the character outside the (necessarily limited) action, the action itself would be invalid.

Action is the simplification (for story purposes) of complexity. For each one act, there are an x number of alternatives. It is the palpable presence of alternatives that give action interest. Therefore, in each of the characters, while he or she is acting, the play and pull of alternatives must be felt. It is in being seen to be capable of alternatives that the character becomes, for the reader, valid.

Roughly, the action of a character should be unpredictable before it has been shown, inevitable when it has been shown. (Note: Means to get the page turning!) In the first half of a novel, the unpredictability should be the more striking. In the second half, the inevitability should be the more striking.

(Most exceptions to this are, however, masterpiece-novels. In War and Peace, L’Education Sentimentale, and La Recherche du Temps Perdu, unpredictability dominates up to the end.) 

The character’s prominence in the novel (pre-decided by the plot) decides the character’s range—of alternatives. The novelist must allot (to the point of rationing) psychological space. The ‘hero’, ‘heroine’ and ‘villain’ (if any) are, by agreement, allowed most range.  They are entitled, for the portrayal of their alternatives, to time and space. Placing the characters in receding order to their importance to the plot, the number of their alternatives may seem to diminish. What E.M. Forster has called the ‘flat’ character has no alternatives at all.

The ideal novel is without ‘flat’ characters.

Characters must materialize—i.e., must have a palpable physical reality. They must be not only see-able (visualize); they must be to be felt. Power to give physical reality is probably a matter of the extent and nature of the novelist’s physical sensibility, or susceptibility. In the main, English novelists weak in this, as compared to French and Russians. Why?

Hopelessness of categoric ‘description’. Why? Because this is static. Physical personality belongs to action: cannot be separated from it. Pictures must be in movement. Eyes, hands, stature, etc., must appear, and only appear, in play. Reaction to physical personality is part of action—love, or sexual passages, only more marked application of this general rule.

(Conrad an example of strong, non-sexual use of physical personality.)

The materialization (in the above sense) of the character for the novelist must be instantaneous. It happens. No effort of will—and obviously no effort of intellect—can induce it. The novelist can use a character that has not yet materialized. But the unmaterialized character represents and enemy pocket in an area that has been otherwise cleared. This cannot go on for long. It produces a halt in the plot. (Note: Flesh everybody out.)

When the materialization has happened, the chapters written before it happened will almost certainly have to be recast. From the plot point of view, they will be found invalid.

Also, it is essential that for the reader the materialization of the character should begin early. I say begin, because for the reader it may, without harm, be gradual. 

Is it from failure, or tendency to fail, in materialization that the English novelist depends so much on engaging emotional sympathy for his characters?

Ruling sympathy out, a novel must contain at least one magnetic character. At least one character capable of keying the reader up, as though he (the reader) were in the presence of someone he is in love with. This is not a rule of salesmanship but a pre-essential of interest. The character must do to the reader what he has done to the novelist—magnetize towards himself perceptions, sense-impressions, desires.

The unfortunate case is, where the character has, obviously, acted magnetically upon the author, but fails to do so upon the reader.

There must be combustion. Plot depends for its movement on internal combustion.

Physically, characters are almost always copies, or composite copies. Traits, gestures, etc., are searched for in, and assembled from the novelist’s memory. Or, a picture, a photograph or the cinema screen may be drawn on. Nothing physical can be invented. (Invented physique stigmatizes the inferior novel.) Proust (in last volume) speaks of this assemblage of traits. Though much may be lifted from a specific person in ‘real life’, no person in ‘real life’ could supply everything (physical) necessary for the character in the novel. No such person could have just that degree of physical intensity required for the character.

Greatness of characters is the measure of the unconscious greatness of the novelist’s vision. They are ‘true’ in so far as he is occupied with poetic truth. Their degrees in realness show the degrees of his concentration.