Deepening Character Tri-fecta: Part Two -- Filters
Each
of us sees our world differently based on our personality,
our past, our peers...the reasons for our unique
perspectives are endless. When developing your characters,
knowing where they've been and how it has shaped them into
individuals is imperative to creating a unique and
believable cast.
To start with a simplified example, let's say Cassie
(heroine) sees her world through a RED filter; Rio (hero)
sees his world through a YELLOW filter. When Cassie looks at
the sky, she sees purple. When Rio looks at the sky, he sees
orange.
Now, let's put that into practice with their character.
Backstory: You'll need a bit of your character's history to
decide what filter your character views life through. Here's
my heroine's...
Cassie had a perfect childhood with her mother, surrounded
by love, money, friends and security. Her stepfather
(selfish and manipulative) came into the picture when she
was sixteen, tilting everything off kilter and setting off a
string of troubled situations. In his attempts to control
her, her stepfather bugged her room, had her followed and
interfered in every aspect of her life through manipulation
and bribery.
After she left home for college, her relationships with her
beloved mother and stepbrother suffered because her
stepfather's psychosis worsened and started to affect their
behavior as well.
While in the early years of medical school, she dated a man
who attempted to rape her on their third date--her first
brush with true violence. She was emotionally and physically
scared. A strong personality to begin with, her
vulnerability has shamed her. Self-disgust over her naivety
kept her from turning to others for help and she retreated
into herself, regaining "control" over her life by drowning
herself in her medical studies and residency.
During the last year of her residency, three years after the
attempted rape, her mother and brother are killed in a
boating accident. The trauma of losing the last of her
family sets back any recovery she'd attempted, and her
return to a more normal and balanced life is thwarted.
This is where my story begins.
In Cassie's case, her filter is SUSPICION and FEAR. To add
conflict, her strong independent personality combined with
the sudden changes in her past and experience from medical
school has developed an almost severe need to control her
environment. Lingering beneath that, her happy childhood
with a doting, loving mother has ingrained a deep inner need
to love and be loved. Not only do these traits clash with
each other, they war against the filter that has become as
much a part of her as her eye color.
Here are some examples from Safe in Enemy Arms I hope will
illustrate that explanation.
Example 1:
The sea to her right spread like ink
into the distance. The coal-black mountains to her left
loomed against a plum sky. Behind her--nothing. Ahead, only
the asphalt beneath her high beams. The only sign of life
came every fifteen or twenty minutes in the form of
headlights on the opposite side of the road. With each mile,
the isolation sank a little deeper into her bones. Anxiety
had already taken hold with pressure in her chest, tingling
in her fingers. Her heart thumped a little too quickly
against her throat.
Result: She
sees the landscape through her filter of SUSPICION and FEAR.
Another person in her situation--exhausted from residency,
taking three months off to go to Baja and tie up personal
business--might feel relaxed, relieved. They might even be
looking forward to closing one chapter of their life and
starting anew. They could see the landscape as peaceful and
soothing, not ominous and desolate and threatening.
Example 2:
Cassie caught sight of a large man
silhouetted against the truck, blocking her view of the back
and making her rethink the decision to stop. "Make sure you
send the policia, por favor."
Result: Cassie
immediately sees the man as a threat. Many women would see a
man as a source of security; someone uninjured as someone
who could help. But Cassie's filter of SUSPICION and FEAR
automatically make her distrustful.
Example 3:
When the first police car arrived, she
considered unloading all her suspicions. An elemental part
of her wanted to insist, no order, the cops to arrest these
men. But with the rampant corruption of Mexican officials,
she knew a few hundred pesos would render this officer blind
to anything but an unfortunate accident. Instead of labeling
herself a suspicious outsider with local authorities, she
gave a concise report of the incident and went back to work.
Result: The
internals within this passage make her thoughts, and the
filter through which she views life, clear. Mexican cops are
dishonest. Not only won't they help her or these poor women,
the cop could also be a threat to Cassie's safety. Her
filter, created from past experiences, affect her opinions
and her decisions.
Example 4:
(This passage is taken later in the story, chapter 2. She's
seen Rio in town and believes he's following her.)
Of all the nerve. Saul had put his
watchdog on her ass, just one of many controlling techniques
he'd used on her as a teen. A grown woman, a doctor, sole
owner of everything Saul now had, and he still treated her
like a naive, ignorant child.
Results: She
hasn't confronted Rio yet, so she doesn't know for a fact
that he is following her. But with the SUSPICION and FEAR
filter in place, along with the knowledge (shown through
internals and interaction between them in chapter one) of
her past relationship with her stepfather (Saul), the reader
can accept the fact that Cassie was on alert and when she
spots Rio, her natural instinct is to believe she'd been
followed.
