Chapter Nineteen
The Character Emotional Development Column
The information you include in the Scene Tracker boxes in the Character Emotional Development Column tracks the Character Emotional Development plot scene by scene. Thus what you write in these boxes for the beginning scenes will be vastly different emotional information about the character compared to what you convey about his emotional makeup in the middle scenes and the end scenes.
For the beginning scenes, make a note of which scenes you introduce various character emotional and personality traits. Refer to the protagonist’s Character Emotional Development Profile to determine the primary traits to introduce in creating a multidimensional and emotional character. Since you’re attempting to engage the reader with the character, you’ll likely demonstrate mostly positive traits. However, to make the character believable, he must have traits he struggles with. If your story involves a character that experiences an internal transformation by the end, take the opportunity as early as you can in the beginning to at least hint at his “fatal” flaw—the personality trait that will ultimately play a part in his downfall at the crisis.
In the scenes in the middle, you’ll deepen the reader’s appreciation of the traits introduced in the beginning as the character is put under more and more strain, stress, and pressure.
In the end scenes, show how the character acts and reacts now that he has transformed emotionally in comparison to how he acted and reacted in the beginning and in the middle. Show how his emotional development serves him now at the end.
We begin this chapter with examples of how to track beginning scenes.
Case Study: White Oleander
Janet Fitch begins White Oleander in scene.
The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves. We could not sleep in the hot dry nights, my mother and I. I woke up at midnight to find her bed empty. I climbed to the roof and easily spotted her blond hair like a white flame in the light of the three-quarter moon.
“Oleander time,” she said. “Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.” She held up her large hand and spread the fingers, let the desert dryness lick through. My mother was not herself in the time of the Santa Anas. I was twelve years old and I was afraid for her. I wished things were back the way they had been, that Barry was still here. That the wind would stop blowing.
“You should get some sleep,” I offered.
“I never sleep,” she said.
| Scene Tracker: White Oleander by Janet Fitch | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scene (SC) or Summary (SU) | Time and Setting | Character Emotional Development | Goal | Dramatic Action | Conflict | Change in Emotion | Thematic Details |
| Ch. 1, SC 1 | Nighttime Santa Ana | Deeply identifies with mother; 12 years old; afraid; takes care of mother | |||||
The first scene of chapter one of White Oleander is a page and a half. We know it is a scene because the action is played out moment by moment. Though the narrator says very little about herself directly, we learn several important details about her character emotional development in this passage:
We could not sleep in the hot dry nights, my mother and I.
This sentence speaks volumes: It shows how deeply the narrator identifies with her mother.
I climbed to the roof …
Again, in showing this action, we understand how connected these two characters are. The child knows from experience just where to find her mother on a night like tonight.
I was twelve years old and I was afraid for her.
“You should get some sleep,” I offered.
Case Study: All the Pretty Horses
In scene one, there is little to inform us about the protagonist other than his statement at the end of the second paragraph.
You never combed your hair that way in your life, he said.
From these simple words, we get the sense that he is observant and speaks the truth.
| Scene Tracker: All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scene (SC) or Summary (SU) | Time and Setting | Character Emotional Development | Goal | Dramatic Action | Conflict | Change in Emotion | Thematic Details |
| Ch. 1, SC 1 | Just before dawn | Speaks the truth | |||||
“Unless I know what sort of doorknob his fingers closed on, how shall I—satisfactorily to myself—get my character out of doors?” —Ford Madox Ford
Case Study: The Sea-Wolf
In the first scene, we find out that the protagonist has a tendency to blame others for his misfortunes. In the opening summary and scene one, we learn that he is intelligent, that he likes to hang out weekly with a man who loafs about by reading Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, and that he is a writer.
| Scene Tracker: The Sea-Wolf by Jack London | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scene (SC) or Summary (SU) | Time and Setting | Character Emotional Development | Goal | Dramatic Action | Conflict | Change in Emotion | Thematic Details |
| Ch. 1, SU | |||||||
| Ch. 1, SC 1 | Jan. Mon. A.M. | Blames others; intelligent; writer | |||||
Tracking Your Story
With your Scene Tracker in front of you, refer to your manuscript and fill in the Character Emotional Development Column with any significant character traits brought forward in your scenes. This is also the place where you indicate any important character background information you want to keep in mind about the protagonist.
If you have two major point-of-view characters (two protagonists), or if you want to track the antagonist as well as the protagonist, just use different-colored pens for each of them.
When filling out the Character Emotional Development column, watch for the flaws of your protagonist to come to light. For example, is your protagonist a procrastinator or a perfectionist? Is she judgmental, greedy, bullheaded, pessimistic, or jealous?
At the same time, search for your protagonist’s strengths. As much as his flaw creates tension, his strengths and spunk are attributes that make readers want to stick with him through his problems.
The Role of Adversity
As stated earlier, the middle (one-half of the entire project) serves to reveal the deeper nuances of the character’s emotional development. This is the part of the story where the writer thrusts the protagonist into as much adversity as possible in order to reveal to the reader who the character really is.
Make a list of all possible antagonists—other people, nature, society, a belief system, machines, etc.—that can help generate conflict, tension, suspense, or curiosity and thus reveal who the character is under pressure. The more pressure the better.
The end (the last quarter of the project) actually shows how the character’s emotional development has been affected by the adversity in the middle and reveals how the character has been changed or transformed. Though your character will demonstrate the new behavior and act with his newfound understanding, based on what happened in the crisis, he will not do so consistently at first. Full mastery at the deepest level comes only at the climax.
These steps in the overall character emotional transformation can be plotted on a Scene Tracker for ease in developing your project.
A successful writer writes every day, even if for only ten minutes.