characters - four

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

For a Hermit by Nature, My Head’s Certainly Full of a Lot of People

Gore Vidal says every writer has a repertory of a certain number of characters. He figures Shakespeare had twenty, and Vidal himself had ten. After some exploration of the theme, I’ve decided I have five.

So why are there usually fifty to one hundred characters in my novels?

I know I fudge the expense these days of having to come up with names for so many people by calling half of them Lou Moon, but still … The logical question arising from this fact is: if I only have five types in my repertory, how can I come up with so many apparently different people? You can even tell the Lou Moons apart. Well, I can anyway.

To review, my five types were:

1.     The Investigator

2.     The Post-Fall Individual

3.     The Pre-Fall Individual

4.     The Eccentric

5.     The Agent of Chaos

And the clear answer to my question of howcum so many from so few is, every one of my characters is a mix of those five types. So it’s really 5! types, not 5; five factorial, which equates to 120 possible character mixes, or thereabout, if I remember my math right. Which I probably don’t. After all, my first successful short story was “The Attack of the 100 Foot Factorial”, written out of frustration doing my homework one early seventies Sunday afternoon.

Let’s take a look at ten major characters and see how this works.

Jason Midnight. Investigator, obviously. But also Post-Fall and Eccentric, with a touch of Agent of Chaos, just to keep the other characters on their toes.

Amaleh. Post-Fall, but with a touch of Investigator. She’s been around the block — a few times — but she’s still looking.

Billy Garlock. Pre-Fall, still trying to work out his Post-Fall existence.

Mordecai, the Tall Purple Demon. Agent of Chaos, Eccentric, and Post-Fall.

The Iron Clown. Agent of Chaos, and so Post-Fall he’s Pre-Fall again!

Gwen. Post-Fall, but incredibly well adjusted about it.

Theda Bara. Pre-Fall, rapidly becoming Post-Fall in Thirty-One Across.

Coyote. A trapped Pre-Fall Agent of Chaos.

Scintillisha Evans-Holyrood. Pre-Fall, Investigator, with a healthy dose of self-contrived Eccentricity.

The Evil John B. An eternal Pre-Fall Eccentric Agent of Chaos, who wouldn’t know a Post-Fall existence if the Iron Clown hit him over the head with the post.

The permutations are endless!

Well — not really. As I said, I think there’s about 120 permutations, but you can do a lot with that. Even just by changing the same permutation’s wardrobe, setting, and supporting characters.

For example, I revealed in the first column on this subject that Theda Bara and Dr. Lyjia Argullus are the same character, even identical in appearance and voice in my head. But Theda’s out there in the evolving world of High Tide, Ominous Creek, and Gallows Falls,  Manitoba, while Dr. Lyjia is still struggling for women’s rights back on my fantasy continent of Deronda. Outside of Reality Fiction, never the twain shall meet. And as long as the story is different enough, they might be the same people but they will read entirely as separate.

So there we go. I’ve got 120 characters, and an endless array of stories to cast them within, only limited by my imagination and the speed and legibility of my penmanship.

At the moment. Suppose I come up with a sixth type …

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REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

This week:

Theda Bara’s winning novelletta Thirty-One Across continues this Friday at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

We pass the halfway mark and Suzi Coffin makes a surprise guest appearance to explain exactly what’s going on to our heroine. Not that that helps.