When I was young, I shared a smoke from a friend’s cigarette. Fast forward ten years and I was on a twenty a day habit. Another five and I found myself pregnant, and that first cigarette didn’t have an impact only on me anymore, but my child as well. I gave up, with a struggle, and I’ve been nicotine free for fifteen years. Each step in the chain from the trying, to the keeping going, to the pregnancy, to the giving up, had its own consequence and each of those had an impact on me and how I viewed my world.
This week, I had the first proper review of my book by someone who bought it and shared their thoughts. One of the things they picked out was that in Abendau’s Heir, every action has a consequence. To some extent the characters drive the plot more than anything external to them – and there are plenty of external influences. For me, that’s what makes a rounded character, more than any degree of closeness in the writing or voice – that the character has to actively make choices and stand over them, even if they’re wrong.
When I think back to some of my favourite characters in literature and film, they have this in spades. Ripley comes to mind – she understands the wider implications of the aliens, not just the long-term dangers but the humanity of the situation and what it could lead to. She understands, particularly in the later films, how integral her responses are to outcomes, how everything she does must be something to stand over. She stands in stark contrast to other characters who think only of their own agenda, who move in their limited sphere. It’s what makes her memorable.
The Terminator films, too, are focused on consequence – what happens if John doesn’t send his father back, what if the Terminator’s body parts can be destroyed. Through the story we have the ripples of What if constantly being challenged and changed, with each action leading to the next, to the greater context. Inception takes that idea further; Groundhog Day deals with it beautifully.
In literature, we have Paul Atreides, and, as a mirror to him, Alia. In fact, through the original Dune series, we have conflicted characters who make choices that aren’t always right. It’s what makes it more than just a story about some guy in a desert, and turns it into something we can touch, something touching the deep humanity we all are.
When Paul walks into the desert, abandoning his power, he knows where it might lead – and it’s why, as the Preacher, we see something of an old soul, one who has had too much time to think about the consequences of his past, who has learned to abhor what he has unleashed and tread warily for fear of making it worse.
When I created characters, I didn’t expect them to be more than a voice on a page, but to have a wider conscience of their own. They make choices I wouldn’t and have to stand over actions I would never condone. Some have a value base like my own, some are far away from it. That, for me, is harder to write than anything else – a character removed from myself.
When I created my antagonist I struggled to write her. Interestingly, I couldn’t write her until after I’d become a mother and had come to understand the difference that relationship can make to your place in the world – like giving the strength of reason to give up the cigs, like changing your focus and understanding of the impact of actions. My Empress is a mother, and she is a monstrous one, whose actions I could never stand over. Only by understanding that she was the antithesis of everything I stood for and delving deeper into her person could I finally understand her and see how a damaged child could lead to someone harder than I could ever be. And when I carried out that process of understanding she moved from something of a cardboard baddy into someone rounded, and all the more terrifying for it. Because rounded is real, and the real is possible. It’s what Stephen King does so well – make the real a believable ground for the horrific.
I don’t write hard science fiction, not only because I don’t, genuinely, have the skills to do so, but also because I use the genre to ask different questions. Questions about what we will become as humans, and how the essential spirit within humans will change – or remain enduring – in the future.
One of the things that holds us together as people is the centralness of responsibility, that knowledge that when we do something, however small, we start the butterfly wings of consequence and may need to accept where they go. If we are like that as people, surely our characters should be, too? That’s why, for me, depth of character sits around understanding of our impact on our world, whatever galaxy that might be in, and not just the closeness of our voice.
It’s also why, for me to enjoy a book, I need those exceptional characters who can look beyond themselves and make it deeper and, as a consequence, real.
*********************
Jo Zebedee writes science fiction and fantasy, sometimes in a big space opera world, sometimes on the streets of Belfast. Her debut novel, Abendau’s Heir, the first of a trilogy, is available on Amazon or through ticketyboopress.co.uk.
More of her thoughts on writing, the universe and everything can be found at jozebwrites.blogspot.co.uk
