Getting Into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn From Actors (31 page)

1.
How might Twain’s memory of being left alone when he was two have led to his memory of Aunt Hannah and her superstition?

I think of two emotions that could have caused Twain to link these two memories. The fear he felt as a very young boy all alone in the dark must have been overwhelming. Most likely it lead to a feeling of helplessness. Fear and helplessness are also evident in the memory of Hannah, although in different forms. The young Twain made noise to scare away the “ghosts,” while the old woman tied her hair in tufts to keep away witches.

2.
How did the fusion of these two memories work to change Huck Finn’s Action Objective in the scene?

As he first enters his room, Huck is lonely and despondent from talking to the judgmental Miss Watson. His Action Objective: “To shake myself from my despondency.” Here is where Twain’s two memories seem to fuse. Every noise reminds Huck of his conversation about death with Miss Watson. The sounds of death lead him to think of ghosts, which turns his despondency into fear. When he kills a spider, his Action Objective immediately becomes: “To protect myself from bad luck.” The scene has taken on a whole new aura as he ties up a lock of his hair.

If Twain hadn’t fused the two memories from his childhood, this scene of Huck alone in his room would not have been nearly so captivating, for Huck’s Action Objective to protect himself from bad luck would not have arisen.

3.
Is there a memory from your past that tends to lead to another memory of very different circumstances? Take a closer look at the two. What emotion links them in your mind? How might this linking be used in one of your scenes to prompt a character to unique action?

FROM:
Over The Edge
(stand-alone suspense), by Brandilyn Collins.

SETTING: California, present-day. Prologue.

In writing this opening scene for one of my Seatbelt Suspense® novels, I had to build upon emotions in my own experience. At one time I suffered from chronic Lyme disease and came to understand how much the medical community refuses to accept and treat this disease. How awful. How unjust for all Lyme patients. I remember thinking, “What those denying doctors need is a real good case of Lyme.” Of course, I never pursued that thought. But my antagonist does.

A vision denied is a battle lost.

With a flick of his hand the blackened sky blipped into eerie green. Crouched on the house’s back deck, he adjusted his night goggles. The high bushes surrounding the yard illumed, the wizened limbs of a giant oak straggling upward in surreal glow.

He ran his hand over a pocket on his black cargo pants. The vial created a telltale bump against his thigh. His latex-gloved fingers closed around it.

Rising, he crossed the deck in five long strides. He surveyed the lock on the sliding glass door. Not enough light. He raised the goggles, darkness reigning once more. From a left pocket he extracted a tiny flashlight. Aimed its beam at the lock.

A common thief he was not. His mission had required intricate study of skills he’d never dreamed he need possess. The pick of a lock. A stealthy skulk. A means to render unconscious.

He pulled the necessary tools from the same pocket. Holding the flashlight in his mouth, he worked the tools into the lock, manipulating as practiced. The mechanism gave way with a tiny click.

He slid the door open.

No alarm sounded. He knew it wouldn’t. In this upper crust town, home to Stanford University, alarms were for vacations. Children at home were too apt to set them off.

He replaced the flashlight and tools in his pocket. Slipped inside the house and eased the door shut. Down came his goggles. The large kitchen gleamed into view. His astute nose picked up the lingering scent of pizza, cut with a trace of ammonia. A cleaning agent, perhaps.

The digital clock on the microwave read 2:36 a.m.

From where he stood he could see through open doorways to a den, a hall, and a dining room.

At the threshold to the hall he stopped and reached into the lower right pocket beneath his knee. The three-ounce glass bottle he withdrew had a covered plastic pump spray. The chemical inside was not compatible with metals. He removed the cap and slid it back into his pants.

Holding the bottle with trigger finger on the pump, he advanced into the hall. A left turn, and he stood in the entryway. Straight ahead, a living room. On his left, a staircase. Carpeted.

He lifted a sneakered foot onto the bottom step.

The bedrooms would be upstairs, two occupied. One by nine-year-old Lauren. The second, a master suite, by mother Janessa, called Jannie. She would be alone. Her husband, the highly respected Dr. Brock McNeil, was supposedly imparting his impeccable knowledge at a medical symposium on Lyme disease.

His jaw flexed.

After three steps he reached a landing. He turned left and resumed his inaudible climb.

His heartbeat quickened. Too many emotions funneled into this moment—grief-drenched years, anxiety, the playing out of two lives, and now adrenaline. He willed his pulse into submission. Once he went into action everything would happen quickly. He needed his wits about him.

Within seconds his foot landed on the last stair. To his immediate left stood an open door. He craned his neck to see around the threshold. Empty bedroom. With a quick glance he took in three more open doorways—two bedrooms and one bath, halfway down the hall. The closed door directly in front of him would be a closet. He looked down the length of the hall, saw one open door at the end. That was it. The master bedroom, running the entire depth of the house.

He advanced to the next room on his left. Peered inside. The green-haloed room held a canopied bed and several dressers, a large stuffed lion in one corner. In the bed lay a small form on her back, one arm thrown over the blankets. Lauren. Beside her head was a stuffed animal. He could hear the girl’s steady breathing.

His mouth flattened to a thin, hard line. He turned and glared at his targeted bedroom, left fingers curling into his palm.

His legs took him in swift silence to the threshold of Janessa McNeil’s door.

With caution he leaned in, glimpsing a large bed to his right. She occupied the closest half, lying on her side facing him. How very thoughtful.

Scarcely drawing oxygen, he stepped into the room.

Her eyes opened.

How—?

His limbs froze. He’d made no sound. Had she sensed his presence, the malevolence in his pores?

Janessa’s head lifted from the pillow.

In one fluid motion he strode to the bed, thrust the bottle six inches from her face, and panic-pumped the spray. The chloroform mixture misted over her.

A strangled cry escaped the woman, only to be cut short as her head dropped like a stone.

He stumbled backward, holding his breath, pulse fluttering. When he finally inhaled, a faint sweet smell from the chloroform wafted into his nostrils. Leaning down, he dug the plastic cap from his lower pocket and shoved it onto the spray container. Dropped the thing back into his pants.

For a moment he stood, fingers grasped behind his neck, regaining his equilibrium.

Everything was fine, just fine. No way could she have seen him well enough in the dark.

Remember why you’re here.

Visions of the past surfaced, and with them—the anger. The boiling, rancid rage that fueled his days and fired his nights. So what if this sleeping woman was known as quiet and caring? So what if she had a likable, if not beautiful, face? Green eyes that held both caution and hope, smooth skin and an upturned mouth. She looked as if she could be anyone’s friend. But at this moment she was nothing to him. Neither was her daughter. Merely a means to a crucial end.

He snatched the vial from his upper pocket.

Raising it before his face, he squinted through the hard plastic. Saw nothing. The infected parasites within were no bigger than the head of a pin. He turned the vial sideways and shook it. Three tiny dark objects slid from the bottom into view.

His lips curled.

This
Ixodes pacificus
, or blacklegged tick, carried spirochetes—spiral-shaped bacteria—that caused Lyme disease in California. And not just a few spirochetes. These ticks were loaded with them, along with numerous coinfections. Thanks to painstaking work the spirochetes had flourished and multiplied in the brains of mice. As the infected baby mice had grown, the sickest were sacrificed, their brains fed to the next generation of ticks.

The spirochetes loved human brain tissue. Janessa McNeil may soon attest to that.

He moved toward the bed. No need to hurry now, nor be anxious. His target would not rouse.

Last summer in their larval stage, the captured ticks had enjoyed their first feeding on an infected mouse. Now as disease-carrying nymphs, they were ready for their second meal. He’d chosen three to hedge his bet that at least one would bite and infect Janessa McNeil.

He leaned over the sleeping woman and opened the vial.

The hungry ticks would bury their mouth parts into Janessa’s warm flesh and feed for three to five days. After one to two days they would begin to transmit the spirochetes. Even fully engorged, nymph ticks were so minuscule they could easily go unnoticed on the body. But just to be sure, he held the vial above the woman’s temple. Her dark brown hair would provide cover.

Pointing the container downward, he tapped the ticks over the edge.

He slipped the vial back into his right pocket, pulling the flashlight from his left. Then raised his night goggles and turned on the flashlight. He aimed its narrow beam at his victim’s temple and leaned in closer, squinting.

Ah. There they were, crawling near her hairline.

With a fingernail he nudged them farther back until they disappeared among the strands of hair.

He straightened and took a moment to revel in his victory. He’d done it. He had really done it. Nothing more to do but hope the disease took hold of Janessa—and soon.

Smiling, he put away his flashlight and lowered the goggles. With a whisper of sound he turned and left the room. Down the stairs he crept, and through the kitchen. He stepped out onto the back deck, closed the sliding door and relocked it with the tools from his pocket.

As he slunk from the backyard, a wild and primal joy surged through him. He smirked at the memory of the green-hued sleeping figure, every fiber of his being anticipating, relishing the fulfillment of his vision.

A battle won.

Justice.

Exploration Points

Some exercises for you.

1.
Look at a scene you’ve written that is based on an experience in your own life. Recall that experience until all your Emotion Memory wells up within you. How can you blend those recalled emotions with your character’s inner values and Action Objectives to improve the scene?

2.
Find a scene in your novel that feels flat. What Emotion Memory within you might improve the scene? Remember, the most insignificant incident—like killing a fly—can lead to understanding of a character far different from you.

Moving On

Though Emotion Memory is our final adaptation of Method Acting techniques, we have hardly reached a finishing point in some linear process of discovering our characters. As you have seen, this process isn’t linear at all. It’s circular, one technique cycling us back to all the others. A certain Emotion Memory may cause you to rethink a character’s Action Objectives in a scene. Those Action Objectives may end up clarifying a trait or mannerism from your Personalizing process, or they may drive your character into Subtexting his conversation. This conversation may lead to new colors of the character’s passions, which in turn drive his Inner Rhythm in a certain scene. Your desire to portray that scene to its fullest will lead you to write with Sentence Rhythm and Compression, and to delve as deeply as you can into your Emotion Memory for even more insight into the character’s Action Objectives.