#plot climax

What is the most important aspect of a story: plot or character? This is something that has been debated for centuries, as far back as Aristotle. However, there is no answer, because, as McKee states:

“Structure is character; character is structure. They’re the same thing, and therefore one cannot be more important than the other. Yet the argument goes on because of a widely held confusion over two crucial aspects of the fictional role--the difference between Character and Characterization.”

First, let’s define things.

Characterization: the sum of all observable qualities of a human being, everything knowable through careful scrutiny: age and IQ; sex and sexuality; style of speech and gesture; choices of home, car, and dress; education and occupation; personality and nervosity; values and attitudes--all aspects of humanity we could know by taking notes on someone day in and day out. The totality of these traits makes each person unique because each of us is a one-of-a-kind combination of genetic givens and accumulated experience. This singular assemblage of traits is characterization... but it is not character.

True Character: it’s revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure--the  greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature.

In other words, characterization is who the character is on the surface. But true character is who the person is at their core, who they become in the most harrowing moments of their lives.

McKee states that the only way to divulge true character is to witness the character make choices under pressure to take one action or another in the pursuit of his desire.

“As he chooses, he is. Pressure is essential. Choices made when nothing is at risk mean little.”

If a character chooses to tell the truth where telling a lie would gain him nothing, the choice is trivial, the moment expresses nothing. But if the same character insists on telling the truth when a lie would save his life, then we sense that honesty is at the core of his nature.

McKee provides a brilliant example that I’ll give a portion of.

“Two cars motor down a highway. One is a rusted-out station wagon with buckets, mops, and brooms in the back. Driving it is an illegal alien--a quiet, shy woman working as a domestic for under-the-table cash, sole support of her family. Alongside her is glistening new Porsche driven by a brilliant and wealthy neurosurgeon. Two people who have utterly different backgrounds, beliefs, personalities, languages--in every way imaginable their characterizations are the opposite of each other.

Suddenly, in front of them, a school bus full of children flips out of control, smashes against an underpass, bursting into flames, trapping the children inside. Now, under this terrible pressure, we’ll find out who these two people really are.

Who chooses to stop? who chooses to drive by? Each has rationalizations for driving by. The domestic worries that if she gets caught up in this, the police might question her, find out she’s an illegal, throw her back across the border, and her family will starve. The surgeon fears that if he’s injured and his hands burned, hands that perform miraculous microsurgeries, the lives of thousands of future patients will be lost.”

The scenario continues, but you get the idea. How these two people act when under pressure will strip away the mask of characterization and then we can see their true characters.

Character Revelation

The revelation of true character in contrast or contradiction to characterization is fundamental to all fine storytelling. Life teaches this grand principle: What seems is not what is. People are not what they appear to be.

If you write a character as a kindhearted mother, and by the end she is still a kindhearted mother with no secrets, no dreams, no hidden passions, it’s certainly a realistic character. Such people do exist in the real world. But they are boring, and we don’t want to read a whole book about them.

We need to see who our characters really are, and see a contrast between their characterization and their true character.

Character Arc

“Taking the principle further yet: The finest writing not only reveals true character, but arcs or changes that inner nature, for better or worse, over the course of the telling.”

It’s probably easiest to see character arcs in coming of age stories. We start out only seeing their characterization, and then slowly the layers are peeled back as the plot progresses, choices become more difficult, stakes get higher. By the end of the story we can see not only who they were at the beginning, but the person they have changed into by the end of the story.

Structure and Character Functions

“The function of STRUCTURE is to provide progressively building pressures that force characters into more and more difficult dilemmas where they must make more and more difficult risk-taking choices and actions, gradually revealing their true natures, even down to the unconscious self.

The function of CHARACTER is to bring the story the qualities of characterization necessary to convincingly act out choices. Put simply, a character must be credible: young enough or old enough, strong or weak, worldly or naive, educated or ignorant, generous or selfish, witty or dull, in the right proportions. Each must bring to the story the combination of qualities that allows an audience to believe that the character could and would do what he does.”

Structure and character are interlocked. If you change event design, you have also changed character; if you change deep character, you must reinvent the structure to express the character’s changed nature.

Climax and Character

Structure and character seem almost symmetrical until the climax of the story. If the finale fails, the entire book will be for nothing.

“Story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time. Storytelling, therefore, is temporal art. And the first commandment of all temporal art is: Thou shalt save the best for last.”

Basically, McKee believes that the success of a story hinges on the success of its finale. And in order for the finale to be successful, we must believe that it is a choice that the character would make. Any aspect of the character that undermines or goes against their ultimate choice in the finale needs to be cut away or rethought.

So does this mean that you need to have the climax planned out before you start creating characters? No, not at all. Honestly, because structure and character are so interwoven, I think you have to have a character in mind before you can determine the climax. But if during the long path of writing your story you decide that the climax does not match the character, then you must change one or the other, and go back and change what you have already written accordingly.

I’m not expecting any new arcs. Maybe some followup chapters after this arc to wrap things up, but not a whole new arc….