An Ode to Snape

Severus or Snivellus?

Despite Youtube being the life-long enemy of my productivity, sometimes Youtube does me a solid and reminds me of something I love. I stumbled upon this video doing the Youtube rounds a few months back. Harry Potter fan or not, do yourself the big favour of watching it for the next 14 minutes! 14 minutes seems like an awful lot of time to commit to anything on Youtube but it's worth it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhOQ4VW6xV8

Well, now you know... and probably knew already... the multitude of reasons why I consider Professor Severus Snape to be the best of J.K.Rowling's many brain-children. His characterisation dazzles me because he could have easily just become this cardboard-cutout of an antagonistic dark figure set up to punish Harry, but instead J.K.Rowling spun him into a gloriously intriguing character instead.

Writers are told to avoid cliches and we really should do our best to do so. Deny the Damsel in Distress. Cancel the Chosen One. Ban the Brooding Bad Boy. Wean yourself off Wizened Mentors. Cookie-cutter cliches are not our friends. However, if all cliches are bad, how then did J.K.Rowling manage to become so deservedly successful when her books contain all of the above figures in some form or another? She uses cliche-inspired characters by the dozen, but gets away with it! More than gets away with it! Masters it and woos us into loving these characters! What's her secret??? I don't know - she hasn't told me. However, this is what I think...


First, she does more than just tweak her characters. She turns them on their heads.

If you were wondering who the Damsel in Distress of Hogwarts is, I see Ron and his cascading ginger locks cast in the role. He's always getting into trouble and can't always get himself out of it at first. To his credit, he saves a fair few people too. However, he bumbles his way through many a crisis.

Then in swoops Hermione to the rescue. Again. Neither Ron nor Hermione being perfect, J.K.Rowling still makes Hermione more of the protector than Ron.

On top of that, she's not afraid to make a hero horrid and a horrid person heroic.

There are no perfect personas made charmingly 'human' by one minor flaw in her novels. Giving a character one or two small foibles, like mild shyness or clumsiness, will not fool your reader into thinking your character is fully flesh and blood. Take Rowling's version of the Chosen One, Harry. Like all Chosen Ones, Harry struggles with his path and his destiny. However, Harry really, really, really struggles with it. At first, he's just this every-man character who gets to go to magic school and take us along with him for the ride. Then, from the third book onward, Harry the Teenager starts making a ton of mistakes. He can be clueless. He gets jealous. He falls out with friends. He is from time to time selfish. Shock! Horror! The Chosen One is human and probably has acne too! Harry the Chosen One makes a fair few mistakes too and is also just plain wrong in some cases. I'm sure I'm not alone in having found Harry irritating at times, but I still always wanted him to prevail!

Alongside her willingness to have horrid heroes and heroic horrid people too, J.K.Rowling doesn't rush to make you fall in love with her brain-children straight away. She has patience.

If you asked me now, I might be tempted to say that I had ALWAYS known that Snape was on the right side and that from Book One I had known that he'd be the anti-hero to save the day. I'd be lying. I spent the first two books in fear of Snape and comparing him to the worst teachers at my school. He didn't just have the illusion of being bad. He truly had many bad characteristics which he kept until the end of the series. He sneered at students. He bullied Harry and more. He petrified all. He led a bitter life. Yes, in the background, he was loyal to Albus Dumbledore and was a protector, but he still wasn't likable or appealing in any way to the people around him.

*** SPOILER ALERT! *** AND SERIOUSLY YOU HAVEN'T READ THEM YET?!?!?!!

Entire books passed by before we found out his even darker past and betrayals and other characters questioned his loyalty. Most of the books had passed by before we discovered that he was Lily Potter's closest friend and that James Potter had been less shiny than expected. J.K.Rowling gave us glimpses of Snape the hero here and there between all the scenes of horrid, but she made us wait and wait and measured out bits of Snape over time until we finally had a full understanding of how heroic a character he could be. While most cliches jump out at you and scream "Look at me!" in a less than subtle manner from the minute you see them, Snape had been the Brooding Bad Boy of a Severus-Lily-James love triangle and we hadn't even known it for multiple books.

One of my favourite Snape lines has to be when Snape, who no one trusts, and Dumbledore, who everyone trusts, discuss what Dumbledore has planned for Harry. A shocked Snape says, "I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter's son safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter." In that one page, Snape proves himself the protector and Dumbledore the betrayer (but I can't speak ill of him! I won't!) and the reader is left stunned! Beautifully done! What a story arc! That takes both planning and patience that I am in awe of.

We don't need to throw all the cliches out, but have fun playing with them! Toy with overly traditional gender roles! Turn cliches on their head and splice them together and remake them! Make your heroes and villains meet at some murkier middle point! Commit some time to fleshing them out bit by bit! You don't find out everything about a person in one conversation!

Now time for a re-read! And I'll leave you with my favourite wizened mentor for company!

Searching For Mr. Right

I had lunch with my stepdaughter this week and listened to her stories about the dating world.  It's always interesting, and even sometimes scary, to hear about the people she's meeting. I've tried to drill it into all of my girls' heads that the dating period is the "honeymoon" phase. It's not going to get any better. People will be on their Very Best Behavior while dating. 

The jerk that went to the Singles Party and acted like he didn't see her? That guy is a Loser. He's never going to turn into a Prince Charming. 

But the sweet guy that spent the evening talking to your lonely grandpa? He's a keeper.

How does this apply to writing?

Photo by Ian Muttoo

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

When dating, you meet someone for the first time and make many decisions based on first impressions. Walking into a book store and choosing a book is a little like dating. You pick up a book and study the cover. You like? It's passed the first test. Now you flip it over and read the back jacket. The equivalent of having a drink. Small spark? You open the book to check out the first page. 

The first line has set the stage nicely. If the character is interesting, maybe you read a little more. But then you hit a snag. 

"I can't get a hold of Bob." A childish whine snuck into her voice. She coughed to cover it up. Why did she always regress when she spoke to her older sister?   

Nope. I’m not reading about some whiner for 350 pages. Your protagonist doesn’t have to necessarily be likable. Lisabeth Sandler isn’t likable. But she is compelling. 

BLANK vs STRONG

The call for strong female protagonists is stressed at writers conferences and all over twitter on the #MSWL. To me, this means a character like Taylor Stevens’ Vanessa Michael Munroe or Stieg Larson’s Lisabeth Sandler. While I love these books, my MC is not anything like . 

In reality, the "strong character" means a character with agency. The character must lead the story, rather than react to what happens to her.  Readers are interested in watching her figure things out. If she makes a poor choice that’s okay. It's still interesting. 

Lisabeth Sandler from
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

The blank character is another option. This character can still have some interesting attributes, and still must have agency, but he or she is just average enough for the reader to identify with and imagine being that character. Harry Potter is a prime example of a blank character. Keep in mind, the blank character is not to be confused with a flat character (one personality trait, i.e. all good, or all bad).

Harry Potter

CONSISTENT

Your characters must be consistent to themselves. You, the author, can make your character do something he might not want ti do--much like a strict teacher can make a bully apologize. But everyone knows the bully is not sincere. Just like the readers know your character isn't either.

BECHDALE TEST

The Bechdale Test originated as a way to measure the diversity of films in the 1985 comic strip “Dykes to Watch Out For,” and it’s still a way to build a more realistic female character. It has three criteria: 

*********************************************************************************

I told my stepdaughter I was going to write a blog post comparing fictional characters to dating. Her reply was that it’s not comparable. She also gave me a funny look and asked if all writers are so mathematically oriented in character building. 

After researching for this post, I realize she’s right. Dating, to some degree, is looking for Mr. Right. Reading is entertainment. But you have to be engaged enough to spend ten to twenty hours with a character AND be compelled to spending that time inside a characters head. 

In closure, I give you my notes and my formula. Your character:

1. Must have agency
2. Must be consistent
3. Must have inner conflict applied to external situation
4. Interior narrative cannot be whiney
5. Female characters must pass the Bechdal test

Please let me know your answer to the equation in the comments below.

~Charlotte Levine-Gruber

From Drab To Fab

Recently I read Margie Lawson's lecture on Empowering Character Emotions. In it, she talks about strengthening your emotional pull with your characters through setting, dialogue, internal and external thoughts and actions. I came across a section where she discusses basic sentences and I realized, to my horror, that this was the reason my manuscripts are basically flat-lining.

Now, I'm not going to go through everything she said in her lectures because her lectures are long and she teaches them as a class and they cost $22 a lecture, but I do want to discuss what I discovered about my own manuscript. 

When I say basic sentences, this is what I mean:

My stomach churned.

Nothing special, right? It's a basic description, and one probably all of us have used more than once. It's one we've read a million times in other manuscripts and it's a sentence that does just fine on its own. But is there a way that we can transform it? Give it a little pizzazz?  Make it our own and fresh?

Sailor Pluto

How about this line from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire:

Just the sound of his voice twists my stomach into a knot of unpleasant emotions like guilt, sadness and fear. And longing. I might as well admit there’s some of that too. Katniss Everdeen, p. 14

There is so much more emotional charge than the basic My stomach churned.

Basic lines are great. They give us the base emotions we need when writing a rough draft, but do they really pull the reader in? Our goal, as authors, is to give the world something they've never read before in a way that pulls them in and keeps them there. To charge the read with so much human emotion that we're drawn in. We can see ourselves in the characters and never want to leave. 

We don't want to write a manuscript that's flat-lining.

Do a search for the phrase, or similar phrases such as she smirked, he raised an eyebrow in your manuscript. How many times do those same basic lines appear? For me, it's a lot and one of my biggest flaws. Right now I'm going through my entire manuscript to spice up those flat-liners.

Consider sitting in a restaurant and watching the people around you. 

This weekend I attended a wedding for a friend of my husband. The reception was held at the local Moose Lodge complete with dingy carpeting, pool tables, pictures of past Moose Lodge members and an open bar. For those of you who know me, you know that I don't drink and I didn't know anyone at the wedding. I did what anyone would do in that sort of situation. 

I people watched.

Rocky and Bullwinkle

People are interesting creatures. We fidget. A lot. A much older gentleman walked in with his beard dyed pink. The entire dinner he twisted a wooden cane in his hand. He turned it faster the more alcohol he drank. A woman, after a man that hadn't been sitting with her, crossed and uncrossed her legs a dozen times while he sat and chatted with her. Another woman smoothed the back hem of her skirt repeatedly, probably because the hem was half an inch from revealing all the goods. All of them staggered and whooped and hollered when they hit the dance floor without a care in the world.

Angry Beavers

People have quirks. 

Characters do too.

When I'm nervous, I bite on the edge of my acrylic nails, so why don't any of my characters do this? Surely one of them bites their nails, chews their hair or feels the need to pee, right? So why do we forget to mention these things? I can imagine myself in the Hunger Games with Katniss and repeatedly thinking, please don't let me pee my pants. Please don't let me pee my pants!

Giving your characters these flaws makes them human, gives them personality traits outside of dialogue. If you're struggling to give your characters separate identities, give them flaws when they're interacting.

Here are more examples of basic lines being made over into something amazing:

They held hands.

I never used to understand why people bothered to hold hands as they walked, but then he runs one of his fingertips down my palm, and I shiver and understand it completely-Tris, Divergent.

Veronica Roth didn't come out and say Tris and Four held hands. She hints at it. She gives you the imagery, and that basic emotion is stronger for it.

He was frustrated.

Up and down he paced, consumed with anger and frustration, grinding his teeth and clenching his fists, casting angry looks out at the empty, star-strewn sky every time he passed the window. Dementors sent to get him, Mrs. Figg and Mundungus Fletcher tailing him in secret, then suspension from Hogwarts and a hearing at the Ministry of Magic – and still no one was telling him what was going on. -Harry Potter, The Order of the Phoenix.

J.K. Rowling didn't just say Harry paced in anger. She gave us visuals that show us just how upset and isolated he was. 

A great resource for character emotions is The Emotional Thesaurus. It lists various emotions and the physical and mental attributes that will help take the basic into the amazing. Don't let your disappointment be simply lips pressed in a tight line. Allow it to give a bitter smile, break eye contact, and fill your body with lead. Take these drab sentences and make them emotionally charged while turning them into something fabulous. Don't just gasp. Gasp with one hand over your mouth and bulging eyes. Don't just shake hands. Shake hands firmly enough to make his man boobs quiver. Find a way to strengthen those basic sentences and turn them into a mesmerizing read.

Rocko's Modern Life

Get out there and turn the drab into something fab!