In ground warfare terms, per the US Army’s FM 3-21.8, Infantry Rifle and Platoon, Chapter 1: Fundamentals of Tactics, it is not only
essential to create a problem for
your enemy—namely by shooting at them—but to create a dilemma. Namely, shooting at your enemy, cutting off routes of egress,
and dropping artillery, bombs,
mortars and whatever else you can on them in order to defeat your enemy
or force them into a choice you (the author) want them to go in.
So too in fiction.
By creating dilemmas for our characters (particularly our
protagonists), we get them to show us their true—er—character. You could say
that the dilemma for a protagonist is actually where both plot and character
coincide, where the two elements come to a crossroads. It’s fun to find those pivot points in plot,
where the character has to make a
decision because everything is falling down around them. They are under immense
stress. It’s perhaps the climax of the story. What do they do? This is where the antagonistic forces of the plot can
bear down upon the protagonist so relentlessly, even we the readers are begging
for mercy.
Here’s a good example:
In Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, the protagonist—the English butler, Stevens, with a
bushido-like moral code of dignity and service to one’s “employer”—about midway
through his recollections of his career, remembers an event of international importance that took place at Darlington Hall; an event that
may, as Stevens’ employer, Lord Darlington, put it, impact whether or not
Europe goes to war.
Besides managing the intense amount of activity—the maids,
the under butlers, the rooms, the guests, and, particularly, the French
ambassador complaining about his sore feet and needing some salts in a basin,
Stevens’ father is also upstairs in a room on his deathbed. Furthermore, the
international tensions are rising as an American diplomat accuses the French
and British gentleman running their respective countries’ international affairs
as being no more than gentlemanly amateurs. Then Miss Kenton, whom Stevens harbors romantic feelings
towards though he barely even recognizes them within himself, comes downstairs to
inform Mr. Stevens that his father, Mr. Stevens Sr., has finally passed away.
Then the French ambassador shows back up, in agony over his feet, as—if my own memory serves me well—another under
butler stands by for orders.
In this way, Stevens’ character is posed with a dilemma. He
must decide not just what to do to solve all three of these problems, while
also attending to the now tense event as Lord Darlington, his employer, has
instructed him to do, but he must also decide—as he recollecting the event—how to feel
about them. In the end, Stevens allows himself just an iota of a moment to say farewell
to his father, however he does not allow himself to become overcome with grief.
He swiftly attends to the French ambassador, accepts Miss Kenton’s condolences,
and then is back at his place in the event serving drinks to the guests. All in
all, in recollection, Stevens is proud of maintaining his composure during such
a trying episode. He is proud to have maintained his dignity.
Now we see the true nature of Stevens.
So too in our own novels and stories. We must find that
point where our plot and our character collides, where our character is tested
to the extreme. In my own burgeoning work, The
Vallen, which I’m currently outlining, I have a similar dilemma for my main
character, Yeshua. At one point in the plot, she becomes beset on all sides by
death, failure, being arrested, struggling to balance newfound truth with the
lies she’s been taught, as well as a bad flare-up of her asthma.
So too in life. We may, in our own lives, be able to
recollect a point when we were faced on all sides with problems. The stress
just kept building up and building up till we thought we were going to pop. And
then our own true character shines through…