The Fiction Toolkit, Part 7
Shelly Lowenkopf -- January 20, 2007
Another in a series of excerpts from Shelly Lowenkopf's forthcoming book, The Fiction Writer's Tool Kit: Terms, Concepts, and Devices for Building a Better Story. In this installment Shelly examines prototypical protagonist Sherlock Holmes and his ever-present confidante, Dr. Watson, as two more literary patterns you should understand.
Sherlock Holmes a brilliant character whose distinctive, logical approach to the solving of problems led him to become a paradigm for lead characters in detective fiction; a character so taken with his own abilities and powers that his creator quickly saw the danger of letting him out on his own. Holmes needed the insulation of a confidante, someone he could talk to but also someone -- John Watson, M.D. -- who could speak for him.
Just as Wile E. Coyote merits our attention as being the exemplar of traits needed by characters in a story, Sherlock Holmes serves to remind the reader of several important requirements: The main character should have someone with whom apprehensions, suspicions, and theories may be shared; while it is no longer an absolute necessity that a front-rank character be likeable, that character should at least be tolerable to the reader; front-rank characters should in at least some way be accessible. The placement of the bumbling and garrulous John Watson, M.D., accomplishes all these in excellent measure. Although the success of the Sherlock Holmes series turned on its protagonist's ability to piece seemingly inconsequential bits of a puzzle together, forming a picture of clarity, it nevertheless rested on the foundation of Dr. Watson's good nature, his open admiration of Holmes, and his frequently amusing but nonetheless plausible requests for explanation.
Call it what you will -- amanuensis, the buddy system, the confidante -- the tradition of a plausible partner or presence with whom the protagonist can carry on present-time conversations and speculations, has its origins in the early history of story, at least as far back as Aristophanes's The Frogs, where the two principal characters are a master and his slave, embarked in a situation where their roles become reversed.
The Second Banana character also forestalls the need to stop the present-time activity for a soliloquy.
Shelly Lowenkopf's soon-to-be-published The Fiction Writer's Tool Kit: Terms, Concepts, and Devices for Building a Better Story. is more than a lexicon. It defines a conceptual language for thinking about fiction, providing the writer with the tools to raise the level of craftsmanship of his own work.