The Spine

"She believed that all well-drawn characters have a spine. And the idea is that the character has an inner motor, a dominant, unconscious goal that they're striving for, an itch that they can't scratch."-Andrew Stanton, writer for Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and Wall-EA character has secrets. A character won't announce every thought and feeling, which was the focus of a previous post. But some of the most important secrets that characters keep are from themselves. Often, I wonder, Why does rudeness get me so angry? or Why do I like this so much? The command to "Know thyself" baffles the wisest among us.The spine of a character answers the "Why?" of a story. Why go to Asia? Why leave your wife? Often the true answers to these questions are not the answers that the characters themselves give. Characters lie because they do not know the answer. "I always wanted to see Japan." Or worse, they lie to themselves. "I never loved her." The spine of a character is the unconscious engine that pushes the character into strange circumstances, no matter how many times the character insists on some rational motivation.One of my favorite movies is La Grande Bellezza. The main character, Jep Gambardella, wrote a novel many years in the past, but now spends his time in the vapid world of the social elite. Throughout the film, Jep is asked, "Why did you never write another novel?" He generally points to the meaningless of his current lifestyle, and asks, "How could I write a novel about this?" When he takes a deeper look at himself, and gives a new answer to an unexpected guest, the story is at its most powerful.Today, the exercise is to create a character who has a spine.***Buds, the worker bee, could flap his wings twelve thousand times in a minute. He could build a perfect hexagon without any measuring stick. His one-millimeter mind knew the angles the way a bird knew true North. But Buds knew that his gift wasn't his geometry: Buds was the most handsome bee in the hive.Never mind that his stripes were the same black, and his thorax the same yellow, as every other male in the hive. Never mind that he created no more honey than others. In fact, Blizz had secreted three more sections than he had. Buds knew that he was the most handsome, because if he wasn't, then he couldn't mate with the young queen who had just been born, and if he couldn't mate with the young queen, he couldn't see much point in being in the hive."What's wrong with you?" Blizz would ask. "We don't ask questions. We do what we can for the queen."But Buds had grown tired. His wings grew stiff and his thorax rattled with pain. Rube, a female, had looked him over and pronounced him perfectly fit for work. That was the way she judged your health: how much work you were able to accomplish.Staying up late was forbidden, because it would affect the hive's productivity. Buds lay awake, but not on purpose."Maybe someday," he dreamed, "someone will wonder about more than what I can do for them."***Getting Started: 4Character: 4Point of View and Tone: 3Plot and Narrative: 3Dialogue and Voice: 3Descriptive Language and Setting: 3Revision: 3Overall: 3*Level 3*