Using Character Values to Write Great Fiction
When a character’s values are in conflict, they force the character to make a choice.
That’s a key to writing great fiction. It’s easy to make a decision when you only value one thing in life. We all know people who only have one criterion for making decisions. It may be their quest for money. Their hunger for fame. Their theology. Their cat. Whatever.
People like that CAN be interesting characters, IF they have some powerful opponent. Then there’ll be a nice external conflict and, hopefully, the Good Guy will win. It’s a battle of Good versus Evil, and that’s always interesting.
But it’s so much MORE interesting when the Good Guy has conflicting values. Then there’s an internal conflict too. It becomes a story of Good versus Good. It forces the character to confront his own values. And it forces you to think about YOUR values.
I’m thinking of the movie Chariots of Fire. It’s a story of two British runners in the 1924 Olympics. Both of them want to win, and each has an interesting story. I’m going to focus here on only one of them, Eric Liddell, because a major part of his conflict is internal — a clash of his values — and both of those values are good.
Eric Liddell is a conservative Scottish Christian and he loves to run. In one of the strongest scenes in the movie, he’s explaining to his sister why he likes to run, even though it seems like a frivolous activity. He says, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.” So that’s one of his values — Eric runs for God.
But Eric also believes that a man shouldn’t race on Sunday. He’s a throwback to an earlier time when many Christians observed Sunday as a Christian Sabbath. That’s pretty uncommon these days, but it was more common in 1924. Whether you agree with Eric’s theology or not, you can at least understand that Eric believes absolutely that he’s doing God’s will by not racing on Sunday.
The internal conflict comes for Eric when he learns that he’ll have to race on Sunday if he wants to run in the Olympics. He comes in for a lot of pressure from the British Olympic committee, because he’s the favorite to win the gold medal. It’s a matter of patriotism for them. What’s the big deal, Eric? Won’t it glorify God if you run on Sunday? Other Christians do it. Why can’t you?
But Eric can’t, and he won’t. For him, running and winning while violating God’s law would be worse than losing. Eric has two values in conflict, but they’re not equally strong. And his stronger value wins out, even when the weaker value gets a powerful push from the British Olympic committee. Eric refuses to race.
Ultimately, the committee enters him in a different event that doesn’t require him to run on Sunday. It’s not his best event, but he wins the gold anyway.
You’ve got to admire a guy like Eric because he did what he thought was right. That’s always an admirable thing.
At the SAME time, it’s also valid to ask whether what Eric THOUGHT was right actually WAS right.
The movie came out in 1981, at an interesting point in my own life. See, I was raised in a pretty unusual church — the Seventh Day Adventist church. Adventists observe the Sabbath about as strictly as Eric did, but they don’t observe Sunday. They observe Saturday. If you get cornered by an Adventist on this subject, and if you’re honest, you will eventually admit that they are “right.” The only Sabbath ever mentioned in the Bible, Old Testament or New Testament, is Saturday.
So the Adventists are “right”, but . . . are they RIGHT? Because even if you establish that Saturday is the Biblical Sabbath, you still have to prove that Christians are obligated to observe it.
That’s an interesting theological discussion that may interest a few of you but probably would bore most of you. I’ll skip it for now.
In any event, when the movie came out in 1981, it hit a special nerve for me, because I was in graduate school at UC Berkeley, and sometimes tests came up on Saturday. In Seventh Day Adventism, it’s not OK to take a test on the Sabbath. For me, that meant having to ask for a special exam on a different day. A major hassle for everybody involved.
So Adventists really liked that movie. When I watched it, I admired Eric for doing what he thought was right. But I also had some qualms about that. Sure, it’s a good thing to do what you believe to be right. But what if you what you think is “right” really isn’t? What if you’re just laying an extra load on yourself needlessly?
In the end, I decided that Seventh Day Adventists had it wrong. They’re nice folks (except possibly when they corner you to convince you that you’re wrong.) But I don’t believe their theology is right.
Looking back on it now, I can see that the movie was one of the things that influenced me to ask hard questions. I could respect Eric Liddell for standing up for what he thought was right. But I also “knew” that he had things wrong. And that led me to consider the possibility that I might have them wrong too.
By the way, I don’t want to suggest that you should get your theology (or philosophy or math or history) from the movies. There are a lot better resources for learning theology or philosophy or math or history.
But the power of a great story is that it can jolt you a bit. It can make you think about your own values in a new way — from inside the skin of a character who isn’t you. It can make you rethink your values.
You may end up confirming your values. You may end up changing them. But in the end, you’ll know your own values better. They’ll be more deeply a part of you. You will be more truly yourself.
All that from just a story! Don’t ever let anyone put you down for “just telling stories.” Story is one of the most powerful forces in any civilization. Part of the reason story is powerful is that story forces characters to examine their values.
In doing so, it forces us to examine our values too.
2007
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