Smash Goats: A Lesson in Writing Characters

I want to give my beautiful readers an insight into my process.

The people who read Bloggie really are beautiful.

So handsome. So…handsome.

“Process” is what we writers call the things we do as we go about our work. It's all the little tasks put together. Put the tasks in a row and you’ve got a process on your hands.

It’s outlining. It’s brainstorming. It’s taking out all instances of the saying, “Fish ain’t made of bread for no reason,” which comes up eight times in the first draft of a 4,000-word short story, though you can’t recall writing it down, not even one time.

Each of these tasks is but one step in the “process.”

Right now, at this moment, I have on my mind a character. I've been creating him for the last eight months.

Character creation is a process in itself. It can take time.

All I know about this character so far is that he weighs 190 pounds and whenever he leaves a room with other people in it he says, “Forgive me I must smash goats.”

This is where the process of character creation can be magical. When the characters you’ve created, and who ought to be under your command—your total control—surprise you.

When you first heard that man, in your mind, say he must smash goats, you didn’t see it coming. You didn’t intend it. Those words just came out of his mouth somehow.

What does he mean by it?

What's going on in that head of his?

Does he mean literal goats? Is he going to smash them? Real goats?

Or is “smash goats” a new idiom the others in the room haven't heard yet?

I've been contemplating these questions, and more, for months.

What’s truly magical is that pursuing such a question can lead you to learn more about the character. To fill in all the blank spaces that are left in the name of clearing up the confusion you’ve committed to the page.

This is where I'm leaning.

That man a business tycoon. He rose to the top from the very bottom.

It's a rags-to-riches tale. A classic arc.

When he says he'll smash goats he means it. But what he means is not that he will crush animals in a hydraulic press, which is what the phrase brings to mind for everyone who hears it.

No. What he’s going to do is retreat to his cupola and read a few pages of Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici.

It's what the townspeople did, where he grew up in filth and squalor, under the constant, watchful eye of the factory owner. They spent their private time hidden away in cupolas, reading Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici. They called it smashing goats so no one would find out and try to stop them.

Now the man we’ve invented is the one who owns the factory.

Now he is the one in control.

And so the question is this: how long can he expect to continue smashing goats like that?

How long will it be until everyone else finds him out?

Sound off in the comments.