I. Writing the First Family
Cain: Son of Adam is not a conventional novel. As such, it presented its own unique challenges that I only became aware of when I started to write it.
The first of these were the characters. Specifically, the lack of characters.
Think of any novel set in any time period, modern or pre-modern. Even if said novel follows a small number of main characters, there are innumerable side characters that weave in and out of the story. Sidekicks, quest-givers, merchants, enemy combatants, random bystanders, or anonymous crowds to cheer/jeer at our protagonists.
Cain: Son of Adam has none of these until half-way through the book. For the first eleven chapters (more or less 300 pages), there are only five human beings in the entire world, and they are all part of the same family. There are no minor characters.
At first glance this doesn’t seem to be an issue, but it is amazing how many authors (including myself) rely on these characters to move the plot forward. For example, a couple years back I started reading a novel (started but never finished). It was all about vampires and Catholicism, so you’d think it would be right up my alley. But the author kept having thugs attack the main characters to advance the plot. Seriously, there must have been at least four random thug attacks within the first 50 pages. It got old very fast, and I congratulated myself for being above such hack clichés.
Ironically, I was only a few chapters into Cain when I was hoping for some random New York thugs to show up and make my job easier. It would have been story telling suicide, but stressed out writers with weird brains are not known for making good decisions. Thankfully, the thugs never showed, and I made do with lions.
Even without the thugs, the Adam’s Family (snap snap) would have no one to talk to except for each other. There were no best friends or classmates for Cain and his siblings. There were no other adults besides Adam and Eve, meaning no teachers, no old (human) friends, no ex-boyfriends or ex-girlfriends, and no parents or grandparents either.
All this, and they’re living a subsistence diet consisting of whatever they can catch, gather or harvest.
It is somewhat like a married couple shipwrecked on an island with no hope of rescue, if they survived for almost two decades and had children born on the island. The children would have no knowledge of the world beyond the island save what their parents told them. And yet this comparison is inadequate; for while Adam and Eve have (metaphorically) suffered a massive shipwreck which has (literally) damaged their human nature, their memories of Eden would be indescribable and incomprehensible to us. Not only did they live immaculate in the presence of God, they also did not have any sort of human culture.
We live in a society, but they live in a family. And that is all they have ever known.
There is another, related pitfall of such a setting with very few characters: claustrophobia. I refer not to actual cramped spaces or the fear of them, but to a sense the reader may get from the narrative, as though the reader and the main characters are trapped in a gym locker. The characters and their physical features are described in meticulous detail, yet almost no thought is spared for the environment or for background characters.
I’ll use the Catholic Vampire novel from earlier as an example. After a two page prologue, the first few chapters (as far as I was able to read) are all about conversations between a hot girl and a hot dude. In these conversations they flirt, talk about themselves, and wordlessly convey that they really, really, really, really want to do married people things with each other (but they are Catholic and not married, and so they can’t, but they really, really, really, really, really, really want to). Their surroundings in these several conversations were given sparse descriptions, as were the only secondary characters (Hot Dude’s dad and a police chief who made random house calls). It was far more important to suffocate the reader with Sexy Hormones and Thug Attacks!
It was important to me not to replicate this effect in Cain: Son of Adam. It was easier than you might think. I just had to give my characters some space, some time alone with their thoughts. And have them focus on other things besides, you know, hormones. Not that romance isn’t an essential part of the plot, or that certain characters don’t experience suffocating obsession. But the book is a story about life, and life is much bigger than a love affair.
Now, there is little point in writing a novel about life is the characters are not life-like.
Flat characters may work for religious tracts, but not so much for novels. There is, after all, very little plot to speak of, at least at first. It’s up to the characters to carry the story.
I’ve read more advice on writing well rounded characters than I can remember, but there is one that has always stuck with me. I can’t cite it properly because I donated the book years ago. But it went something like this: “Everyone in real life is the main character of their own story. No one imagines themselves as the protagonist’s best friend, the hooker with a heart of gold, the comic relief, or the love interest. Your characters, therefore, should behave like real people, with their own core needs, goals, and quests.”
Certainly, Cain is the main character, but he wouldn’t be very interesting if he was surrounded by human shaped Lego bricks. Edward Cullen he is not. So not only he, but the rest of his family would need to be fleshed out, enough to be relatable, likable, and believable.
I’ll be breaking down how I did this for the main cast over the next few weeks. Stay tuned!
And if I've piqued your interest, Cain: Son of Adam is available from Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats.
Blessed Advent!