Getting to the "Root" of the Matter

"Root Cause"

There is something in the field of quality management called “root cause analysis”.
 
You may now be asking what this has to do with writing books. I’ll get to that in a minute or two, but first of all I’ll have to explain what root cause analysis is and how it works.
 
Basically, it is an assumption that when something goes wrong in a process, the visible signs are very rarely the root cause of what went wrong. To make sure that the same problem never occurs again, you have to find the root, or real, cause of the problem. It is the difference between treating the symptoms (a headache, say) and treating the cause (a brain tumour). Aspirin may temporarily relieve the pain of the symptom, but it won’t cure the brain tumour.
 
Let me give you a worked example.

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Guess the cause!

Car A is driving along the road and approaches a stop sign. Being driven by a good driver, the car is brought to a controlled stop in the right place. Car B, following on behind, then crashes into the back of Car A.
 
The assumption, at this point, might be that the driver of Car B wasn’t paying adequate attention and therefore didn’t see Car A coming to a stop and ran into the back of him.
 
Only by asking questions would it be possible to establish if that assumption was correct.
 
In quality management a tool that is used is called “The 6 Whys”. Basically it means that by asking six “why” questions in succession it is possible to find out what the real cause of the accident was.
 
So, question 1 might be “Why did the driver of Car B fail to stop?
 
There are several possible answers, only one of which will be true. For the sake of this illustration, I’ll say that the actual answer is “Because the car’s brakes failed.”
 
The second why question would therefore be “Why did the brakes fail?” Again, there are several possible answers, only one of which will be true.
 
If you ask a further 4 “why” questions in this vein you might get to an answer that is “Because there is a flaw in the manufacturing process for a minor component that hadn’t been previously identified”. Obviously more evidence than just one accident would be needed before that conclusion could be drawn, but gathering that evidence, such as data on other accidents, would be part of finding the true answer.

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Brake failure? Or inattentive driver?

So, the root cause of the accident is that flaw in the manufacturing process and unless that flaw is corrected, other accidents involving brake failures are bound to occur. That is a long way from “Driver B wasn’t paying attention to his driving”.
 
It is just that sort of process that leads to product recalls on cars, sometimes several years after production started, to rectify defects that have been subsequently identified.
 
If you work in a place where the same problems keep on occurring, time after time, then you might want to carry out this exercise for yourself, or in conjunction with your colleagues. By identifying the root cause of those problems – and getting them fixed - you could earn yourself some kudos (and all that goes with it).
 
Even if Driver B wasn’t paying attention, to get to the root cause of the accident we would have to ask another 5 questions. It might turn out that he is suffering from undiagnosed ADHD, for example, rather than just being distracted by his phone ringing.

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It's not just icebergs that have hidden depths.

But that leads us onto the real subject of this blog: What does this mean for you as an author?
 
It means that you can build multi-layered characters by showing your readers that what they see on the surface isn’t necessarily what is going on underneath. In characterisation, we call this “having hidden depths”.
 
Let’s take a typical character trope, the cop who drinks too much and prefers to work alone.
 
It’s easy to establish that he drinks too much because his partner got killed in a shoot-out and that he wants to work alone because he’s reluctant to get emotionally attached to other cops in case the same thing happens again. Those are just the answers to the first 2 or 3 “whys”.
 
But if you were to ask yourself a 4th why you might find out that the cop has suffered major losses in his life before. A 5th why might be that he feels responsible for the earlier loss and the 6th why is because he was blamed for the loss even though he was too young to even know what loss was about.

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​Anyone who has ever gone through counselling (therapy as our American cousins call it) may recognise the depth of questioning necessary to reveal those sorts of emotional scars.
 
But as an author, you can build that character from the ground up to give them hidden depths and secret anxieties. More importantly, you develop them from being a trope into being a ‘real’ person.
 
You don’t have to reveal all that to the reader, at least, not all in one go. It may be something that you keep to yourself or reveal over a series of stories. But when it comes to deciding how your character(s) will react in any situation you put them into, you can draw on that depth of understanding of their emotional baggage to make them more interesting, to make them react consistently and to make them believable.

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Emotional engagement.

In many novels it is very difficult to understand what motivates a character if the author hasn’t actually explained it. Because of that it is difficult to believe in the character and a lack of belief creates a lack of emotional engagement from the reader.

​And if the reader doesn’t engage with the character on an emotional level, they don’t care what happens to them and they stop reading the book.
 
That might not matter if you only write one book. After all, the reader has already bought it. But if you want to write a second book, it is important. If your first book didn’t engage the reader, they won’t buy your second book. And if they post a bad review of your first book, it will impact sales to other people for all your books, even if they are in a different genre. So having interesting characters is a big deal.
 
This is the difference between plot led and character led fiction, which is an on-going debate in writing circles. Here at Selfishgenie we’re very much in the ‘character led’ camp because a good plot can’t make up for badly drawn characters. Good characters, however, can save a poor plot – as many a Hollywood movie has demonstrated.

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Why would my character do that? 

​The place to start in this “root cause” journey is with the initiating event, as it’s known. The things that gets the story moving and gets the character involved in the action.
 
Ask yourself “Why would my character do that? What is their motivation? Is that motivation enough to keep them going when the going gets tough?”

A simple Hobbit

These are questions I asked myself a lot when reading Lord of the Rings. As in “Would a simple Hobbit really keep going in the face of all that opposition? Wouldn’t they just throw the flipping ring into the neatest river and hope for the best?”

I’ve read the book several times and the character of Frodo always makes me ask those questions and I’ve never really reached a satisfactory answer. Strength of character and determination to succeed don’t even begin to satisfy as motives.
 
In some types of plot, the triggering event goes with the territory, because it’s the character’s job: police stories, spy thrillers etc. In those cases we have to take a step back and ask questions about why the character got into their job in the first place, as well as why they stay in it when things are going so badly.
 
When we give feedback to authors who submit their manuscripts to us, we often refer to characters being “two dimensional”. It is the deeper motivation of characters that give them their third dimension and make them more human, more realistic. This is especially important if the characters are to go beyond the everyday experiences which we all go through and into worlds where they place themselves in mortal danger.
 
We know we couldn’t do those things – but we have to believe that the character(s) can. Motivation is what makes us believe and motivation comes from deep within – whether we are real people or characters in books.
 
I’m not saying that this sort of analysis is the only way to build good characters – there are many others, I’m sure. But if you are struggling with creating believable characters, this simple tool, "the 6 whys", may help you to add new dimensions to them.

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