I was reading a favorite P. G. Wodehouse again (there are so many of them to enjoy!), and had a brief moment of satori. about a type of character I never use in my own fiction.
I was reading one of the “Uncle Fred” books. If you’re not familiar with the character and situation…. well, “Uncle Fred” is that crazy titled relative in the cheerful bucolic Wodehousian universe who can’t help himself from affectionately interfering in the lives of his young friends and relatives — for their own good, of course — and who creates/encourages/revels in phenomenal chaos, which he then assists in sorting out, so that all is well at the end: the villains defeated, the worthy rewarded (or married, or kept out of jail, depending). His young relatives know better than to involve him by choice, mostly, but that doesn’t do them any good — he’s an unstoppable force of nature.
Uncle Fred isn’t the primary character in these books, but he’s always the one you remember (so much so, that the subset of Wodehouse books that involve him are known as “Uncle Fred” stories. (“oh, no! (in tones of dread), not Uncle Fred!”)
Uncle Fred is never in doubt, never at a loss, never ruffled. He’s not the hero of the story, but he is its tutelary deity, after a fashion. He’s a catalyst in the story of the nominal lead players, benign to the heroes, unavoidable to the villains (in so far as Wodehouse has villains).
Who he reminds me of are semi-divine characters like the Mynah Bird who bedevils Inky in the old Warners Bros cartoons, the agent of chaos who hops into the scene to the music of Mendelson’s Fingal’s Cave Overture, never speaks, and sorts things out to the mystification or frustration of all.
The Uncle Fred as Catalyst conceit only works because, like all the Wodehouse books, the plots are so meticulously constructed that his presence is essential to the plot mechanisms, inevitable. You know, the instant Uncle Fred appears, that the plot will justify his actions, to the delight of the readers.
It was reminding me that I’m the sort of fantasy author whose heroes (and villains) are in charge of their actions, and aimed at each other. I know how I want their motivations and actions to drive the plots. If I have a deity-like entity in the story, he is typically offstage or pure speculation. I’m focused on my primary characters. I want their motivations to come from within, from personal growth or dissatisfaction, and so on. So I don’t really contemplate omniscient catalysts like the Mynah Bird or Uncle Fred — I think of that more as a comic move, and that’s not my metier.
That’s my loss (so far). But what about you? Do you have catalyst characters? How do you use them? Are they also primary characters — if so, what motivates them?
Mad Genius Club 
5 responses to “Catalyst Characters”
It depends on what you mean by catalyst characters. My Star Master books have plain, simple seamstress Shenti, who’s something or other in Partisan Intelligence and “facilitates” most of the crazier adventures the POV characters get into. (She also comes up with the idea of having the hero impersonate a Partisan military officer when they can’t find one on short notice). Prince Bertram has less direct impact on the plots of the second (published) and third (WIP) Hunter Healer King books, but he has very specific ideas about nudging his friend the hero into positions of greater prestige, responsibility and visibility.
But when it comes to resolving events, Shenti is like the DS9 character who inspired her, merely another fallible player trying to sort things out, and Bertram tends to be rather more of a bystander in the plot resolutions than that.
When I was starting up the ‘Granny Samurai vs the Planet of the Aztecs’ I discovered there was an entire genre of Western that was basically that. The protagonist did not really change, not was the story about them changing.
Rather, they were about the world the character has entered, and how it changed under their impetus. Sort of like the older Doctor Who serials. The Doctor drops in from literally nowhere, explorers the world, inevitably gets roped into (or intentionally sticks his nose into) whatever problem is going on, and provides the kickstart necessary to fix it. But they are as much about the locals and how they grew and changed as whatever the Doctor himself did.
I think it was Metropolis? The Doctor and Leela land on a rooftop, and are trying to figure out why the navigator says they’re on Pluto, when some depressed salary man tries to throw himself off the roof. By the end of it that same salaryman is one of the leaders of the revolution that over throws the Collectors. And the smarmy Mayor, the condemned executive who stopped taking his pill, and the creepy alien collector are all incredibly memorable characters who go through complex arcs. And at the end, the Doctor and Leela slip out before they get sucked in any further…
Which, among other things, allows for a series. Uncle Fred can keep on appearing, though the couples keep changing.
I don’t think I have any catalyst characters, although maaaaybe Uncle Ebenezer Trent in the first Shikhari novel is close. As far as the protagonist knows, he is unchanged and unchanging, although the reader gets hints that he’s not what he seems (Trickster, anyone?).