Marked for Greatness

   After the “only two stories that are retold through generations” conversation, the second biggest concept I learned in beginning playwriting was that you have to have plants and pointers.
    Plants are bits of information an author or playwright gives you that turns out to be important later on in the story. Most of the time, a reader will not know that something is a plant until the climax. A pointer is a clue that leads the reader in a certain direction. My favorite example is from Arthur Miller’s 1947 drama All My Sons, in which *spoiler alert* a gun goes off in Act 3. The gun didn’t come from nowhere people. It was casually included within ten minutes of the opening curtain ever so slyly. Anyway, as Foster mentions in Chapter 21, “You give a guy a limp in Chapter 2, he can’t go sprinting after the train in Chapter 24.” (200)
    This chapter is about physical deformities though. Why did I go into a rant about plants and pointers? Well, if I were to take away one thing from this chapter, it would be that in 97 of 100 cases where a character is saddled with a physical imperfection, it isn’t just to give them a “fatal flaw.” (another lesson from playwriting 101...no character can be perfect; it’s too unrealistic) An author gives a character a marking because it’s important, either to the plot or to the overall arc of the character’s journey throughout the novel.
    Whether it’s Laura Wingfield, who’s limpy leg has left her with an inferiority complex that has caused her to feel isolated from the rest of the world, or Tiny Tim from Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, the imperfections a character faces are most of the time huge clues for signifiant thematic points that an author wants to get across to their readers.
    Additionally, Beth from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women contracts scarlet fever from a baby she was visiting, and though the purpose of diseases in literature is discussed more at length in Chapter 24, the reasoning behind giving a character a disease is much the same as giving them a physical imperfection.
    In addition to the role it plays in developing the the theme of the plot, physical markings also set a character apart from others. Foster calls this character differentiation. Protagonists who are crucial to the story (and even other main characters) need to be remembered. No one wants to read about a forgettable lead, and an author cannot afford to have you mixing up characters in their stories-- especially if they play an important role in the plot. Therefore, physical imperfections are used to help identify characters for the reader. On a very basic level, the imperfection is a quirk, something that makes the character unique. (Though I would hardly call a missing or damaged body part a mere “quirk.”)
    Physical or mental defects are not something an author just throws in for fun. These traits often symbolize bigger psychological or thematic concepts that an author is trying to get across. Pay attention to characters who are “marked” when you are reading from here on out. They are “marked” for something big to come.