Christopher Moore and the
Creation of the Beta Male
All literary genres are artifacts, but none more blatantly so
than fiction
—Michael Riffaterre
Stories are like rope, braided together out of strands of plot, setting,
dialogue, theme, and character. Alone, none of these can contain a story. Each
needs the others, in varying degrees, to support it and make it stronger. Without
any particular aspect, a story will certainly be weaker and might very well fall
apart. However, even though you need all parts to create a whole, each part has
its own unique system of building blocks which allow writers to play with
formula, adding more of one and less of another to create their original works.
The most personal of these authorial creations, though, is character.
The question then becomes what is the proper character? According to
Jouve’s classifications1, as a primary character we are looking at a “Personality,”
someone with whom we, as a reader, can identify. H