<b>CHARACTERS – UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL</b>

“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your

own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

– Carl Jung

I believe this is good advice for the fiction writer, especially

when it comes to writing characters. By the time we are five

years old, we have all experienced pretty much every human

emotion possible: love, hate, revenge, jealousy, greed, sympathy,

etc. – and thus we are equipped, emotionally at least, to

understand every other human being we encounter.

What makes a character "real," "believable," or interesting?

Gustav Flaubert famously said, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi."

That intriguing statement indicates his instinctive understanding

of one of the most important aspects of character writing: you

must put something of yourself into every character you write.

Sometimes more, sometimes less, of course – no doubt Flaubert

understood Emma Bovary on some deep personal level, in spite of

the gender difference, in the same way that Tennessee Williams

wrote so much of himself into Blanche Dubois, as well as many

other of his gentile, desperate Southern heroines. And one of

the things that makes Shakespeare a great dramatist is, in my

opinion, his ability to write from the point of view of such a

variety of characters – old and young, male and female, peasants

and princes. His villains – Iago, MacBeth, Richard and others –

are given incredibly detailed personal monologues describing

their feelings and motivations, which is one important reason

they come across as “three-dimensional,” or fully rounded.

In fact, I have long suspected that the greater the artist, the

great his ability to “step inside” a wide spectrum of people.

Flaubert’s portrayal of Emma’s forlorn husband Charles is no less

insightful and affecting than that of his heroine, for example.

Leo Tolstoy, like Shakespeare, seemed to have an inexhaustible

ability to transcend his own personal biography and write from

the point of view of just about anyone – or anything. <u>War and

Peace</u> contains arguably three protagonists – Andre, Pierre

and Natasha – and they couldn’t be more different from one

another. He wrote one entire short story from the point of view

of an old cart horse, and it is an incredibly moving piece of

work.

<b>THE “GENDER BARRIER”: FACT OR FICTION?</b>

Much is made of the supposed “gender barrier” in literature – the

difficulty men can have writing from a woman’s point of view, and

vice versa. I truly believe that barrier is entirely permeable,

and that crossing it is a matter of depth of imagination (and, in

some case, research). I remember sitting in class my freshman

year at Duke, and the professor, a rather well known poet, leaned

back in his chair and said in his syrupy Southern drawl, “I

wonder if a woman can write about what it’s like to have an

erection.” In those days I was very naïve, and frankly a bit

scandalized at his ponderings. But now I say, hell yes – or we

can at least try.

Another of my favorite writers, Thomas Mann, could jump the

gender barrier with great ease, and write equally well from the

point of view of woman and men, heterosexuals and homosexuals.

One of the most beautifully observed characters I have ever come

across is the young gay son in <u>Buddenbruchs</u>. His

sensitivity and discomfort with rigid, mercantile, paternalistic

German society is a metaphor for the artist in society. And of

course “Death in Venice” one of the great novellas, with its

wonderful portrayal of the aging But Mann is equally at home

among women and heterosexuals as well.

Other very gifted writers – I would number among them Franz

Kafka, Ernest Hemingway, and Jane Austen – have a somewhat more

limited canvas. Kafka’s writing is by and large extremely

personal and claustrophobic, with one central persecuted hero

surrounded by dehumanized tormentors of one kind or another.

Hemingway famously wrote pretty much only from a man’s point of

view, an usually a certain kind of man at that. And Jane Austen

never really transcends the high society she knows so well. It

probably never occurred to her servants and peasants could have

interesting lives – I believe Defoe’s Moll Flanders was the first

“lower class” heroine of a novel.

No matter – these writers are all brilliant, and do what they do

with great skill. You might call them specialists. It was once

said of a famous scientist that he knows only one thing, but he

knows it very, very well.

<b>REALITY BITES</b>

How do you create "real" characters - that is, characters with

resonance? The same way you do everything else - you follow your

own instincts, and interests and – yes, your obsessions. When

you're writing, <u>especially in a first draft</u>, don't think

about your "audience" and what they would like - think about what

interests <u>you</u> personally and particularly. That is what

people mean when they say "write what you know." That applies to

your emotional and spiritual knowledge, as well as your knowledge

of people. The tricky thing is that as you write you'll learn

more about your emotional and spiritual knowledge, because

writing has a way of revealing you to yourself. Sound mystical?

Maybe, maybe not; it's just an observable fact. Sometimes you

don't know how you feel about something until you write about it.

You may sit down to write about someone you love and discover a
deep well of resentment and even hatred buried within the love.

You may write about someone you loathe and find as you invent

events for them that you have a sympathy with them you never

suspected.

<b>OBSESSION – COMPULSION OR CLOSE FRIEND?</b>

It is a commonplace that hate and love are closely intertwined,

and if you doubt that, read <u>Moby Dick</u>. I'm sure I would

not be the first one to point out that Captain Ahab pursues Moby

Dick with the ardor and passion of a spurned lover - and

sacrifices his life in the quest.

So, in fiction, obsession is not a dirty word - in fact, it's

what drives us. Don't question them, just follow them, and don't

judge yourself. I recently decided to write a musical about

Benedict Arnold. As I was doing research I began to ponder why

he interested me so. Then I recalled that a few years back I was

in an employment situation in which I was betrayed by one of my

colleagues - he plotted against several of us, in fact, and

systematically tried to get rid of us for political reasons.

Eventually, we all left, and were glad to be gone, but we all

were left with a feeling of having been betrayed by someone we

had formerly trusted. My subconscious began to ponder the idea

of loyalty and betrayal, of what it meant and how very

complicated that issue was. And suddenly I was writing about

Benedict Arnold; I chose to believe that this is no coincidence.

I need to understand what can drive a man to act that way. (It

is, of course, not that simple: I also have an abiding interest

in the American Revolution, am descended from two signers of the

Declaration, etc., and I have always been fascinated by the men

and women of that time period.)

There are always many forces at work when you sit down to create;

fine, let them be there. Don't spend a lot of time questioning

them in the first draft of something, just let them influence

you; because it might put a crimp on your style, ask the why

questions later.

"I just write; I let the critics explain what I meant." -

Hemingway

Finally, I leave you with the words of Walt Whitman, who said, “I

am large; I contain multitudes.”

To him, and to you, I say, Yeah, baby! Go for it.

How can a writer improve his or her ability to write from the

point of view of a variety of characters, especially people who

are vastly different from the writer?

Hi Fiction Folks -

Here's this week's optional exercise:

In keeping with the theme of characters and beginnings, start

writing from the point of view of someone you see frequently but

don't know very well; maybe the deli guy, or your doorman, or

that homeless woman across the street. Try to capture their voice

and INFER a lot about their life from your observations of them.

Don't do too much thinking before you start; just see what

happens.