Characterization

Lately I’ve been getting rejected for reasons other than unoriginality. I feel that I’m not creating lifelike characters, flawed yes, but not without some redeeming qualities for the audience to get behind and rally for.

I don’t mean using gimmicks to create characters: no one should have to read about a retarded dwarf with one leg, one eye and a lisp...unless such physical traits are dire to the character’s character and to the plot itself. However, that is all surface anyways – physical traits. Instead, what needs to be done is to create characters with depth. How the fuck do you do that? It takes time, and energy, and a lot of thought to really understand your characters.

What scares your character? You should know...

What I like best, is of course, start with a character sketch. This gives me a full introduction with all the sorts of bio information that would be common: name, age, height, hometown, etc. The surface points. But then you’d have to delve deeper, slightly deeper at first: Why does your character have one blue eye and one brown? Why does s/he have a permanent limp? The answers to these questions scratch the surface, and start to carve out a backstory (history) that should be presented here in the character sketch and not needlessly on the page of your novel. The one thing I hate to read is backstory that seems to have no place in the novel. Information dumps are a sign the author is providing crucial information in an artless manner. Rather, to avoid this, to make sure each word is pregnant with meaning in your novel, write the backstory in the character sketch. I will get to the point as to why this is important in a minute.

Next, after penetrating the first depth, the first layer of the onion, the surface of a character’s physical traits, and the next, why they have such traits, now comes the tricky part: you must carve out the personality...but in the context of the story. This will provide valuable characterization to help drive the story forward, and make the characters seem more believable as real life people.

For example, in a story I wrote, the main character has a different take on fashion sense that is not accepted in his hometown. When he travels abroad, he finally unleashes his threads and finds that other people accept his fashion sense, even compliment his do’s, but the fashion sense as part of the character’s personality is also part of a plot device: because of the way he dresses, he is mistaken for a celebrity, much to his advantage. That characterization drives the story forward.

I guess that would bring about the discussion of ir/relevance: don’t make your character a retarded midget unless it drives the story. IE it reveals an important part of character that is crucial to the theme/ message. 

The main reason why backstory of the character should be written fully in the character sketch is to provide you, the author, with all the information to make sure each scene with that character and bit of dialogue spoken my him/ her is true to character. What I like to assume in speaking, is that not everyone speaks exactly what they want to say. Speaking is an approximation of thought, and sometimes that articulation can be a bad approximation. By knowing the backstory of your character, you will be full well knowledgeable of how this person thinks, behaves, and therefore speaks in certain situations. Some authors argue they had their characters doing unexpected things. My take on that is, nothing is unexpected if you know your characters. All characters react to situations brought before them. Even if a strange reaction is brought about, it is still your character reacting in his characteristically character-like way. (???) Sorry to pound you with that word over and over.  

When you write your first draft, the words the character wants to say may come out in dialogue: but when you re-read it, you hear the words as being too direct, or in some way, out of line with the character and the context. When you revise, reframe the same ideas communicated in the dialogue but in an approximation. People, just like characters, sometimes make the wrong word choice. This could speak volumes about your character, and how s/he is reacting to the context.

So, in so much, I wanted to confess that characterization is more than just tacking on adjectives to your character, more so than physical traits, more so than backstory. Instead, characterization is knowing all there is to know about your characters and then approximating what s/he says in dialogue (never exactly, or so directly 100% linked from thought to speech) and then having your character reacting to situations (scenes) in which s/he is involved in.

If you just remain on the surface, your characters will remain cardboard cutouts, and therefore only vehicles to tell the story. Melodrama is cardboard – dimensionless, surface only – drama is depth. Think hard and long about this aspect. 

Dreaming again

I was conscious that I was dreaming, yet I somehow still believed it was really happening.

I was sitting in a magnificent room with checkered marble floors. Vases and art decorated corners and walls. 

A man sat next to me: sleazy with a small, pencil-thin mustache, beady black eyes and a comb-over.

He asked, ‘What do you see?’ and waited for my answer, smugly smiling with a glint in his eye.

So I looked at the far end of the room. In front of the door was a ghost: a faint outline of a man, standing, doing nothing more. He was not walking towards me. No sense of impending doom. If that ghost was friendly or not, I couldn't tell. Simply, I was afraid because it was not supposed to be there. It offended my senses, defied my rationale.  

I woke up screaming. Terrified, I drew the blanket tight around my body. My heart thumped so hard. Sweat beaded along my tingly-tight chest. Had I been dreaming about my own bedroom transformed into something grander in the dream?

For a long time I lay there waiting, unable to turn on the light and look towards the door for fear there would be something there I shouldn't see, didn't want to see. 

Early Morning

Soft light breaks over the horizon, quiet, alone with my thoughts, I begin to write.

Some people work in the evening. I used to do that. All night ragers that ended in the morning. What began as something that felt like being shot out of a cannon from indulging in less than healthy activities slowly faded into a snail's crawl. Guilt would surely follow. But hey, I wrote a fucking shitload!

You will come back down

I was kidding myself. Re-reading the words I wrote during those times were good, but functional. They were not grand. Because I was not completely lucid. I was flying high, thinking whatever I wrote was unbelievable.     Instead, I was producing with only half-a-mind, unable to weigh my writing decisions accurately. Later when I had come down, I would have to re-write.

The morning is when I write now, and I produce more quality work. I'm not strung out because I got a good night's rest. I'm not manic, as I am actually a little sleepy when I begin. I'm relaxed because I'm still in the limbo between dream state and being awake. I feel much more connected to my thoughts and my words in the morning.

As well, writing first thing in the morning, even if it is only for thirty minutes before I shower, dress and go to work, starts off the day well. I may have a shit day at work, but it's still good and productive because I wrote. No matter what happens, I still have a piece of mind. For others, their piece of mind is different. They may value talking with a friend, eating healthily, exercising their body. I get satisfaction from knowing I am reaching my goal. No matter how slowly I crawl to it. A step forward is still a step forward.

Slow, but she's still going somewhere

When do you write? Do you have a schedule, or are you more of a poet, writing at whim when the fancy strikes you? Does using drugs come into play? 

What a wonderful feeling...

No I’m not talking about cumming. But I am talking about that feeling of writing, and writing well.

Today was a shit day; my boss gave me a shit schedule, and I had to endure a shit bunch of meetings. In so much, I got the shortend of the stick. Knob end, right up the backend. But I digress...

Yes'm boss...

After such a bad day at work, I came home to an empty apartment. My wife’s studying abroad, and I miss her terribly. Even more so on bad days because I cannot get a nice kiss and hug from her. But I digress...

The un-happy

I procrastinated, watched a TV episode, ate dinner, all while thinking about writing. But then I settled down to work.

HAPPY!

And then for two straight hours I wrote. Well, I re-wrote, revised, clarified, bettered the scene of the novel. I felt the magic of writing, of putting words onto the screen, reading them out loud, hearing the sentences and shortening at will, making it sound crisper, fresher, snappier, and then picturing the images that were conjured up. My god...I forgot what a writing-orgasm is like.

A shit day, suddenly has turned into a fantastic day. Two hours of writing, feeling the fucking juice flowing from my spirit into my words. 

This is me me...minus the fantastic rack.

Computers versus Hand-writing

I love computers for writing more than using my own hand, a pen and some paper. I can type faster than I can write by hand; computers are more efficient – I can save thousands of words, of multiple works on a single computer; I can rewrite numerous times over; typing puts easy-to-read words on the page rather than my handwritten chicken-scratch; a computer is perfect to use for small questions or quick fact checks about the topic you are writing about. In short, there are a lot of pros for using a computer. Then why is it I still have a soft spot for writing by hand?

I began writing with the following romantic image lodged in my head: a writer ruminating with pad of paper on his desk, pen or pencil in hand, eyes wild with inspiration, cooped up – yet cozy – in a small bedroom with a window showing a dark, snowy night. This image also sustains me as a writer, for it really defines what writing is about. A person spilling their mind and soul on to the page with the hope the message transcends the personal, the obscure, and becomes universal. It is the image of grappling with your conscience to detail the difficult to define abstract. How does one detail a dream so that it resounds with other people? This question shows how this image, although romantic, is accurate: a person needs solitude to think, peace and quiet to create. This image shows the artist free from distraction. Although a computer is efficient, it is also a tool that can become a distraction. For a computer is also used for internet access, movie watching, game playing, music listening. Facebook! An all time distracter of thoughts! A horrible waste of time – that is, if you are checking your page seven to ten times a day. When I write by hand, my thoughts do wander when the writing hits a wall. ‘I wonder if ‘so-and-so’ responded to my message?’ I feel I must check my computer. If I am using my computer to write in that moment, I will usually check on the internet. Perhaps it’s a compulsion… After all, the computer’s already powered on. If I am writing by hand, it allows a brief moment for me to say to myself, ‘Ahh, I have to go downstairs, turn the computer on, wait for it to power up, log in etc.’ and by the time I get to ‘etc’ I toss the thought in the trash. I remember why I chose to write by hand to begin with: free of distraction.

A final thought before I close this entry… Perhaps farfetched, but a wish on the wish list nonetheless.

Handwriting’s got more character, charm, passion and texture than any font of a computer or printing press. I love handwriting – my own, but also other writer’s. When the PARIS REVIEW features an interview with a writer, they usually input an author’s draft page from a previous book or work-in-progress. You get to see the writer’s personality: if the words are written in cursive, printed, tiny or large letters, with a slant or straight; if the page has lines or no lines, doodles of varying artistic ability or free from them (Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky doodled on their draft pages). For me this reveals more about the author’s personality than an interview. You see, in an interview, you have the author responding to questions from the interviewer. It can be intimate, but it is not singularly private. An observer is present to record the subject’s words and actions. But when you see the author’s draft page, you encounter a page that was created privately, used only as a draft to be seen by the author before he or she edits the piece. It is more intimate than being a fly on the wall in the author’s workspace. Instead, it is akin to examining the inner workings of the mind. What it reveals is up to your interpretation, or the writer’s, if he is so generous to talk about the draft page. And for those writers that use typewriters or computers to draft their stories, most print out the pages and edit by hand.

A wish: that after a final draft has been printed, that the writer binds all the previous drafts – the shitty first one, the terrible second one, ridiculous third one and so on, with all errors, pencilled-in-edits, and remarks suggesting the deletion or addition of certain words – and sell the draftworks to the public. For a writer to follow initial inspiration through the labyrinthine paths of drafts to the synthesis of a final product would be invaluable. That is why I love to read QUERY SHARK. You can follow the queries as they progress from first drafts to polished final ones, and the comments that helped shaped them to become winners.

I love computers for their efficiency, but sometimes I just get tired of looking at the computer screen or becoming distracted. That’s why I love to turn off the computer, forget about Facebook and emails, pick up my notebook and write by hand. I need to remind myself of that romantic image that started my career.

Short Stories

It is a form most revered for the discipline it demands from the author. A powerful punch in a few thousand words…not for those who are verbose. I have read the great authors’ short stories – Melville and Tolstoy not so short, but shorter than their novels definitely – loved them – most notably ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ by Flannery O’Connor, ‘Bananafish’ by Salinger, take your pick of Poe’s works – read and reread them to find the magic, as they are indeed magical, tried to emulate their styles and tone, of which, never could I achieve what they had done. But their short stories – as I feel of all short stories – pale in comparison to novels.

I feel rotten writing that paragraph, but it’s true. ‘What’s the point?’ I ask after reading a short story. Why spend a few pages when you could prober deeper into the characters for hundreds of pages? If it is a good enough story, I wished it was a chapter in a novel. It is a literature medium that aims to be brief, to the point, provide the reader a glimpse into another world; for me, the medium can only rely on the surface. It deals with stories that are really just starting.

I do not respect short stories, as I do novels. In comparison, short stories do not delve – they remain on the surface. They do not satisfy my urge to be immersed, to remain under the surface for long periods of time. I want to be drowned by the story. A short one merely pushes my head under the surface, takes away my breath for but an instance, and allows me to surface. Oxygen! With a short story, there is no fear that I may drown. With every novel – good and bad – it is long enough to plunge me far down deep enough to choke out my want for air.

A short story is good, some would argue. But for me, a novel takes my breath away.

Why Write?

‘An Irishman is nothing without his imagination.’ – George Bernard Shaw

Imagination is what allows me to breathe! When I feel stifled by demands of life – must work tomorrow, must shop for food, must pay the bills past due, must do this, must do that – I escape by climbing up the stairs to my world, my imagination, where anything goes; I can play. Imagination is my personality.

That is why I write. It’s like a vacation for me from the demands of life. I imagine, and want to capture it. Even though Rejection has beaten me in the face, I still write, still imagine. I even tried to quit writing! But imagination pulls me back…

Why do you write?
What motivates you to keep at it?
Do you think you will ever stop?