Hello, writers and frenz.
This is our first of four NaNoWriMo Preptober nights, so everyone who groks Preptober please be forthcoming in the comment thread! Thanks! ‘Cos I know aught of Preptober, so in tonight’s post, I’m only writing what I know. ;-)
Okay, so, in the ‘70s or so, there was an ag association airing tv spots on a nice thing about food turned house-plant: the voice-over said, “Inside every avocado is a tree … and someone to talk to.”
It leaped to mind when I chanced upon this from wikipedia:
A Breath of Life is the [posthumous late 1970s] last novel by Brazilian author Clarice Lispector [that] takes the form of dialogue between a male "Author" and his female creation, Angela … The god-like author infuses the so-called breath of life into his creation who speaks ... lives and dies at his behest. The [sometimes destructive author ultimately cannot] separate her from himself.[2]
The novel has been characterized as a lyrically schizoid duet … [that opens] up a wild space of contradiction and paradox….
Welp, lyrical schizoid duets or not, I remember some fiction class or other where the prof called this kinda thing a novelist’s exercise. To dialogue with our own Galateans, for generating treasure troves of character and plot resources.
But not for typing onto the to-be-published page. It’s more a pre-writing and revision tool, coincidentally also good for when things jam up or bog down.
The catch is, we gotta take the imaginary colloquy dead serious, even if the story itself is essentially whimsical, with characters full of mischief. Think of it this way: even that class clown back in the day was a real person with probly a lotta problems in life, and maybe some hidden wounds to bind.
It’s also said that great comedians can make brilliant tragedians. (Danny Kaye in Skokie, for example.)
So, the idea is to dive in as if we writers are in a literal rather than literary same boat with real-people characters, all of us desperately stranded at sea.
Or jury members in a murder trail with someone’s real life on the line.
It’s the story’s/novel’s living, breathing existence at stake.
If you like to skip ahead, jump down to where you’ll see Challenge Background a ways below. Or meander along with me on a bit more exploration of how and why this kind of thing can work so well for us.
Thing is, when we first come up with a character, there’s not yet been time to wonder/figure out what are her or his deepdown goals, needs, desires, demons, conflictednesses, hopes, fears. Everybody’s got’em, though, right?
No diff than the stuff deep down inside ourselves. A lot of which we might never be aware are driving us, even when things get bad, unless someone compassionate, patient, interested and trustworthy recognizes there’s more to us than only what’s on the surface, and asks. Their questions open our pathway forward, outa the vale of troubles we’re said to be born to just as sparks fly upward.
An author is that compassionate person to our characters. We’re asking what’s the stuff in their beginnings, before we met them, that drove them to where the story opens, and keeps them going on despite all the obstacles and discouragements.
What’s riding them in the ‘now’ that holds them on their/our plotted present course? Or makes us reconsider and replot?
Or makes them suddenly rebel against what we supplied, flinch away, and shoot off on some other heading.
Or shut down on the story and curl up like a pangolin under survival threat.
Like us, characters may weave and dodge their way through their “life” if they’re put under more pressure than they want to face … more than the writer equipped them to handle.
Until now.
It’s not all angst, either. Are there ancient frumenty flavors or modern pizza toppings they love that we do too? (Or hate!) Do they argue that denim is best for hiking the swamps and steppes of Togwogmagog when we say khaki twill? Are our characters all alone in the world, or are there people worrying for them back home … or right at their side?
MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, are they feeling pretty positive about the plot of the story we put them in? Or do they see a glitch driving them nuts because we haven’t caught it yet?
IOW, they may have some pretty pointed questions for us, too!
It’s almost like, from their perspective, they’re the hardworking employees, and WE are management. We better have real answers for their questions, and readiness to offer and negotiate good working conditions, so they don’t walk out on strike until we deliver. Or at least come back once things are worked out.
Otherwise, like in real working life, they might turn into automatons just going through motions, or pieces on a chessboard, saying “Yes, Boss” to all commands, but never doing their best, not even for one another ... just sitting there like marionettes mimicking puppet-life the times we shove them onstage for this scene or that one.
Okay, that’s prolly enough of the similes and metaphors. ‘Cos truth is, this kinda sh*t can be pretty freakin’ confessional on personal basis, since in real-est reality this writer’s exercise/technique is a hair’s breadth from pull-no-punches interrogation of self.
Our characters are part of us, after all: products of our own individual, unique imagination.
<big><big>Challenge Background:</big></big> To convo like this with our own characters, then, as a comments-challenge out in fronta God and everyone, scaring the horses — that would not be right, or kind!
So, for this evening’s skills practice (a.k.a. “challenge”), we’ll instead sit down to have a real talk with OTHER characters, not our own.</big></big>
Maybe from books we’ve read or films or television or gaming, be it a character that truly worked, or a one-dimensional cardboard cut-out, fancy wardrobe, and hair product and all. Like Pinochio, even they would rather be real.
Alternative, use WriteOn characters gifted to us by SensibleShoes and crew (TASW, cfk, GussieFN, Emmet, pico, WiseFerret, wonderful world, not a lamb, and others) STARTING HERE originally, I think? NOT from the Quest for the Sacred Lost Jewel of Togwogmagog, of course, because we’ve developed our own versions, so that’s too close to home. Instead, maybe one from the rest of our standard genre templates, with tongue-in-cheekiness elided for the evening, to allow for conversations as real as possible with them. Here are some modifications of that bunch, for anyone who’d like:
Chatelaine Ellender saw Lord Pax depart the banquet hall with his royal guest, here for negotiations on shared border lines. Lord Pax’s honor-guard remained in the hall … but the royal armed escort disappeared.
The desert battle went badly, and mercenary non-com Wallace Redbird, bandaging his bleeding squad, now wonders which side their officers are really on.
A stranger flashing money arrives at Dragonvir Farm, and the rest of the family is thrilled, but something about it raises Jocasta Vir‘s worst suspicions.
Driving rain-spattered streets at midnight, Journeyman investigator Celia Sark realizes a 1940 Hudson has been shadowing her for miles, the same year, make and color of her client’s own car.
Goodwife Thankfulheart feeds her hens and tries to stay peaceable, even knowing the new village pastor gives hateful sermons about widows and spinsters and people who are ‘different’.
In the fog, haze and rubble of his bombed duty station, state department low-ranker Jamil Bandur comes ‘to’ with his partner, Angharad, nowhere in sight, as he hears searchers telling each other to look for hostages to take.
Incorruptible police detective Scotty Blaine has to deliver a warning to the local mob boss.
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Remember, no one can have a real talk with a person who thinks communication is a joke.
Or who thinks we are.
Or who’s mistrustful of us, maybe for good reason. The course of true fiction never did run smooth between first draft and final, after all, even if the published version looks as if surely it did!
So, however playful or tongue-in-cheek as the above stock characters usually are, or however melodramatic the ones from television, books, or film, imagine them as actual people who only were required to play their roles that way, because it was their job. Until now!
That should make it easier to make a good-faith effort with the challenge. We all know what it’s like to be a friend, too — I sure hope our characters are our friends, and that we’re theirs. Even if we fight now and then! There might come a time they need someone to talk to, or we do … isn’t that what friends are for?
<big><big>Challenge:</big></big> Convo with a character about the person x/s/he is, the story they’re in, what’s going right as to the writing, and what’s going rong.
Make friends with your avocados and pangolins!
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