Finding characters

The path to finding one’s characters is not as clear-cut as I once thought.  It turns out characters not only change utterly during the writing of a tale, but also (thank the heavens) once you’ve discovered them, they still grow and deepen.  Like real people, the knowing them reveals the inside of them.

Some characters came easy, praise the heavens.  Others are a long slog in fog.  Some are still recreating themselves, name, personality and all–including nationality, marital status, etc.

Sometimes a character resolves into him or herself by accident and I realize they’re found and they’re meant to be here, in the story.  That would be R, whose name never changed too much at all–and in fact only changed because I forgot what I’d first called him. (A sad truth, poor R.)

I found R by sitting down one day finally to etch out M, shadows, nuance and all.  M is one of my three longest-serving characters.  R at the time was a minor, minor figure in the story, his main role being to let my main characters know that M was in trouble.  To give him the knowledge, I’d made him a colleague of M’s.

But one fine weekend morn, after a long walk , I sat in an unknown diner with its floor to ceiling windows open to Broadway and the church opposite, with the grey wind blowing the street onto my pages, and I found myself with R.

How did M seem from the outside, I asked my notebook, and then the answer came.  I wrote several pages, and then condensed them to one.  It was a breakthrough on M, but the amazing thing to me was the style. It wasn’t my style, not my voice, not my tone–but it was authentic. It pulled at my gut.

I realized it was R’s voice.  ”Who is M?” I’d asked, and R had answered.  In doing so, R not only shaped to me how M showed himself in the world, but in so doing, R showed me who he himself was. The words he used, the way he saw people. I found R, the real R, and his voice in one go.

I found I very much liked R.  His role grew.  I considered paring him down–it’s okay to have minor characters with body and soul, after all–but in his realized form, he actually transformed a weakness in my story into a strength. I could kick out a cardboard character who’d never gelled. R would take that role on too, but in his own way.  He wasn’t just a character finder off-page, he became a story-maker on-page.

Madness.  Writing is madness.  Makes me want to read old versions of my favorite books, so I can appreciate all the more how organic good characters are, and how full of knots the act of writing is!

Beyond the Point of No Returns

There’s no two ways about it.  Writing is an insane activity.  Both when it’s working—and one walks along city streets in earnest, deep conversation with oneself, periodically stopping still to jot down notes—and when it’s not working (which involves more air-punching, sulking, frustration, etc, and yet one keeps getting up in the morning for it).

 The other day I was complaining to another writerly type, and giving vent to my less than decorous feelings about my key villain.  This villain still just isn’t working.  I’ve had this problem with the villain the entire time.  I’ve switched the villain’s goals, motivations, background—everything—precisely forty zillion and seventy three times.

 But for some reason, the precise rude bent of my rant suddenly opened my eyes to the true nature of my villain.  Oh—joys!  It would require…a HUGE revamping of the novel, but…this might be it.

Now, villains are the context of a hero’s actions—both protagonists and antagonists are affected by external as well as internal pressures—and so this change has pulled with non-genteel abandon at my frayed plot threads.  A new framework is rising, beam by beam, and it might even work.

This time I’m taking a different approach.  I’m taking notes.  I’m zoning into the plot and lingering in thought, pulling at the threads as they’re entwined with the beams, checking for weaknesses, checking for consistency.  I’m not writing.  I’m living with the options and recording them in my little notebook until I see it works.  Then—the writing.

In a sense, I’m not so much planning as I am letting the waters fill up and calm around me, taking stock as they clear, to make sure they’re right, healthy…and then I’ll sit down and pour them into the manuscript.

I think this might actually work…

Writing is full of so many false-starts.  You never know if you’re on a wild goose chase.  All you can do is ride and learn.  Patience, fortitude and stick-to-it-ivness.  Because in some cases you reach a point of no returns—when no matter your effort, nothing’s working and even making one part better is really just procrastinating from the problems with the whole—and you just have to keep on keeping on.  Beyond the point of no returns.

No second wind, no strain, no patience, no flexibility, no learning –> no improvement.

Writing novels, I conclude, is a hell only for the stubborn.

At any rate, I’m thinking of printing the manuscript so I can see all the spots I need to rewrite… But at the same time I can imagine that 400 pages is rather unwieldy…but I guess that’s the only option.  When have you started effectively printing your work for similar reworking?

Developing Characters, or: What Doesn’t Kill You…

The other morning I had a guest over for brunch.  In other words, I had to tidy the apartment.  The problem was that my apartment was already tidy. 

This is because I’m writing a book, and writing a book requires time to think.  Most often, taking “time to think” results in my getting caught up retightening the legs of my chairs, vacuuming the couch, cleaning the stove, polishing the floor, and even cutting and filing pieces of wood to hold up tapestries.  With steak knives.  In other words, procrastination leads to a tidy house. 

(Of course, too much predictability is boring, so when my original mission is to do housework, I artfully procrastinate by reading.)

Please, don’t try this at home.  I am a master and cannot promise you’ll have the same results.

So there I was, looking at my altogether far too tidy living room and thinking: I need time to think.  And then I thought, why, I really should clean the coffee table.  A lady never entertains guests on a laptop-and-paper-strewn coffee table.

Now, my coffee table is a Moroccan brass tray table.  In other words, it carries heat.  I always place a large and slim volume between my table and my laptop.  As a lady never overheats her books, I have a constant rotation of books.  Hard-covers being preferable for lap-top writing, I use paperbacks usually for table-top writing.

And so it was that Frog and Toad was on the couch, and Writing the Breakout Novel: Workbook was on the table.  I squinted at it, not out of suspicion, mind you, but because I’d just switched on the lights.  Then I sat down and flipped it open listlessly.  (I was, as you’ll recall, currently tasked with tidying up, and it fell to my lot to procrastinate by reading.) 

The book fell open to the section on antagonists.  I read a few lines of the worksheet Maass, the author, wanted me to fill out.

Meh, I thought. My antagonists are just fine.  I yawned.  And then an idea began to niggle.  I slammed down the book, yanked Frog and Toad back from the shelf and slipped it under the laptop.  And began answering the worksheet.  Egad.  It was amazing.

And bizarre.  I would read a question and think, but I already know… and then I’d type the question anyway and suddenly the groove would kick in.  I’d write sometimes totally what I knew, what I expected…  And then he’d ask me to subvert it, to fight my character.  And suddenly…great stuff.

I’d think I was rehashing, but suddenly—D’s future opened up for me.  I realized what was in store for him—in detail.

I was thrilled and horrified.  I’d just broken thoroughly into Act III.  I knew, finally, what he didn’t.  I had an emotional moment.  I decided to put all my characters through the process—protagonist and antagonist alike. 

And then, of course, as that meant writing, I cleaned the stove instead.

Okay, fine, so I did keep on writing.  Time-to-think rules don’t apply when writers have actually caught hold of a wriggly little fairy of a genius insight, and indeed one must often crush the desire to “think” too much over the stove or under the furniture.  Writing requires that key ingredient my dad used to tell me about:  Glue in the ass.

Anyway, this breakthrough’s been amazing.  I’ve been racing with Act III scenes and have plot points written up for others.  My antagonists are ready for their face-offs, and my heroes are heading to the denouement.  I’m exhilarated to feel it take shape.  It’s a great nexus—my vision, which I’d felt impaired for a long time, is back; and with it my sense of patience is restored.  Emotional truth and structure are both in sight, and the plot’s sense of inevitability is back—although I hope not its predictability.  We’ll see. 

I am utterly realizing anew what they mean when they say that the first draft is the writer telling the story to themselves, and that the subsequent drafts are writing it for others.  The first draft is when I find out what happens, really.  Only then can I craft it into something that will be enjoyable to read.  Then finally is the time to exert power over the text, because I’m not floundering in my own sea of questions.  My spidey-senses tell me that that’ll be a whopper of an experience–rewriting and editing.    But we’re not there yet.  We’re finishing Act III, mehopes.

Other stuff on my to-do list are:  two protagonists that need development and three secondary characters that need work—one of them I have decided is mostly invisible because she’s still the wrong person.  It took me several versions of M to find him fitting, and longer for him to start to move into himself, to develop his grays.  H isn’t there yet.  Maybe H has to go, and someone else take her place.  I wonder how M finally worked and how I can make my other protagonists stronger like him…

Welcome back, heady rush of story!  Welcome back euphoria!  Goodbye housekeeping!!! 

How’re you guys doing?

View from Central Park, New York City

Plotting Along

This weekend was pure torture.

And by pure torture I mean intermittent irritation in a backdrop of a wonderful weekend.  So clearly I choose my words wisely.

I woke up to an unusual sound on Friday.  Puzzled, I looked about the room, wondering what was sputtering and hissing little death pangs.  Then a memory sparked, and joy filled me. 

It was too much to hope for, surely?

I approached the radiator slowly.  Knelt before it, and inclined my head.  Yes.

I had heat.

Heat.  I love heat in the winter.  And to think, I thought merely being insulated from the elements was gift enough.  What a treasure trove of comfort my new apartment is!

Insulation, hot water AND HEAT.  All was good with the world.  And as my new carpet had been delivered–my sole piece of furniture in my living room, bookshelves aside–I sat me down on a corner and enjoyed a delicious avocado sandwich and coffee.  Perfection.  Now my rug had served as a dining table and chair, too.  Why, it was as if I had said luxuries in my home.

I lay back and pondered my book.  And so it served as a sofa.  I enjoyed it muchly.

But even so, it wasn’t enough to keep the hounds at bay.

For as I’ve mentioned, I was having problems.  Character problems.  Worse–antagonist problems.  Me!

I thought about him.  I paced the floor.  I wrote his thoughts.  His justifications.  I cleaned the fridge.  I thought about him some more.  I cut my nails.  Realized I needed a hair cut.  Made soup.  I listened to his playlist.  I made cheese and spinach pastries.  I cleaned the dishes.  I washed the sink.  I cleaned the toilet.  I grumbled.

I read a book that had nothing to do with my own work.  I got an idea that didn’t fit.  I wrote it down anyway. 

I searched for a quote that had moved me, and realized it was online and not in my books.  I was not online. 

I bought wine.  I drank it.  I noted belatedly that I ought not drink before writing. 

I fixed my drapes.  Then they fell.  I moved them under the bed.  And then I moved them into the closet.

I looked under my bed to make sure it was clean.  It was.  How unfortunate.  My cursor blinked.  I looked away again.

And that’s when I realized.  I had a plot hole.  Which is very much like a pothole.  You can avoid it, but at the end of the day, the road isn’t good if it’s potholed.  It wasn’t my character who was failing, it was his options which weren’t clear to me–because of a tiny question mark I’d noticed and never fixed.

So I spent most of Sunday sitting on my couch carpet writing alternate diagrams to figure out that tiny bit of backstory without which the plot founders 365 pages later.

Gack!

Peering out of a Church

Six Pages This Morning, All is Good with the World

A question had been niggling me as questions are wont to–at least when they pertain to my story and therefore are really my job to solve, and solve quick.

How do characters M and B realize that two auspicious artifacts are connected, and why doesn’t M blow off S’s seeming deceit.  And for that matter, why did my character S make that odd, throw-away comment.  Why did the thought of what he suggested make me tingle with anticipation and a sense of rightness?  Was he right–did my protagonists really have to make that odd change of plan, or was he messing with them to buy time, or was there another nefarious plot afoot?  Or, as I reminded myself quietly, was that remark of his actually something I could delete. 

I do, after all, have the prerogative to have my characters unsay things.  But, at the same time, I need to give the story time to show me if the character’s unplanned action in fact has worth to the story, if it makes the plot stronger or just wider and disconnected and never ending.  In other words, is that string they tuck in going to unravel my entire fabric if I pull at it, or is it a crucial part to a pattern I myself simply never discerned before? 

Odd things, characters.  S has changed, too.  His role–no.  But his appearance and his mannerisms, and even his backstory.  Right now I’m trying to unite two visions of his backstory, but the crucial piece–how he’s connected with M–just fell into place over the past two mornings.  Today I slipped it in, and finally, VOILA, my question was resolved.

S fits much better into the story now, the awkward random coincidence thing is done and deleted, M’s instinctive understanding makes sense, and B’s impossible knowledge explained.  M’s emotions upon first hearing “the news” at the beginning of the second act of the novel no longer seems preternaturally restrained and aloof, and his growing anxiety and haste now make sense.

In other words:  All is well in the world.

It’s amazing how a good writing morning brightens up the day, no matter how filled with deadlines and impossibilities it may be. 

When writing a novel, that’s pretty much what life turns into:  ‘House burned down.  Car stolen.  Cat exploded.  Did 1,500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.

~ Neil Gaiman

Road to Kazbegi