Characters in Pain

This is inspired by the most recent installment of David Farland's e-newsletter "A Daily Kick in the Pants."

So first, a minor recap:

Farland states that the best way to make readers sympathize with characters is to put them in pain and then force them to confront said pain.   He says that American readers don't like characters who suffer from self-inflicted pain.  Apparently, we like only characters that are hurt by others and find a way to deal.

I'm not going to argue with this.  Not really.   But I do think that characters suffering psychologically are more real than those who are merely react to those around them.  But the best way to convey psychological issues is to have characters undergo self-inflicted trials.  I love it when an author can take a character, shove said character through crap and have them suffer internally, only to reach the main goal despite their shortcomings. I don't want a character who can triumph and remain unscarred at the end.  I don't want to read a character who changes only for the better.

I love escapist literature. Still, I take the more realistic characters more seriously.  We can't overcome everything.  So give me a character, scarred and likely to never fully heal, but who will face all of his/her trials and come out on top. That will make me feel that I, lowly and struggling, can reach my goals as well.  These characters can provide therapy in escape.

--Drea

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Posted in: characters,David Farland,painting,writing

Out of My Head

Here’s a kind of stupid confession: I used to write out conversations between myself and my characters. For some reason I thought that this was the best way to get to know them, so I would write a literal encounter, like the character suddenly sat down beside me and said hello.

These usually occurred when I was stuck on some aspect of motivation and needed to know why someone did what they did. “I need help on this,” I would write, and the character would inevitably be more than happy to explain it to me. (Side note: If my characters were real, I don’t think that any of them would be quite so pleasant as they managed to be in these instances.)

I think I stopped using this technique around the time I read somewhere that Anne Rice claims she wrote the Lestat novels with the title character whispering the story to her over her shoulder.

But for my purposes, these character conversations often revealed unexpected things. People would spill their deepest secrets. Stoic, unemotional characters would suddenly burst into tears. Weak characters would draw on hidden strengths. Like good therapy, everyone came out feeling better.

As I said, I don’t use this method anymore. My cast of characters in Novel #2 feels more separate from me. I don’t draw on my own neuroses so much in their creation, nor do I understand their every thought or action. Interestingly, I reread a few chapters of Novel #1 last week (after about four months of refusing to let myself open the files) and found that distance has positive effects. I was able to read more objectively, no longer anticipating every word. I caught the stupid typos or redundancies that I had always glossed over before. And, strangest of all, I no longer recognized the characters as pieces of me, but as pieces of who I used to be. My protagonist, who I used to think was myself on paper, actually annoyed me in places.

Becoming enmeshed in a novel is like having your nose to a large painting. You can only work on a few inches at a time and you lose sight of what the entire canvas really looks like. For all you know, you might be working on the Mona Lisa or one of its parodies. Taking a step back, giving yourself time to detach, is both a difficult thing to accomplish and a necessary one. Every time I have imposed breaks on myself, I come out with something positive or learn about some integral piece of the canvas that I had been overlooking.

To return to my original topic, I think that my teenage-self might have had the right idea when trying to get into the characters’ heads, but it’s important to also know when to stop and let them work out their own problems, with the author merely holding onto the reigns. Distance is often crucial to see your creation.

-Melissa

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Posted in: characters,inspiration,lestat,painting,writing