— Learning to Write XXI

I don’t believe that anyone created a character from a handful of dust. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to create someone who bore no resemblance to a person that the writer had ever met or read about or heard about or had access to in some form or other. That is not what is meant by creating character.
Some of the characters in your novel will be lurking within the concepts of the novel, perhaps for a while before you begin to commit it to paper. If it’s a crime novel there will be a policeman or some kind of investigator, if the novel deals with psychology you will already have some more or less hazy idea of a professional in that field. There may be a heroine and a villain, and all of these characters will be reminiscent of figures from your own life, though often present themselves to you through your subconscious mind.
Another source for fictional character comes directly from the author. So much so that there are writers and critics who believe that all of their characters are aspects of their own self. With a little introspection it can be seen that there lurks, under the camouflage of a unified identity, dozens of possible alternative selves, both masculine and feminine, easy-going and potentially violent, rational and religious, warm and cold, etc. I remember writing about a particularly vicious psychopath in one of my novels and realising anew each day that I lived with him, that I was drawing on my own personal intelligence of how that character’s mind worked. He was a part of me, controlled and suppressed in everyday life, but there nevertheless, even within reach.
I believe it was the author Erika Jong who said, Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to my RSS feed

— Double Take

York Literature Festival - Friday 9th March
Double Take – leading York writers in conversation.
Mike Kenny, called “one of the 10 leading playwrights in the UK” by The Independent, has written more than 60 plays, including more than 40 works for children and young people and many for special needs audiences and actors. He has won [...]

— Out-takes XXV

‘Yeah, I’ve been reading those books again. I read all kinds of books. That’s one of the things I do. Everybody in the world does a few things, you know that. Or you might get some people who do lots of different things and they’re crap at all of them. Most of us, we’re good [...]

— Learning to Write XVIII

The most important single ability of a fiction writer is to be able to characterize. Unfortunately it is also an ability which can never be taught. That being the case I’ll confine myself, in this post, to try to show some of the most particular faults that beginning writers make in trying to assign characteristics [...]

— Three Little Pigs

We were at the Friends of Fairfax House Concert last night, which is where my attention was drawn to this little ditty, from Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes, 1982. Try reading it aloud:
 
The animal I really dig,
Above all others is the pig.
Pigs are noble. Pigs are clever,
Pigs are courteous. However,
Now and then, to break this rule,
One [...]

— Books talking

You let it out from time to time. Margaret Atwood, I like her. Or you tell someone you’ve just finished another Elmore Leonard novel. Rupert Thomson, I’ve read a couple of those, there’s always something . . .
Whatever, your tastes change and you get to the end of this author’s work and start on someone [...]

— Presque vu X

If you haven’t seen Marion Ettlinger’s Gallery, which consists of photographic portraits of writers, then now’s your chance. The gallery opens with a study of Truman Capote taken in 1982.
*
Over at Chekhov’s Mistress, another review of the Sony Reader:
At the fashionable yet oddly cold Sony store on Madison Avenue I checked out the much ballyhooed [...]

— Five things Feminism has done for me

Crimeficreader has done tagged me again. My first impulse was to run, and I did, round and round and ended up in the same position, but panting. I’m not going to tag anyone else.
Thanks for a continuing parade of new things to read, and especially for Charlote Perkins Gilman and The Yellow Wall-Paper.
Thanks for improving [...]

— The Perfect Egg - a book review

Blaise White was reading this book in Norway during the summer, so when I saw it on the counter at my local bookshop I bought a copy. The full title is The Perfect Egg and Other Secrets. Aldo Buzzi first published it in Milano in 1979 and it was eventually translated into English in 2005.
I [...]

— Volver - the film

At Cannes the Best Actress Award was given to “a family of actresses”, to the six actresses in Pedro Almodovar’s film Volver: Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, Chus Lampreave, Yohana Cobo and Blanca Portillo. Almodovar was given the award for Best Script.

I find myself waiting for films and books with certain signatures. This was [...]