Like Nobody's Reading

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I read a quote the other day.  It was probably on Pinterest - most quotes are - and I have not the least idea who said it.  (Which is good, because I'm going to disagree with it, and I hate disagreeing with famous people.)  I can't locate the quote now, but in essence it said

write like nobody's reading.

I thought, when I came across it, that is sounded good and pithy and like something we need to hear.  Most of us have had times where we get ourselves into a bind wondering if what we write will be appreciated. I know I've had panicked moments when I think, "What if people think I hate cats because Regina dislikes them?  What if they think I don't like to read because Tip doesn't?  What if people misunderstand these characters' relationships?  What if they twist my words and come out with something horrible?"  The questions range from the petty to the dire, and if allowed to grow, they could quickly become overwhelming.  In one sense, therefore, this "Write like nobody's reading" quote has a point.

But I believe there is another side to the coin, a side I had not particularly noted until reading Dorothy Sayers' book on the Trinity and the creative mind, The Mind of the Maker.  (I wrote something of a synopsis for this after I finished it back in September.)  In her work she draws a parallel between the economy of the Godhead and the economy of the mind of creative man - a reasonable object, seeing as we are made in the Image of God.  The first two "persons" of this imagining, creating mind are simplest to see and to explain; they are the Idea, that thing that exists in our heads before ever we begin to write, and the Energy or Activity, where the Idea is translated into something understandable to others.  But of course the third is rather more elusive, which to me makes Sayers' parallel more credible.

The third "person" deals, in essence, with the power that brings about proper communication and appreciation in the mind of the reader.  It is that thing which conveys the spirit of the Idea as expressed in the Activity.  It is that thing which, when present, creates the vital connection between the reader and the writer through the book.  And it is absolutely necessary.

In her book - which I continue to recommend for all writers - Sayers generally uses the example of a playwright, being one herself (as well as a novelist and an essayist, but that's beside the point).  It is critical, she writes, that when a man is penning his play, he keep in mind the perspective of the audience.  What is the audience going to understand by this wordplay?  How are these props going to appear?  Will the scene be conveyed?  She uses a humorous example of a play that failed to do just this; instead, the writer (who really should have been a novelist instead) substituted a long passage of "stage directions" - those sections in italics at the start of a scene in a Dover Thrift edition of Shakespeare.  Thunder.  Darkness.  Woman in bed, tossing and turning as if in pain.  Woman cries out, twisting sheets in hands.  End of Scene I.

This is an exaggeration, and yet it is an exaggeration that applies to all creative fields: whether you are writing a novel or a play, a failure to figuratively place oneself in the viewer's chair will result in a terrible disconnect.  At the heart of the matter, the fact is that mature writers, the ones not just starting out (and that is an important caveat), must write as though someone is reading.  Because isn't that the very thing we desire?

he that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.

- john locke, an essay concerning human understanding

We want to be minded.  We want to be understood.  And in order to do so, we have to be able to have minds in two positions at once: that of the writer, designing and creating; and that of the reader, following and learning.   That is why, while we cannot allow worries about what others will think to paralyze us, we also cannot ignore them.  They have their place in helping us to convey our story, and the vital spirit of that story.

Developing Minor Characters

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I love characters.  I love getting to know them, however tricky and long the process is.  I love seeing them develop what writers might call "independence" or "personality" or what-have-you.  I love rubbing shoulders with them.  I just love them. They're always such - characters!

At least, that goes for the major players.  Regina and the Assassin, for instance, or Tip or Marta or Charlie.   These are, after all, the ones I really spend time with: not just the narrator, but the people whose lives are intertwined with that narrator's and who I must deal with in just about every chapter.  As in real life, being with them and trying to get to know them over such a long period makes them (relatively speaking) easy to write.  I know them.  Sometimes they surprise me, but in general I can tell you how they will react in a given situation.  I know Regina has no use for Dickens.  I know the thing Tip misses most when he's miles from land is the trees.  After a while, I just start finding these things out.

minor characters are a different matter.

Just about every story has them - people who exist on the periphery of the story, whose interactions with the protagonist are infrequent, who have a part to play but do not sit at the heart of the tale.  I don't know about you, but I find these ones the tough cookies.  When you have a fellow who drifts in and drifts out, how do you get to know them?  How do you make them memorable?  How do you make them a person?

I've read some tips that advise writers to "give the character a defining trait" - a drawl or a habit or a word they're particularly fond of - to make them stick in the reader's mind.  I suppose if that is the goal, it's a reasonable approach, but it rather smacks to me of "tagging."  You scribble down the defining trait, punch a hole in the card, put a string through it, tie it to the character's leg and voila!  An easy something for the reader to note!  No great brainpower needed on either side of the equation, but the reader remembers (a little remotely) who the character is and so it's all good.

Note, I'm not at all saying that there is something inherently wrong with defining traits; I know there are several in my own books, and I also remember a novel I read some while back where a character habitually said, "Listen now," and it worked.  It fit him.  It was natural, and I liked it.  I'm just not a fan of the dartboard approach to writing - picking a trait and plastering it to the character without even a by-your-leave.  A quirk doth not a person make.

And that, I think, ought to be the goal with every character, major or minor: to make a person of them.  They won't all be equally vibrant.  My word, some of Dickens' heroes were downright pale!  But we ought to do justice to the characters in our stories, and not make caricatures of the poor fellows.

I still find this a tricky business, but one thing I've found helpful in the process of writing Tempus Regina, whose cast is larger than any I have dealt with yet, is to take the time to dig into each person's backstory.  Not that it comes out in the actual novel, mind, because that would be downright tedious.  But when I feel a person is flimsy, it is helpful for me to take them, go back into the bits and pieces I know of their past, and write them a short story.  Casting them as the point-of-view character forces me to study their thought-patterns, and following the snatches of their undeveloped history gives me something to work with.  Then, when I go back to the novel and pick up where I left off, I think, "Nyaha!  I know who you are now."  And even if what I wrote ends up having no bearing on the plot, it still gives me confidence and grants that character that much more reality.

but sometimes what I write does have bearing, and that's even better.