Writing Fiction: River Jumping

It’s been about six weeks since I received the editorial report on my novel suggesting another rewrite.  Six weeks.  That’s a long time.  Frankly?  I’ve been struggling.  Oddly, it was easier for me to adopt the idea of changing one of the main characters from a middle-aged man to a 29-year-old woman than it has been for me to make subtler changes.  Perhaps because I’ve run up against the limits of my conception for this novel or my ability to see this character in a different way.

One problem, for example, is in making the female character independent, mature and empowered.  I’ve had additional feedback from a couple of women about the character and it is consistent with the report: she is too childlike and too dependent on male characters to rescue her.  Damn.  And there was I thinking I was a feminist.

But, without meaning to dig myself any deeper, I like the character the way she is and can’t picture her in a different way.  I understand what I am being told, but there is nothing creatively that then presents itself as an alternative.

When Edward de Bono created brainstorming, it was to try to break people into new ways of thinking.  The principles are pretty well known: go for quantity not quality, always say yes, allow associations, encourage wild ideas.  In short, just say whatever comes into your mind, don’t censure and keep going.

It has been around long enough for variants to develop.  One is called River Jumping.  I’ve been teaching it on courses recently and it occurred to me that I might use it.  I think there are a number of ways to approach it.  But this is how I used to with my current problem:

First, state your problem.  In my case, it was how to create an empowered character rather than the slightly childlike/dependent-on-men character that I had before.

Second, generalise the problem.  Flatten it.  So, being able to create an empowered character.

Third, brainstorm all the people/organisations/etc. who face a similar problem.  I came up with a list of 49.  Starting with therapists, politicians, dramatists, etc.

Fourth, pick one or two which are quite different to yourself.  I picked: stewardess on a crashing plane, Robinson Crusoe, a porcupine and Yahweh.

Fifth, in your head, ask them how they would solve the problem.  I did it with all, but I’ll use the stewardess as an example.  She came up with lots of ways:

Forget the rest of the world, what will happen and what has happened.

Fix only on your passengers.

Know that their calmness is created by your calmness.

Fuck status

Think, this moment is your best moment.

I liked the middle one particularly.  But looking at them again, the last one quite appeals.

Final stage, apply what they say to your problem.  Actually, what I did was to write a scene in which the lead female character remembers being six years old and meeting a stewardess, who says, ‘I was once on a crashing plane.’  But beyond this, it gives me an empowering philosophy of my female character, one that I can identify with.

Since then, I’ve used it with other writing problems.  The effectiveness may not last.  The brain has a way of habituating to even the most innovative practice.  But it’s been interesting.

Character: Losing the Signal

When I was a child, one of my most-prized possessions was a transistor radio. A present for my eighth or ninth birthday. Six shillings from the local hardware shop, I think. On days off-sick from school I would listen to Tony Blackburn (loved Tony Blackburn!) and the rest of the Radio One D.J.s until tea – or when the TV started. In the evening, while pretending to be going to sleep, I would try to tune into Radio Luxembourg. A signal so weak that it would come and go across the airwaves. Half the game was turning the dial to catch it.

I have reached an interesting point in the rewrite for my novel. A pivotal chapter in which the middle-aged male comedian goes to visit the elderly woman he has been teaching. She is now deep in dementia and unaware of what she has done.

Except, in the rewrite, it’s not a middle-aged man, it’s a twenty-nine year old woman. Which is a shame, because there was some great writing in the original – cough, cough. And the deal is, it has to go.

But I have found myself, as I walk the new character through a similar scene, wondering if I could just lift one or two nice sentences from the old version. Who would know?

So I do and guess what? The new character disappears. Not in a strop, and with no great fanfare, just…disappears. Holding on to the old version, I lose the signal from the new.

So, I have had to stop. Retune. Get back in her head and set off again. There have already been rewards in doing so.

If I have time and patience, creative signals are there. As long as I’m willing to give up what I want and listen in to what is able and willing to come through.

Characters: Nicking Real People

I have a friend who feeds foxes. And mice. Some would say he is encouraging vermin. I see him as a defender of outcast animals. It has occurred to me he would make a great character for a story, but I felt awkward approaching him. Until he raised it himself. We had been discussing the way I had co-opted my neighbour into a novel. ‘You could write me,’ he said. I told him I’d love to and gave him the summary above. He offered to tell me stories about his past, but I tried to explain: I have been writing my neighbour as a character for a couple of months but I don’t think I’ve used a single thing she has said or done in the past. It’s just I know that if she sat in an executive wheelie-chair, she would almost certainly walk it round the office. I’ve never seen her do it, I just reckon she would.

What I’m interested in is personality: how that person would typically behave in any situation they are dropped into. Just recounting their life is biography. The hope is that, having set the initial character off, they will retain a consistent core while responding spontaneously to the situations they are placed in – even developing their own patterns of speech and behaviour.

I’ve had a couple of experiences of being written in this way myself, and it was not always comfortable. What had been a free-flowing relationship between me and the author was now fixed on the page with no comeback. My father characterised me as an American kid who kept saying, ‘Hi!’ Imagine my delight.

But now, as a writer, I’m seeing the benefits. The original person provides a solid model I can refer back to when it feels as if the character is slipping away. Also, as anyone who has been watching the recent series of First Dates can tell you, real people say and do things you would never think of writing. For example, the woman who, when asked what she thought of her date, said, ‘Would I, high-five, his face, with my minge? 100%.’ This is so weird, it could only be real.

The truth is that I have often heard an echo of myself within any real person I use. It becomes a way to explore that aspect without getting stuck in my own story. Like my friend, I feel an empathy for the outcast; though, I’ve never fed a fox or a mouse. Also, this recognition of my own reflection is probably useful. It mitigates against the settling of issues or harsh caricature. Though I suspect that a real writer would not be so cautious. It’s an interesting dilemma for anyone who wants to keep their friends or family.

You will often hear writers say that people do not recognise their own portrayal. But the model for one of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s characters wrote to acknowledge the truth of his con-artist depiction, while one of Stevie Smith’s models threatened to sue her. Jean Ross, the model for Sally Bowles, was well aware of her character, and took some time to decide whether she was ok with the inclusion of an abortion she had undergone, before finally giving her agreement.

Perhaps because of my own experiences, I prefer to tell the person what I’m doing – particularly if they’re a main character. It feels more respectful. But I’m not sure what I would do if they withdrew their permission halfway through the writing. The character on the page is not the person in real life – they do things differently there. But the link is so strong, it would be disingenuous to deny it. Over time, I seem to have gone the full journey from resentful subject of fictional portrayal to advocate for its use. Real people are often more interesting and unpredictable than anyone I could create from scratch. Though perhaps, as I once said to my sister, I should try writing fiction.

Thanks to Frances for examples in fiction.

Character: The Real Person’s Reaction

There is always a danger that when someone finds out that you’re basing a character on them, they may react badly. Yesterday, I told my neighbour about just such a change. Or rather, I tried to tell her, because she kept interrupting and saying, ‘Is it me?’ And then, when I’d finally finished, kept shoving her arms out to the side, saying, ‘It’s me! Me! Me!’ So no resistance there.

Writing Fiction: Forcing Mind, Letting-Go Mind.

So, my task: to rewrite a character. To be fair, it’s not one that’s been set for me. I’ve just decided to do it. The problem being that I have no confidence in the main male character in my second novel. I was told, recently, that he was cold. When I started re-reading the novel, I thought it was more than that, he was bitter and aggressive.

The key word in rewriting seems to be ‘warmer’. So, I could either hammer him into a warmer shape – which would feel a bit like neutering. Or I could start again.

Then, I remembered the husband of a friend. A truly warm, enthusiastic, pleasant man. And a phrase, ‘An angel with low self-esteem’ came to mind. My inner self said, yes.

Good. The problem is, I now have two voices in my head. Not the characters, but the parts of myself that would either like to force a quick solution to this, or are prepared to give up control, see what feels right, and work from there. I have loyalty to both.

The first voice says, ‘Can’t we just use some of that great writing from the many previous versions, and then fit the new character around them: best of both worlds!’ The second says, ‘This will only work if you’re prepared to truly let go and follow the character. New writing will develop; old writing will find its place, or fall away.’ Then first voice comes back, ‘But that will take ages! And you can’t hang around. A properly revised novel needs to be ready quickly. Agents don’t wait.’ The second voice, ‘It won’t be great unless you let it grow at its own speed.’

And on, and on.

My favourite comic characters, as a child, were The Numbskulls. Little thinkers inhabiting a cutaway brain. Turns out, it was a psychologically accurate portrayal of the mind.

The battle will go on. If my comic is to be believed, the usual way it is resolved is by an outside force. But, in the absence of a falling television set, I will just have to work it out for myself.

Character: The Unpleasant Hero

I’ve just finished reading William Boyd’s Any Human Heart. Interesting. Without giving too much away, Logan Mountstuart, as a child, is a bit of a pompous twat; as a young man, a terrible husband and father; and, at various times, he cuckolds his best friends. So, how come I finished the whole 400-odd pages? How can a writer create a hero who behaves badly, yet hold the reader’s sympathy?

To be clear I’m not talking about operatic villainy, or even the anti-hero who inverts the noble qualities of courage, care and selflessness. I just mean the sort of everyday unpleasantness: being bitter, two-faced, mean-spirited, jealous, humourless, indecisive, or petty. Qualities we might all be party to but would rather not be in the company of.

I declare an interest here. I’m writing a character who is a self-obsessed hypochondriac.

So, let’s have a look at what Mr Boyd does. As a child, Logan Mountstuart is a geek, an outsider who is very quickly set a challenge to get into the school first rugby team – obstacles! Despite being a rotten first father, he is loving and devoted in his second marriage – redemption! And the friend he cuckolds is shown to be far more cruel in his philandering – comparison!

There’s a sort of game going on here. A balancing act in which each negative is balanced by a subtle positive. Also, from early on, the hero is a successful writer. He has a skill. And we do love a skill.

Emily Mortimer says, of the TV series Doll and Em, ‘We were trying to tread a fine line between being monstrous at times, and losing the audience completely. We never wanted to do that, so in order to keep people engaged and following our story, and wanting us to make up and get back together and fall back in love with each other at the end, we had to keep the complexity of who we are alive. And not just be a bitch.’

A recent Empire article on Toy Story correctly identified Woody as ‘jealous, vengeful and proud,’ and Buzz as ‘deluded…cocky and stupid.’ And yet, that isn’t all they are – we root for them.

Along these lines, a friend suggested I use a character wheel, in which a negative characteristic in one segment could be balanced by a more positive one in the opposite segment. It’s almost a cliché of crime drama: the alcoholic who’s a brilliant detective. It seems a bit calculated, until you reflect on the people you are drawn to. I heard a lovely story the other day. About a besotted man who met his partner’s parents for the first time. The father took him aside and said, ‘You think she is perfect, but the only reason she is with you is because she has the same number of issues you do.’

What other ways do writers use to counterbalance their character’s negative qualities?

The Outsider. A friend of mine told me she went to her school reunion with some trepidation. She had always been something of an outsider. But by the end of the evening she’d found out that all her friends had thought they were outsiders. It’s part of the human condition. Ignatius P Reilly in Confederacy of Dunces lives a very small, solipsistic life. A snob/slob who loves hotdogs and looking down on others. But he is also an outsider, and perhaps we like him because of that. Imagine if he were instead the headmaster at a college.

Being Trapped or Oppressed. Similar to the outsider but with a greater sense of something institutional to fight against. Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair is notoriously amoral. And yet, she holds our sympathy because she is fighting her way up from nothing. She is merely doing what you have to do to make any headway against privilege and oppression. Think also, Winston Smith.

They Change.   Apparently Jeremy Paxman reads A Christmas Carol every year. So do I. There is nothing like a well-told redemption story. You forgive Scrooge his cruelty or Silas Marner his miserliness for their transformation by the end.

They’re Funny. Ricky Gervais has said that David Brent is not a bad man, he has just mistaken popularity for respect. We laugh at the weakness without having to acknowledge that it reflects something in ourselves. See also Charles Pooter, Basil Fawlty, and Captain Mainwaring.

Love and Selflessness. When I was at school, I once saw a local bully at the swimming baths. He was teaching his sister to swim. There is something that happens when you find out things like this. Holden Caulfield also loves his sister. It takes him beyond being just an aimless, disaffected teenager, to someone who has a capacity to care for others. Ignatius P Reilly is the object of fascination for Myrna Minkoff. Their complicated relationship somehow lifts him from being a proto-troll. As for generosity, in Restoration, Robert Merivel, Court physician, is debauched waster. But his skill as a healer, and a single selfless act redeem him.

There But For the Grace of God. The heroine in Blue Jasmine lies, cheats, is self-deluded, greedy, the list goes on. It would be hard to identify a counterbalancing positive quality. It is like watching a car crash. Perhaps she makes us feel better about ourselves.

Is Interesting. Barry Lyndon is a fantastic liar, cheat, philanderer, unreliable narrator. The manner of his storytelling holds the attention.

Invokes Compassion. There is something odd about characters like Razzo Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy, Emmet Ray in Sweet and Lowdown, George Milton in Of Mice and Men, even Holly Golightly. They are broken people who believe they are in control of their lives, and adopt someone they believe to be weaker. We see the truth, and it invokes a feeling of compassion.

It’s No More Than We Would Do Ourselves. A friend of mine completely disagrees with my assessment of Logan Mountstuart. For example, she believes his behaviour in the first marriage is justified because it is a marriage of convenience. We judge a character by our own values and experience.

The Boyd List Recap. Faces obstacles, has a compensating virtue, is no worse than their victim.

As I was writing this post I tried to imagine a character for whom there could be no sympathy. Someone who comes from a background of privilege and feels he has been hard done by. Is bitter, and acts out in such a way that innocent people are hurt. Who reacts with jealousy and pettiness in relationships, and remains incapable of doing anything meaningful. And oh my god, it’s Hamlet. The character that actors fall over themselves to play, and audiences still flock to see 400 years later.

How come? It can’t just be the nobility that makes the difference; or the rightness of his cause, since he seems to lose control of that almost immediately; or even the fact that he seems to briefly pull himself together at the end. Perhaps it is just that we recognise ourselves: the lure and fear of death, a desire to do the right thing, an inability to do so. Throw in poetry in the face of the abyss, and suddenly it’s a character we are drawn to.

The writer follows the character down every dark alley, showing aspects of ourselves we need not necessarily admit to, but can recognise.

In the Guardian on 29March, John Carey picked George Orwell as his hero.

He was a truth-teller, admitting to feelings others would hide. In Burma he had found the taunts and insults of the radicalised Buddhist priests hard to bear. Part of him thought of the British Raj as a tyranny, but another thought ‘the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts.’

Pleasant? No. True? Yes.

Again and again, this idea of recognition comes up. There is a moment in Charade, when James Coburn is walking through a stamp market and realises he is surrounded by the solution to a mystery. The camera cuts away: stamps, stamps, stamps. They’re everywhere. Any good character has unpleasant thoughts and behaviour. We do. Perhaps the list above is no more than the way in which we justify our own foibles. The skill of a writer is in portraying those weaknesses in such a way that as readers we can say yes, tell me more.

 

PS.  I subsequently attended a writing evening with Greg Mosse.  He said some interesting things about why we get engaged with characters even when they’re unpleasant. Firstly, that we are engaged with their volition – wanting them to do that thing they want to do – even if we don’t approve of it. Secondly, that the closeness of their observation engages us. Thirdly, as you puzzle out information about someone, you get engaged in them. We have a desire to pattern solve and problem solve.

Character: Bruvs and Moral Compii

In Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig plays – for a comedy – a wonderfully complicated character.  One who loves her friend but is prepared to totally ruin her bridal shower; who can organise a hen night but so badly that everyone gets the shits; who can flirt with a policeman, and then throw him out when he suggests she’s avoiding something. In Ben Stiller’s Walter Mitty, she turns up as The Girl.  The one whom he must impress, whose sole role is as moral compass.  Shame.

And let’s not let the women writers off the hook.  Lena Dunham, who writes possibly the most important TV series of the last five years, created a wonderfully spikey character in Adam.  A character who is at the same time loving and gross.  Except in the latest series, in which he seems to have turned into some perfect cookie-cutter boyfriend: supportive of her ambitions, saying the right things when her friends go mental, always there for her.

I think this is the third time I’ve written about the difficulty that the sexes have in writing about one another.  There is always a temptation to write a character who is the-person-who-would-solve-my-problems and, in doing so, deny them an independent life.  There’s probably a good reason for this.  The film/TV/Book is about Character A, not character B.  Give B too full a character and it becomes about them.  But some people manage it: Harry Met Sally, Mad Men, even The Bridge.

In the meantime, From Dickens to Dunham, the minimising goes on.

Character: Me and Brad Pitt

On a recent episode of In the Actor’s Studio, Brad Pitt said, ‘I just think there’s too much pressure on this idea of character.’

I have spent the last couple of years trying to write a female lead for my third novel.  The first attempt was a 60,000 word exercise.  Lots of words, but nothing stuck.  So, I started writing the novel, having had a picture of the two protagonists meeting.  But after that, the character refused to speak, and just seemed unhappy.  Then I imagined a cartoon that she might draw: with a character who summed up the key elements I wanted for her.  But still the woman herself remained elusive.  A couple of months ago I wrote a scene showing how the two leads had first met.  She came out strongly in this but was not the person I’d thought she was.  Here, she was more confident.  Now, I have a sense that she is close.

Mr Pitt went on, ‘Find truthful moments first and character will come.  You will be surprised how it comes and will keep coming, and it’s an endless well.’

Hope so.

Character: Altered Ego

Early in The Girl Who Played With Fire Lisbeth Salander goes to Ikea.  She buys ‘two Karlanda sofas with sand-coloured upholstery, five Poang armchairs’ and at least five other tables.  There is something so fascinating about the character that for me she could have carried on to Lidl and I’d still have been wondering what she was going to buy.  Soon after, she disappears for most of the novel, Mikael Blomkvist takes over and the novel goes flat.

Blomkvist is a cypher for the author Steig Larson.  By rights he should be interesting: a campaigning journalist risking his life to get to the story and bring the baddies to justice.  But he’s not.

Why is it so difficult to write an interesting character that is based on yourself?  It is, after all, the easiest way to create one: just walk yourself through the action.  The trouble is that the result is often unsatisfactory.  Even Dickens seems to have struggled with this.  Some of the male leads in his later novels suffer from a sort of flatness: John Jarndyce (Bleak House), Arthur Clenham (Little Dorrit), John Harmon (Our Mutual Friend), are melancholic do-gooders, and contrast with more interesting leads like Pickwick, Oliver Twist or Scrooge.

When you set out to write a character based on yourself it is a little like sitting inside a washing machine: thoughts, experiences, feelings, opinions, churn around you, and the character can end up as a confused version of what you think of yourself.  Those that you regard as different are much easier.  You are now outside the washing machine and distance brings perspective.  You can point and say, ‘Look! shirt, socks, pants.’

Any character is likely to reflect some aspect of its author.  But with characters-at-a-distance, it may only be a single aspect; a shard in which, if you look hard enough, you might see a likeness.

One of the things that makes Silence of the Lambs so interesting is there are two great characters: Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lector.  For her the interest is always, how is this person from such tortured beginnings going to solve a case with so many people getting in her way?  For him, it’s who is this person?  Tell me the details of how he lives in his flat in Italy; tell me what it’s like when he has to sit next to a noisy, smelly kid on a crowded flight.   Most of all, tell me what happens every time the two of them meet.

I think it is fairly safe to assume that Thomas Harris is neither a young ambitious woman nor a psychopathic cannibal.  But perhaps that very distance enabled him to create characters that reflected some aspect of his own psyche without the character getting overwhelmed by it.

One of my favourite Dickens’ characters is Bradley Headstone in Bleak House.  He is murderous jealousy personified.  It is a weighty, lumbering emotion, summed up perfectly in the name.  The way he is written turns him from a standard villain to someone whose own suffering brings a degree of empathy.  Dickens biographies suggest that he could be subject to such feelings.

As ever, I’m trying to work out an issue that I’m facing in my writing.  On two occasions, agents have commented that they liked the elderly woman in my second novel, but not the man.  And that’s the one that’s based on me.  The main character in my current novel is also based on me.  So how do I save them from being flat?

The subject of another post, I think.  But, in the meantime, if you have any ideas let me know.

Character: Interviewing

Way, way back, when I started this blog, I was talking about the fact that I don’t like using character questionnaires (What colour are their eyes? What do they do? etc).  I find them too distancing and rigid.  When I started I relied on stereotypes flavoured with versions of people I know.  Over the last couple of years I have started to use another technique.

After attending a summer school, I had been experimenting with the first person voice having used the third person for many years, and was enjoying the freedom it gave me. (Believe me, after seven years of ‘he/she’, the move to ‘I’ was like that moment when the Karate Kid stops having to clean cars).

That autumn I received a rejection from an agent for my second novel saying that the main male character needed to be fleshed out.  I decided to interview him.

To do this I set myself 500 words a day for six weeks: asking anything that came to mind.  One of the scenes in the book was his recollection of the moment his mother had walked out when he was a child.  One day I was in a hotel in Bristol waiting to go to a training event I’d been booked for.  I’d had breakfast and realised I probably didn’t have enough time to do my 500 words but could do it on the train home.  And then I thought, why not?  So I sat on the bed with my laptop, opened the document, and typed, ‘Tell me about your mother.’

As he began to talk about her leaving, he described a stupid dream he had: that he might get her back for one day, and the conversation they would have.  As he was talking, I could feel the sadness welling up in me and eventually tears dropping onto my shirt.

As a trainer I was hoping they would dry in time for the course; as a writer I was thinking, this is great!  Keep typing!

And it was good.  What he said is now in the novel.

The truth is that for several years my mother had been suffering from dementia and was long past the point when we could talk in any meaningful way.  In that moment of the interview, my world overlapped with that of the character, and produced something heartfelt.

Earlier this year, I did a second interview, this time with the elderly woman.  Another agent had questioned why a woman of her generation and class would want to do what I was describing.  So I went back and asked her.  20,000 words.  About 4,000 of them went into the novel.  Some really funny, quirky things.

When I have tried to explain this method to people they say one of two things: a) you interview the real person?  Or b) you mean you talk to yourself?  In answer to the first question, no.  I interview the character.  In answer to the second question, in a way, yes.  But only as you might talk to a character in your dreams.  They contain an aspect of you, but at the same time they have their own identity.

The advantage of this method is that you can ask whatever you want, and adapt the following question to the answer just given.  Biographical information often emerges as part of a larger conversation.  The reply comes in the first person and you can interrupt one another if a new thought occurs.  The elderly woman said to me at one point, ‘You’re very polite’; I said, ‘Thank-you’; she said, ‘You’re welcome.’  It was an odd exchange, but it did bolster the sense of a real conversation.

For me, I need at least one draft of the novel before I attempt it, so that I have a solid enough idea of the character before I start to ask questions.  Otherwise they keep changing shape.  I once tried using it before I started a novel and it didn’t work.

Which, I suppose, raises the question of how you write a first draft of a novel if you only have a cursory knowledge of the character.  I guess because I start with a general sense of them.  In the first chapter of the novel the elderly woman is at the doctor’s.  She moves in the leather chair and worries that the squeaking sound may be misinterpreted by the GP.  In terms of the way she interacts with others this is a pretty significant pointer.  The second thing is that despite being put off on several occasions in the early part of the novel, she will do everything she can to achieve her aim.  So, she’s determined.  A polite but determined elderly woman.  And really, that was enough for a first draft.

There is nothing new under the sun.  This method is used by many writers, who all have their own way of approaching it.  I seem to remember hearing that a classic writer (Henry James?) suggested ‘going on a train journey’ with a character just to talk to them.

I’m using it again now.  I’ve transcribed all of the scenes that I got for my screenplay (see Meditation 2), and I’m now interviewing the main characters to find out more details about them.

As ever, when I put these posts into Word Press, I get suggestions of other posts that have related content.  This time, the suggestions included one titled, ‘Ezekiel: Breathing Life into Dry Bones.’  Which is pretty good tag line for what this whole interviewing exercise is about.