Tag: characters

Learning to Write

Pram was melancholy about his choices. He was a colossus, becoming so because his father exhorted him to think big. His father, he knew, hadn’t meant that in the sense of his body, but Pram delighted in vexing his father by being literal.

That was Pram’s only choice about his life body that he made, eschewing being a female, remaining a heterosexual male, dismissing opportunities to become another race other than Indian, which alluded to his family’s far origins on the Indian sub-continent on Earth. None of them had been back to there since his grandparents left Earth. Relatives did remain on the planet. He often connected with them virtually.

So this was how he’d thought it had gone. This was how the author had written it. But then the writer had realized more of the concept and story. Pram had gone from being large by technological choice to amuse himself to being large as an advantage in combat.

Which, as a character, intrigued Pram. The writer had created a cause and effect paradox about his choice. He was large in one reality but that choice carried over to other reality due to entanglements. Pram understood; he wasn’t certain the writer fully understood it. That, though, was the writer’s problem. He was just a character.

Then the writer had started playing other games with him, introducing him to Chronos. Chronos! Where did this come from? He knew who Chronos was – actually, Chronos the Fourth, or something, although Chronos took pains to explain to him, “I don’t know how many of us actually exist. There are multiple universes in my story, just like in the novel he’s writing about you.” The point was that Chronos was from another novel. While all the characters from the different novels and short stories knew one another, they didn’t socialize, and there wasn’t any reason for the two of them to meet. Yet, here was the writer, amusing himself by introducing Pram to Chronos.

They were in a dark, chilly bar, watching a baseball game taking place on another planet. The game was being streamed in real D. They could more fully immerse themselves, like most of the bar’s patrons chose, but didn’t. Because of his size, Pram couldn’t fit anywhere comfortably. Chronos, inhaling shots of whiskey and beer chasers, noticed and wandered over to chat.

The ballgame became forgotten. They talked about the novels they were in, contrasting the stories and pondering the similarities. Lack of choices in life obsessed the writer. In several of his novels, humans just had no idea what was going on. They always thought they knew and thought they were in control, and made choices according to their body of desires and knowledge. This was because human nature to adjust perceived facts to fill and diminish vacuums of information. Imperfect, they often forgot, ignored or discarded vows, or rationalized an intellectual compromise about their behavior.

“Why are we doing this?” Pram asked.

Sinking a shot of Macallan, Chronos looked off toward the ball game as someone got a hit, triggering motion and cheers. Pram waited. He expected Chronos to know and answer, because Chronos was a demi-god, the offspring of the God of Time. As he thought that, though, Pram knew the answer for himself.

The writer was just practicing writing, playing with prompts in his head, readying himself to sit down and write again. He was learning to write by imagining situations and searching for the setting and details within himself, trying to understand how to resolve scenes and move the story further. Between writing novels, he’d made this scenario up as an intellectual exercise as a writing fix. As the writer said, he was always trying to learn how to write. He meant that he was trying to become a more expressive, insightful writer and story-teller, so he wrote every day, afraid that if he didn’t, he would lose the meager skills he’d acquired. The writer had been sick and unable to write for several days, although he’d tried. Now that he seemed well enough to actually write, he needed to write something. Otherwise, he might get stopped up.

The exercise calmed, relaxed and reassured the writer. Now, creative excess spent, he could begin editing and revising the novel’s first draft.

 

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Personal Levels

Eva Lesko Natiello, author of ‘The Memory Box’ questioned, “Do readers need to like the protagonist?” in a Huffpost essay.

I thought, no. I think a reader needs to care about what will happen, given the situation, morality and ambiguity but I changed my wording from care about to need to know what will happen to the character.

Deciding I needed more input, I asked my wife, the reader, what she thought of the question. “No, readers don’t need to like any of the characters.” She offered as an example, ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’, by Lionel Shriver. “That book was beautifully written. The story seemed so real that some people were confused as to whether it was true or fiction. I enjoyed the book, but I didn’t like any of the characters.”

Spoiler Alert Warning.

She continued, “The mother was cold and seemed emotionally distant. Her son was a screwed-up killer, who killed his father and his sister.” She didn’t like the father/husband at all. The daughter was a minor character who didn’t really play into her feelings.

Ms Natiello’s question prompted further thoughts. First, not all readers will bring or take the same aspect from novels. Considering readers’ reactions to books become fascinating. As Ms Natiello mentioned, she read a book review where a book was given one star. The comment was, “Hated the main character.”

Eva goes on about the things I’d thought. Some readers seem to think that it’s their duty to like the main character and base their reaction to the book on how they feel about the main character. It’s critical to one friend. A voracious reader, if she can’t like the main character, she can’t get into the book and won’t read it. Likewise, even if she reads the book, if she can’t relate to it on a personal level, she doesn’t like the book. Relating to the book on a personal level means that something she read in the book triggers a memory of a like experience. It’s a position that appalls me because it narrows the narrow aperture into which new experiences through books can enter.

Considering Eva’s question is a reminder of how personal books are to people, as readers or writers. I struggle with the idea of characters a reader will like or hate. My characters tend to be unreliable as narrators, betrayed by memory, expectations, emotions and intentions. It fascinates me to encounter people who believe they’re telling the truth but what they describe is completely contrary to what I witnessed. They’re not deliberately lying, but are viewing it through their own prism.

Likewise, because I will relate something different, it doesn’t mean that I’m correct, either. I can be just as flawed in what I witness and how I describe it.

Natiello’s post is an inviting read into these complexities. She concludes it as I would, “Most characters are not black and white. Personally, I love deeply flawed good guys and bad guys who elicit empathy. Other people like it when characters are strictly one or the other. Of course, I support anyone’s criteria for the books they choose to read. It’s a very personal decision, and it should be. I just don’t believe a book is bad because its characters may be.”

There you go. It’s an intriguing subject, and, like her, I wonder how other writers think about it.

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Pram

I reached that point. I went into the novel, strolled around the forest of words and found the trails I’d marked. One was marked Pram.

What was I to do with Pram? No, that was a flawed position; what will Pram do and what will happen to him? Walking about after writing yesterday, I reviewed what he’d done and what had happened.

Then Pram spoke up. He knew what was to happen, what he was to do, his role in the greater arc. He understood how he’d not understood himself, how he’d sheltered himself and hid, safely in the middle despite his colossal size, happy to be considered above average but just far enough above average to gain some trust and some attention, but not too much. He saw better than me how his personality and quiet choices of non-choices dictated his endpoint, and he saw how others saw him and had recognized, accepted and planned for his inadequacies. That directed his destiny. He saw it as not giving up, but as acquiescing.

He dictated a few thoughts to me. These sentences were the seeds that sowed the scene and grew into a chapter, becoming a turning point.

I compared him to me afterward, seeing the similarities and differences, how much of myself was vested in him. He’d been a good corporate soldier but could not stretch himself enough to seek another beginning. He didn’t fear new beginnings but didn’t care for them. He’d had new beginnings before. They hadn’t worked out. He was tired of trying.

He lived almost one hundred years. His parents remained alive and together, and the latter was unusual in Pram’s era. He’d been born well-to-do and had been comfortable in his role. He thought he loved his work. Turned out he’d been placating himself about what he believed and accepted. But then came an unfolding of his protections, welcoming a new understanding of himself. Gladly he went on, happy to understand who he was.

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