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pegkerrWhen I am just in the beginning stages of forming characters, they are very amorphous in my mind, of course. I have always described the beginning processes of creating as being rather like dropping a single crystal into a super-saturated solution. Once you add the seed, if the conditions are right, things can bloom like a crystalline structure all at once. (Tolkien, btw, had a similar image--he called it the creative stewpot. You put all the stuff you've read and experienced in your mind into a stewpot that bubbles at the back of your unconscious mind. Then, if you've put enough in for your mind to work on, and you've let it simmer long enough, you can ladle up good, hearty, satisfying stew, with beautifully blended flavors.
One way this works for me with characters in particular is that my sense of the physical nature of a character can be quite vague in the beginning, but often, when I am just beginning to think about a character, I'll see someone on the street and think: "Oooohhh . . . that's what x looks like." One of the most dramatic consequences this had for me was with a major character in my last book, Sean. I saw the "template" for Sean at a public library. This handsome stranger, reading a book and totally oblivious to my fascination with his facial bone structure, happened to be wearing an Irish sweater, and it was that small detail alone that made me decide that perhaps Sean might be interested in Irish music--a little character detail that added so much to the book. (I often think, what if he had been wearing a Hawaiian shirt? Good heavens, what a different book that would have been.)
In other words the decisions you make early on, or the "snapshot" or "gut reaction" that gets the book rolling, about either the plot or a character, will have consequences throughout the book--and you may be struggling with those consequences months later.
I imagine that's one of the reasons that I've been blocked on starting a book for so long--I'm hyper aware that there are a bunch of key decisions in the beginning, and these cut off an infinitude of decision-trees about what-the-book-could-be-but-won't-be from ever coming into fruition.
You just have to plunge ahead anyway.
I have been thinking about this today, that at this early stage I'm highly . . . I guess the word I'm struggling to come up with is something like "imprintable." You know, like those baby ducks that will follow the first thing they see that moves after they come out of their shells, even if it isn't their natural mother. For that reason, I'm careful about what I read at this point. I will start gulping down research books (aside: you know that you're becoming serious about being a fiction writer when you start reading more and more non-fiction, for research). But I'll be leery of reading books that I have some idea are too much like what I'm trying to attempt. I don't want to "imprint" on that other author's voice; I want to find my voice. Sometimes I think when I'm starting to thing about a character, "I want him to work sort of like character X in author y's work." The problem is, if I really, really like that character, I worry too much that my character will become TOO much like character x. I've got that worry right now. Jack Frost is very hazy is in my mind, but there is a particular character in a certain author's work whom I love, whom I think has several of Jack Frost's characteristics, and I'm chanting over and over to myself, "Be SURE you don't make him too much like character x."
This is rather like telling yourself: "Be SURE you don't think too much about pink gorillas." Trying to banish something from your mind can, perversely, make it stick around even more stubbornly.
Peg (who is the sort of person who worries about the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow).
One way this works for me with characters in particular is that my sense of the physical nature of a character can be quite vague in the beginning, but often, when I am just beginning to think about a character, I'll see someone on the street and think: "Oooohhh . . . that's what x looks like." One of the most dramatic consequences this had for me was with a major character in my last book, Sean. I saw the "template" for Sean at a public library. This handsome stranger, reading a book and totally oblivious to my fascination with his facial bone structure, happened to be wearing an Irish sweater, and it was that small detail alone that made me decide that perhaps Sean might be interested in Irish music--a little character detail that added so much to the book. (I often think, what if he had been wearing a Hawaiian shirt? Good heavens, what a different book that would have been.)
In other words the decisions you make early on, or the "snapshot" or "gut reaction" that gets the book rolling, about either the plot or a character, will have consequences throughout the book--and you may be struggling with those consequences months later.
I imagine that's one of the reasons that I've been blocked on starting a book for so long--I'm hyper aware that there are a bunch of key decisions in the beginning, and these cut off an infinitude of decision-trees about what-the-book-could-be-but-won't-be from ever coming into fruition.
You just have to plunge ahead anyway.
I have been thinking about this today, that at this early stage I'm highly . . . I guess the word I'm struggling to come up with is something like "imprintable." You know, like those baby ducks that will follow the first thing they see that moves after they come out of their shells, even if it isn't their natural mother. For that reason, I'm careful about what I read at this point. I will start gulping down research books (aside: you know that you're becoming serious about being a fiction writer when you start reading more and more non-fiction, for research). But I'll be leery of reading books that I have some idea are too much like what I'm trying to attempt. I don't want to "imprint" on that other author's voice; I want to find my voice. Sometimes I think when I'm starting to thing about a character, "I want him to work sort of like character X in author y's work." The problem is, if I really, really like that character, I worry too much that my character will become TOO much like character x. I've got that worry right now. Jack Frost is very hazy is in my mind, but there is a particular character in a certain author's work whom I love, whom I think has several of Jack Frost's characteristics, and I'm chanting over and over to myself, "Be SURE you don't make him too much like character x."
This is rather like telling yourself: "Be SURE you don't think too much about pink gorillas." Trying to banish something from your mind can, perversely, make it stick around even more stubbornly.
Peg (who is the sort of person who worries about the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow).
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Date: 2002-09-15 07:23 pm (UTC)I notice that. Whenever I've begun a new endeavor (writing-related or not) my imprintability is SO high. :)
Do your characters sort of pop up and introduce themselves, or do you mold them to some extent? I know you've mentioned you want your protagonist (Princess Kaye's granddaughter) to undergo a specific arc of need vs. fear, and the concept of the heart of flesh vs. the heart of stone is sort of leading you in this. Is that driving your character creation, or do you feel the right character will appear with the qualities you need?
side note based on your prior post on protagonist: What if her need is emotional, but her fear is also a need -- a need for emotional security (the inner-building-of-walls sort)? That would make a "heart of stone" truly tempting, as she'd be secure from hurt...
Anyway. I'm blathering. :) This is fascinating, I love following along with the process.
- Darice
Creating characters
Date: 2002-09-15 07:55 pm (UTC)Characters come from pictures, people I see on the street, other characters I've read, people I interact with.
Sometimes I have sort of an intellectual idea: create a sympathetic gay man, who is in the same ecological niche as the protagonist-princess in Andersen's "The Wild Swans." But then something pops up that will surprise me. For example, I was trying to think of a job that Elias could get with just a little experience, the sort that a high school graduate might have, that would turn into sort of a dead-end job. I played around a little with photography when I was a kid, so I stuck in "he's a photographer" and gave him a job in a photoshop. And then, since he was a photographer, he was an observer of people, the sort of person who noticed little tiny details about people--and so started picking up subtle clues very early on that his lover was ill.
Good thoughts re: protagonist. Yes, I'm turning that sort of thing over in my mind now.
One critical decision I'm making about her right now is whether anyone dies trying to rescue her when she falls through the ice--I'm thinking it would be her father. Killing off her father in the first two pages, of course, will make it a very different book, and give her a whole different kind of emotional baggage.
Another thing: I don't entirely know whether or not it's a comedy. It certainly could be . . . it could be entirely light and fluffy. If I kill off Dad, however, it will start out with more gravitas. Ideally, I'd like the book to have a really wide emotional range: laugh out loud funny, but with stuff that goes straight to the heart (but NOT sentimental bathos, please). That's one thing I liked about Neil Gaiman's American Gods. It had a wide range. I mean, the idea of a god of the Internet or the god of credit cards could be just plain funny, and he could have chosen to write it as just a romp. He went for a wider scope than that, however. That's more of a challenge, and I'd like to set myself a real challege. I don't write fast enough to write a book a year, and so when I do write a book, I'd like it to be good enough to be remembered.
Of course, it wouldn't hurt if it won the Hugo for Best Novel, like American Gods did, too.
One thing about my protagonist is bugging me right now: I know that I won't get much further creating her until I hit upon what her name should be. This is a very old quirk of mine. I just can't write about a character until I know his/her name--I remember my first book once stopped dead in the water for three days until I came up with one character's name (Ranulf). I just can't do it. It's as if we haven't been properly introduced.
P.
Re: Creating characters
Date: 2002-09-16 09:03 am (UTC)Killing off Dad: Wow. The thing that immediately sprang to my mind was that, since the protag. is gifted with a lot of magic from her dip in the icy waters (and you made clear that this doesn't always happen), possibly it's because her father's death is a sacrifice? She's gained something of great value, but it could be because she also "gave up" something of great value (even if it wasn't an active decision on her part). It would definitely make a darker book, but I don't think you'd necessarily have to give up humor. (American Gods certainly has both -- of course, a good part of the humor is grounded in the nature of Laura's death, and in the way she keeps coming back.) I think, in fact, that the underlying gravity can be a solid foundation for humor, because even though the characters can laugh in the face of danger, the reader knows the stakes are still high.
- D