CHARACTERS
Arnold Bennett said that style, plot, and originality are important
but count for
nothing
without convincing characters.
There you have it.
People point the way.
They sculpt the plot.
#
No character is real until he casts a shadow of his own, until he
takes a step you didn’t dictate, until he goes to the bathroom without
first raising his hand for your permission.
#
Every character, to stay real, must be a bit of a fraud. No one, absolutely no one, is
everything he seems to be.
#
No character can be totally evil or totally good. To be all one or the other
wouldn’t be human, nor would it be good fiction. To be human is to be capable of
every absurdity and every kindness.
#
A crazy man needs no reason for what he does. An evil man always his reasons,
each carefully nurtured.
#
The more you describe characters, the less they’ll speak for
themselves. Too much
description imprisons them.
They need room to stretch.
#
A character can take on flesh with a single sentence. Here’s one. She wanted to burn all her
birthdays and start clean. Here’s another. His pants were short and
showed his socks, which were white but didn’t quite
match.
#
You must be big enough to encompass all your characters. Your brain must blaze with enough
energy to fuel their brains, and your mind must be rich enough to
fertilize theirs. More than
that, you must sow seeds that will make them think for
themselves.
#
By necessity, writing involves voyeurism. You watch your characters perform
their most intimate acts.
Whenever possible, give them privacy.
#
A writer’s worst sin is straining to be clever. If you’re clever, you don’t have
to strain. Another
taboo. Never be
cute.
#
Something shifts in your writing when you lose a parent or a
spouse. New degrees of depth
and darkness creep into your work.
You become more sensitive to your characters, and they to
you.
#
When characters are physically hurt, they don’t bleed. The author does.
WRITERS
A male writer must portray women with all the truth he can muster,
for in real life he coats them with too much fiction. Women writers tend to grip the
senses, goose the imagination, set the tone, stir the pot. They put a man on his toes.
#
Women face the facts of life and death with more fortitude than
men. To a man, mortality is
not natural. To a woman, it’s
just one more thing to cope with.
#
All writers, male and female, pay a price, the brunt of it
emotional and exorbitant.
All
seek to exceed themselves, a sure formula for stress, insomnia, and
perhaps eczema.
#
Writers tend to be full of themselves. Some are full of something
else. The best take their
work seriously but not themselves.
All strike aloof public poses but suffer chilling suspicions that
maybe they know nothing and are fooling everyone, including
themselves.
#
A writer knows that when he talks to himself he is two persons,
each absorbed in the other, neither quite on the up and
up.
#
No writer would enjoy being a twin, for a twin can never be
confident his writing is original, not if he’s
identical.
#
Right or wrong, every writer thinks he’s special, a foot apart from
others. It’s one of the perks
of the profession.
#
A writer reads another writer more for language than for story, for
the bare bones of all stories have been rattled since man began spinning
tales. It’s language that
keeps stories going, that refreshes and renews them. For language is a breathing thing,
eternally changing, shifting shades of meaning, hues, adding nuances,
fermenting thought, and distilling ideas.
#
Some scenes you create can give you the creeps, scenes that cut too
close to the bone, that seemingly come from nowhere and act themselves out
on their own. That’s when you
feel less an author and more a member of the audience, one with a
privileged seat.
#
The hardest lesson in writing is the proper degree of
detachment. No one wants to
see your face on the page, your labored breath on the
print.
#
No writer should try to impress readers, for it’s a sure way to
lose them. To hold their
interest is more than enough. To magnify the meaningful in subtle and
understated ways
is a goal. To give fresh
voice to a truth or add to the resonance of one is an achievement.
#
The best writing is not in black and white and not in colors. The shades should be
gray,
taupe, tan, bone, over which the reader paints his own
colors.
#
One should write with a very healthy fear. The fear of falling on
your ass.
WRAP-UP
A short story permits no dead air. The challenge is to write
novels that way. A short
story can’t survive a single mistake. As in a poem, a false note
destroys the whole. The
bulk of a novel can survive indignities, provided they are tiny and the
readers undiscerning.
#
A short story that lacks mystery and ambiguity is not a short story
but a report. The same can be said about a novel.
#
A short-story writer, like the poet, knows his language must be on
the mark, the ring of truth in each syllable. Too often the novelist prefers to
rough it, and the hack is content with publishable rubbish. The greatest ally of a hack
novelist is a hack editor. Neither threatens the
other.
#
Few writers can make the tough cuts in their manuscript. Only good editors can do
that.
#
Writing is as solitary as reading. The world outside contracts, the
world within expands.
