Fiction Scribe

Hello everyone! I hope you week is going fabulously so far. Mine has been interesting, that’s for sure.

This week we’ll be discussing “Character” and “Plot”, two sections I’ve been eager to read, as I’m still in the beginnings of my current work in progress.

Lamott starts out the Character section with an image that doesn’t quite work for me, but it is plain enough to understand what she is saying. We all have inside spaces all our own that we get to do with as we wish. Your task as an author is to find out what the spaces inside your characters are like because if anyone should know your characters inside and out, it should be you.

I think one of the most important things Lamott points about character is this: “As soon as you start protecting your characters from the ramifications of their less-than-lofty behavior, your story will start to feel flat and useless, just like in real life.”

Exactly right. I’ve seen this a lot, especially in younger writers. You have crafted this character you absolutely love. Perhaps he or she is the person you’d like to be someday. It’s natural to want to protect yourself and those you love from everything bad…and that makes for bad stories.

If a character gets the best by giving the worst, your readers are going to stop caring, stop reading, and move on.

But don’t feel bad if you have a hard time with this. Even Lamott admits she’s slowly learning to do it.

I think basing your characters on people you know - at least partially - is something a lot of us do, and I’m very glad Lamott mentioned this as a technique for getting to know your characters. I’d heard growing up not to base characters off real people because those real people will start getting fussy about how you portray them.

Then I learned most people can’t pick themselves out all that well, and I learned proper critiques don’t often come from the mouths of friends and family. And so I continued doing it, often having a hard time writing for a character until there was a reality base I could touch on.

I like how she touches on how your characters’ actions speak louder than all the description you can give them. A woman washing her hand exactly thirteen times in thirteen minutes is, I think, a much more effective thing than telling your readers your character has an obsessive compulsive disorder, don’t you?

Sidenote: “I could watch John Cleese or Anthony Hopkins do dishes for about an hour without needing much else to happen.” - Agreed.

Also another thing she mentioned that I think should be told to writers when they start out is, “One final reminder: you probably won’t know your characters until weeks or months after you’ve started working with them.” It’s easy to forget this and get frustrated if you are having a hard time getting to know your characters at first or reigning them in because they’re ‘misbehaving’. Part of the journey is getting to know them, and it can be a lot of fun if you keep that in mind.

“Plot” is a fun chapter because I think it can bring up a bit of debate right from the start. What Lamott talks about is close to my heart because I’ve always worried about my characters first and what they’re actually doing (the plot) second. However, I know a few people who like to drive the plot and might argue Lamott’s method might not always be the way to go.

I agree with her, though. Mostly, people want to care about other people, not plots. Rather than care about war, we want to care about the heroes, and thus stories focus on the people who fought with the war as the background instead of vice versa. The beginning of this chapter is, essentially, a continuation of “Character”, but that’s okay because people and interest in them keep the pages going.

And, because people are so different, I’m glad she mentions in here to have other people read your work. Other people can point out when you’re being soft on your characters or where the manuscript has holes in it.

Lastly, I would like to give a hearty ‘amen’ to not focusing on the climax. Focusing to hard on what I thought should happen instead of just trusting my characters to get there (or somewhere near there) is what kept me from writing for a good chunk of time. As she says, your characters might end up bringing something that was a whole lot more meaningful than your original plan, and you could miss it by focusing too hard.

How did you like these chapters? Anything you disagreed with? Is there anything missed that you’d like to talk about? Let me know and we’ll discuss.

Be sure to read “Dialogue” and “Set Design” for next week’s discussion.