A Question for Writers
How do you handle your characters' fate?
I’ve written about this topic before, but I need to rehash this conversation because, frankly, my current creative process is driving me crazy. My question is very simple, yet complicated, at the same time: how do you handle your relashionship to your characters, especially what happens to them?
I ask this honestly, because I never followed formal writing classes and didn’t study literature in college. My approach has been pretty much D.I.Y.: the only writers I exchange with are the ones I read, through their books. Personally, I don’t like hanging around writers. The ones I’ve met were pretentious assholes who were so insecure they felt threatened by any other writer they couldn’t control. I was probably hanging around the wrong crowd, but that was my experience. I like chilling with musicians, photographers, actors; people who come up to me with a gloomy demeanour, proclaiming themselves to be “poets”, can all go get bent.
I don’t use detailed schemes or plans for my novels. I do have a general outline, but I like to leave space for exploration and creation, that’s where the best stuff comes up, in my opinion. So I know that character X is going to be at place Y in order to advance the story thanks to piece of information Z, but that’s about it.
Which brings me to my conundrum: I’m currently working on some new stuff and just pitched a manuscript to my French editor. My project is writing a crime/noir trilogy set in contemporary Venezuela, where “Les Poissons de Caracas” is the first installement.
I really like that book - it’s the kind of project I step back from and feel extremely proud. I have no idea how it came out so well-balanced, but after all the nights of furiously pounding out the book on my laptop, it turned out to be really humane and, dare I say, artistic. It just touches a nerve, beautifully. However, I have no idea how I did that and am completely incapable of reproducing that effect, even if I tried.
The second book (the one I just sent to the editor) is quite dark, I’m affraid. It just didn’t make sense to me to write a book trying to convey what life in Venezuela was like in that period (2010-2020) without having major drama hit a family. So, much to my own dismay, I had to kill off one of my characters (no spoilers, so you’ll have to figure out who dies when it comes out ;-)).
That experience was FUCKING DREADFUL. As a father of two young kids, you can imagine how hard it was to write down what the loss of a child is like. It wasn’t the happiest of times around the house. Spending all day exploring feelings and trying to write about loss was terrifying. However, writers don’t go to therapy, we don’t talk about these things, we write them down. Even if I wanted to, how am I supposed to talk about this? I can’t answer the question, “Honey, how was your day?”, with, “I spent four hours thinking our son was dead and figuring out how that made me feel”, isn’t the best conversation starter. If there’s something I’ve learned, it’s that absolutely nobody understands this process (except writers, but I don’t hang out with those).
I treated myself with psychedelics, which is the best way to get over these kind of situations. If we’ve learned anything from our predecessors, it’s that writers tend to abuse the sauce to try and shake all this off, so I made an effort to avoid winding up like Kerouac or Hemingway and just stuck to natural, non-addictive medicine for the soul (in very low and controlled doses). “Now I’m fine” :-)
Then came a situation that was arguably worse: I realized the couple I was writing about (a mansucript I’ve been tinkering with for about five years, now) got estranged (maybe divorced - haven’t made my mind up yet) after losing their baby.
It was the perfect setup: I needed an event to create a rife in the couple and introduce adultery; what better than having them fight over keeping a baby and then losing the pregnancy?
You’d think that, since I’ve got all the kids I want and they’re not babies, this would have been easier to tackle. You’d be wrong. I’m smack in the middle of it (the baby is about to die) and connecting with those emotions is damn killing me, here. Why? Because in order to write it real, you have to live it as much as you can. I know it sounds like a manageable task: invent a character, then imagine she loses a baby. Do that, and you’ll produce shitty writing. The trick is to imagine you’re the character and see how she feels when she loses her baby.
So I’ve been spending some nights completely convinced one of my kids is dead and seeing what that brings up (spoiler: it ain’t nice). However, now I’m completely panicked that these ideations will manifest in reality: if you build it, they will come, kind of thing. Terror settles in. I light candles, pray and try to set the mood right, but may God grab us confesated, as my Mom used to say (que Dios nos agarre confesados).
Therefore, let me reiterate my question: am I the only one tormenting himself to death when they write fiction? How do you handle this? What’s your strain of magic mushrooms? Do you meditate?
Let me know your thoughts, I’m really curious.
There is a saying that authors are assholes that drag their characters through the worst problems.
Perhaps some do, but I care about my characters. They get in trouble, because that's just what they do, and you can understand why, a chosen destiny, and IT'S NOT MY FAULT! I had one almost die. Her friends sure thought she was gone. I knew her strength. Ellen, please. Don't you fucking die! Bad coma dreams, but months later she made it. Her friends didn't have my knowledge, and that was not great at all. Another character lost her only friend and her reading the last will wasn't any better than writing the will itself. Thanks goodness you did not ask why I write, because at that point an answer might be difficult.
So, perhaps the noir vibes were too dark really. The place maybe should not have been Venezuela. Right, like you had a choice! Well. Buddha says, your identity, in the modern terms of constructivism, is the mental model constructed from observing yourself. He called it an illusion, whereas I differ and say information does exist and entropy is not an illusion, but it is not physical, not fixed, it changes any moment. The rules of construction are not entirely fixed either. Your true identity is not that model, but much less really. Recognize who you are, and then recognize who you are not, but only believed to be. Behind ancient terminology and language, Buddha is smart and tells of a lot of applied modern psychology.
Does it work? Actually, yes, some. Better understanding how we think helps each day. There is the meme "What would captain Picard have done? (Startrek NG)", which is half serious, but there should be a meme "What would Buddha have done?".
So, to answer your question, reflective thinking and some psychology give a more true view at life and yourself. In a way, it explains how the mental model you call your identity can suffer from the death of a mental model of your character. But it also explains how grief works, its phases, and how to let it become an experience and get over it.
No, I do not torment myself. Never done. It is just, a character or a situation comes to mind, like a horse who suddenly appears at my door, and I mount and ride it to see where it goes. Of course, i handle the reins, and sometimes I pull them one way or another, but pretty much that is it. I let the horse go, with as less control as i consider necessary