The other night over on Twitter I saw an interesting question about authors and method writing. Just how deep do authors go when creating the personalities that fill those pages? I’ve never heard of anyone trying to become their character in real life, like Brando preparing for a role (though it’s an interesting idea). But we all know that it sometimes works the other way, where the main character is based on the author.
When it came to carousing, Ian Fleming was James Bond before James Bond.
I remember many, many years ago going to a public library event where a local author did a roundtable discussion on her process. Somewhere around here I’ve got her novel, but I admit I never read it. I also have to confess that I really got on her nerves by asking more questions about getting published than how she wrote (which probably says something about my self-confidence).
Making sausage is easy. Selling it is the hard part. For me, anyway.
Whatever information the author offered me is long forgotten. What I do remember is that annoying old lady in the corner who dominated the conversation. She said that knew everything about her main character: how she dressed, her favorite perfume, all sorts of extraneous details that would never be included in her manuscript. If that’s writing method, she was going method. Maybe it helped her, I’ll never know. But to me, it sounded like a self-indulgent waste of time.
It’s like listening to George R.R. Martin talk about his fantasyland like it’s a real place. So stupid.
Or is it? For all his faults, Martin has had success I can only dream of. And reading Quentin Tarantino’s novelization of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood shows that he builds far more backstory into his characters than is necessary for a movie. There’s something to be said for using Hemingway’s iceberg theory in characterization. When the author can speak with an authoritative voice about everything, the reader feels reassured that what they see is grounded in things they cannot.
But as for me, I take a more nuts and bolts approach.
To my mind, every character is there to serve a function. There are certain things that a hero must do to fulfill his role. The herald archetype is there to do one thing, and do it well, even if he gradually morphs into a different archetype later. A mentor character mentors the hero, and how he takes his coffee is probably none of my business (I'm exagerating, just a bit, as some flourishes are important). Many of my characters are inspired by real people, or even myself, of course. The real people are the part of the iceberg that’s underwater. I only concern myself with what’s above.
Sometimes authors talk about their characters surprising them. So far, mine do not.
My characters don’t “surprise me” because I never think of them as real. The elements of Story are as tangible in my mind as anything, but I don’t anthropomorphize a nail. Other writers talking about a character taking the story in a new direction would to me just be a sign that I’d made an error somewhere in the story structure. Or that I’m about to make an error. I’ve studied Story so thoroughly that I write by intuition and do my best to turn all the various elements into gold.
Sometimes I even surprise myself. But they're just elements.
All that said, writing is an art. There’s no right or wrong way to make art as long as it gets made. Anyone spending hours and hours picking out perfume is just procrastinating if she never goes back to the page.
