I recently characterized this space as "...an odd mixture of some personal
experience--which I justify by using the mantra of It's All
Material--small random bits of fiction and ephemera, and posts about
writing in general and my writing career." So I feel the need to temper some of my more...what's the word...unhinged? Too harsh by half, isn't it, so no. Unguarded? Sentimental? Loopy!
Ah, well. I'm supposed to do this for a living, but sometimes the right word doesn't present itself. To continue: to justify the personal experience here, I feel the need to tie it in to writing, because a) it makes me feel less like an overwrought exhibitionist, and b) it's useful to me to do so, which in turn leads to c) maybe it'll be useful to someone else. (See how that works? Two "me"s and a "you." But at least I care a little.)
So. I pay attention to my internal life, my interactions with other people and the world at large, as well as other people and their interactions with me and the world at large, because that is a prerequisite to the creation of characters in fiction. Observation must precede the commitment of the details of a character to the page, and when it's time to write, details are all you've got to work with. You can write out a ten-page character sketch as an exercise, but you can't include that in the story itself, because it doesn't belong there. What belongs in the story are the expressions of that biography which can be found in the way a character thinks, speaks, and acts. You don't tell the reader that a female character is shy. You show her speaking to a person she's just met with her arms folded across her chest. In a later scene, when she's grown more comfortable with that person, her arms drop, and she becomes more expressive with her hands as she speaks. If the person she's with is an observant sort, he'll notice that. If he's self-involved or doesn't care all that much about her, he won't. So from the simple portrayal of body posture, you can convey two sets of character traits: those of the woman, and those of the man.
Taking it further, there's a certain insight you can gain into a character's mindset if you find yourself in a similar mindset. My forthcoming novel involves a protagonist who's falling in love--actual, true love--for what is essentially the first time in his life. I don't have to be falling in love myself while I'm writing about that, but it certainly helps if I've done so once or twice, can play around with the thought of it, and imagine what emotional and mental states I'd have to be in for that to occur if I were the protagonist. There's a difference between falling in love at, say, 18, and falling in love two decades later. I've got the former experience in my memory banks. I have to use my imagination for the latter, and to do that I write odd little outbursts and fictional vignettes, some of which end up here for you lovely people.1
If all of this sounds a bit familiar, that's because it owes quite a lot to the work of Lee Strasberg, and is also an inversion of the gonzo notion that fiction is the best fact. To yank from that link:
Method acting is a phrase that loosely refers to a family of techniques by which actors try to create in themselves the thoughts and emotions of their characters in an effort to develop lifelike performances. It can be contrasted with more classical forms of acting, in which actors simulate the thoughts and emotions of their characters through external means, such as vocal intonation or facial expression. Though not all Method actors use the same approach, the "method" in Method acting usually refers to the practice, advocated by Lee Strasberg, by which actors draw upon their own emotions and memories in their portrayals, aided by a set of exercises and practices including sense memory and affective memory.This isn't a new or original idea (which I had already assumed when I started this post, and confirmed with that Google search just now.) Some of its more extreme examples have been proclaimed as "ridiculous" in a short burst of reductio ad absurdum. But I haven't taken any classes on it, or read any books describing the approach. And as for the extent of my own particular method, well, I'll just leave that one be. Which, given some of the stuff I've written, might be something of a disturbing idea. There are of course limits. I don't want to end up like Heath Ledger because I spent three months alone in a hotel room really getting into the mind of the Joker. But there is some role playing that goes on, yes. I'll spend time in a weird space, and explore it to see what it's like. If I've done the work properly, that shows in the finished product.
One of the ways this expresses itself during the creation of a story is when a narrative "goes off the rails." That's where you're writing along, at a pretty good clip, and suddenly find yourself in a sort of cul-de-sac where the story just stops working. If you're lucky, you'll notice this sooner rather than later. This used to happen to me fairly frequently--and still does--but what I managed to figure out about my own process was that this sudden dead end was nearly always the result of a character who wasn't behaving like herself. If I had a particular plot point I wanted to reach, and made a character do or say something that she simply wouldn't do or say in order to reach that point, I could keep forging ahead, yes. But somehow, the whole thing would start to unravel, to feel less and less genuine, and I would finally get to the point where the characters were sort of standing around, waiting for me to figure out where the screwup had occurred so that I could go back and allow the character to make a choice consistent with her own personality. Because, as it turns out, once one character is forced to jump through a hoop, it's reflected in how all the other characters react. It's as though they know she's being a phony, and then everything gets awkward.
Now, none of this is intended to be instructional, per se. It's just a set of observations about my own process, and while I believe that reading about this sort of thing can be useful, in the end the most genuine writing--the writing that only you can produce, the writing that's in your voice--is always the product of your own, personal process. Perhaps that's synthesized from a multitude of external sources, but at some point there has to be a kind of alchemical reaction that produces something entirely new. So, if anything, maybe this will form some minor ingredient, a bit of crypt shroom to add to your own peculiar brew.
Which would be nice, I think. See? I'm helping!
Love this, Ian. I don't have nearly the experience and work invested in my fiction that you do, but I do appreciate hearing about your thinking on these things for my little moments of creativity.
Thanks--I'm glad it's helpful.