(no subject)

[lagilman]

Normally, I don't analyze what I'm doing -- I think about it, of course, and I look at the work itself from every angle, trying to make the prose and the story better, stronger, more tightly constructed, if I can. But the actual process by which I do it? It's like walking, for me. Break it down into individual muscle movements, and you'll just as likely fall over your own toes and break your nose. Again.


But recent events and conversations have left me thinking about my characters, and how they're 'born.' Bear with me as I ramble.

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A lot of people over the past few years have announced, with great certainty, that Wren Valere is me.

She's not.

Yes, her ability to 'disappear' arose out of my youngest-child feeling of never being heard/never being seen. And she wears her hair in a braid, same as I do. But her dialog, and especially her humor is taken from a friend in high school (J, if you're out there, you're to blame!), and her pragmatic money-sense is from another dear friend, and her refusal to ever give up is something I envied and stole wholesale from someone else. Her sexual preferences are her own, arising from the life she's led. And Sergei? One woman and three different men went into Sergei's emotional and intellectual makeup, including my dad (waves at m'dad, if he's lurking. Surprise!). P.B.? I can name four different people on Livejournal who contributed to P.B.'s literary genetics, none of whom have ever twigged to it.

Short fiction? The characters may have been inspired by someone -- the narrator of "Apparent Horizon" was based on an old professor of mine, the cop in "Dragons" has many of the mental quirks of a certain LJer, etc. But there's bits and pieces that are picked up along the way, dumped into the mental storage bin, and pulled out without conscious thought when I need that bit. I am a magpie, as I suspect most writers are: we see, we pick up in our claws, we tuck it away into our mental nest Just in Case. Ohhhh, shiny! Mine!

So is there anything of me in my characters? Of course. I may have stolen their genetics from other people, but I'm still the one who carried them for 9-12 months (or longer) who nurtured and nursed them. And yes, I know I'm using very maternal metaphors here; your point? (as I said in conversation a few days ago, if being independent, maintaining my own identity, making my own living and my own decisions doesn't make me a feminist in your eyes, you're the one who needs your vision checked. But mostly I just think of myself as human, female. Categories are such solid things for slippery, multi-limbed creatures as we are. But I digress)

And that's how it goes for me. No one character ever has one 'parent.' If you're trying to play 'name-the-source,' it's doomed to frustration, even if you know me really well. When I teach, one of the things I tell the audience is that you never ever waste anything. Me, I'm the original recycler: I may not know when, or how but somewhere down the road, a phrase you use, or a way you look, or the pose you hold when you're paying attention? I'm going to integrate that into a character.

And, likewise, the emotions of these characters. The emotion behind the story is mine, I lay total claim to that, otherwise I would never have been driven to write the story in the first place. I might not recognize it at the time (re-reading "Apparent Horizon" two years later made me realize something significant about my life at the time, something I hadn't been able to see then, but had clearly felt.), but it's there. But once the character moves into the story, the reactions to that emotion, both external and internal, are his/hers, not mine. If they were mine, they'd be a lot easier to create, and this damn book would be done by now. *ahem*

Which leads into the other discussion I had last week, about the "my character won't listen to me/won't do what I want" complaint. But that's another post for another time...

Comments

[ex-fashioni.livejournal.com]

Normally, I don't analyze what I'm doing -- I think about it, of course, and I look at the work itself from every angle, trying to make the prose and the story better, stronger, more tightly constructed, if I can. But the actual process by which I do it? It's like walking, for me. Break it down into individual muscle movements, and you'll just as likely fall over your own toes and break your nose. Again.

And yet again, I'm blown away by how similar our writing processes are-- I listen/read people who can deconstruct the writing process down to the minutest detail, discussing scenes, beats, Hero's Journey, goals, motivation, conflict, etc., etc. and while intellectually, I understand and can even appreciate how this works for them, emotionally, I don't get it. Doesn't mean that I don't think endlessly about the work-- I just don't do it in such concrete terms, because to me, that takes the joy out of the process. Breaks it down into something very cold and clinical and totally lacking that amorphous "something" that I love best about writing. (Or maybe not so amorphous-- it's the sense of mystery and discovery.)

I think it's why I can discuss writing with other writers, but with the civilians who ask, "how do you do that?" I just sort of flail my hands and am reduced to, "Uh, I don't know... I just sort of do."

Yes, her ability to 'disappear' arose out of my youngest-child feeling of never being heard/never being seen.

Even though I don't write characters who physically disappear, I've incorporated this feeling into other characters. Funny how that works.

And I've got a character who's not listening right now either. Little pisher.

[lagilman]

And yet again, I'm blown away by how similar our writing processes are--

I'd make a joke about being separated at birth, but.... *grin*

[allaboutm-e.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the insights.

[(Anonymous)]

A lot of people over the past few years have announced, with great certainty, that Wren Valere is me.

Ha.

Not even.

And I'd be deeply disappointed if I thought she was, too, because if a writer tries to base a character entirely on herself, or on what she thinks "herself" is, in the long run it's not going to be a very interesting character. I don't think any of us have enough depth of understanding, or objectivity, to really write ourselves as a character in a story--we'd focus on the things we'd like to believe about ourselves, particularly if the character was meant to be Romantic Heroine or Action Figure or what have you, and then it would become what we'd like to be and not a true picture anyway. So even the character that starts out, perhaps, as the author ends up with bits and pieces and finally great large whacking chunks of other people and other pasts and other incidents to fill in what we don't know about ourselves, or the things we've never experienced that our characters would need to have experienced in order to become real.

Better not to even try to spackle over; just build from the ground up, using the materials available, whatever they may be.

Even if we write autobiography, I suspect, we're really not that person on the page, just the one we think we remember being.

[badgermirlacca.livejournal.com]

Ooops, sorry, that last anon was me.

[thecityofdis.livejournal.com]

It's like walking, for me. Break it down into individual muscle movements, and you'll just as likely fall over your own toes and break your nose. Again.

Yes. That's it exactly.

I always love reading about how people find their way through this process. Thank you for sharing.

[klingonguy.livejournal.com]

For the record, I never thought Wren was you.

[lagilman]

Yeah, but you also announced to my face at Philcon last year that you only buy hardcovers, and so wouldn't be reading Staying Dead, so....


:-P

[klingonguy.livejournal.com]

Very true. But... I've been to two separate readings you have done of Wren and Segei stories at conventions (actually, I think only one was a story, and the other was a reading from the first novel).