The Surprising Confessions Your Characters Make When You Listen
By Guest | September 13, 2015 |
Today’s guest is Stephanie Gayle, whose newest book, Idyll Threats, (Seventh Street Books, September 8) is the first in the forthcoming Thomas Lynch mystery series. Stephanie’s fascination with crime stories began when she first met a policeman at the age of four and attempted to outsmart him. After flirting with the idea of becoming a defense attorney and then working for a few weeks as a paralegal, she decided writing crime fiction would be a lot more satisfying — and fun. Stephanie’s first novel, My Summer of Southern Discomfort, was released in 2008 (William Morrow). By day, she’s a financial assistant at MIT’s Media Lab. Stephanie’s here to tell us how letting her protagonist Thomas Lynch speak to her when she was stuck in the writing process helped her discover his secret, and the key to her novel’s plot. Welcome, Stephanie!
The Surprising Confessions Your Characters Make When You Listen
In a novel writing class a while back, I complained, “I couldn’t fall asleep last night. My characters kept talking to me. They kept me up for hours.”
“Treasure that,” my instructor said. “The hard part is when they don’t talk.”
Years later, his words returned to me while I was working on my latest novel, Idyll Threats. My protagonist, Thomas Lynch, had a lot of personality. I knew plenty about him: he was an Irish Catholic cop, he’d had a bad experience with his former partner, he felt out of place in his new job as police chief of a small town. But Thomas didn’t talk to me the way my other characters had. He was withholding. What was his problem?
It’s easy to misunderstand the author/protagonist relationship. Readers figure that if you create a character you can just make him do what you want. Right? I’ve written a couple of novels. It doesn’t work that way for me. Usually, however, I do understand what has influenced my characters and why they behave a certain way.
But Thomas was an enigma. He talked and walked like a cop, yet was somehow an outsider within the police fraternity. I couldn’t pin down why. It’s almost impossible to write a novel when you don’t understand your protagonist. And a first person narrative? Forget about it.
Taking showers, going for walks, and running are my usual methods for breaking through writing dilemmas. The showers hadn’t worked. I’d logged miles of scenic walks without a solution. It was time to pull on the sneakers and sweat. So I went for a jog and I thought about Thomas.
He had a great sense of humor, but he rarely expressed it around others. I huffed and puffed. He had strong opinions, but he didn’t always share them. A stitch formed in my side. I tried to vary my breathing. He was a big, tough guy, but he acted as if he was afraid. I ran easier. It was as if he was afraid of someone discovering a secret. He’s hiding something, I thought. An affair? My pace quickened. No, but something like an affair. And then I stumble-stepped on the sidewalk, mid-stride. Because that’s when Thomas spoke to me at last:
“I’m gay.”
That explained everything! Why he wasn’t at ease with his colleagues. Why he was always policing his own behavior. Why he had few close friends. Why he had no interest in women. Why there was a constant undercurrent of secrecy around him.
After that realization, Thomas opened up to me. He didn’t get chatty. He speaks in three-word sentences. But he felt more accessible. I finally understood where he was coming from.
However, the revelation was not without costs. I hadn’t set out to write a gay character, so I had homework to do. I wanted to create an authentic gay man. Not a caricature, and not an ideal. Luckily, I had astute readers who gave me excellent feedback during revisions, and a brilliant editor. They called me out when they felt Thomas wasn’t behaving as a closeted gay man would. In a scene where Thomas discovers a list of all the gay men in his small town, I’d made him angry and scared because his name is on it. A fellow writer pointed out that a small part of Thomas might be happy to discover that list. Because it shows he’s not alone. That he’s surrounded by people like him. So I worked that in.
Thomas isn’t a paragon. He’s too quick with first impressions and he’s not careful with people’s feelings. He doesn’t like having his authority challenged. He’s also the most fully realized character I’ve created to date.
It took time to understand what it was that made him unique, and the revelation came as a surprise. My characters’ sexual orientation was never at the center of my stories before. I’m glad I took that run (a sentence you’ll never hear me repeat) because it somehow enabled me to let go, open up and tune in to Thomas fully.
Fleshing out characters is one thing, and there are lots of character-development exercises that can help: personality sheets to fill out, diaries written by contemporaries to investigate. You can also borrow quirks from real people you encounter. But sometimes, the most important part of our job as writers is simply to listen. And let our characters tell us their secrets.
Has your character ever surprised you? How did that surprise impact the story? Do your characters talk to you? What form does that conversation take?
Many thanks to today’s guest.
You can read more WU guest posts by visiting this link.
My protagonist’s mother threw me a curve when I discovered the nature of the secret she’d been keeping, and there have bee numerous times when one of my characters turned left when I’d been planning for them to turn right. I’ve come to learn that when I hit a wall, it is often because a character has dug his or her heels in, refusing to go where I planned to take them. Yo can’t say these things to regular people, so I’m thrilled to be able to say them here with you. Thanks for a wonderful post.
Susan,
Yes! You can have all the plans you want, but characters sometimes refuse to conform to them.
Great topic – it comes under the category of ‘dig deeper.’
Every once in a while, when something needs to be sorted out, I let my characters have a conversation with their psychiatrist. Me.
It is with both of us knowing that the character would NEVER see a psychiatrist, or reveal any of this personal information to one, see? Private. They would deny they ever said any of these things.
But IF they WOULD…, and off goes the conversation.
I find out the most amazing things.
I think they’re just so glad to be asked, and to let it all come out. Catharsis is good for the soul.
Not that they’re admitting anything.
Alicia,
That’s great. I know of at least two other writers who use the same approach. They put their characters “on the couch.” It’s wonderful when you find a method that works for you, isn’t it?
Sometimes I’D like the ‘comfort of the couch’ – but not enough to pay for it, or admit the really dark secrets – because they’re NOT a secret once you tell someone, are they now?
Confidentiality? And your data is perfectly safe with FaceBook.
My character spoke to me during a class. We were working on character sketches and had to answer the question “what is in the little box he keeps on the mantle?” And the answer, much to my surprise, was “the ashes from my baby that was born still.” I had known there was a baby who died, but I hadn’t thought about where the baby actually went. And then he told me.
Elle,
You got an answer! And such an emotionally weighted one. That’s amazing.
Great topic. My main character is basically an emotional mess through most of the book. Indecisive, anxious, somewhat neurotic and totally messing up her relationship. Though at times, she shows glimpses of great courage and insight but can’t change herself and her behaviors!
Yet near the end, when real disaster hits and she has lost everything, she became clear and knew exactly what she needed to do next. She stopped agonising over all her own problems and went and helped others. It was a great surprise to me and to her and her friends. But maybe she wasn’t really happy with the unhappy ending because she has stopped talking to me ever since!
This is difficult to explain to non-writers. It has happened a few times to me. Once, in the middle of a class taught by James Scott Bell. I was able to fix what was wrong with that manuscript once I got home. Another was because I had the wrong match for my main character. Once I listened to the secondary character, I realized he had a lot to prove and it made him not only a better match, but a better man.
Isn’t it fun when secondary characters step out of the shadows and assert themselves?
Listening. A simple word that’s hard to do. Underlying it is the premise that characters are real–we don’t create them, we discover them.
Here’s a technique that worked for me:
Choose a character you’re having trouble with and line up a writing buddy willing to help. For the first 10-15 minutes write about the character in first person, stream of consciousness. Then ask your partner to interview the character (you) using open-ended questions. If your answers seem superficial, the interviewer should urge the character to go deeper by saying “Tell me more” or “What’s underneath that?” “What are you hiding? What are you afraid of?”
Then reverse the process and do the same for a character of theirs. I did this at a workshop recently and found both roles (interviewer or interviewee) gave me amazing insights into character motivation and hidden wounds.
You get to be both client and psycho-therapist at the same time.
This is great. Hadn’t heard of this exercise before.
There must be techniques to help us formulate and expand our characters (beyond going for a walk or whatever). I wish I knew some of them.
Terrific post! I recently started working through Writing The Breakout Novel Workbook and it’s all about digging deeper. It’s hard work, but I persist and persuade my characters to divulge information about themselves.
I like Ben Bova’s method of building character with plot.
Here’s the best explanation I could find of how to do this.
https://www.marilynnbyerly.com/page9.html
I’ve had characters talk to me in dreams.
One character I was having troubles with came alive when I “cast” an actor I was very familiar with to play him. Once I could see and hear him, his personality became crystal clear.
Most of my characters are well-behaved because I create them to fit the plot, but in a science fiction romance I wrote, the alien kitty who jumped into the heroine’s lap announced he was sentient, he was not just there to show that this world was alien, he was in the plot until the end, and he could take care of the heroine perfectly well without a human hero.
Running, walking, even going for a drive can break down the barriers between me and my characters. But one of my favorite exercises comes from our very own James Scott Bell—He asks you to find out what your character is hiding in the closet.
That little question blew the roof off my WIP. I now have an entirely different novel—the one I was meant to write. That little nugget will be with me forever.
Thanks so much Stephanie. It’s good to be reminded that sometimes our characters need room to breathe in order to share what’s bother them.
The only way my writing gels is when my characters talk to me. Without that connection, my writing is forced and the story seems fake. Sometimes my characters whisper; sometimes they scream. Regardless, I’ve learned to listen because, after all, it is their story.
oohhhh…great topic here. I am trying to get my characters to talk to me, and it always happens when I least expect it. I’ll see something, or overhear something, and bam. I get some insight!
It’s never planned and it never comes the way I think it will.
That’s part of the fun, I guess!
Editing your manuscript is the revenge your main characters get on you
for thinking you’re running their lives.
Thank you for an enjoyable post. I giggled halfway through because–I say this as an Irish Catholic woman–he was reticent because he’s an Irish Catholic man.
Discovering my characters at a deep level begins with what you might call an into-body experience. At first i am inside them more than they are inside me. I fall further into them as I get to know them better. The process is maybe closest akin to falling in love because the deeper I plummet the more besotted I become. That’s when the process reverses and I find them residing in me – in my thoughts – in the way I associate one thing to another – and finally in my heart. The same way we invade a lover and then – if the attraction is mutual – the lover invades us back. At that point – as Stephanie says – the key is to listen. To get past my own thoughts and assumptions and most of all my tendency to put myself in control of everything. If I can accomplish that – the story tumbles and flows out of my characters and into me in an experience that is nothing short of mesmerizing. Or maybe – more accurately – meditative. To tell you the truth – this is the real reason I love to write despite its inevitable difficulties and frustrations. I am addicted to the immersiveness of it – to being taken over and transported where my characters need and want me to go – like a child clasped by the hand and led through a place that unfurls around me where every step is magic..
Hi, Stephanie:
So sorry to be so late in commenting. Wonderful post. I’m a firm believer in secrets, and believe they are one of the best ways of creating “depth” in a character, since they automatically conjure an interior and an exterior — and the two are at odds. I also believe the bigger the secret, the greater the payoff, and I think yours was excellent. I realize you didn’t “choose” his secret. You simply listened. But where creation begins and discovery ends is foggy terrain.
Wonderful post. Best of luck with Mr. Lynch!