It's There in Black and White – and Grey?

We are complex beings and our behaviour frequently lands us in complicated situations, something you should try and reflect in your fiction writing. Things are rarely cut and dried in the real world, so it is a good idea to tie some intriguingly complicated knots in the story you are working on. Your heroine may love somebody but not be in love with them; she may be frightened of the consequences of being successful in either her professional or her personal life; your hero may be attractive yet unsympathetic all in the same breath. It is within these areas of ambivalence that tension grows and tension is an extremely handy tool to have in your writing armoury.

Things are rarely black and white -- it is in that ambiguous,blurred area that most of us live and where interesting fiction is often kindled. Although you should always be aiming for clarity in your writing: the well-realised character, the taut plot, not to mention crisp, new-minted prose, try not to exclude a little bit of healthy ambivalence at the same time. Instead, go for grey and see where it takes you -- my hunch is that you will arrive in an interesting space full of creative uncertainty.

What You Can Learn from John Lanchester...

Well, loads of things, of course, he's a brilliant writer.  But having just read Capital, which is set in a single London street and anatomises the effects of the 2008 financial crisis on its inhabitants, what struck me most was the way in which he was able to accentuate the foibles and of fallibility is of his characters, while still making them seem sympathetic.  It can be a difficult trick to pull off, but it has the effect of giving greater depth and subtlety to characterisation.

I'm always intrigued by any tension in a narrative.  I don't mean narrative tension or suspense, but something at a more structural level:  the sense that the warp and weft of the story are pulling in slightly different directions.  It adds timbre and texture.

In John Lanchester's case, Capital's hot shot banker Roger is lazy, greedy, selfish, concupiscent and utterly lacking in self-awareness, in other words the perfect vehicle for all our prejudices about city high flyers. But at the same time, he is disarmingly human: he does enough, more or less, to get by; he tries to please his insatiably avaricious wife without much success; he lusts after the nanny but is unable to seduce her; whether or not he will get his coveted bonus is open to doubt.  There is something forlorn and disappointed about him; he has shortcomings we can recognise, in spite of ourselves we feel sympathetic.

Lanchester portrays most of the other inhabitants of Pepys Road with similar ambivalence and ambiguity. I think it is part of the alchemy that lifts them from the page and transforms them into credible, complex beings.  It's something to think about in your own work: people are never wholly admirable so, when you are writing, see if you can conjure up a character who is just about likeable, warts and all.

What To Leave Out?

I think I've mentioned elsewhere in my blog (several times -- avoid repetition, Ed) that I'm interested in the gaps and spaces in a creative work; in what is alluded to, rather than what is spelt out.  This is particularly true when it comes to characterisation.

To write effectively about a character, you need to know as much as possible about them: their past, their inner life, their appearance, their proclivities, what irritates them, what unsettles them -- the list is endless, but it is ground you have to cover in order to be able to bring them to life on the page.

The million-dollar question is how to convey all the knowledge you have garnered.  Although there are many facts you need to know about your hero or heroine, you don't necessarily have to write them all down for your reader, as it would slow the action immeasurably and have them wandering off to put the kettle on (and find a better book to read).

Rather than swamp them with fast flowing torrents of information, occasionally it can be productive to leave them guessing about some things, to suggest significance without spelling it out too much.  To put this to the test, write yourself a list of a dozen or so important facts about your main character and then choose one that offers most scope for ambiguity, one that raises more questions than it answers.  Start writing about this and see where it leads you.  It's the ambivalent parts of human nature that are usually the most interesting.

Think how a door which is open a crack, rather than flung wide, inflames your curiosity:

Well at least it does mine....

Using Your Influence

Writers work on their readers in many ways, their wonders to perform.

You can convey information directly, by telling the reader that something is so; you can allude to it symbolically and get them to work it out for themselves, but sometimes it can be quite fun, and therefore satisfying, simply to influence them.  By means of mood and atmosphere and choice of words, you can nudge them in the direction that you want them to go.  Done well, this can be a subtle tool, but a lightness of touch is important.

Here's little exercise to practise with, in between wrapping presents.  Write a quick sketch of a character in such a way that it quickly becomes apparent that the person you are describing is sympathetic and likeable.  Then see how  little you have to change -- make sure it is the absolute minimum -- to recast them as somebody for whom the reader will have no sympathy.  Explore the small margin that exists between the two, the grey area, the ambiguous area, as that is often where your most interesting work will occur.

I'll be wrapping presents in the next couple of days, so blogging might become a little sporadic (I'm giving myself plenty of latitude for a could do better  New Year's resolution...)

Characterisation - What's Not to Like?

The protagonist of the book I'm working on at the moment is a middle-aged man who is struggling (and not always succeeding) to be more than the sum total of the disappointments life has visited upon him.: his marriage ended in divorce and in the process he became estranged from his only son.  I have tried to tread a fine line between his own responsibility for his actions and the careless cruelty of those he has loved.  He is not altogether innocent, but he is by no means totally guilty.

My agent's response was that he should be more likeable. Hmm. Is that what characters are for?  To be likeable? In the cautious world of publishing today, likeability is certainly a plus, but I suspect that's only part of the picture.  I think one of the pleasures of reading is to see a vulnerable and fallible character acknowledge and overcome his shortcomings -- that is what gives hope to the rest of us. But because I think it's important to be responsive to criticism (see my last post) I've done everything I can to make him less diffident, less reactive and probably less irritating.  He still does some dreadful things, but that's because (I hope) he's human; good people slip up sometimes and make mistakes they come to regret.

I don't want my readers to feel hostile towards him, but I don't see the harm in a little bit of ambivalence -- I adore my husband, but there are things about him that drive me mad. That's how the real world operates, none of us is perfect, but it's the flaws and the hairline cracks in our characters which make us interesting, otherwise we'd be unbearable, or worse -- unreal.

So when you are working on one of your characters, watching them evolve, don't draw them starkly in black and white, inflect to them with a little colour, even if it is an ambiguous shade of grey.