Why Characters Should (Sometimes) Keep Their Own Counsel

Still on the theme of creative spaces, or more particularly, how you can fashion spaces in stories which both you and the reader can use creatively, having glanced at characterisation yesterday, today's small and imperfectly formed thought concerns dialogue.  What people say to one another can be incredibly potent, but what they don't say (and why) can be equally fascinating.

As a starting point, think of all the reasons you might not tell somebody that you love them:

• Because you are not sure how they will respond.
• Because, more specifically, you are fearful of rejection.
• Because to speak out would give them too much power over you.
• Because you feel unworthy.
• Because it would be inappropriate -- perhaps you are married to somebody else.
• Because you assume they already know (but perhaps they don't).

 Even in this simple little list, some intriguing and potentially complex scenarios are emerging, so if you want to have a go at a writing exercise, why not try writing a piece that hinges on the significance of what is not said. It might lead you to examine all the different qualities that silence can have, or maybe you'll end up writing about regret, a major literary theme in its own right, but perhaps that's for another post...

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....

Writing and Therapy - A Quick PS

Here's an afterthought from my previous post. I've just been reading interviews with Edward St Aubyn as I am so enjoying his novel, Mother's Milk.  No writer could have drawn more comprehensively on their own experience than he has, so I was interested in his remark about writing and therapy.

'If it does have any therapeutic value, the only way to get access to it is to write without any therapeutic intent. You transform experience into, for want of a better word, art."

 Enough, already. See you soon.

Writing as therapy? Only lie on the couch if you want to read a good book, not write one

There's a blurry old line between writing and therapy.  I've taught classes where people were unable to finish reading their work because they were crying and in many ways both reading and writing highly-charged literature can be cathartic.

If it's catharsis you are after -- that purging release of emotion, then using your work as a kind of therapy may be a good idea.  If your aim is to write to the very best of your ability, it might be better to do your therapy elsewhere.

I suspect I'm on potentially controversial ground here.  Many feel that their inner demons drive their creativity and provide the passion to write in the first place. I know from my own work that my experience informs the subjects I choose and how I tackle them.  However, my hunch is that unless you confront major personal issues and come to terms with what they have to tell you in some forum other than your story or novel, you will be the servant of them in your writing, rather than the master.  You also risk writing and rewriting the same stuff, because unless you lay your ghosts they keep coming back to haunt you.

Perhaps an added bonus of doing therapy before you write, rather than as part of the process, is that you will have already visited dark places, fascinating, uncomfortable places, but will be (hopefully) be healed enough to write about them, a kind of reporting from the interior, without coming to further harm.

What Would Shakespeare Give Away for World Book Night?

It's Shakespeare's birthday, which gives me license to remember the dysfunctional number of times I stood at the back of the stalls of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, when standing cost 70p a ticket, dizzy with excitement at seeing Eileen Atkins play Rosalind, or Ian Richardson/Richard Pasco play Richard the Second, almost fainting with the intensity of seeing my first Romeo and Juliet with Estelle Kohler and Timothy Dalton (even though the staging was such that we could only see their feet in the balcony scene), and just don't get me started on Alan Howard's Henry the Fifth...

Those were the days when I first glimpsed the alchemy of language, how words can transfigure thought and emotion into something mystical and oceanic. I felt more alive in the blackened back of the stalls than I ever did in my own life. The private magic of a great read still has that effect on me today.  So does attacking the base metal of my own writing, searching for gold, searching for gold.

It's not just Shakespeare's birthday, it's World Book Night as well, so to mark the double celebration, take some time to think what books have meant in your own life. I handed out free copies of Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife last year.  This year, I'm going to follow Nicola Morgan's excellent suggestion and buy a book to give away - benefiting both the author and the recipient.

I wonder what Shakespeare would give away for World Book Night?

Why Losing Your Balance Can Be Good for You

Ooh, Google have changed all the templates for my blog, so that I feel as if I'm all thumbs today.  I'm in a state of cyber bewilderment and don't quite know if I'm on my head or my heels.

As a writer, I know that I should hold onto this state, (although in my heart I long to be up, running and totally proficient). But while my technological balance (and every other kind of balance) is uncertain, I'm sure that the potential for interesting things to happen is far greater than normal.  When your feet are solidly on the ground, you may find you are less creative.  If you are mid-somersault you may see things from a more interesting perspective

With that thought in my mind, I'm going to stop writing and fumble around behind the scenes for a bit, to find out how everything fits together.

It's no good.  I'm lying to you.  Actually, I'm going to sneak off and read Mother's Milk by Edward St Aubin - prose whetted like a blade and a talent to make you weep. 

Enjoy the weekend...

What Crap TV Can Teach Creative Writers

Following on from my last post about the seamless and subtle Twenty Twelve currently showing on BBC 2, it occurred to me that you don't have to watch excellent television if you're curious to learn how good writing is created.  You can learn just as much from watching crap TV.

To this end, you might like to cast your eyes over The Syndicate, Kay Mellor's "gritty" drama about the lives of a group of lottery winners.  See if you can last for a whole episode, and when you next find yourself in front of your computer with a blank page ready and waiting, think of everything this drama has attempted, and do the opposite.

The programme aspires to tragedy, setting brother against brother in true biblical style, but in spite of sterling work by the likes of Timothy Spall and Lorraine Ashbourne, it never manages to get beyond hollow melodrama.

There are a few reasons for this: some of the plotting is clunky -- it is unlikely and far-fetched and because it strains of the willing suspension of disbelief whereby we collude in the story we are being told, it becomes difficult to believe.  This has a knock-on effect. If the action is implausible, then the emotional responses of the characters starts to seem empty.  In an attempt to breathe life into a dodgy script, many of the actors put their heart and soul into their performances, but they only come across as histrionic and insincere.  There is a lesson here -- don't over-compensate, if there is a flaw in your work, go back to the drawing board and rewrite until it rings true.

For a story, or a script, or a novel to succeed, it must have integrity.  Never write for effect -- to create beautiful prose, or to evoke emotion as Mellor has done -- because you will be putting the cart before the horse. Instead write in the pursuit of truth, both in terms of how you plot your narrative, so the action stays plausible within the conventions you have established, and in terms of the characters who are caught in its grip.  And before you set to work, remind yourself again and again: less is more, less is more. Wise writers will always leave some work for their readers to do.