Joined: 7/18/2011
Posts: 8
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from the foreword of Mars Shall Thunder:
I think it is inevitable that writing fiction strips the author spiritually
naked and reveals every detail of one’s character – that is: everything
voluntarily constructed by conscious choice, plus quite a few unchosen
racial and historical characteristics that datestamp all creative work.
Literature is a library of snapshots, every title a portrait of somebody’s
heart and mind. Good stories take a long time to focus and capture in
final form unless you’re writing to publication deadline. The Good Walk
Alone was written at breakneck speed, one chapter each week for 16
weeks. Mars Shall Thunder took years, a dozen rewrites and refinements.
Technique is something taught, partly by the example of other authors
and partly by technology. I was a filmmaker. I think in three acts –
beginning, middle, end – with George Cohan sitting on my shoulder,
saying: “In the first act, get your man up a tree. In the second act, throw
stones at him. In the third act, get him down.” My reference library was
the Golden Age of Hollywood, when Frank Capra and George Stevens
and John Ford were bright young things. So I write like a filmmaker,
cutting from one situation to another for shock value, compressing
events as much as possible.
The Good Walk Alone was polemic, almost instructional in purpose.
So was Mars to a certain extent. I wanted to show the meaning of law,
how it is and certainly ought to be the perpetual pursuit of exact justice,
every lawyer’s first duty. Harry happened to stumble into a clear challenge,
but it seemed plausible to me that any Martian colony of size
would run off the rails within a generation or two. My work has always
aimed at describing a plausible future not unlike the present, except that
man’s range and collective breadth of experience grows over time. My
characters know more than we do today, which is quite a feat to pull off.
The bizarre work of writing is surrender. Once launched, a story pulls
the author along. New characters pop into life and suddenly insist on
taking over. There was no Laura in my outline of Mars Shall Thunder.
She walked in from nowhere when Harry was wounded in battle –
Mars, however, was planned very carefully in terms of geography, city
streets, landmarks, power and water utilities, economy, demographics,
architecture, customs and costumes. There were many sketches and
maps. Tycoons were modeled on WWII figures Churchill, Roosevelt,
Franco, and Smuts. Sympathetic but doomed characters Jimmy Elser and
Terry Beane were drawn from real life – men of my acquaintance who I
admired and pitied.
Harry, Laura, and arch-villain Danny came from me. I didn’t want to
write Danny, but there wasn’t much choice in the matter. I had to show
evil as a tangible, credible threat – the end product of a permissive,
stupefied gentry of dumbbells. Faced with the duty of writing Danny, I
asked a number of colleagues for advice: “What is evil?” John Young
challenged me to define it myself. “You’ll have to look inside,” he
concluded. I looked and found Danny, who frightened and revulsed me.
That’s why I say an author is stripped naked, and it takes courage to write
fiction, as much courage as you dare.
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Joined: 8/18/2013
Posts: 31
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I get what you say about the characters pulling you along. That is how I felt, and in part still do. Then I realized the character was me, at least the part of me I don't show the world. The quote " "A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave." (Oscar Wilde) I have always thought should be 'A writer is someone who allows his mind to misbehave' Was more fitting. I think those of us who let the story drag us, is a person who has been making stories up in their heads their whole life. I didn't teach my mind to misbehave, something neither I or my teachers and parents could control. So in part the characters have always been us, we are just releasing them. In the end it is brave to bring them (and ourselves) out to show the world. Yes, rather walking down the street without clothes.
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Joined: 5/16/2011
Posts: 1
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I so agree. As I was writing The Honormans of London, almost every character I came up with, male or female, represented some facets of me. I’ll never tell which facet, but then again do I have to? And, to Wolf’s point on character creation: I remember being stuck at one point, I had gotten two of my characters to Dover, and I was not sure what to do with them, until a new player literally burst on the scene, fists flying, cursing, and fighting. He took over the action and then got the two other characters to where they needed to be. He was so much fun to write, I kept him around longer than I had first intended, and even brought him back at the very end.
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Joined: 8/18/2013
Posts: 31
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It's funny I am the opposite, I'm well acquainted with my evil side . I built myself a great and wonderful wall of toughness, and was a tiny little scrapper when I was little. The wall is awesome when it comes to the daily job I do, and people look to me to lead. So...showing the soft squishy inside was at first really hard for me. I'm either the clown, entertainer or boss, but nothing with vulnerabilities. It did help me remember what it was like to be a teen and all the insecurities that go with it. So much of me I hide, I was afraid to put it out there for everyone to see. It's fun to visit the young me in my stories. Maybe that is why I have a inner dialogue that never stops, all the things I shouldn't have said, and the things I wish I could say. But shhh don't tell anyone where I work that I am really soft and squishy.
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I reject the idea that all characters I create are a projection of myself. I understand how characters, while not actually a reflection in totality of oneself, can hold various aspects of who we are or wish to be, but I also think I can create characters who are totally foreign to my being, containing no visible or hidden variations.
@Aira: I like how you said, "So much of me I hide, I was afraid to put it out there for everyone to see. It's fun to visit the young me in my stories. Maybe that is why I have a inner dialogue that never stops, all the things I shouldn't have said, and the things I wish I could say."
I often do this. Play out scenarios in my head, and writing is a way to create characters who can act, think, say, and do things I would not do myself. So, I agree with the concept that writing takes courage, stripping yourself naked, expressing yourself and living a life on the pages we dare not live in reality.
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