Meet Some of My Friends

Thursday is my day out, for getting my hair done, shopping at a supermarket, and meeting various appointments, if I’ve been lucky enough to arrange them for that day. So it is a good time for my driver and me to have lunch out too. It’s something to look forward to, often my only social event of the week. This is good, for the writing life is a lonely life, it is said. But not really lonely, if one’s day is filled with characters met in the writing. And that is exactly what happens for serious writers.

Two days ago I finished reading the latest suspense novel by a highly paid writer, one of the highest paid in the country, and found much bad writing. If you’re interested in writing, let me point out some of her errors. When she introduced her characters, she did not give the reader time to become accustomed to the name before she brought on the next character. The way to manage that problem is to repeat numerous times the name of the first character, so that he can be solidly set in our brains, and, most important, give us the opportunity to get inside the head of that character so that we know him well. If he is the hero or the villain we do not necessarily need to know at this point. In fact, the longer you can keep us guessing, the better. However, when we do learn what he is, all the foreshadowing needs to be in place, so that we can say, “Of course, why didn’t I see that earlier?”

Characters are the reason for the story. If we had no characters, we’d have no plot and their names should suit the roles they play. The writer mentioned above is not expert at this job by any means. Many of her characters’ names sound too similar, such as a secretary named Nan working for a man named Gannon. Even though this could happen in real life, you have to remember, what you are writing when you write fiction is not real life, but it should be realistic. That is, it’s something that could happen. This writer probably makes up her characters’ names herself. “What?” you might ask. “Don’t all writers do that?” Absolutely not. I don’t, for one. When I first meet my characters, they already have names and a whole family history. My job is just to get them to reveal the story they are living at the current period of their lives. Although I may have an idea for the ending of the story as I write, I do not know what is going to happen on the way to that end and those characters may change my mind. I know nothing until my characters know something.

In one short story of mine (which won first prize, statewide, by the way) the POV (point of view) was that of a man. Since he was telling a story not really about himself much, he had no reason to say, “My name is” whatever. His name had nothing to do with what he was experiencing. But when a plainclothes detective asked him his name, “Archie Madison” popped right out of his mouth. I did not know till that instant what his name was. Until then, there was no reason for me, or any reader, to know his name. That spontaneous reply furnished enough excitement that I had to wait a few minutes before continuing with the story. That is one example of the story’s writing itself. And that’s what you want to happen.

I could go on with this for several hours, but it’s Thursday, my day out. See you later.

♥