A Brief Piece on Character.

One of my favourite approaches to writing a novel — the one I return to again and again — is to allow myself to become the central character, to tell the story as if I were the I-guy, as if I’ve lived the story and am now recounting it, for the benefit of myself as well as my audience.

For me, it always lends a degree of authenticity. I find it much easier to tell the story, acting it out in my head, assessing my reactions and using them to give form to the fiction. Because of this, I suppose, my narrators have a lot of “me” in them — however reshaped and disguised! Their thoughts and reactions to given circumstances may be radically different to my own, but they come from a place that I have, at least temporarily, visited. I draw on what I know, on what I am, but that’s only the beginning.

And my other characters? The ones that move around my narrator, touch him, love him, hate and hurt him? What of them?

When it comes to them the process is far more difficult to pinpoint. They are written by the observations of my narrator — by what he sees and how he interprets that. His bias possibly conceals the truth of their reality, even from me…

… and maybe that’s where the real story is. In the things that we — as readers and writers — can only guess at.

© 2009 Gary William Murning

Joyce Carol Oates — On Writing Characters.

A short, interesting video that I’m sure some of my regular readers will find very helpful. Character is always a fundamental starting point for me and here Joyce Carol Oates shares her very similar approach…

A Recommendation for Fellow Writers.

Sometimes the best way to say something is to let someone else say it for you. That’s why I like hiding behind a character in my fiction. I can voice all of my most outrageous thoughts through him (or her) and then let him (yes, or her) take the flak. Not very noble of me, I know — and I suppose that’s why I started blogging, in an attempt to rid myself of this strange brand of cowardice! In my blogging life I like to be myself, to say it myself, and to face up to the consequences — whatever they may be.

Today, however, I’m going to make an exception and let someone say exactly what I think and feel for me.

Kathleen Brandt on plot.

If you’re a writer, please read this. It’s well worth a few moments of your time.

© 2008 Gary William Murning

Location, Location, Location.

I always like to have a strong sense of place when writing a novel. I wouldn’t consider myself the kind of writer who labours over detailed, lyrical description of landscape and surroundings — far from it. My primary concern is always what’s going on in my principle character’s head. Nonetheless, without the capacity to visualise in detail where he/she is I quite often find myself struggling with the other aspects of the novel. Environment is an extremely important part of understanding who my characters are, even if I share only a little of the detail with my readers.

Wherever possible, I like the places I use to be real towns, cities, villages etc — or to at least be based upon them. In the early stages of planning a novel I will quite often consciously look for new places I haven’t used before, places that will reflect my character in the right way and provide the necessary possibilities I will need. The Yesterday Tree (the new name for We Are Watching) was no exception. I knew early on I wanted the North York Moors to feature. In winter it is a stark and awe-inspiring place, the sky seemingly going on forever. I knew virtually from day one that I would set some major scenes out there. There would be a dead man. A suicide. Probably more — much, much more.

But where was my protagonist going to live? He wasn’t a city or town man, that much I already knew. So it had to be a village — or at least a market town.

Last Wednesday, I found the perfect place. Thornton-le-Dale.

Nothing bad could ever happen there, right?

We’ll see about that!

Children of the Resolution.

The end is in sight. I have just hit 101,000 words and I’m incredibly happy with it. Chapter Sixteen will soon be completed and then there will only remain Chapter Seventeen and an epilogue. Two or three weeks work, now I have the voice recognition software (which is proving invaluable!)

More later.

Unlike Me.

It was suggested to me a while ago by friend and screenwriter Sean Hood that I write a blog post concerning my approach to writing characters who are very different to me — his example being an atheist writer having to tackle a character of faith. It was a fascinating suggestion, and I set about considering it deeply. So deeply, in fact, that two months have gone by and I still haven’t formulated a solid idea of how I approach this problem!

Writing, for me, is about making it personal, I suppose. When I “meet” or, even, “become” (I like the role-play feel of the first person) a new character, I immediately try to find something in them that I can relate to. Something significant that may not be quite so obvious to the reader. If I were writing the character of a Catholic priest, for example, I would probably look at the questions he asks himself during those long nights when sleep won’t come and see if, perhaps, they are similar to my own. I would look at the man (for, contrary to rumour, I am also a man 😉 ) and approach it from that angle, examining his back story to see how he arrived on his chosen path and also to see if, under different circumstances, I might have made different choices.

But this makes it all sound very methodical and thought-through, and it isn’t quite like that for me. This isn’t something that would be done “on paper”. I find my character and I live with him for a while, thinking about him, studying how he behaves and why in my head. If I can get to the “why”, I’m there. I don’t work at it from that point on, I just let him be who he is.

After twenty years of writing, it’s not something I really think about anymore — not in the usual sense of the word. It’s quite an… organic process, I suppose.

So, how do you approach writing a character with a very different perspective to your own?

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