It’s a bit of two-for-one day here at Casa de Corbett—I’m posting not just here but with Deborah Crombie over at Jungle Red, where we’re giving away a free copy of The Art of Character.
Why am I defying laws of physics by appearing in two places at once?
Because we’re a week away from the pub date for The Art of Character, and in between popping open the Dom Perignon and soliciting celebrity piggyback rides, we’re trying to amp up the volume on the book’s release.
If you want to know the story of how the book came about—Deborah’s preoccupation—trundle on over to Jungle Red.
Here I just want to speak briefly about why I think the book is helpful, and maybe even important.
Some of the best books on writing in recent years have emphasized structure—specifically Robert McKee’s Story and John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story. And though both books deal with character, Truby’s in somewhat more depth, I found there was something lacking in both that needed addressing.
Though both books and a few others deal brilliantly with the function of character, and discuss how the character is a crucial element in the story matrix, they leave largely unaddressed the trickier, subtler, more difficult, and thus most interesting parts of characterization—giving the character recognizable feelings and desires, contradictions and secrets, letting her think and feel and behave like a real and complex human being, not a plot puppet.
As I emphasize in the book, it’s important to think of the character not as just a cog in the story, but as a real individual, with a life “outside the narrative,” to whom the events of the story happen.
And it’s not enough to “take dictation from imaginary beings.” A great many clichéd characters sprang fully formed in their creator’s imagination precisely becaue they were derivative—vaguely concealed duplicates of other characters.
There’s no short cut. To create great characters you have to spend time. You have to feel deeply and imagine wisely. You have to ask a hundred questions and answer them not with your mind but with your heart and your intuition—and characters aren’t always quick or straightforward with their answers. Patience and attention are required.
The books I did find that dealt with this aspect of characterization didn’t take it far enough, in my opinion, or didn’t deal with it sytematically and comprehensively. On top of that, they were written in a style I found leaden, contaminated by “how-to.”
A character can’t be fashioned from ideas, or stitched together from parts, no matter how clever the tropes. You end up with a Frankenstein, not a Frank Galvin, or a Frank Pierce, or even a Frank Chambers.
But few if any of the books on writing I reviewed, even the ones I admired, offered any real guidance on how to conjure that organically whole yet emotionally complex hobgoblin we think of as a fully realized character.
I took only the mininum number of English classes in college and never took a creative writing course. I learned most of what I know about writing from trial and error—plenty of the latter—and breaking down scenes in acting school, where the importance of a physical and intuitive connection to the character was hammered into my over-analytical brain.
Writers lack the physical presence of the actor, and can’t rely on it. We have only words. How is it done?
I wanted to help writers figure that out by helping them move through each of the stages of characterization, from conceiving the character—and being wary of characters derived from the story, the finishing school for plot puppets—to developing the character, to understanding that character’s role in the story, to techniques for rendering her on the page.
I emphasize the importance of scenes, not information, in not just portraying your character but conceiving and developing her.
And I stress the need to plumb one’s own experience, emotions, and memory to create the intuitive facility you need to perceive your characters like figures in a dream, not pieces on a chess board—or the product of a checklist.
Last, I wanted to write the book in such a way the reader would feel not just informed but inspired. I wanted readers to feel compelled to put down the book and return to their desks and forge ahead with whatever they were writing.
From the response the book has garnered so far, I think I’ve been largely successful. Now the book needs to find its target audience: writers, whether just starting out or perfecting their craft.
If you’d like to try for a free copy, go to today’s posting on Jungle Red.
And if you’d like to pre-order the book, you’re only two clicks away, beginning with this one here.
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What are the easiest and most difficult aspects of characterization for you?
Who is the most interesting character you’ve come across in a book, play, film, or TV program lately?
Among the characters you yourself have created, which one’s your favorite? Which one was hardest to create or get right? Which one was easiest?
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Jukebox Hero of the Week: One of the points I make in The Art of Character is that a writer who writes for himself is "scribbling to a ghost." We write for readers, because the reader makes us honest.
But it's often important to personify the reader we're trying to reach, and envision that reader as someone who expects our very best.
The actor Joseph Chaikin wrote that he never went onstage without imagining Martin Luther King, Jr., in the audience. Since we celebrated Dr. King's birthday Monday, I thought it might be appropriate to choose this tribute to him from the late great Solomon Burke. It's a beautiful song about persevering despite the gnawing doubts that plague even great men and women, and the humility that comes with true courage:
I got a great opportunity recently when the film I wrote this year, GRINDER, attracted a quality actor. The screenplay came to me as a rewrite assignment almost exactly a year ago. I worked with a group of producers and the film's director to produce a new outline, treatment, two full drafts, and two polishes. The result was an intriguing action film with intense, zombie-like creatures and a structure similar to the film "Momento." The final draft got the film its financing as well as a number of exceptional crew attachments. The lead actor came to us and made his attachment contingent upon an additional rewrite to satisfy his notes.
The actor looked at the script through the eyes of an actor. And thank God he did. He pointed out the fact that the central characters lacked motivation. He noticed that the clever, intricate plot actually disguised the fact that the characters had not been properly developed. The plot served as eye-candy to keep the viewer (or reader) turning pages, offering no additional dimension, no "soul." It was Story 101 stuff, and I should have caught it earlier. But the development process is complicated and a great many perspectives need to be considered along the way. We could have moved forward with the script we had, parting ways with the actor who had so generously given his time and feedback, or we could have taken his notes and worked to give the film the depth it deserves. We decided to do the rewrite, and I've spent the last two weeks writing a new treatment for the film. I'll have about two weeks now to write the draft. Eleventh-hour stuff, but exciting as hell.
Motivation. Why our characters do the things they do. The challenge with the script is that it's non-linear, so it's very difficult to mark the "scene before" moments that guide each character's motivation through the story. I had to pull the story apart, create a linear time-line, then restructure the puzzle in a way that made sense. In the process, I had to give the protagonist a reason to do the things he does. The actor asked a few crucial questions about his character - "Who is he now? What was he? What does he want to be?" Simple stuff. Sacrificed by a complicated plot. What motivates him to do the things he does?
The questions got me thinking about my own motivation and how it has changed over the years. I've noticed that I don't have the same kind of passion I used to for writing novels. Why is this? What happened to me?
When I was writing BOULEVARD I wrote every single night after my day job. After a ten-hour day I'd go to the cafe and spend another five or six hours writing the book. I spent all my weekends, holiday and vacation time writing the book. I did this for three and a half years. What was my motivation?
I think the big motivator was a decision to change my life. The novel represented my last opportunity to prove that I had something more going for me than selling lighting products to support myself and my family. It was my ticket out. I had already spent what felt like a lifetime in and out of the film business and it left a bitter taste in my mouth. The novel seemed like the perfect way to fulfill my creative aspirations.
When I got my book deal, I was motivated to please my editor and write the best book I could. It was a two-book deal, so the motivation to write my second book, Beat, was wrapped right into the first. I expected all that hard work to pay off. I expected to support myself as a writer from that point on.
But I learned it could be a long, long road to that goal. I quit the day job a year ago, determined to write my third book without the stress and frustration I experienced while writing the first two. I had a screenwriting assignment, a little bit of cash from the books, and some savings.
I've been writing the book, but the motivation hasn't been there. Why? Well, there's no book deal, for one. I'm writing on spec with the hope that it'll sell when I'm done. But that's how I wrote the first book, so why was I motivated then and not now?
I think it's because, in the beginning, the possibilities seemed wide and endless. I didn't know anything about the publishing industry. I figured a two-book deal would net me, what, two million dollars? Seemed about right. Now I'm educated and depressed. I tend to think, "What's the point?" All this hard work, all the sacrifice. I made a big deal of spending a lot of time with my family this year, to make up for all the time I didn't spend with them when I had a full-time job, writing those first two books. I didn't want to resent my writing for taking me away from my family, so I quit the day job in order to balance it all. But now I resent the writing for all that it requires of me, while not providing me with the kind of income necessary to support a family. I get tired of the dream that says, "after I finish this screenplay/novel/film/whatever, I'll sell it and everything will be all right." I've been living that dream for twenty-five years.
There is, of course, a different kind of motivation to write, and it has nothing to do with paying the bills. There's writing for writing's sake. I'm all for that, but it means a complete restructuring of my life. It means I write for myself and if it sells, all the better. It means I should have a real job, something I love, something that I want to do for the rest of my years. All of my day jobs have been just that--day jobs. Designed only to get me to the next film or writing assignment. Because all I ever really wanted to do was write and make films. What else do I love? I mean, love enough to do forty hours a week? The only thing I can think of involves animals. I could work at a zoo forty hours a week. Or a gorilla reserve in Uganda. Or I could do ocean animal rescue. Maybe I could work at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah. I could do these things, for the rest of my life. However, they wouldn't pay the bills.
I'm told I'm only a couple years away from really "making it." Hmmm. It does seem plausible now, for the first time in my life, providing the film gets made and it becomes a success, and that the TV option I recently sold for Boulevard and Beat actually goes to series. And that I finish my third novel and sell it.
But where's my motivation to finish that third novel? Why does it feel so much like work?
I have to find my motivation. Story 101. Without it, my life is just a clever, sometimes intriguing, oddly non-linear ride toward a zombie-like climax. But the soul, man, where's the soul?
I used to tell people that I had ideas for maybe forty novels, but a few years ago I was advised to stop doing this. “You don’t want everyone to think that you’re churning them out like some kind of production line,” I was told severely. “Every one should be hand-crafted and ripped from your soul.”
But they are – trust me on this. Yes, I have a word target each day, calculated from how many words I want to achieve each month, but that doesn’t mean I just dash off any old rubbish purely to fill an empty space. I can’t work like that.
I know there are the theories that say you can fix a page but you can’t fix a blank page, but I’d rather have it more or less right the first time. Once I’ve imagined a scene, written the dialogue and the action, it’s like I’ve cut the grooves in a record and trying to go back and make major changes to existing words just scratches the whole thing into an unintelligible mess.
Like I said: clean, simple, and right (ish) the first time.
So, I do agonise over every sentence, every line, every word and chapter break and scene. I plan and re-plan the sequence of events, the major plot points, and even after I have my writing outline sorted, there’s still room for total left-field changes.
I just had one of those with the new book, DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten. My original plan was for a bus hijacking.
What I’ve just written is a helicopter crash.
(And I don’t mind telling you this, because I’m only a third of the way through writing the book. By the time I’ve finished it and it’s been through the production and publishing process, you’ll have most likely forgotten. Hell, I’ll have most likely forgotten.)
And in that synergistic way things have of happening, it just so happens that for many years I’ve known somebody who was a rotary wing pilot before he retired. Not only that, but he survived a very nasty crash-landing in Australia. I called him up and he talked me through it in wonderful, atmospheric detail.
So, when you read the pilot’s name as Capt Andrew Neal in DIE EASY you’ll know he really exists and has the skills to match.
And maybe it was something to do with the fact that the pilot went from being just an invented name, an actor playing a part, to someone I actually knew, but he instantly rounded out into a very real person. One of those cameo parts that steals the scene. Not that the character of Andrew Neal matches the real Andrew in many details, although I did borrow one of his real experiences as a throwaway line.
This seems to be happening a LOT at the moment. Another character has gone from a bimbo to a MENSA-level businesswoman. She’s just made my main character, Charlie Fox, an offer she will find it very hard to refuse.
I never saw that coming. It certainly wasn’t in the outline.
But I’m damn glad it’s happened.
For me, these organic changes are a sign that the book’s coming to life under my fingers, that parts of the story are weaving back in on themselves and getting stronger. I may not analyse to quite the same amazing degree that our David does, but I hope the overall effect is the same.
These are real people to me. I care what happens to them. I’m thoroughly engaged by what’s driving the bad guys. The good guys are never entirely good, all the way through. Light and shade. Bright and dark.
I admit, though, that I get a little nervous when things are going well. It’s like the two cops in the squad car in the middle of the graveyard shift and one says to the other. “Boy, it sure is quiet tonight ...”
But at the moment, the new book is humming along and the best I can do is cling on for the ride – at least while the going is good. And yes, I did hit my 35,000 word target by the end of October. Woo-hoo!
Because I know, come the final page, I’ll be absolutely convinced it’s the worst thing ever written. Not just the worst thing I’ve ever written, but the truly worst thing. Ever.
The writer’s life – one day up. One day down.
But I wouldn’t change it for the world.
This week’s Word of the Week is carphology meaning fitful plucking movements as in a delirium, from the Greek karphos straw, and logeia gathering. Also floccillation which has a more specific meaning – the fitful plucking at the bedclothes by a delirious patient.
Next week, by the way, I am appearing at:
The Wordpool festival in Blackpool, first at the Palatine Community College at 11:30am, then at Moor Park Library at 2pm, and finally at the Central Library with Meg Gardiner and Jenn Ashworth at 7pm, all on Monday, November 7th.
At Meltham Town Hall (1:30pm) and Slaithwaite Library (7:30pm) with Lesley Horton and Penny Grubb for two LadyKillers events on Thursday, November 10th organised by Kirklees Libraries.
And finally, I will be teaching two workshop on crime writing with Lesley Horton at Huddersfield Town Hall on Saturday November 12th (again for Kirklees Libraries) starting at 9:30am. Oh, and I’ll be trying to get a bit of scribbling in as well ...
I can no longer remember where I first heard that, but I’ve come to realize it’s one of the truest insights into writing and the writing life I’ve encountered.
An example: I have a tendency to see the trees not the forest, to get lost in the rough, to marvel at the minutiae and miss the big picture. This isn’t just true of my writing. It defines my life.
I’m so obsessed with getting things right, with not making a mistake, that I dwell on details far longer than I need to. I over-complicate, listening to my nag of a brain instead of my gut. Over and over, I have to remind myself: What's the goddamn story? Keep it simple, stupid.
It’s one reason I write so slowly. It’s also the chief reason why it took me so long to silence my inner critic and let go of the cancerous perfectionism that kept me from accomplishing anything. I’m not a late bloomer. It just took me too long to escape the prison of my own self-doubt.
Two weekends ago I taught a class I blithely call The Outer Limits of Inner Life, and it’s intended to get students in touch with the real life people and experiences that, knowingly or not, form the raw material for their fiction.
As Jim Harrison remarks in his novella, “The Man Who Gave Up His Name” (I’m paraphrasing here, having just spent half an hour trying and failing to track down the actual quote in my copy of the book): The sad truth remains we don’t get to be anyone else. The inability to accept this fact accounts for the questionable psychological states of many Hollywood actors. Look at them. See the folly whirling in their eyes.
I normally conduct this class by leading the students in a series of exercises: first, to acquaint them with a number of people in their own lives who have had some kind of emotional impact, from chain-smoking grandma to the kid who threw up on the teacher in second grade; two, to explore moments in their own pasts that were particularly charged—moments of profound fear, or shame, or love, or pride. In this way, I hope to root them in their own emotional truths, keep the folly from whirling in their eyes.
But due to the economy (I like to think), my enrollment was down: I had just two students. I threw out the lesson plan and said, Let’s focus on what you’re working on, and I had them tell me in detail about the novels they were writing.
Turns out, this was the best way to get at what I’d originally planned to teach. Go figure.
One student (his name is Richard) was a criminal lawyer with a long history of major trials, and he was writing, not surprisingly, a legal thriller. He’d had three agents almost bite, but had been told his protagonist wasn’t engaging enough. (I actually address this in another class I teach called The Protagonist Problem.)
As Richard got into the various scenes, he admitted he had his own doubts about a decision he’d made—the protagonist, being new to criminal law, makes a fundamental error early in the book by being too trusting of his client, and believing too wholeheartedly in his innocence. This mistake sets up much of the later action.
For whatever reason, I had this gut-instinct impulse. I asked Richard why he himself had gotten into criminal law—he was clearly a well-educated, middle class guy, not a former cop or street tough who’d gone legit with a bar card. Richard admitted that, as he was clerking after law school, he'd done a few criminal cases pro bono and had found he was good at them. He even got a second-degree murder verdict for a man who’d killed three kids in a drug deal gone wrong—when everyone was sure the defendant would get the death penalty. But Richard also remembered shaking the client’s hand after the verdict was announced, and feeling repelled.
I said, “You have to use that. It’s too vivid not to.” And we worked on making that contradiction—realizing you’re good at something that nonetheless creates a profound moral qualm—a core element of his protagonist, down to the skin-crawling handshake.
Instead of being naïve, the hero now puts too much faith in his talent. He’s a gambler, not a Pollyanna. This instantly makes him more interesting. But he also has this revulsion of genuine lowlifes, which ironically causes him to trust the wrong people. His arc pivots around the revelation that sometimes the person who seems morally repulsive is exactly the man you must rely upon—and the people you thought you could trust are the actual snakes—which sure enough was right there in the story all along.
Bingo, as Aristotle used to say.
The other student—we’ll call him Jim—was working on a police procedural with a lone wolf detective who’s nearing retirement but can’t quite let go. I asked the obvious question: Why is this guy a cop? Jim said it was because the job permitted him the means to live the life he wanted: a solitary existence, with a marriage long settled into routine, neither warm nor loveless, and a surfing sideline.
I told him that didn't ring true for me, and it diffused his hero's sense of moral purpose. Cops become cops because they have a sense of justice (at least the ones in books do, and a lot of the ones I know personally as well). They’re almost afflicted with a sense of responsibility, even if their own lives are a shambles due to irresponsible choices.
I let Jim talk some more about his hero, and it became clear that the cop was haunted. His loneliness was a choice, and something was bugging the bejeebers out of him. I said there just seemed to be something in his past, something he did or failed to do, or something he witnessed, that has eaten away at his soul ever since. It was clear from everything I was hearing, but Jim hadn’t yet honed in on it.
We talked it through a little more, proposing this, conjecturing that, and suddenly, the light went on in Jim’s eyes. “I know what it is.” It turned out to be something the hero didn’t do that has gnawed at his conscience. He was walking on the beach in Marin, he saw two kids struggling in the surf about thirty to fifty yards from the beach. He wanted to go in to save them, and knew he could with a rope lashed around his waist, but the two people on the beach with him talked him out of it, and the two kids drowned.
“Who were the two other people,” I asked.
“A cop,” Jim said, “and the woman who would become his wife.”
And yes, this wasn’t imagination. This had happened to Jim. And I said, as I had with Richard: You have to use this. By finding this personal link with his hero, Jim felt a newfound interest in him, a depth of insight he hadn’t had before.
A writer has only four tools: research, experience, empathy and imagination. The urge to rely too much on imagination—whether from sheer cleverness or a belief our own lives are too mundane to be of any use—steers us away from the core emotional truths and raw experiences that make us who we are. But those same emotions and experiences are what we want from our characters. We feel obliged to be inventive, when the truth is right there, in our past.
But as always, it wasn’t just my students who learned something. As the class was nearing its end, I talked about the novel I’m currently working on, and problems I was having getting into the main character.
The working title is The Wrong Girl, and the story’s based loosely on a case here in my hometown. Two girls were abducted six months apart by a child predator. The girls bore a very strong physical resemblance to each other: eight years old, slim, long dark hair, dark eyes. The first girl was still missing when the second was taken, but the second girl managed to escape after three days. (The first girl, they’d later learn, was long dead.)
Everyone admired the pluck of the girl who got free—until it leaked out that the reason she was so resourceful was because she came from a family of gang members. And sadly, ten years later, that girl was working the streets, in constant trouble with the law, despised by the cops who once considered her a hero.
I took this idea and built on it. That girl would have to live with the realization that everyone wished it was the other girl, the good girl, who survived. What was the message in that? You don’t matter. The trauma of her abduction, her abuse and imprisonment, would only be compounded by knowing that all too many people, even her family, would be perfectly happy if it had been the other girl who escaped. What would it take to save that kid’s life, to lure her back from whatever disaster she was calling her life at age eighteen?
Despite having worked for fifteen years as a private investigator, I’ve never written a PI novel—largely because I don’t see myself or the job I did within such books. PI novels are westerns, with the plains gunman transported to an urban setting. But Charlie Huston has urged me to forget all that and write what I know about the job, and this book will be the maiden effort. It features a PI named Phelan who’s been hired to find the girl, who’s name is Jacquelina Garza—Jacqi, she calls herself—get her to show up for court, and in the bargain he’s hoping to distance her from her poisonous family, find her some kind of stable life so she can turn things around.
But whenever I told this story to people, they always asked: Why does the PI care? And that’s exactly what Richard and Jim asked. And my answer was found wanting. I said he realizes that he’s the last chance she’s got—after him, the abyss. He feels responsible.
Richard said, “I get it here (pointing to his head), but not here (pointing to his heart).”
And so the teacher was obliged to suffer his own lesson. I needed to plumb my own experience. I gave Phelan my own nagging perfectionism, driven by a feeling he’ll never be good enough.
But I dug deeper than that. I realized I felt somethng for this girl because I too had a sense that I didn't matter. I was a blue baby, Rh+ when my mother was Rh-, back in the day when this could prove fatal. I almost died at childbirth, and was quarantined from my mother for six weeks, a critical time, we now know, for bonding. And my mother would often, particularly when she had a bit too much to drink, gaze at me and with saccharine sentimentality tell me that she wasn't supposed to have me, but she was glad I'd come along. And the guilt and misgiving in the message always came through loud and clear. What I heard was: You're not supposed to be here. And it gave me my kinship with Jacqi, haunted as she is by: You don't matter.
But I didn't stop there, for I knew there was more within me that responded to this story, but I wasn't getting there, wasn't facing it head on. So I gave Phelan a bit more of my own biography -- I married him to a stellar woman who died too young, a woman who herself fled home at fifteen, and who often said, if not for a friend’s family who took her in, she might have died on the streets.
This gives Phelan a gut instinct for how close a kid can get to being lost forever, because he was married to a woman who was just such a girl. And sadly, yes, he’s lost her forever. He knows the stakes. But he also feels that amorphous irrational guilt all survivors carry, feels it acutely, because his wife’s love was the only antidote he’s ever known to the poison of his own self-doubt.
And he knows what his wife would have him do. He has to do what someone did for her. He has to show this girl that sometimes you really do find a person you can trust, someone who truly believes you matter. He has to become that person—no sanctimonious bullshit, no noble altruistic look-at-me, no trying to reincarnate his wife through her or, on the other hand, saying glibly: It's just my job. A kid like Jacqi Garza will see right through all that nonsense and he’ll lose her for good. It’s the hardest thing he’s ever done, like walking a tightrope between selfless compassion and Zen-like non-attachment. He has to be utterly committed and at the same time willing to walk away. He has to be brutally honest, tough as nails, and as open-hearted as a ghetto nun.
But if he gets it right, if he can lure this wild child off the street and into a safe place, maybe for once he can tell himself: At this, at least, I’m good enough. But if that becomes his motive, he'll fail.
There. Now I've anchored my story in my heart and soul. It means something to me, something essential and yet something mercurial, difficult, as yet unclear, worth exploring. I'm ready to write.
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So Murderateros, which of your writing problems can be tracked back to personal problems? When have you reached into your own life and found exactly what you needed to make a character or scene come alive?
Has your own life ever betrayed you in your fiction? Have you needed to step outside it and rely on empathy or imagination instead, because your own experience seemed to be holding you back?
And last: Does my story resonate with anyone of you raising teenagers -- that need to care but not show it, to be there but also step back just a little, let go?
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Jukebox Heroes of the Week: Given the tone of this post, plus the fact we're saying goodbye this week to so many of our comrades in arms, some for good, some for just a while, suggested the following song, written by Steve Earle and sung by Emmylou Harris:
Inspired by Alexandra's postings on craft, I've decided to chime in with a bit of scribbler wonkery of my own.
Rather than address story, however--which Alexandra, to my mind, discusses as insightfully as anyone I've read--I'd like to talk about character.
What follows is the introduction to a book I'm writing on the subject, and I'll follow up in following weeks with portions from successive chapters. (This being a mere introduction, it's general and thematic, not practical; the wonkery will follow.)
The book began as lectures for an online course I taught through UCLA's Writers' Program, one of the best resources for classes geared to both aspiring and working writers I've ever been around: http://www2.uclaextension.edu/writers/
I'm very much interested in what the Murderati crowd thinks on this subject, and what insights and suggestions each of you might have.
During a 2010 interview in San Francisco, the British novelist Kate Atkinson confided that her characters—who are some of the most unique and engaging in current literature—appear to her imagination fully formed, like dream figures.
Queried on the subject of teaching characterization—specifically, asked what strategy or technique she might suggest to students for bringing a character so vividly before the mind's eye—she conceded puzzlement, remarking candidly, "I really can't imagine what that might be."
Consider this book a humble attempt to inform her disbelief. A writer of Atkinson's gifts arguably has no need of what appears within these pages, but there are perfectly competent writers who do, or might benefit from it, and they need malign neither their imaginations nor their talent for that.
Of course, it's not as though Atkinson is off the mark. What every writer hopes for—one might even say requires—is a full embodiment of his characters within his imagination, as though they possess a life of their own.
I realize this makes writing sound like a quasi-functional neurosis, or at least a kind of controlled hallucination—or professional daydreaming. But writers almost universally admit that when things are going well, it's because the characters seem to act at will, of their own accord.
And yet fluidity of conceptualization guarantees neither richness nor elegance of portrayal. A great many characters who have leapt fully formed within their creator’s imagination have done so precisely because they were facile, predictable, clichéd. Whatever else can be said of characterization, it is absolutely true that if a portrayal falls flat, it is not the character’s fault.
For all but a lucky few, writing requires more than taking dictation from imaginary beings. One must be ready not just to bear witness but to engage the imagination—to ask penetrating, even embarrassing questions of one’s characters, to mold them, remold them, defy them, even destroy and resurrect them, while still maintaining that curious capability to step back, allow them once again to escape their creator’s grasp—dust themselves off, as it were—and reassert their enigmatic independence.
This dialog between deliberate and spontaneous, intentional and unknowable, conscious and unconscious lies at the heart not just of characterization but of all creativity. It is the pulse, the inhalation and exhalation, of the artistic endeavor.
Even at its most realistic, art remains an approach to the mysterious, and working with the depiction of human life can often seem particularly tricky—like fingering smoke. But at their most unique and unforgettable, characters strangely feel no less real to us than human beings themselves—seemingly infinite in their complexity, fathomless in their depth, tangible and yet ineluctable.
That does not mean, however, that the craft of characterization can't be analyzed, or is resistant to technique. If that were the case, Atkinson would win the match and this book would be pointless.
And yet I make no claim that what you will read on these pages alone can instill an unerring gift for creating memorable characters. Since their appearance in the mind remains a mysterious business, the craft of rendering characters well is by its nature incomplete. Magic once explained ceases to be magic. But the act of conjuring should not be mistaken for what is conjured.
What can be learned in this book are ways to help you bring forth a concrete, compelling and dynamic image in your mind, and further shape what appears. This is no small accomplishment. Without it, storytelling withers into convention, hackwork, formula—worse, propaganda. The lifeblood of any story resides in characters that are, at one and the same time, vivid, unpredictable, and convincing. And the art of creating, shaping, depicting such characters is an exhilarating, at times maddening business.
But at some point in your life you have felt that curious, ineffable stirring in your imagination—the nameless, shapeless volition that seems to both arise from within and yet come from elsewhere, that manageable madness, that quickening pulse of urgent light we somewhat crudely refer to as the creative impulse. It is why you are reading these words. You may even believe it is why you are alive. You craft stories. Whether characters are demons or angels, apparitions or simply mental stuff, they are your inescapable companions. Hopefully this book will help you engage them with greater confidence and deeper insight.
So, fellow Murderateros--intrigued, confused, inspired, bored? Chime in, pipe up, fire away. Please.
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Jukebox Heroes of the Week: You have not lived until you've heard the gypsy wedding band Fanfare Ciocarlia play the James Bond Theme:
Wednesday, January 23, 2013 at 3:01AM in 
