The Road Goes On Forever

By David Corbett

In my last post, I mentioned the need for near perpetual publicity in this day and age of publishing meltdown and online promotion.

A little over two weeks after my book release, I feel like I understated the matter considerably. I need seven more hours a day, five more days a week, and a bottomless bowl of Wheaties to tackle everything.

As for sleep…

There are the events and readings I’m doing in the Bay Area and Los Angeles—please come out if you’re nearby—including a wonderful panel I did with Ellen Sussman this past weekend at the San Francisco Writer’s Conference (they sold out of my book!).

There are the workshops I’m conducting—again in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, and also at Left Coast Crime in Colorado Springs, where I’ll be serving as toastmaster, and then in various northern California locales, at the DFW Conference in Dallas (where I’ll be co-keynote speaker with the lovely and charming and gifted Deborah Crombie), and finally, Memorial Day weekend, at the High Sierra Writers Conference in Reno.

There’s the various blogs I’ve posted for—call it Bombing the Blogs—including:

1. A book giveaway on Goodreads. I’m giving away five copies of The Art of Character, to be followed by a week-long Author Chat March 4-8.
2. An interview with the writing community at Scribophile, with an extra forum for additional Q&A at the Scribophile Forum. (The interview is open to the public; the forum requires a free signup to join the community, which is much like Goodreads, but more writer oriented.) Scribophile will also soon be sponsoring a contest with free books and a free critique session as prizes: Stay tuned.
3. I’ve posted various items with bloggers Kristi Belcamino (a Murderati regular), Vince Keenan, and Jungle Red Writers, with one planned with another Murderati regular, Erik Arneson, and more on the way.
4. I’ve posted excerpts from The Art of Character at Narrative, Zyzzyva, and We Wanted To Be Writers.
5. And I’ve even touted what I keep nearby for pleasure reading at Books By The Bed.

Then there’s just keeping my News page on my website current, with updates such as:

1. The Art of Character was chosen one of the 13 Top Picks for Writing Guides for 2013 by The Writer Magazine.
2. My article, "Push Your Characters to the Limit," appeared in the January 2013 edition of Writer's Digest.

I’m pitching an article I wrote called “The Politics of Plot” to the Huffington Post, and one titled "Secrets & Contradictions" for the New York Times' The Opinionator/Drafts column.

And then there’s the constant drafting of event invites on Facebook, keeping up with the ever-changing world of Amazon, communicating with everyone who responds to the book giveaway on Goodreads (and inviting others I know), answering comments on the Scribophile blog, updating what I’ve already done, building my Twitter base (hey guys, over here, follow me, follow me, no me, over here, I said here, hey guys?) …

Plus I have my online course through UCLA Extension -- incredibly wonderful, hard-woring students from around the world -- a new one I’m pitching to LitReactor, three manuscripts to review and edit, a novel to finish (close, I’m very close)...

I've yet to inload any financial date into Quickbooks for my 2012 taxes, I’m refinancing my house (don’t get me started), my car needed new tires and a new radiator before I headed south to LA, my computer keyboard has developed a new glitch where -- only in Word -- the forward cursor moves backwards and no one at Microsoft has a clue…

Then there’s the happier end of Things to Prepare For: My other half, Mette, is driving cross-country next month with Hamley, the Wonder Dog, and moving in with me.

(I’ll be traveling to Norway and Turkey this summer to meet Mette's extended family. Yes, she’s descended from Vikings and Turks. This is not lost on me.)

So, let’s just say I’m keeping busy. Or busier. Make that busiest.

Every now and then, I get to read a book—which reminds me: Cara Black’s latest, Murder Below Montparnasse, is coming out on March 5th, and you can win a trip to Paris with Cara if you pre-order now. (I'll be interviewing Cara about the new book on Wildcard Tuesday, March 26th.)

Oh, and lest I forget, you can buy copies of The Art of Character here.

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So, Murderateros—what’s keeping you up these nights?

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Jukebox Hero of the Week: Robert Earl Keen, Jr., one of the great Texas singer/songwriter/storytellers, with one of my favorite tunes ever, and something of an anthem for my life right now, thus the title of today's post: 

The Art of Character

By David Corbett

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.

If you’d like to read an excerpt (“Serving and Defying the Tyranny of Motive”), check out this post on Zyzzyva. (Another excerpt will appear a week from today on Narrative Magazine's Tumblr page.)

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: