As always, lovely and excellent advice from George. I've never tried such a thing--inventing two characters separately and then letting their wires cross. Maybe i'll try it as an experiment one of these days. In my own case, I only create one character. Later, another character will show up. But I can't imagine beginning with two. Maybe my brain is too small to hold all of that at once. Anyway, if it's any help to anyone (and with full acknowledgment that I am no expert in this), I start with one character and--like the Questioner says, maybe I flesh the character out a bit, figuring out who they are. And then I do the age-old trick of saying to myself "And then, one day..." which is the moment that "something happens" to that character, the "something" being big enough to send them spiraling a bit, because that "something" is out of the ordinary. So, from ordinary day to....something else happens. And hopefully, that leads to a story. (It ALWAYS leads to conflict/tension of some kind, because the character wants to get back to normal, to the day before the "something" happened. The whole story, in fact, is that character's quest to find balance again.) Maybe i just went way off topic here...?
It's interesting that you talk about holding two characters in your head at once. When I read about this method, I imagined the process as: You write one character, stop, then write about the other. Then, once you have those characters written, you put them together in a situation.
Hi Amy. Yes, you are completely right--that is the process as I'm understanding it, too. What I mean is that I think (and I haven't tried it yet, so who knows?) I think that if I wrote up dossiers for two characters, my brain would explode. I'd have to create them, hold them, and then somehow cross their wires. That seems like a lot of work to me--to make that happen. And i'd have to hold each character in my brain to do it. They would be sort of "equal." Others may not agree, but to me a story is (usually) about one character. And so to create another one completely--and hold that in my head and make the story about both of them, about the way they cross wires....I don't know. Maybe it's a question of tension--to me, the tension is usually not between two people when I write a story. The tension is between one character and themself. I hope this made sense. But yes, I should try the exercise and see what happens!
In drama, 'conflict' can of course mean conflict between two different characters; but it might equally be between who a person wants to be, and who they're supposed to be.
Yes, and at base--to me--stories are ultimately about one character defining themself anew--regardless of what the surface conflict is. Of course, this isn't always the case. But the stories I like best do this.
A perfect post for me too. I'm writing historical fiction based on several real people, so creating dossiers works in with understanding who they were perceived to be, and then the rising action is where the art brings them back to life...
I write historical fiction too, about real figures in wildly imagined stories which are long ago enough that not everything is known. What I write before hand, is more a set of monologues than a dossier. I'm accessing emotion rather than facts. I put them in the worst moment and let them hold forth, see what thrills or upsets them, what ax they are grinding. It also tends to give me an idea of the voice a character speaks with. IDK. Works for me.
Really like your monologue idea. I've tried a few monologues as poetry writing exercises, but I've never thought of using them as a way to develop characters for stories. So interesting. Thanks!
I also print them out and take the monologues for a walk sometimes, usually at the beach. I say them as if I were an actor rehearsing my lines. I make all kinds of changes to them as I speak them aloud. It teaches me so much about the character in an embodied way.
I love this simple idea: "I often think that, in art, we should do exactly what we feel like doing - what we can do with confidence and joy - and then clean up “the mess” afterward. (But it’s not really a mess, it’s “the state of affairs” there within the story.)" It might sound simple, but I think it is such a kind, generous and healthy approach to writing. I now might have a post-it in my writing corner that says "Let's make a mess!" :)
As for starting a story by inventing a character, that is not really my approach, simply because life is so curious and is full of real, complex characters. I might of course chisel a real character into something that serves my fiction best, but honestly speaking - life provides me with far too much interesting material for me to have to invent much. But I am a people watcher and eavesdropper. That is how I get most of my ideas for plays. I prefer to start with a question. Actually, the question always comes to me, so I don't even have to ask it. It usually is a big, philosophical question that bothers me on a personal level, and then I think of a scenario that could fit the exploration of this question. But I love the idea of just starting "to make mess" with the element that most intrigues you. Why not? Whatever makes the writing more fun.
I like there being a 'big philosophical question' at the heart of a story; though for me, I often have to work out what this might be after I've done quite a bit of writing, rather than knowing what the 'question' is from the start.
Not entirely the same thing, but I'm fairly sure it was George Orwell who said he wrote in order to tackle some pervasive 'lie' that already existed.
I love this! My big philosophical question often starts with a much smaller, simple question (for example, something like ‘what would my first love think of my married life now?’) and just like you said, through writing I discover that I’m asking much deeper questions and themes. This is why I love writing so much: it’s a process of discovery! And it’s always surprising!
I've experienced something similar in real life. I was driving home along a route that took me past my old University, and decided to drop in. I'd visited once or twice since leaving (a little over 30 years ago), but by now there had been a huge number of changes to the campus, so it didn't feel particularly resonant or full of memories.
Then I took the path from the main campus, to the area where my department was situated, at the top of a wooded hill. Either side of the path were countless bluebells, and once the campus was out of sight, there was a palpable feeling of timelessness. So much so, I started to get the distinct feeling I might bump into my former self.
I wondered what that younger version would think of my life now, and - I'm glad to say - had the distinct impression they'd approve.
“Look, trust me. Let’s make a mess. The cleaning up of that mess - the organization of that mess into something shapely and inevitable and meaningful - that is your true artistic self, revealing itself."
I am a bit of an interloper here, not a short story writer but a documentary filmmaker working with a very big historical dossier -- images, archive footage, interviews, music, newspaper articles from 1968. And the making of something shapely and inevitable of that mess resonates with the process of editing (which is really what documentary film is all about -- I think).
Taking the cue from George to focus on the individual line (in my case sound or image or spoken word/s, etc.) and see what wants to happen next without any concern about how it serves the story seems to be working well. The pieces find and inevitable relationship to each other which could never be planned out. And the story takes care of itself.
As a prompt I will sometimes take an image at random and see what image wants to be next to it which reminds me of something that was said in an interview which plays well when illustrated by newsreel footage where I notice that someone is looking at the camera who I don't think would agree with what my interviewee is saying. Maybe I need to maybe undercut what is being said by with music to emphasise this tension. Come to think of it there are a lot of people looking at the camera -- looking across time at us. I wonder what they would think of us? Maybe we could turn the tables and cut back to the present day and...
Anyhoo. This free thinking (messing) with the dossier/archive usually reveals something that I did not know was there and could never have got at any other less chaotic way.
With this messing and cleaning up and daring to mess again something is beginning to emerge.
Tentative title is Hope and Fear in 1968 or maybe You Say You Want a Revolution. Leader of student revolution in Germany is shot in the head, loses his memory and has to learn everything again.
If you want to see a really audacious application of taking an archive and making a literary documentary maybe check out Double Take by Johan Grimonprez. I think it can be got free on Vimeo.
There is so much here that I needed today - crossing the wires - Yes! Totally the right advice for my novel in progress. And how freeing was this? "..we should do exactly what we feel like doing - what we can do with confidence and joy - and then clean up “the mess” afterward." I felt my soul sigh in relief as I read that.
Thanks Questioner and thanks George, you just gave me a great idea for a writing class assignment I have coming up. I happen to live near a river these days. It's a small one, and it's in a town I don't feel particularly at home in, but there are always at least a few people out walking or jogging or biking along one of its banks. More important and apropos of this discussion, just about every time I go there, I witness some sort of "crossing wires" scenario of the kind George mentions--not as dramatic as in "The Falls," but certainly material that could be worked with fictionally. Thanks for the reminder to pay attention to what's right there in front of my face and for permission to make a total mess of it when first trying to put it on paper. I know I should already "know" both of these things but, still being a novice at fiction writing, I tend to forget them quickly.
Neatly turned, practically applicable phrase "material that could be worked with fictionally". Thanks.
Now I'll just see when I can get to go down to our nearest town park, The Arboretum, which has a Victorian pedigree with a fine lake to take a walk around on the lookout for material that could be worked fictionally
So it seems that the phrase having struck is setting to stay, positively, stuck with me.
My first draft of my novel was like this. I'd written loads of backstory on characters and then had to keep rewriting to find the crossed wires. It's rather laborious, or I want to say painful, though because I made a mess of discovering the plot and timelines (especially timelines) because I was so committed to all the words that were already on the page. But it did make the characters so real that all the "aha" moments that have come since is because there's a trust that's been built between the characters and myself. When they move me in a certain direction I know what feels real for them vs when I'm just trying to make them do something for a word count. It's like a version of the P/N meter for causality because I'm constantly trying to find ways for them to interact and a little bell goes off in my head whenever the right wires cross.
In regaurds to characterization or developing a dossier, one method I’ve been wanting to try is answering the Proust Questionnaire (a series of 35 questions that supposedly reveal who we are, our true human nature) from different perspectives. Admittedly, I have only done it from my own perspective thus far.
I think the Proust Questionnaire could be a good exercise to get to know or maybe even discover a character you hadn’t even thought of yet. It works past the surface level or small talk answers or things like appearance and other demographics. Alls to say, it doesn’t ask the simple question of who is your character? Rather, it asks the deeper question: what is your character like?
I think this exercise might be helpful in developing a dossier !
Some background context: If I try to write something with a plot in mind it is entirely debilitating. I recently-ish have freed myself from the idea of writing with the goal of something happening. Someday… a place I wrote about here or a character whose voice I tried on there might come together in some way. For me, answering the questionnaire was a freeing way to get pen to paper without judgment.
(I also forget how I came upon the Proust Questionnaire, it could have very well been from Story Club!)
The Proust Questionnaire is a great idea. I used to use a version of it with my English language classes. The host of a CBC (Canada) radio program from a few years ago also used to include a segment where writers were asked to respond to it. It's a great way to get to know people better (definitely "past the surface level" as you say), so I agree--I think it would be a very helpful exercise in developing a character dossier.
Can I expand on our definition of the 'dossier' method a bit?
Inspired by the almost hallucinatory level of detail used by Turgenev to describe characters (in Singers and elsewhere), I sat down to write a story (experiment) that relied on static description. I was partly responding to my own worry that, if I relied too heavily on descriptive text that did not explicitly move my little story along, then I would get bogged down - I was also, paradoxically enough, simultaneously worried that I wasn't sufficiently skilled at larding my stories with rich, juicy descriptions a la Turgenev.
Since then, I have found that I can indeed write a story in this way. If I imagine or recreate an item at a sufficient level of detail, then, from somewhere, comes the narrative impetus that will bring about the story - given enough revisions, hahaha...
So, our dossiers can also be about things, or places, in addition to people.
(I now remember that my second source of inspiration, in addition to Turgenev, for my dossier experiment, was the opening lines of Salter's SC-approved 'Twenty Minutes', where there is a haunting description of a winding river - I wanted to be able to describe something like that, almost gratuitously, and then pull a story out of it).
They end up getting pretty thoroughly revised, but they stick around. One story was about a glittery pink pair of child-size Doc Martens. I just started by trying to go as deep as possible into describing those Doc Martens, what they looked like but also what it was like to 'experience' them - then out popped a main character, a guy who saw the shoes in his office and became obsessed with them.
It’s always this idea of freedom - reminds me of Carmen’s Habanera, (in my humble translation) « Love is a child of the Boheme, who had never never known the world of laws »
Doesn’t creation/creativity come from the same unconscious source? Yes, we can trigger it sometimes consciously, but after that, at the rightly felt moment, just let go … and witness the mystery. One can try to analyse and imitate but the Beethovens and the Shakespeares stand alone.
Hello,I’m beginning to write about my life for our grandchildren and wondering if the dossier style would suit this type of writing?Can a book like this have chapters in both First and 3rd person throughout or only the one?
I'd say the dossier style is a perfect way to start ... and to give in-depth portraits of people in your life--you can include the bits that wouldn't necessarily fit into a linear, themed narrative. And your memoir for the grandchildren can be told in any way that feels natural to you. Maybe experiment with first and third and see if one of them feels more "right" to use throughout ... It's great to try out different voices and techniques when you're beginning a project like that one. As to whether you should stick with approach or mix it up--it's your choice; it's your memoir for the family. Such a personal narrative lets you set the rules.
An idea I had recently (yet to act upon) is to go through my photos (pre-digital and digital) and pick out a few photos and write about them. The idea came from a documentary on dying. My intent is to pick 5 photos that mean something (wedding photo, scouts photo from my youth, my first motorbike .... whatever) and then simply write about the photo (who knows how much for each photo - "a picture is worth a thousand words" - maybe that's the target). I imagine explaining why the photo means something beyond "a good picture" - that could include other people, and they may not be in the photo but they are in the "means something" envelope. I thought if it worked with 5 photos then maybe do another 5 and then another..... etc etc. And maybe it just might provide a secret way into a fictional story. Deciding on the 5 photos is where I sit at the moment .... a great way to avoid the writing .... so I need to get past that. Having been to a few funerals of late, there are some curious photos in the service but if you ask a question about them (at an appropriate time) then there is often little known - "it just showed them in a nice way" "or it was them with a family member". Nothing wrong with that .... I saw the documentary just after a set of questions (within our family) and so the idea came about. Not sure if that helps, your comment hopefully will help me go past the idea stage to actions stage. So thank you for that.
I think I'd find it just as engrossing to go through old photos; as you say, it could be a great form of procrastination. Might it be worth getting someone else to choose the five photos for you?
Re "The big problem for any of us writers is a blank page. How do we fill that page in, so we can start revising it and making it better? Well, my answer is: by whatever way is easiest for us."
Absolutely.
I think part of the problem is the potential perfection of the blank page. After all, that's how Hamlet started - and Ozymandias - and Lincoln In The Bardo - and every great piece of writing ever written. Unless we're up there with Shakespeare, or Shelly, or George (and perhaps they all felt / feel this too), every mark we make will take us further from that perfection.
Similarly, there is the infinite variety a blank page makes possible. This is great if you embrace it - a bit like the child who opens an expensive toy, but ends up playing with the box. Why? Because the box has so much room for imagination - it is a house, a rocket, a robot, etc, etc, etc. Every mark we make on an empty page discounts some of those possibilities, so it feels like we're losing something.
I use a few methods to get over this. One is to keep notes about a project for a while before I start actually writing it. Eventually - if the idea has legs - a sort of 'critical mass' will be reached where ideas start sparking other ideas.
Another is to switch to less and less 'permanent' writing tools. I write finished work on my laptop, so writing with pen and paper feels less restrictive. If still struggling, I'll switch to pencil.
I've never got as far as writing with chalk on a blackboard, but maybe one day . . .
Another approach is one I read about in Julia Cameron's excellent book The Artist's Way: when blocked, simply write three pages of anything - literally whatever pops into your head. [An image pops into my mind of running a tap after the pipes have been switched off for a while, getting rid of the dirt until the water runs clean].
For the author, her creativity is closely tied to her faith, but you don't need to share that faith for the exercises to work.
I have tried a 'dossier' approach, back when my approach to playwriting was to have as much known as possible before I started actually writing a play. This included knowing the plot as well as the characters; and for me, it didn't work. My stories had great structure, but they were inert. Characters felt like chess pieces I was moving around a board in predictable ways. Or perhaps a better analogy - I'd written a decent skeletal system, but without any real motivation, there was no nervous system or musculature, so the skeleton just sat there.
These days, I often start by finding out about characters and how they relate by simply putting them in a room together (so to speak) on paper. Sooner or later they'll start saying interesting stuff, which gives me clues as to their characters and relationship.
Plot then emerges from the interactions between character and circumstance (with one character being part of the other's 'circumstances', and vice versa).
I think I may have been switched on to this approach by reading about Harold Pinter, who'd sometimes start with two characters he knew absolutely nothing about, called them A and B, and then wrote to find out what happened between them.
[I once read some overly prescriptive writing advice that included the absolutely certain declaration that 'you can't have compelling dialogue until you know your plot'. On the contrary, I find the emergence of compelling dialogue tells me I'm on the trail of something that will become the plot].
For me, this approach means that the characters feel more 'real', more 'organic'. It also helps me avoid writing clichéd relationships and dialogue - instead of writing a 'typical' mother-and-daughter relationship, for example, I write about the relationship between two people I only later realise are mother and daughter.
The downside being (to stretch one of my analogies even further), I can now write lots of 'muscle', and even recognisable human 'features', but without a skeleton, the whole thing sort of hangs there.
Introducing the skeleton is clearly what I need to do next; and, though it may sound paradoxical, it feels right that the skeleton is added later, rather than being there to build on from the start.
I may well return to the dossier method at some point in the future, as I find even things that really don't work for me at one point, may well work for me at a later date.
Creating character profiles are, for me, an essential part of story-making. If you don't know your characters well enough, how do you know how they are going to behave in certain situations? You may not create them up-front, but if writing longer fiction (even 'long' short stories) a character profile can be invaluable.
Good question, Zac. I have found that, even when I have a profile, characters can still surprise you by what they say and do. No matter how detailed any profile, you are still subject to the fluidity of the creative process, and you can never forecast exactly what word you're going to type next. Nor should you want too; that's where the magic lies!
This is taken from my book "So, you think you're a Writer":
I was at an early stage in writing "Once Significant Others" and had drafted around 11,000 words when I ran into difficulty. I had introduced the six main characters and had the whole of the novel planned out — and yet for some reason I was unable to get traction on the next section of the book where the characters started to interact with each other.
Steven Nesbit, playwright and screenwriter ("A Very British Christmas" [2019], "Gloves Off" [2017], "North v South" [2015]), asked me how well I knew my characters; he wondered whether I might be stuck because I didn’t know them well enough. He suggested I consider defining them more fully before carrying on. So I spent some time drawing up and then completing a profile for each. There were around thirty elements in the template. (Creating them freed me to carry on writing.)
One of the questions in the profile was “What was their childhood like?”
To this day I’ve no idea why I included this; it wasn’t something at all relevant to the plot, yet instinctively I’d added it in. I considered deleting the question or giving myself the option not to answer it, but in the end I answered every question for every character.
In the main section of the novel my cast are having dinner. During the scene, one of them says something to which I found another could respond in a manner that was driven by her experience of childhood. If I had not included that question in the profile, she would never have been able to do that. Moreover, because I knew the childhood background for all the characters, I was able to add in a brief childhood-related exchange initiated by that first response. It only lasted a few lines, but it allowed me to demonstrate the characters as rounded, make the whole scene more realistic. If I hadn’t attempted the profile, I would never have included this small but important fragment in the book.
I often have the exactly opposite experience - a character will say something I'm not expecting, and I'll think 'Where did that come from?', then go on to discover it's prompted by some element of the character's previous life.
As always, lovely and excellent advice from George. I've never tried such a thing--inventing two characters separately and then letting their wires cross. Maybe i'll try it as an experiment one of these days. In my own case, I only create one character. Later, another character will show up. But I can't imagine beginning with two. Maybe my brain is too small to hold all of that at once. Anyway, if it's any help to anyone (and with full acknowledgment that I am no expert in this), I start with one character and--like the Questioner says, maybe I flesh the character out a bit, figuring out who they are. And then I do the age-old trick of saying to myself "And then, one day..." which is the moment that "something happens" to that character, the "something" being big enough to send them spiraling a bit, because that "something" is out of the ordinary. So, from ordinary day to....something else happens. And hopefully, that leads to a story. (It ALWAYS leads to conflict/tension of some kind, because the character wants to get back to normal, to the day before the "something" happened. The whole story, in fact, is that character's quest to find balance again.) Maybe i just went way off topic here...?
Character is fate, said Herakleitos.
Same with my approach--starting with one makes it possible. Two, too much at first.
It's interesting that you talk about holding two characters in your head at once. When I read about this method, I imagined the process as: You write one character, stop, then write about the other. Then, once you have those characters written, you put them together in a situation.
Hi Amy. Yes, you are completely right--that is the process as I'm understanding it, too. What I mean is that I think (and I haven't tried it yet, so who knows?) I think that if I wrote up dossiers for two characters, my brain would explode. I'd have to create them, hold them, and then somehow cross their wires. That seems like a lot of work to me--to make that happen. And i'd have to hold each character in my brain to do it. They would be sort of "equal." Others may not agree, but to me a story is (usually) about one character. And so to create another one completely--and hold that in my head and make the story about both of them, about the way they cross wires....I don't know. Maybe it's a question of tension--to me, the tension is usually not between two people when I write a story. The tension is between one character and themself. I hope this made sense. But yes, I should try the exercise and see what happens!
In drama, 'conflict' can of course mean conflict between two different characters; but it might equally be between who a person wants to be, and who they're supposed to be.
Yes, and at base--to me--stories are ultimately about one character defining themself anew--regardless of what the surface conflict is. Of course, this isn't always the case. But the stories I like best do this.
Hmmm, well, I hope your brain doesn't explode, but I think you're probably pretty safe.
Ha! I'll let you know!
I like when George talks about writing as art. It makes so much sense.
A perfect post for me too. I'm writing historical fiction based on several real people, so creating dossiers works in with understanding who they were perceived to be, and then the rising action is where the art brings them back to life...
I write historical fiction too, about real figures in wildly imagined stories which are long ago enough that not everything is known. What I write before hand, is more a set of monologues than a dossier. I'm accessing emotion rather than facts. I put them in the worst moment and let them hold forth, see what thrills or upsets them, what ax they are grinding. It also tends to give me an idea of the voice a character speaks with. IDK. Works for me.
Really like your monologue idea. I've tried a few monologues as poetry writing exercises, but I've never thought of using them as a way to develop characters for stories. So interesting. Thanks!
I also print them out and take the monologues for a walk sometimes, usually at the beach. I say them as if I were an actor rehearsing my lines. I make all kinds of changes to them as I speak them aloud. It teaches me so much about the character in an embodied way.
Intriguing ... Now I want to know who you're writing about!
I love this simple idea: "I often think that, in art, we should do exactly what we feel like doing - what we can do with confidence and joy - and then clean up “the mess” afterward. (But it’s not really a mess, it’s “the state of affairs” there within the story.)" It might sound simple, but I think it is such a kind, generous and healthy approach to writing. I now might have a post-it in my writing corner that says "Let's make a mess!" :)
As for starting a story by inventing a character, that is not really my approach, simply because life is so curious and is full of real, complex characters. I might of course chisel a real character into something that serves my fiction best, but honestly speaking - life provides me with far too much interesting material for me to have to invent much. But I am a people watcher and eavesdropper. That is how I get most of my ideas for plays. I prefer to start with a question. Actually, the question always comes to me, so I don't even have to ask it. It usually is a big, philosophical question that bothers me on a personal level, and then I think of a scenario that could fit the exploration of this question. But I love the idea of just starting "to make mess" with the element that most intrigues you. Why not? Whatever makes the writing more fun.
I like there being a 'big philosophical question' at the heart of a story; though for me, I often have to work out what this might be after I've done quite a bit of writing, rather than knowing what the 'question' is from the start.
Not entirely the same thing, but I'm fairly sure it was George Orwell who said he wrote in order to tackle some pervasive 'lie' that already existed.
I love this! My big philosophical question often starts with a much smaller, simple question (for example, something like ‘what would my first love think of my married life now?’) and just like you said, through writing I discover that I’m asking much deeper questions and themes. This is why I love writing so much: it’s a process of discovery! And it’s always surprising!
I've experienced something similar in real life. I was driving home along a route that took me past my old University, and decided to drop in. I'd visited once or twice since leaving (a little over 30 years ago), but by now there had been a huge number of changes to the campus, so it didn't feel particularly resonant or full of memories.
Then I took the path from the main campus, to the area where my department was situated, at the top of a wooded hill. Either side of the path were countless bluebells, and once the campus was out of sight, there was a palpable feeling of timelessness. So much so, I started to get the distinct feeling I might bump into my former self.
I wondered what that younger version would think of my life now, and - I'm glad to say - had the distinct impression they'd approve.
Hey, Imola. This reminds me of one of George's recent posts on intention. The "bone to pick" one.
I have read it!
“Look, trust me. Let’s make a mess. The cleaning up of that mess - the organization of that mess into something shapely and inevitable and meaningful - that is your true artistic self, revealing itself."
I am a bit of an interloper here, not a short story writer but a documentary filmmaker working with a very big historical dossier -- images, archive footage, interviews, music, newspaper articles from 1968. And the making of something shapely and inevitable of that mess resonates with the process of editing (which is really what documentary film is all about -- I think).
Taking the cue from George to focus on the individual line (in my case sound or image or spoken word/s, etc.) and see what wants to happen next without any concern about how it serves the story seems to be working well. The pieces find and inevitable relationship to each other which could never be planned out. And the story takes care of itself.
As a prompt I will sometimes take an image at random and see what image wants to be next to it which reminds me of something that was said in an interview which plays well when illustrated by newsreel footage where I notice that someone is looking at the camera who I don't think would agree with what my interviewee is saying. Maybe I need to maybe undercut what is being said by with music to emphasise this tension. Come to think of it there are a lot of people looking at the camera -- looking across time at us. I wonder what they would think of us? Maybe we could turn the tables and cut back to the present day and...
Anyhoo. This free thinking (messing) with the dossier/archive usually reveals something that I did not know was there and could never have got at any other less chaotic way.
With this messing and cleaning up and daring to mess again something is beginning to emerge.
Cool. What's the documentary you're working on about? (or if you can't say, do you have an older one that this applies to?)
Tentative title is Hope and Fear in 1968 or maybe You Say You Want a Revolution. Leader of student revolution in Germany is shot in the head, loses his memory and has to learn everything again.
If you want to see a really audacious application of taking an archive and making a literary documentary maybe check out Double Take by Johan Grimonprez. I think it can be got free on Vimeo.
Ever read “The Conversations” where Ondaatje interviews Walter Murch? Revelatory. Such a unique perspective on how stories are built and imagined.
Yes. A while ago. Mr Murch is the George Saunders of filmmaking. Great recommendation. Walter has new book coming out next year I hear.
There is so much here that I needed today - crossing the wires - Yes! Totally the right advice for my novel in progress. And how freeing was this? "..we should do exactly what we feel like doing - what we can do with confidence and joy - and then clean up “the mess” afterward." I felt my soul sigh in relief as I read that.
Yes to the mess!
Thanks Questioner and thanks George, you just gave me a great idea for a writing class assignment I have coming up. I happen to live near a river these days. It's a small one, and it's in a town I don't feel particularly at home in, but there are always at least a few people out walking or jogging or biking along one of its banks. More important and apropos of this discussion, just about every time I go there, I witness some sort of "crossing wires" scenario of the kind George mentions--not as dramatic as in "The Falls," but certainly material that could be worked with fictionally. Thanks for the reminder to pay attention to what's right there in front of my face and for permission to make a total mess of it when first trying to put it on paper. I know I should already "know" both of these things but, still being a novice at fiction writing, I tend to forget them quickly.
Neatly turned, practically applicable phrase "material that could be worked with fictionally". Thanks.
Now I'll just see when I can get to go down to our nearest town park, The Arboretum, which has a Victorian pedigree with a fine lake to take a walk around on the lookout for material that could be worked fictionally
So it seems that the phrase having struck is setting to stay, positively, stuck with me.
My first draft of my novel was like this. I'd written loads of backstory on characters and then had to keep rewriting to find the crossed wires. It's rather laborious, or I want to say painful, though because I made a mess of discovering the plot and timelines (especially timelines) because I was so committed to all the words that were already on the page. But it did make the characters so real that all the "aha" moments that have come since is because there's a trust that's been built between the characters and myself. When they move me in a certain direction I know what feels real for them vs when I'm just trying to make them do something for a word count. It's like a version of the P/N meter for causality because I'm constantly trying to find ways for them to interact and a little bell goes off in my head whenever the right wires cross.
This really resonates with me. I love reaching the point where the characters will no longer simply say whatever words I put in their mouths.
In regaurds to characterization or developing a dossier, one method I’ve been wanting to try is answering the Proust Questionnaire (a series of 35 questions that supposedly reveal who we are, our true human nature) from different perspectives. Admittedly, I have only done it from my own perspective thus far.
I think the Proust Questionnaire could be a good exercise to get to know or maybe even discover a character you hadn’t even thought of yet. It works past the surface level or small talk answers or things like appearance and other demographics. Alls to say, it doesn’t ask the simple question of who is your character? Rather, it asks the deeper question: what is your character like?
I think this exercise might be helpful in developing a dossier !
Some background context: If I try to write something with a plot in mind it is entirely debilitating. I recently-ish have freed myself from the idea of writing with the goal of something happening. Someday… a place I wrote about here or a character whose voice I tried on there might come together in some way. For me, answering the questionnaire was a freeing way to get pen to paper without judgment.
(I also forget how I came upon the Proust Questionnaire, it could have very well been from Story Club!)
The Proust Questionnaire is a great idea. I used to use a version of it with my English language classes. The host of a CBC (Canada) radio program from a few years ago also used to include a segment where writers were asked to respond to it. It's a great way to get to know people better (definitely "past the surface level" as you say), so I agree--I think it would be a very helpful exercise in developing a character dossier.
Can I expand on our definition of the 'dossier' method a bit?
Inspired by the almost hallucinatory level of detail used by Turgenev to describe characters (in Singers and elsewhere), I sat down to write a story (experiment) that relied on static description. I was partly responding to my own worry that, if I relied too heavily on descriptive text that did not explicitly move my little story along, then I would get bogged down - I was also, paradoxically enough, simultaneously worried that I wasn't sufficiently skilled at larding my stories with rich, juicy descriptions a la Turgenev.
Since then, I have found that I can indeed write a story in this way. If I imagine or recreate an item at a sufficient level of detail, then, from somewhere, comes the narrative impetus that will bring about the story - given enough revisions, hahaha...
So, our dossiers can also be about things, or places, in addition to people.
(I now remember that my second source of inspiration, in addition to Turgenev, for my dossier experiment, was the opening lines of Salter's SC-approved 'Twenty Minutes', where there is a haunting description of a winding river - I wanted to be able to describe something like that, almost gratuitously, and then pull a story out of it).
Do you end up keeping these descriptive passages in the story, or are they just "background" that gets left behind?
They end up getting pretty thoroughly revised, but they stick around. One story was about a glittery pink pair of child-size Doc Martens. I just started by trying to go as deep as possible into describing those Doc Martens, what they looked like but also what it was like to 'experience' them - then out popped a main character, a guy who saw the shoes in his office and became obsessed with them.
It’s always this idea of freedom - reminds me of Carmen’s Habanera, (in my humble translation) « Love is a child of the Boheme, who had never never known the world of laws »
Doesn’t creation/creativity come from the same unconscious source? Yes, we can trigger it sometimes consciously, but after that, at the rightly felt moment, just let go … and witness the mystery. One can try to analyse and imitate but the Beethovens and the Shakespeares stand alone.
Hello,I’m beginning to write about my life for our grandchildren and wondering if the dossier style would suit this type of writing?Can a book like this have chapters in both First and 3rd person throughout or only the one?
Appreciate your advice/suggestions
Regards Nellie
I'd say the dossier style is a perfect way to start ... and to give in-depth portraits of people in your life--you can include the bits that wouldn't necessarily fit into a linear, themed narrative. And your memoir for the grandchildren can be told in any way that feels natural to you. Maybe experiment with first and third and see if one of them feels more "right" to use throughout ... It's great to try out different voices and techniques when you're beginning a project like that one. As to whether you should stick with approach or mix it up--it's your choice; it's your memoir for the family. Such a personal narrative lets you set the rules.
An idea I had recently (yet to act upon) is to go through my photos (pre-digital and digital) and pick out a few photos and write about them. The idea came from a documentary on dying. My intent is to pick 5 photos that mean something (wedding photo, scouts photo from my youth, my first motorbike .... whatever) and then simply write about the photo (who knows how much for each photo - "a picture is worth a thousand words" - maybe that's the target). I imagine explaining why the photo means something beyond "a good picture" - that could include other people, and they may not be in the photo but they are in the "means something" envelope. I thought if it worked with 5 photos then maybe do another 5 and then another..... etc etc. And maybe it just might provide a secret way into a fictional story. Deciding on the 5 photos is where I sit at the moment .... a great way to avoid the writing .... so I need to get past that. Having been to a few funerals of late, there are some curious photos in the service but if you ask a question about them (at an appropriate time) then there is often little known - "it just showed them in a nice way" "or it was them with a family member". Nothing wrong with that .... I saw the documentary just after a set of questions (within our family) and so the idea came about. Not sure if that helps, your comment hopefully will help me go past the idea stage to actions stage. So thank you for that.
I think I'd find it just as engrossing to go through old photos; as you say, it could be a great form of procrastination. Might it be worth getting someone else to choose the five photos for you?
Good thought re someone else doing the photo selection. Then I'll have to find a new reason for my procrastination. Hmmmm.....
Yeah, it can be a bot like spending so long coming up with an exam revision timetable, there's no time left to revise . . .
Right, I'm off to write a long, long list entitled 'Reasons not to procrastinate'.
Good old procrastination...the thief of time.
Crossing the wires. I love this! Office Hours always seems perfectly timed for the thing I am writing.
This resonated with me as well.
Re "The big problem for any of us writers is a blank page. How do we fill that page in, so we can start revising it and making it better? Well, my answer is: by whatever way is easiest for us."
Absolutely.
I think part of the problem is the potential perfection of the blank page. After all, that's how Hamlet started - and Ozymandias - and Lincoln In The Bardo - and every great piece of writing ever written. Unless we're up there with Shakespeare, or Shelly, or George (and perhaps they all felt / feel this too), every mark we make will take us further from that perfection.
Similarly, there is the infinite variety a blank page makes possible. This is great if you embrace it - a bit like the child who opens an expensive toy, but ends up playing with the box. Why? Because the box has so much room for imagination - it is a house, a rocket, a robot, etc, etc, etc. Every mark we make on an empty page discounts some of those possibilities, so it feels like we're losing something.
I use a few methods to get over this. One is to keep notes about a project for a while before I start actually writing it. Eventually - if the idea has legs - a sort of 'critical mass' will be reached where ideas start sparking other ideas.
Another is to switch to less and less 'permanent' writing tools. I write finished work on my laptop, so writing with pen and paper feels less restrictive. If still struggling, I'll switch to pencil.
I've never got as far as writing with chalk on a blackboard, but maybe one day . . .
Another approach is one I read about in Julia Cameron's excellent book The Artist's Way: when blocked, simply write three pages of anything - literally whatever pops into your head. [An image pops into my mind of running a tap after the pipes have been switched off for a while, getting rid of the dirt until the water runs clean].
For the author, her creativity is closely tied to her faith, but you don't need to share that faith for the exercises to work.
I have tried a 'dossier' approach, back when my approach to playwriting was to have as much known as possible before I started actually writing a play. This included knowing the plot as well as the characters; and for me, it didn't work. My stories had great structure, but they were inert. Characters felt like chess pieces I was moving around a board in predictable ways. Or perhaps a better analogy - I'd written a decent skeletal system, but without any real motivation, there was no nervous system or musculature, so the skeleton just sat there.
These days, I often start by finding out about characters and how they relate by simply putting them in a room together (so to speak) on paper. Sooner or later they'll start saying interesting stuff, which gives me clues as to their characters and relationship.
Plot then emerges from the interactions between character and circumstance (with one character being part of the other's 'circumstances', and vice versa).
I think I may have been switched on to this approach by reading about Harold Pinter, who'd sometimes start with two characters he knew absolutely nothing about, called them A and B, and then wrote to find out what happened between them.
[I once read some overly prescriptive writing advice that included the absolutely certain declaration that 'you can't have compelling dialogue until you know your plot'. On the contrary, I find the emergence of compelling dialogue tells me I'm on the trail of something that will become the plot].
For me, this approach means that the characters feel more 'real', more 'organic'. It also helps me avoid writing clichéd relationships and dialogue - instead of writing a 'typical' mother-and-daughter relationship, for example, I write about the relationship between two people I only later realise are mother and daughter.
The downside being (to stretch one of my analogies even further), I can now write lots of 'muscle', and even recognisable human 'features', but without a skeleton, the whole thing sort of hangs there.
Introducing the skeleton is clearly what I need to do next; and, though it may sound paradoxical, it feels right that the skeleton is added later, rather than being there to build on from the start.
I may well return to the dossier method at some point in the future, as I find even things that really don't work for me at one point, may well work for me at a later date.
Creating character profiles are, for me, an essential part of story-making. If you don't know your characters well enough, how do you know how they are going to behave in certain situations? You may not create them up-front, but if writing longer fiction (even 'long' short stories) a character profile can be invaluable.
What happens if you give them the freedom to surprise you? (I am playing devil's advocate).
Good question, Zac. I have found that, even when I have a profile, characters can still surprise you by what they say and do. No matter how detailed any profile, you are still subject to the fluidity of the creative process, and you can never forecast exactly what word you're going to type next. Nor should you want too; that's where the magic lies!
This is taken from my book "So, you think you're a Writer":
I was at an early stage in writing "Once Significant Others" and had drafted around 11,000 words when I ran into difficulty. I had introduced the six main characters and had the whole of the novel planned out — and yet for some reason I was unable to get traction on the next section of the book where the characters started to interact with each other.
Steven Nesbit, playwright and screenwriter ("A Very British Christmas" [2019], "Gloves Off" [2017], "North v South" [2015]), asked me how well I knew my characters; he wondered whether I might be stuck because I didn’t know them well enough. He suggested I consider defining them more fully before carrying on. So I spent some time drawing up and then completing a profile for each. There were around thirty elements in the template. (Creating them freed me to carry on writing.)
One of the questions in the profile was “What was their childhood like?”
To this day I’ve no idea why I included this; it wasn’t something at all relevant to the plot, yet instinctively I’d added it in. I considered deleting the question or giving myself the option not to answer it, but in the end I answered every question for every character.
In the main section of the novel my cast are having dinner. During the scene, one of them says something to which I found another could respond in a manner that was driven by her experience of childhood. If I had not included that question in the profile, she would never have been able to do that. Moreover, because I knew the childhood background for all the characters, I was able to add in a brief childhood-related exchange initiated by that first response. It only lasted a few lines, but it allowed me to demonstrate the characters as rounded, make the whole scene more realistic. If I hadn’t attempted the profile, I would never have included this small but important fragment in the book.
What a great example - thanks for sharing.
I often have the exactly opposite experience - a character will say something I'm not expecting, and I'll think 'Where did that come from?', then go on to discover it's prompted by some element of the character's previous life.