bringing a character to life

There are characters we love to hate in movies and books, we run into them all the time. Occasionally we find ourselves writing them. 
      ,Often these are the necessary antagonist to get our main character moving. I’m usually pretty fond of the antagonist. I can never think of these characters without remembering advice that came from my son when he was ten or eleven. I’d gotten angry with a family member, and he heard me complaining to a friend. He got into the conversation, not siding with anyone, but clearly interested in seeing me let go of the resentment. 

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      Not yet ready for that, I reminded him this person had been a thorn in his side too. He shrugged, and with an endearing smile, he said, “They have redeeming qualities.” 
              And of course, it does take two to create a conflict. 
          (So when i take a picture <above> of Calliope with a vintage--40 yr old--stolen stuffed toy that she won't give back--this is Frog of Frog and Toad, i try to recall when i have frustrated her at least as much <sigh, to the right>. Only two weeks after arrival to live with me, she was so aggravated she burrowed into the folds of a quilt and stayed there for an hour or so. Maybe she fell asleep, but i could hear little growls every so often.)

          That’s what I try to give my antagonists--redeeming qualities. 

 

         Now and then that doesn’t work for me, and the character has some quality I can’t tolerate. Usually, in these cases, it turns out to be a flaw I share. That should be a gift, i think; I already understand the weakness, and the rationale that supports it. I should be able to write that character like she’s a summation to the jury. And yet, I have to wrestle her to the floor, bend her this way and that, until I get something just flexible enough to work with. 

          Then, there are the real mysteries, the character we just can’t bring to life. Perhaps these are aspects of ourselves we haven’t yet plumbed. Or maybe we accidentally drew from life’s lessons a type we never have understood properly, and haven’t yet come to grips with how to treat them. 

       
 Right now I’m writing a character I’m not drawn to, and it shows, he’s a bit flat and uninteresting. We can believe the protagonist doesn’t care for him either, but I have to find something to make me care before I can make the reader care. A character only becomes rounded and real when there is something that . . . to say something that “appeals” to me hardly says it all.

Here is how I want to feel: a few years ago I brought home a puppy, a chocolate poodle that put on a pound and a half every week in her first few months of growth. She loved anything that belonged to me, she loved anything else she wasn’t supposed to have, and she loved it hard. Mangoes topped the list. So when I peeled a mango, I shared the fruit with her, and then I let her have the flesh-covered seed.

She would clean it down to a smooth egg shape and take off to hide it. She’d spend twenty minutes finding and rejecting a hiding place. I’d watch her digging partial holes, clearing fallen leaves to achieve a less labor-intensive but equally good hiding place, standing for a minute or two under cover of vines in the garden as drool dripped from the seed in her mouth, then drop it into the prepared site.

I don’t know whether this dropping-the-seed-into-the-hole was done as lovingly as it appeared or whether the seed had begun to stick to the roof of her mouth. But it looked like it was done with a kind of tenderness, and then she would, with obvious care, use one paw to cover it with sand or leaves. She’d sort of dance away, feeling a job had been done well, but then she’d pause, look around—probably feeling the presence of an observer as a prickle down her spine—and whip back to the site of the dig and unearth that mango seed with one great swipe of the furry paw. She’d sniff it approvingly, no sign of tampering, snatch it up in her teeth and set off on another search-and-dig mission that would take another twenty to forty minutes of her puppy day. 

The feeling I had watching Clio, a kind of fascination, part love, part getting to know her, that’s how I want to feel about my characters, especially the less attractive ones. How else can I put them on the page in a way that will establish them in the reader’s imagination, will hold a readers interest for hours?

Eventually i find something in their experience that is "like me," and like you, something universally understood as cause and then i wrestle him to the floor, bend him this way and that, until I get something that is clearly effect. i write scenes that will never make it into the book, perhaps a day in his past or even his future, i put tangible objects into that scene, i listen to the character's own memories, and i ask myself what all these details mean. i don't rush him, i linger with this character that has been less than fascinating and soon, while i'm mulling over meanings and themes, motives and the stakes this character had in the outcomes, he excavates precisely the information that makes him essential to the story he lives in. 

What i don't think about during this process is what i'm really doing, which is writing myself into this character, into an interior landscape that i haven't yet truly walked, but i'm still finding little trail signs, the trod upon leaf, the broken end of a branch, the turned over stone, the damp footprint, and letting them lead me to the self i haven't yet been. When I write myself into a book, when any of us write ourselves into our characters, we must have the willingness to see the charm in our limited understanding, the virtue in our dogged persistence, we must have the courage of our convictions no matter how wrong we are. 

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But when we present one of those mysteries of our own lives, we strive to present these flaws to the reader as if they were raw oysters on a pearl platter: here, it’s mine and now it’s yours too. 

Or perhaps, as if they were sandy mango seeds with little bite marks all over.

Audrey Couloumbis--actually i'm requesting your kind patience. i haven't got the hang of this quite yet and it's too early to call the west coast and ask for help get this columnar layout to disappear. i tried and the pictures moved all around. i'll get it sorted out later today, i hope. And of course, you'll find me here once a month, writing for you. Leave a message and she’ll get back to you.

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