Mark Rubinstein's Blog - Posts Tagged "stephen-king"
Tortured Souls Tell Great Stories
Poisoned by his lustful quest for vengeance, his obsession carries his crew to their demise.
(Ahab, Moby Dick)
The king goes slowly insane because of his mistakes and his daughters’ perfidy.
(Lear, King Lear)
She was forced to make a choice between two unbearable, unthinkable options.
(Sophie, Sophie’s Choice)
Their marriage, finances and lives were bankrupt; and now he is suspected of her murder.
(Nick and Amy Dunne, Gone Girl)
She could not stop remembering the sound of the spring lambs being slaughtered.
(Clarice Starling, The Silence of the Lambs)
Take the character to hell (either physically or mentally), and if well-drawn, the reader will really care about this person. All of us can relate to the torture of being alive in an indifferent world.
When I think about building a character for a novel, my task is to create someone who inhabits a world where aspects of his personality and life-experiences are the spawning grounds for an emotionally charged and conflicted existence.
Stephen King’s On Writing advises writers to imbue their characters with honest voices, to make them people with faults, passions, weaknesses and strengths. These characteristics make them human. We can relate to them, whether they be a king; concentration camp survivor; detective; duplicitous couple; or sea captain, because their fictional lives intersect with ours and make us connect with them. The link can be one of intense compassion or absolute revulsion, but nonetheless, it is a bond. It relates to the character’s tortured and anguished existence.
All of us have felt victimized by the randomness of life. No one has escaped the seemingly unfair punishment brought upon us through pure happenstance. Recent events like the 2001 terrorist attacks or the devastation brought about by storms like Sandy remind us of the tenuous nature of existence.
Worthy fiction draws us into a world where the characters are emotionally driven and tortured. Their mistakes and triumphs must resonate as real. Human nature doesn’t change. That’s why the stories in the Iliad and the collection of works by Shakespeare are as relevant now as they were eons ago.
There’s plenty of advice about developing characters. Guidance ranges from drawing a detailed profile of each one, describing physical appearance and personality traits, to making a timeline charting the character’s history in the context of the novel.
All of this is solid and practical guidance.
But in my opinion, what matters most is this: the character must suffer turmoil and torture, presented in the context of a story that allows the reader to surrender control and enter the fictional but believable world you have created.
To varying degrees, and at different times throughout our lives, we are all tortured souls.
The life of a well-developed, memorable fictional character must be, too.
Mark Rubinstein
Author, Mad Dog House and Love Gone Mad
(Ahab, Moby Dick)
The king goes slowly insane because of his mistakes and his daughters’ perfidy.
(Lear, King Lear)
She was forced to make a choice between two unbearable, unthinkable options.
(Sophie, Sophie’s Choice)
Their marriage, finances and lives were bankrupt; and now he is suspected of her murder.
(Nick and Amy Dunne, Gone Girl)
She could not stop remembering the sound of the spring lambs being slaughtered.
(Clarice Starling, The Silence of the Lambs)
Take the character to hell (either physically or mentally), and if well-drawn, the reader will really care about this person. All of us can relate to the torture of being alive in an indifferent world.
When I think about building a character for a novel, my task is to create someone who inhabits a world where aspects of his personality and life-experiences are the spawning grounds for an emotionally charged and conflicted existence.
Stephen King’s On Writing advises writers to imbue their characters with honest voices, to make them people with faults, passions, weaknesses and strengths. These characteristics make them human. We can relate to them, whether they be a king; concentration camp survivor; detective; duplicitous couple; or sea captain, because their fictional lives intersect with ours and make us connect with them. The link can be one of intense compassion or absolute revulsion, but nonetheless, it is a bond. It relates to the character’s tortured and anguished existence.
All of us have felt victimized by the randomness of life. No one has escaped the seemingly unfair punishment brought upon us through pure happenstance. Recent events like the 2001 terrorist attacks or the devastation brought about by storms like Sandy remind us of the tenuous nature of existence.
Worthy fiction draws us into a world where the characters are emotionally driven and tortured. Their mistakes and triumphs must resonate as real. Human nature doesn’t change. That’s why the stories in the Iliad and the collection of works by Shakespeare are as relevant now as they were eons ago.
There’s plenty of advice about developing characters. Guidance ranges from drawing a detailed profile of each one, describing physical appearance and personality traits, to making a timeline charting the character’s history in the context of the novel.
All of this is solid and practical guidance.
But in my opinion, what matters most is this: the character must suffer turmoil and torture, presented in the context of a story that allows the reader to surrender control and enter the fictional but believable world you have created.
To varying degrees, and at different times throughout our lives, we are all tortured souls.
The life of a well-developed, memorable fictional character must be, too.
Mark Rubinstein
Author, Mad Dog House and Love Gone Mad
Psychology in Fiction
Over the last few years, I’ve been writing fiction. For decades, I’ve been a psychiatrist. As a novelist, I now write with a reader’s sensibility, and read with a writer’s eye. I’m struck by the degree to which fiction and psychology share certain crucial elements.
Human functioning can be conceptualized as involving thinking, feeling, and behavior. These three elements are the very pillars of being.
Fiction taps into these foundations of existence by using the written word to evoke mental images, which in turn, beget thoughts and feelings. A novelist creates a world for the reader to enter, and to which the reader relates. This is the essence of storytelling.
If the connection is a positive one, the reader is drawn into the tale. The reader must relate to the story’s protagonist for the read to be enjoyable. It’s somewhat akin to meeting a person for the first time. If there’s chemistry, a relationship begins.
To fall under the novelist’s “spell”, the reader must experience and relate to how the protagonist thinks, feels, and behaves. Without that connection, there’s little motivation to continue the relationship. The book is cast aside.
The element of plot is important. But, if the character’s thoughts, feelings, or behaviors are vapid, the plot is nothing more than a linear series of events with little meaning.
So, the first questions a writer must answer are: who is this character, and why should a reader care about what befalls the person? To put it bluntly, character counts. It’s nearly everything. Essentially, the psychology of fiction is the psychology of life. The reader must care about the character for the novel to strike a responsive chord. The goal is to immerse the reader into the commonality of life experience, establishing oneness with the protagonist’s thoughts, feelings, and situation.
Think about the tsunami of some years ago. In that disaster, 250,000 people lost their lives within the span of a few hours. While we were horrified by the magnitude of the event, most of us went about our day, as usual. But, if one person who died had been a loved one, our reactions would have been profoundly different.
Caring about someone counts. Very deeply.
While all people are different, in some respects, we share the same cognitive and emotional repertoires. We all can feel horror, fear, lust, humor, anger, guilt, love, hate, and every other emotional variant. And when we pick up a novel, we want to experience the mental and emotional lives of the characters, living vicariously through them.
Think of today’s bestsellers, those that remain at the top of the charts for many weeks or months. They all have thought-provoking characters who rivet us. In Gone Girl, Nick and Amy Dunne capture us with their marital difficulties and myopically self-serving distortions. The Goldfinch focuses on Theo Decker, a troubled youngster struggling with the loss of his mother, dealing with a remote father, and trying to find his way through a duplicitous world. Whether it’s All the Light We Cannot See, or The Nightingale, each story plumbs the pillars of existence: how and why the characters think, feel, and behave as they do.
This is true for all fiction, whether it’s literary, romance, sci-fi, thrillers, mysteries, or any other genre. Whether you’re reading Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes and rooting for Bill Hodges; Don Winslow’s The Cartel, worrying about Art Keller; a Harry Bosch novel by Michael Connelly; David Morrell’s stunning Victorian novel, Inspector of the Dead, where Thomas De Quincey works Sherlockian magic; Jon Land’s Strong Darkness, featuring Caitlin Strong; or any Linda Fairstein novel with Alex Cooper—the protagonist’s character is crucial. It marries the reader to the novel. And, that connection can linger long after the book has been read.
Psychology is everything in life, and in fiction.
Mark Rubinstein’s latest novel is The Lovers’ Tango
Human functioning can be conceptualized as involving thinking, feeling, and behavior. These three elements are the very pillars of being.
Fiction taps into these foundations of existence by using the written word to evoke mental images, which in turn, beget thoughts and feelings. A novelist creates a world for the reader to enter, and to which the reader relates. This is the essence of storytelling.
If the connection is a positive one, the reader is drawn into the tale. The reader must relate to the story’s protagonist for the read to be enjoyable. It’s somewhat akin to meeting a person for the first time. If there’s chemistry, a relationship begins.
To fall under the novelist’s “spell”, the reader must experience and relate to how the protagonist thinks, feels, and behaves. Without that connection, there’s little motivation to continue the relationship. The book is cast aside.
The element of plot is important. But, if the character’s thoughts, feelings, or behaviors are vapid, the plot is nothing more than a linear series of events with little meaning.
So, the first questions a writer must answer are: who is this character, and why should a reader care about what befalls the person? To put it bluntly, character counts. It’s nearly everything. Essentially, the psychology of fiction is the psychology of life. The reader must care about the character for the novel to strike a responsive chord. The goal is to immerse the reader into the commonality of life experience, establishing oneness with the protagonist’s thoughts, feelings, and situation.
Think about the tsunami of some years ago. In that disaster, 250,000 people lost their lives within the span of a few hours. While we were horrified by the magnitude of the event, most of us went about our day, as usual. But, if one person who died had been a loved one, our reactions would have been profoundly different.
Caring about someone counts. Very deeply.
While all people are different, in some respects, we share the same cognitive and emotional repertoires. We all can feel horror, fear, lust, humor, anger, guilt, love, hate, and every other emotional variant. And when we pick up a novel, we want to experience the mental and emotional lives of the characters, living vicariously through them.
Think of today’s bestsellers, those that remain at the top of the charts for many weeks or months. They all have thought-provoking characters who rivet us. In Gone Girl, Nick and Amy Dunne capture us with their marital difficulties and myopically self-serving distortions. The Goldfinch focuses on Theo Decker, a troubled youngster struggling with the loss of his mother, dealing with a remote father, and trying to find his way through a duplicitous world. Whether it’s All the Light We Cannot See, or The Nightingale, each story plumbs the pillars of existence: how and why the characters think, feel, and behave as they do.
This is true for all fiction, whether it’s literary, romance, sci-fi, thrillers, mysteries, or any other genre. Whether you’re reading Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes and rooting for Bill Hodges; Don Winslow’s The Cartel, worrying about Art Keller; a Harry Bosch novel by Michael Connelly; David Morrell’s stunning Victorian novel, Inspector of the Dead, where Thomas De Quincey works Sherlockian magic; Jon Land’s Strong Darkness, featuring Caitlin Strong; or any Linda Fairstein novel with Alex Cooper—the protagonist’s character is crucial. It marries the reader to the novel. And, that connection can linger long after the book has been read.
Psychology is everything in life, and in fiction.
Mark Rubinstein’s latest novel is The Lovers’ Tango
