What You Don’t Think You Think

I’m not one of those writers who thinks that, by writing stories, I’ve stumbled upon some grand secret of human nature. I do believe that creating art, in any form, even bad art, is good for you, and that if you take it seriously and think about expression of thought and self and perspective that this is generally a good thing. But I’d never claim by any means to be an expert on human nature.

But if you write enough stories and get better at it, you realize that what makes one fictional character seem more alive than another is often found in how much unconscious you give them. By that I mean how much is going on beneath the surface that they aren’t aware of.

This is trickier than we might expect since humans generally don’t acknowledge their subconscious as a motivating factor. The idea that most of what we think and do is completely beneath the surface and unseen, even by us, doesn’t feel right.

Who is in the driver’s seat, if not us?

Well, it is us, and it isn’t. It’s a tangled ball of instincts, emotions, assumptions, and hangups. We might call it the Id or whatever label you want to put on it but how much you can imply subconscious in a character’s actions can make all the difference.

Characters should rarely know everything about themselves, their motivations, their goals. Even a well-adjusted character has an ocean of unrealized thoughts churning below the surface. And these need not be complicated or confusing, but they’re there, and they decide everything.

Characters that are only about what they say and do are flatter and generally, more boring. They can still be serviceable and some stories work fine with those kind of stories. But most characters worth remembering have an unconscious at work, even if it’s never commented upon.

It’s really tricky to imply that unconscious, which is why characters in fiction often have at least some self-awareness. They might drop their guard at a moment and talk about themselves in a revealing way. They might acknowledge their screw ups. They might deny their problems so vehemently that it draws attention to them. It’s all about subtext in the end, and any character that just outright tells you how they feel and is right about it is either experiencing a moment of clarity or flatter than a pancake.

Of course, to understand a fictional character’s unconscious, we also have to acknowledge our own unconscious influences. And that’s a tough thing to wrestle with.