My Characters Drive Me Nuts, Part 1

Having lived in silence about the people populating my head for more than five decades, I have decided, finally, to open up about this whole crazy process of creating fiction. Or at least my crazy process.

And about the blasted characters who drive me up a wall.

There is a debate among writers about where the storytelling process takes off. One camp says it begins with an idea, like terrorists take the White House. The other argues it starts with characters. As in, a teen girl who finds out she had a major past-life role in the cruelties of her society’s overclass.

Put me firmly in the that latter camp. Stories that start with an idea tend to spawn characters with no depth, no arc of self-discovery and growth. This is painfully obvious with too many films. Maybe the premise was high concept, but the characters end up strictly low rent and lame, lame, lame.

I didn’t consciously decide to begin with characters. They chose me, or at least it seemed that way. Like so many writers of my antediluvian generation, I read J.R.R. Tolkien and was profoundly inspired. I rather imagine J.K. Rowling is filling the same role for today’s cohort of budding scribes.

But I didn’t want to write more elves-dragons-swords fantasy. Now, there’s nothing wrong with the aforesaid. I’ve read plenty of terrific works in the Tolkien-like vein. I wanted to do something different.

I need not have worried. About when I was 13, characters started invading my daydreams. They most decidedly weren’t elves or dwarves or dragons or knights in shining armor. They were human beings. I had no idea who they were then, but I could see them and hear speak them in my mind. Vividly. Clearly.

I literally spent decades and lots of thought time getting to know them. They entranced and unnerved me.





Griffin Mordecai

I once was standing in a checkout line at a Safeway and reached for a baby name book sitting on the impulse purchase rack. I opened it to the G section and saw the name Griffin. That’s me, one character said. I heard it in my head. I quickly closed the book and put it back.

Another time I was in downtown Dallas heading toward the YMCA for a weekend workout. I heard two characters, brothers, talking. One cracked a joke, and I guffawed loudly.

At that exact moment I looked up and noticed a business acquaintance walking out of a building close enough to hear me. She must have thought I was looney, by myself and laughing out loud. I smiled and waved and walked on to the gym, a bit faster.

My point is this. Until an author knows her characters, she doesn’t know how they will behave in different situations. And if she doesn’t know how they act and react, she cannot craft the plot. That’s because the events of any story, a.k.a. the plot, arise straight out of the characters’, well, character and motivation, what’s in their hearts.

Griffin, as it turns out, is mean, petty, vicious, and spiteful with a mountain-size chip on his shoulder. And he acts accordingly, stirring up all manner of mischief and driving the plot in various ways. At times I really just want to smack him and say, “You have so much! What is your problem?”

But that’s the thing about my characters. They don’t give a rat’s behind about what I think. They’re going to do what they are going to do.

That realization led me down an amazing spiritual path that I will explore in future takes on the topic of crafting characters.

Creativity and spirituality, at least for me, are inextricably entwined. Lots more on that to come.