Characters: What It’s All About
IMAGE: Jackson Pollock at the MoMA, by joansorolla Creative Commons site
“I respond to character-driven material, regardless of its origin. I fall in love with the characters and generally respond to stories featuring ordinary people who succeed in overcoming extraordinary challenges.” —Producer Gale Anne Hurd
If I had a mantra while writing Pinching Zwieback, it could have been this.
During the Morden library reading on November 28, an astute reader commented that in a normal short story, the reader can be frustrated because the story ends so soon, unlike a novel where characters receive more development. By using recurrent characters and a narrative arc that goes from beginning to end, much as a novel does, the readers get to know the main characters in PZ quite well.
These observations are true for readers and I can comment that it’s true for the author too! I learned a lot about these characters from the structure of the storytelling and by “letting them tell the story” as they developed personality and definition during the writing of the book.
My expert editors, including Matt Joudrey, Alana Brooker, Nina McIntyre, and Priyanka Ketkar did a lot to bring these distinct characters out and let them fulfil their roles as individuals in the larger story told by the collection as a whole.
This aspect of writing Pinching Zwieback was one of the most enjoyable—and cathartic—for me as I did an emotional freefall and let my imagination go, using the characters as the vehicle to rewrite life events from my past and explore alternate outcomes.
I didn’t always use the outcomes I imagined, but just the act of creating them allowed me to think more freely about my own history without being bound by what “really” happened. My job as a storyteller benefitted from this exercise, particularly with the help of my expert team of editors.
In addition, I tried to let the characters come alive and to have them think and sound in the genuine way I imagined they would.
“[…] I like the rawness of the pure untarnished colloquial voice in the reading. Having something to say is essential to me. That is to say, I’m not impressed with a great volume of rarely used words thrown together to impress the reader with the vast knowledge of the writer on command of English, tricks of writing, ancient history, or the places they’ve travelled.”—An excerpt from an interview by writer, editor, publisher Judith Lawrence in, “Six Questions For…”
