Getting into your character’s head…
C.E. Grundler
Two weeks and counting. That’s the official toll I’ve paid for burning the candle at both ends. Two weeks being sidelined from attacking the decks when I was closing in on the finish line. Two weeks, but time has seemed to crawl, even go backwards. Yeah. I get it. I’m not a kid anymore and I don’t get over a simple summer cold in a day or two. I’ve learned my lesson.
Two weeks with no boat work, and very little writing would have made for a very cranky human if not for the fact that it let me catch up on a whole bunch of reading, research, and watching old heist movies, (technically, also research.) To create a truly menacing villain with solid (albeit perverse) reasoning behind his actions, I needed to step beyond my own emotional comfort zone and climb into the head of someone with a highly deviated moral compass and an emotional range that required books by psychologists and neuroscientists to grasp.
Much of what you’ll find on the webs when it comes to shocking acts and reasoning falls along the sensational end, but doesn’t delve into the nuts-and-bolts in a nice, straightforward way. I was hoping to take a peak under the hood, so to speak. And not just for the crazier characters. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m a bit of an introvert, though ‘a bit’ is a bit of an understatement. On the spectrum of introversion, I’m way off in the deep end of the pool, and I’m cool with that. Not surprisingly, so is my main character. But not all of my characters. What I needed was a manual for the human brain. Basic operation, normal or otherwise, and the emotional motivations that drive behaviors, both normal and Abby… Normal. (Bonus points for anyone who knows that reference.)
In the end, two books rose to the surface. One, The Psychopath Inside, is the truly fascinating story told by James Fallon, a highly accomplished and well respected neuroscientist who came to discover purely by accident that his own personal brain patterns were text-book perfect examples of a psychopath. His research spans the range, from studies of Alzheimer’s to evaluations of some of the most horrific serial killers, and he’s a very entertaining fellow, both in his writings and public speaking. Check him out, he’s quite fascinating and his unique insights into the inner workings of the brain, as well as the effects of environment versus genetics are well worth a look.
The second book, Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, takes a broader view of human nature, and encompasses the full spectrum of emotional behavior. Being that emotions tend to take the front seat over logic or reasoning when it comes to conflict, a thorough read of this book is an eye-opener to understanding and convincingly conveying the human animal in all its baffling behaviors.
As writers, we want to reach our readers on the deepest, most subliminal level. We want our books grab them, pull them in, and to resonate with them long after they’ve reached ‘The End.’ We’re writing fiction, and fiction, in its essence, works best when there is conflict. Emotion plays a key part in conflict, and the better we can convey the emotion flowing just beneath the surface of these conflicts, the more our readers will be invested. To that end, I can’t recommend these two books highly enough — they compliment each other in a surprising way, and there’s the added bonus that you might just gain some insight into the actions of your fellow humans, fictional or otherwise.
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