The Mind of a Novelist

Psychologists who study these kinds of things tell us that politicians and executives have higher-than-average rates of sociopathic tendencies. Lawyers, they say, are statistically more likely to have aggressive, competitive, type A personalities. Veterinary technicians score strongly for empathy and altruism. Extroverts are drawn to careers in marketing and sales.

. . . So what about fiction writers?

As a bunch, they’re tough to categorize — perhaps defined as much by their idiosyncrasies and eccentricities as any detectable common thread. Notoriously weird, fiction writers need to be able to spend long periods of time alone to get their work done, yet must also be keen observers of human behavior. Originality and creativity, obviously, are essential (hence the weirdness), along with enough patience in their disposition to get through a single project that might last years. A fine and fuzzy line separates “peculiar” from “crazy,” of course, and the frontier that divides “dedicated” and “obsessive” is even more treacherous.

On a deeper level, however, what makes a person a novelist? Speculating based on the many novelists I know personally, I venture that a prime element of a novelist’s temperament is cognitive dissonance. F. Scott Fitzgerald expressed it this way: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

One painfully clear signal of inferior prose is a lack of variation in the point of view. Not that a story can’t be told from the perspective of just one character — it certainly can — but that character’s voice should not be the author’s voice (unless it’s an autobiography). Few things scream, “bad writing!” like every single figure having the same outlook, vocabulary, background, etc. Even worse is when a made-up individual embarks on a monologue, and is manifestly acting as a gratuitous mouthpiece for a self-indulgent writer. That’s not a novel; that’s a persuasive propaganda essay poorly disguised as a novel. Likewise, when everyone in the story feels interchangeable with everyone else, it’s a sign of lack of imagination. Good writers populate their worlds with distinct, three-dimensional, conflicted, flawed human beings who disagree with each other, make questionable decisions, and do things their creator would never do. When a novelist has two characters argue passionately with each other and you not only believe the scene, but sort of agree with both of them and have a hard time deciding who to side with or relate to, that’s an indicator of skillful storytelling. Why are some writers good at this? It’s simple: they agree with both of them and relate to both of them. The argument is happening inside the author’s head; the author is arguing passionately — and meaningfully — with herself. She fully embraces both angles. Fitzgerald’s sign of a first-class intelligence is also a sign of a first-rate novelist.

Another trait frequently occurring in novelists is a dark streak. If you met Stephen King or George R. R. Martin at a cocktail party and engaged them in polite conversation, you would probably find them charming and pleasant. (This is assuming you were not there in violation of a restraining order.) Yet they are capable of inventing horrific events and terrifying situations that keep you up at night and make your skin crawl. Hemingway was probably fun to have a beer with, but his stories are filled with death and despair. Dorothy Parker could delight the Algonquin Roundtable with her effervescent wit, yet she churned out verses dealing with suicide and romantic failures. A person who is gloomy all the time is boring; a person who is optimistic and sunny all the time is equally boring. A person who can tell a story about a bunch of seemingly ordinary people sitting in an apartment or standing around in a bucolic little village and infuse it with tension and suspense even as almost nothing happens is Shirley Jackson. Music fills the brain of the novelist, a rich orchestral score with bright melodies alongside menacing themes, deriving power from the contrast, delivering depth through ambiguity.

Interesting fiction plays with oppositional forces. When a character is perfect and everything goes well, it’s not much of a story, is it? Riveting tales revolve around deeply messed-up people in lots of trouble. A good writer has to be able to pull you in, make you care, and then rip your heart out and make you cry. In order to do that, she needs to make it feel tangible and plausible. To put that kind of reality on the page, she has to immerse herself in it. A novelist unwilling to do bad things to her characters is probably going to bore you. “Make-believe in a doll house,” is what my wife calls it when nothing bad ever happens and therefore you never really feel invested in the outcome, you never really feel like there is something at stake.

Misery has fueled restless artistic souls since the dawn of recorded history. Perhaps the fact that the same attributes that make a person a good novelist can also make that person an insufferable human being should be taken as evidence that the novelist gene is optimizing its own implementation: surely no person who suffers from a novel-writing disorder will ever be at a loss for material.



My author page:
www.AustinScottCollins.com

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Recent popular posts:

So, What Do You Do?

Crazy People in History #1

A Brief Guide to Writing Terrible Fiction

Answering the Inevitable Questions