By:
John Thornton Williams
One
of the most important accomplishments of fiction is to connect readers with
characters. For me, the strongest of those connections generally take place on
an emotional level. It's one thing to come across a character that shares my
affinity for barbecue or wears my same brand of boots. It's quite another to
recognize in a character my own tendency toward disproportional anxiety or
inappropriate laughter or desperation without cause. That said, when I started
grad school I had very little notion of how character interiority operated in
fiction, let alone any control of it.
Revealing
the interiority of a character in a way that feels natural, yet resonates
powerfully within a reader is one of the most difficult tasks of the fiction
writer. Considering how powerful that emotional connection between reader and
character can prove to be, and how empty a story can feel without it, it's
vital that the writer bridge the distance between reader and character in ways
that are subtle rather than clumsy.
But
how does one accomplish it? It depends on the circumstance, of course. There
are occasions in fiction where it's appropriate for a narrator to say,
"So-and-so felt sad/happy/anxious." But rarely are such basic
expositions enough to make me feel known as a reader, to illuminate aspects of
my own experiences that I didn't yet understand or couldn't yet articulate.
The
most obvious alternative—a lengthy expository digression into the psyche of a
character, perhaps accompanied by physical cues, i.e., So-and-so felt
more upset than he'd felt in his entire life, so upset he thought he might die,
his stomach was in a knot, his throat was on fire… generally proves
detrimental to how I experience the story at hand. Such straightforward
description, even accompanied by metaphor, rarely provides any greater nuance
of emotional experience and usually pulls me out of the fictitious world,
rather than drawing me into it.
A
third option—what I'll call indirection of image—is often a more successful
approach…
Read the full article HERE!
~*~
If
you missed my writing & marketing tweets and retweets yesterday, here they
are again:
- Ten things you can do in the middles of novels http://ow.ly/DNi6h
- Karen Woodward: Conflict: What Is It Good For? http://ow.ly/DNOxz
- 7 Tips for Metadata Magic for Self-Publishers — The Book Designer http://ow.ly/DNOGF
- 12 Digital Publishing Tools the Experts Recommend http://ow.ly/DNP0A
- Bad Agent Behavior - Books & Such Literary Management : Books & Such Literary Management http://ow.ly/DNP91
- Finding Your Genius: 3 Places to Get Creatively Inspired http://ow.ly/DNPhi
- Facts of Fiction: Why Every Story Is An Escape Story | Write to Done http://ow.ly/DNPoJ
- How to Tie Your Book Marketing Into Unique Holidays - Marketing Tips For Authors http://ow.ly/DNPy1
- Author, Jody Hedlund: When You Feel Invisible in the Crowded Book Market http://ow.ly/DNQnF
- Online Marketing Strategy for Entrepreneurs | Denise Wakeman - Your Guide to Better Visibility on the Web. http://ow.ly/DNQyj
- How to Reveal Character Emotion Without Venturing Into Cliché - Jane Friedman http://ow.ly/DNQJq
Happy
writing and running, Kathy
No comments:
Post a Comment