Modernism Rising in Parallel with the Popularizing of the Modern Interpretation of Psychopathology: Writing Interesting Characters by Means of Substitution

Following the basic premise that a person, as perceived by those who know him, is defined by their actions and the surmised motivations behind those actions, it can be assumed a crazy person is seen as such because the motivations behind their actions are too obscure, and possibly illogical, to be understood by an observer.

Any individual you know personally is only half of what you know them to be. Their actions are objectively true, assuming you are an average observer, but their motivations are guarantied to be falsely perceived, given that no two individuals share the same thought process.

Now, getting down to writing characters, one might begin with either the plot, the combined actions taken by the characters involved as placed on a time-line, or with the motivations. Beginning with the plot will produce a clearer linear-narrative, something more classical and theoretically salable. Starting with the characters, and following the method I am about to describe, will assuredly produce something stranger.

Starting with the plot, you simply need to work backwards, thinking, why would this character do what I, writer as God, have determined them to do. A man walking down a street might be heading to the quik-stop to buy milk for his breakfast-cereal, or he might believe himself to be barefoot and walking through a dark forest, while still on his way to buy milk for his breakfast-cereal. This is a huge difference for a character who has a head inside of which we are allowed to peek.

Starting with the characters, you begin by knowing their atypical world view, and then asking, given instigating circumstance, what would this character do.

Brass tacks, deconstruction and substitution: Begin by creating a character that is, as might be innately true, yourself. Then, alter one central feature of the character’s world view.

Assuming the interdependence and relativity of all aspects of our thought process, one small change in perspective must echo, rippling out to the farthest corners of the character’s psyche. Make this altered feature a fetish, a fulcrum around which the character swings, or a lens through which they view the world. Always ask yourself, with every line of dialogue and every action, why, given this altered feature, would this character do what my plot asks them to do? Or, if you choose to begin with the characters, simply, what would my character do?

A Shared Target

A Shared Target

by KECG

The building was fourteen stories, and Olena had six left to go. Her feet were silent as she scaled floor after floor, running up the stairs of the apartment building across the street from the church where she lived.

Abernathy had told her that morning about a meeting she’d had with a journalist a week before, that he knew where they lived. It seemed Abernathy hadn’t thought it was pertinent.

Olena had insisted they find a new safe-house, brushing aside Abi’s objections. Olena was also dearly fond of that church basement, but keeping her lady safe was of higher priority than obeying her careless whims.

Abi and the other girls were across the street and still packing. They’d waited until dark and had been hefting the boxes to an El Camino Abi had borrowed when Olena forced them back down the stairs, asking them to wait.

She was grateful she’d been the first out of the basement; the others might not have noticed the flicker of light from the roof across the street.

It might have been a maintenance man wearing a watch, or a pigeon wearing a name-tag, possibly, but she was sure it was a scope, the lens of a PSO-1 mounted on an SVD-63.

She drew her hook knife and crept out onto the roof. The fine white gravel laid on black tar was glittering in the moonlight, but there was no sniper, not even a pigeon.

Olena was questioning her sanity and finishing a final sweep when she froze, feeling a blade at her throat. With a quick twist, her arm was wrenched back and she dropped her knife.

“Why would you do this?” a woman asked, fluent Russian with a strange accent.

“…Tanya?” Olena asked, smelling a familiar scent, strong tea and red tulips, not that the red variety smelled any different from the white.

“Why?!” Pashtana asked again.

Olena realized this was about her, not her mistress, and her blood began to cool.

“Should I just kill you then?” Pashtana asked.

“Am I your only target?”

“Who else do you think I would cross an ocean for?”

“That’s fine then,” Olena said.

There was a moment’s silence, and then the knife disappeared from her throat. Olena took a step away, rubbing at her throbbing shoulder as she turned back.

“What’s wrong with you?” Pashtana asked, tears rolling down her amber cheeks. She had short dark hair, and a slight frame, but Olena had seen her carry a forty kilo pack through the jungle.

“Nothing-”

“You’ve never let me take you like that before….”

“Maybe…. Maybe you’ve just improved-”

“…My father died,” Pashtana said, the hook knife shaking in her hand.

Pashtana had been born thirty kilometers from Kabul, to a village girl who’d died soon after. Her Russian father was, by way of cover, a professor of biology at KU but had been an adviser to Zahir Shah, and Daoud after Zahir’s abdication.

“I’m sure he loved you. More than he loved anyone,” Olena said. That might not have been very much.

Tanya had spent her life trying to find a place. It had been the first thing they’d noticed in one another and why they’d been friends, but Olena had since made a home for herself.

“You said you’d be back by Wednesday,” Tanya said.

“…Yes.” It was actually Thursday night, but she was many Wednesdays late already.

“You didn’t come back, Olena-”

“So, you thought you’d come find me?”

“No. I’m here on orders. I will kill you, and then the man you allowed to escape.”

“…Have you seen his daughters?”

“They will be orphans.”

Olena sat near her knife on the tar-paper roof, clutching her knees to her chest. “…Have you ever wondered… when I think of lying in the ground, I wonder if I’ll feel the worms crawling inside me.”

“…You never talked about that. Do you think like that often?”

“Not often anymore…. Put a bullet in my head, then I won’t feel anything.”

Tanya tossed her knife down next to Olena’s and sat next to her. “I just wanted to see you again- I could say they’d taken you prisoner- or they captured me, and we escaped together-”

“No. Across the street is a graveyard, it would be a good place to bury me-”

“I’m not going to kill you.”

“And John?” Olena asked. John was the man Olena was supposed to have killed before Abernathy stopped her.

“The unit is all I have, Olena- and you left me.”

Olena reached an arm across Tanya’s shoulders, and leaned against her. They had spent many nights, in both jungles and deserts, sleeping like that. She was surprised by how warm it felt to return to her friend’s company.

“…I’m sorry, Tanya. I’ve thought of you everyday- Just this morning I prayed you were well-”

“Prayed- Why didn’t you come home?”

“…Do you know the story about Mary, and her virgin birth?” Olena asked, hoping to explain herself rather than convert a follower.

“My mother’s book is quite similar to your grandmother’s- Religion? This is about religion?” Tanya asked, peering over at her with a look of disgusted disbelief.

“…This isn’t about myths and stories. My Lady bleeds when she’s shot, but her forgiveness is as real as her blood.”

The door to the stairs slammed open, and Abernathy Greene stood in the doorway. The moonlight shone off her dark skin and red vinyl riding suit.

“She will forgive you,” Olena said.

“This woman?” Tanya asked, staunchly confused.

“You just have to ask.”

“Is this a friend?” Abi asked, in English, as she reached for the lead pipe at the back of her belt. “We got everything packed, and Jane wants the El Camino back by morning.”

“She looks like a normal woman, Olena,” Tanya said, glancing at her knife, just out of reach.

“I’ve never lied to you, Tanya….” That was true, in Olena’s memory. They’d always been like two halves of a broken whole; lying would have been meaningless.

Tanya stood up slowly, staring Abi in the eye. “…Will you forgive me?” she asked quietly, sneering slightly, and still speaking in Russian.

“What?” Abi said.

“Miss Abernathy only speaks English,” Olena said.

“…Would you… please forgive me?” Tanya asked again, in halting English now, as tears filled her eyes.

Abi took a step back, but her hand left the pipe tucked in her belt. “…I guess,” she said.

The Non-Aristotelian Drama and the Advantages Its Form Lends to Blog Fiction

This is, unusual for this blog, a post on writing, rather than a piece of fiction.

 

I love serials. I rarely watch TV that doesn’t have inter-episode continuity, but I have, on a number of occasions, begun watching a show after catching a few minutes of a mid-season episode.

I argue that a blog suffers from many of the problems that plagued early television; A person is about a dozen times more likely to start watching a show mid-season than to catch the first episode, therefore each episode must be, in some way, stand alone.

Enter Epic, or Non-Aristotelian Drama: as Alfred Döblin stated, Wikipedia quotes, and I paraphrase, an epic may be chopped into little pieces, reassembled, and the work will still function.

An initial statement: I believe, and it is at least true to my taste, that plot continuity, character growth, and linear narrative, may exist purely as nuance. By this I mean, any scene in an epic should stand alone, and be comprehensible unto itself, though, as is true in many epics and literary cycles, reading the whole body of work will give a more complete impression of the characters and a grasp on the time-line.

Take for example a revenge plot.

The protagonist might very well appear to be a cold blooded murderer, a one-dimensional psychopath, if we, the readers, aren’t informed of his motivations. One story might show us the end of his quest for revenge, while the preceding stories, if they are portrayed linearly, might show him grieving for his dead daughter while meeting her mother, long estranged, and the rekindling of their feelings. Another story, in the middle, might show us a conversation between the father and his daughter’s heroin addicted former boyfriend. These stories may be connected by nothing more than the name of the lead, but taken together they allow us to see many facets of one character.

Onto the advantage leant by this format. Short fiction, short-shorts or flash, is the obvious choice for a fiction blog, as most blog readers require small bites of content. A serialized novel is another, and I will tackle my opposition to this format first.

When I arrive at a blog and find chapter twenty-six of a serial novel facing me, my reaction is to give it a few paragraphs. Almost inevitably, the prose fails to hold my interest and I move on rather than seeking the first chapter, many pages deep. This is of course unfair. No one can create a hook at the start of every chapter, and I doubt a novel that attempted this would be palatable, but that is what would be required to overcome what is my natural tendency. Not every story has to start with a murder or explosion. Simply starting from the beginning is often enough to hook me.

On a momentary tangent, making the first chapter of a serial novel sticky seems like a good idea, maybe some people do this, but I haven’t run into it.

When I find a short fiction blog, I normally start by trying the top story, which would usually be the latest post. If I find this story is to my taste, I’ll try a few more, and follow. But, after a few weeks, standalone stories don’t stick in the front of my mind. I have to be in the right mood, and I slip, missing weeks at a time.

Finally. When very rarely I find a blogger who posts short fiction which is enjoyable, sufficiently standalone as to act as an introduction to their universe, while being part of a loosely knit whole, I dive pages deep. I read the author’s earlier works, and I look forward to their next post.

I believe my reading habits are motivated by simple psychology. Humans like to have their questions answered. The very first story on a blog in epic format might indeed be subtly answering questions posed in previous stories, while, for a first time reader, those answers might well seem like question themselves, waiting to be answered in the earlier stories.

To summarize.

Short fiction: self contained; no questions left unanswered by the last line, or there shouldn’t be.

Serial novel: utterly dependent upon preceding content; too many question generated to the point of incomprehensibility.

Epic: self contained, stand alone, to the point that it gives a sense of completion and catharsis, while leaving questions to draw me in.

This is, of course, just my opinion. Feel free to share yours.

KECG