Narrator On this track you’ll hear about how some authors use themselves in their fiction, often as a starting point for the creation of someone different, such as Monique Roffey’s male character August, in her novel Sun Dog. The speakers are Abdulrazak Gurnah, Michele Roberts, Monique Roffey and Alex Garland. Abdulrazak Gurnah I don’t in any case expect that you can evade this, you know, that you can escape writing about your experiences, or if you do then in itself that becomes a kind of project. You can say, ‘Well, I’m going to write about everything but I’m going to keep myself out of it.’ Now what would be interesting then, if you were a reader, is to see where that suppressed self actually comes into the writing, however hard you suppress. But, you know, I don’t feel like that at all and I know a lot of writers don’t. There are a lot of writers who in fact quite happily write about themselves, Saul Bellow being one, Philip Roth being another, who quite happily write about themselves. They make themselves the subject of their fiction. V.S. Naipaul is another one in recent times. But I still believe that in fact it is actually harder to keep the writer out of the writing than people imagine, at least the kind of fiction that I write and like to read. Michele Roberts I think every novel has its root in the real world in that it presents me with a problem that I then try and solve. It might pose a question that the novel tries to solve. The Mistress class was inspired by, I can’t remember what now, it’s so long ago, it’s vanished into the unconscious. I think it was inspired by a real situation in my life in that I have sisters, I’m very interested in the relationships between sisters – it’s a theme I return to. I am a twin sister. I’m fascinated by twins, by doubleness, by ‘the other’, the mirror image who’s not the same as you. So there’s an autobiographical element there. But I’ve found over and over again, every time, if you just write about yourself, you’re too close to yourself, to your own stuff, you can’t see it properly. So normally you end up repressing, writing quite clumpily and clumsily, and you need to open up to the world and throw your own stuff out into the world and find what T.S. Elliot called in this grandiose term – an objective correlative. For this new novel, I knew I wanted to write about sisters again, particularly sisters who were rivals. I found a pair of sisters – Emily Bronte¨ and Charlotte Bronte¨ – and I suddenly remembered that I had wanted to write about passionate, obsessive, unrequited love. Ha ha! Charlotte had exactly that experience with her tutor, Monsieur He´ger in Brussels, so I was off. I’d found a subject in the world. But I think actually I’m writing a lot about my feelings about being a twin when I was little. It’s not directly autobiographical, but there’s an energy there. Monique Roffey Well, to be honest, August isn’t that different in terms of his cultural background and his age. He’s a sort of middle-class man of similar age to me when I was writing it. I think if he was a young boy who lived in China, though, I would have had to have made a much bigger creative leap. And again, I mean, it’s a book of internals and internally I understood where August was coming from and what I was writing about, and that men and women do share the same emotional territory in many ways and so it wasn’t a big leap in terms of craft – I didn’t have to sort of think of any clever techniques in which to sort of put trousers on. August internally: I knew what he was about, really, so it was very easy to make the switch. Alex Garland In the case of The Beach, the protagonist, and I think there’s, it’s something that young writers or, maybe young is the wrong word, but first-time writers often do is that what they end up doing is they draw a lot on themselves to flesh out the character. So I did that a lot, I think, with the narrator of that book because you could do it and then you could drop in a few things that he would do that you wouldn’t do, and suddenly you’ve got a fictional character who will take you in different directions. In the audio file above, novelists talk about how they have used themselves in their fiction (‘the autobiographical method’), often as a starting point for the creation of someone different.Activity 5Imagine a character very like you but give him or her a dramatic external alteration. You might make the character the opposite sex, for example, or make them significantly older or younger. You choose.Now write a brief character sketch in which you reveal the character’s appearance, their feelings about it, and their current circumstances. Use a third-person narrator (‘he’ or ‘she’).‘Write what you know’ is a familiar piece of advice often given to writers. But ‘what you know’ can expand through imagination and sympathetic identification with others who are not like you at all. This is similar to what actors do – they are not confined to ‘playing themselves’ – and neither are writers.Activity 6Click below to listen to novelists discussing how they develop their fictional characters using a mixture of methodical research, accident and empathy.
Creating characters
Narrator Here, writers discuss how they develop their fictional characters using a mixture of methodical research, accident and empathy. The speakers are Tim Pears, Monique Roffey, Alex Garland and Louis de Bernie`res. Tim Pears My first book was written from the point of view of a 13-year-old girl, and I never felt when I was writing it that I had to make some kind of special effort, you know, to get into the mind of a female, or a young person, whatever. I think I just thought how I would think about things, and with a little bit of sympathy, empathy towards somebody else and that was it. Monique Roffey I think it’s very much a mixture of accident and design. I think your characters find you in the same way that your ideas find you. I think they settle on you – snatches of people you’ve seen in the street, sometimes, or snatches of someone you might have met, someone you might have, you know, have had a brief encounter with, and they tend to kind of morph, they tend to kind of mix. You’ll have somebody’s hairstyle with somebody’s height, and somebody’s vanity with somebody’s nose, you know, so you kind of have a mixture come to you. But once that’s happened I then, absolutely, treat it in a research-like, a sort of scholarly way. I use a character outline and I, I work on that and develop and, so that I’ve got sometimes 7, 8, 9, 10, 15 pages, so that I know everything about that character. I know what the character’s grandmother’s maiden name was, whether they’re good at dancing, whether they like Marmite, you know, I know everything about that character by the time I’ve worked on it. So I use both, I use conscious and the unconscious to sort of, to make someone. Alex Garland Characters came from all sorts of different places. There’s this gangster in The Tesseract called Don Pepe who was sort of based on a guy I ran into in a very remote part of the Philippines, who came from Spanish ancestry and had never been to Spain but was obsessed with Spain and he’d lost all his money, he didn’t have a hacienda or anything. But he still somehow clung on to that colonial past even though it was a long, long time ago. And there was something about that that just interested me and I kind of lifted him out and dropped him in there and some you just invent. Louis de Bernie`res There seem to be two different types of character. There’s the type that just turns up at your shoulder like a ghost and insists on being written. This is rather spooky, it’s a bit like being a medium. The other kind of character is the sort that you invent more or less from scratch or create as a composite of various people that you’ve noticed or come across. And the one thing that does happen though is that as soon as the character begins to become real, he or she starts misbehaving, and they don’t do what you tell them to do. You often find yourself altering the story to accommodate your characters. Your plans always go wrong [laughs]. Narrator And now Alex Garland talks about ways of handling a large cast of characters. Alex Garland I did have a problem with some of the minor characters, of losing track of them. I remember when I was copy-editing the book, finding that people switched nationalities halfway through and having to sort of make a little list, you know, this guy’s from New Zealand, this one’s from Israel. But I think in the case of The Beach, often what I did was a kind of cheap trick in a way, which was you pin a particular characteristic on a character. So there’s this guy, Bugs, who is the boyfriend of the woman that runs the camp and his thing was that he’s stoical but he’s also a bit of a bullshitter, that stoicism is his thing that he gives out an impression of being a terrific stoic but actually he’s not, and then everything just follows from that. Yeah, you find a little peg to hang them on and leave them on it. In your notebook, as an ongoing exercise, try Monique Roffey’s method of building character outlines to flesh out your characters and see how much you can discover about them.Use headings:Physical/biological: age, height, size, state of health, assets, flaws, sexuality, gait, voice.Psychological: intelligence, temperament, happiness/unhappiness, attitudes, self-knowledge, unconscious aspects.Interpersonal/cultural: family, friends, colleagues, birthplace, education, hobbies, beliefs, values, lifestyle.Personal history: major events in the life, including the best and the most traumatic.1.4 Portraying a characterActivity 7Click on ‘Portraying a character’ below and read the extract, which outlines the main methods of revealing character in fiction.Portraying a characterActivity 8Imagine a new character and build a strong sense of the person by using the checklist shown previously. Here it is again:Physical/biological: age, height, size, state of health, assets, flaws, sexuality, gait, voice.Psychological: intelligence, temperament, happiness/unhappiness, attitudes, self-knowledge, unconscious aspects.Interpersonal/cultural: family, friends, colleagues, birthplace, education, hobbies, beliefs, values, lifestyle.Personal history: major events in the life, including the best and the most traumatic.Now present your new character in the four different ways outlined in Activity 7. Here they are again:Make a summary of what the character is like.Show him or her through appearance.Show him or her through a habitual or repeated action.Finally, show him or her through a speech in a scene.Review your four ‘takes’ on this character. Although you may have shown different aspects of your character, check that there are no inconsistencies. For example, Flaubert’s depictions of Madame Bovary all show her as sensual, whatever the means of portrayal.Activity 9Make a character desire something, and make the desire his or her driving force. Write a scene or a summary that creates reasons why s/he can never have what s/he wants. (‘Three hours between planes’ is a good example of this.)Check that you have made the object of desire desirable in our eyes – make us see from the character’s perspective.1.5 Tips on character creationUse a journal to build ideas for character.Consider all the influences that go into the making of your character: age, gender, race, nationality, marital status, religion, profession.Know about your character’s inner life: what s/he wants, thinks, remembers, resents, fears, dreams, denies.Know about your character’s behaviour, what s/he wears, buys, eats, says, works at and plays at.Know how your character speaks and how this changes according to context, mood and intention.See and describe your character vividly, how s/he looks, how s/he moves, his or her possessions and surroundings.Focus on your character’s contradictions and conflicts in order to create a complex person and also to generate plot.Remember the four main methods of character presentation: summary, appearance, habit and scene.2 Setting2.1 Setting as antagonistNothing happens nowhere.(Elizabeth Bowen, in Burroway, 2003)Showing the setting in your story is just as important as creating convincing characters. Character itself is a product of place and culture, so the interplay of both contributes to your story’s meaning and significance. Elizabeth Bowen’s maxim warns of the kind of floundering and confusion which arises without a firm grounding in place.Activity 10Click on ‘Setting’ below and read the introductory section, which deals with the importance of setting and its links with plot.SettingActivity 11Make a list of objects you remember from your childhood home. Don’t use any particular order or many adjectives. Don’t censor yourself – something seemingly unimportant may evoke strong impressions. Read through your list and circle the objects that evoke the strongest feelings and memories of events.What are these events?Do you see a story lurking there?Now write a paragraph describing one of these events.Where exactly did it happen?What objects were involved?Don’t use any overtly sentimental language – let the details speak for themselves.Example: In the space beneath the staircase I find my old dog’s house, with his shaggy hairs caught in the rough edges of the wood planks, although the dog is long gone.If you don’t spell out the emotional significance of the dog, you create poignancy without sentimentality.Activity 12Click on ‘Setting as antagonist’ below and read the extract. This looks against place.Setting as antagonistActivity 13Write a scene in which a character is unhappy in his or her surroundings. For example, he or she might be:shyfrighteneddisgustedtrappedhomesickShow the feelings through the descriptions of the place, rather than by naming the feelings.Activity 14Write a scene in which two characters are quarrelling about the setting. One wants to stay and the other wants to leave. A setting could be:a rowdy barDisney Worlddeserted beachzoosecond-hand bookshopschool classroomexpensive hotelalien spaceshipActivity 15Click on ‘Setting for special effects’ below and read the extract.Setting for special effectsActivity 16Write one paragraph describing a place where you have worked. Describe how the people used their tools, machines or other equipment. Try to engage our senses, as shown in the Richard Yates’ example given in the ‘Setting for special effects’ extract.If you stated the type of workplace – an office, hospital ward or canning factory – delete the information and see whether it’s still obvious. If not, rewrite the piece with a focus on the sounds, sights, smells and general atmosphere of the place.Activity 17Think about how mood and circumstances affect perception. In 250 words, describe a supermarket visited by a woman who has just received a promotion at work.Now, in another 250 words, write about the supermarket from the perspective of the same woman, who has just ended a love affair.Activity 18List 6 objects found in a character’s bedroom, office, garage, or other semi-private space. Be specific. Name them, for example:plantsbooksmagazineDescribe them, for example:clothessnacksphotographsdetritusIn 200 words, describe the character’s space in a way that provides clues to character. Now consider: could any of these objects lead to a larger story? For example:Is there a shameful or glorious memory attached to one of them?Do any of them belong to someone else?Is one of them being hidden on behalf of another character?Jot down some plot ideas.Activity 19WorkshopRead through your work on Activities 14, 16, 17 and 18. Choose two that you would like to develop further.3 Genre3.1 Categories of fictionA genre is a particular type or category of fiction. It can apply to both the long and short form (novel and short story/novella, respectively). It’s impossible to give an exhaustive list, but it includes:crimepsychological thrilleraction thrillerrealismmagic realismdirty realismromancehistoricallegal thrillergothicscience fictionhumourfairy talegay fictionfamily sagapoliticalmaximalistNote how readily these genres might overlap. They are not mutually exclusive. Most pieces of fiction contain glancing aspects of many different genres. Genres also overlap, and within any one genre there are often a number of sub-genres. For example, ‘crime’ is a genre, ‘East End gangster crime’ is a sub-genre; ‘romantic fiction’ is a genre, ‘historical romance’ is a sub-genre.3.2 The uses of genreThere are two central uses of genre for any writer:You might wish to write within a particular genre; in which case, your question is – what are the defining characteristics, and possible ‘rules’ of that genre? Here, ‘reading as a writer’ is clearly important. The best way to see how to do this is to see how others have done it. Read and familiarise yourself with the specific ‘tricks of the trade’ to achieve that genre’s particular effect.You might not wish to write within a specific genre. In this case, it’s useful to know about genre for a number of reasons. First, to avoid unwittingly writing in such a way that you will be categorised within a particular genre. Second, you might wish to ‘borrow’ characteristics from any number of genres. An example of this is Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, where elements of romance, thriller, crime and historical drama all feature in a bestselling literary novel.3.3 What can genres do for you?Think of it like this: each genre novel suggests certain characteristics, qualities and plot patterns that are particular to that genre. When you read a murder-mystery, you expect there at least to be a murder, or some kind of love interest in a romance. The reader has certain expectations. To fulfil them – the murder-mystery opening with a dead body; the romance delivering the passions of a hero and heroine – means that readers recognise the familiar elements and progressions of the story, their expectations are confirmed, and in the end they feel a satisfaction in proportion to the extent to which the writing has either gratified or disappointed their expectations.The writer enters into a ‘contract’ with the reader, which says that the writer won’t mislead the reader unnecessarily, and that ultimately, the writer won’t betray the reader by breaking out of the boundaries of the genre that the fiction has encouraged the reader to expect.Does this make for a good piece of fiction? That depends.For example, the story’s progression might be too predictable. There might be an excess of ‘expectation, satisfied’, where the most obvious culprit committed the murder, just as you had known from the start. Or there were no tantalising ‘red herrings’ to lead you off the scent, no intriguing ‘twists’ in the plot to make the final outcome seem surprising, even though you had been encouraged to anticipate it.Alternatively, the fiction might not be ‘predictable enough’: a great romance that fizzles out midway through the story, with the writer never again referring to that romance’s existence – this, after having raised the reader’s expectations about its importance within the piece of writing.These are the pitfalls of not following the genre’s ‘rules’. They can also be turned to your advantage.By diverging from your readers’ expectations – perhaps by employing aspects of different genres – they can feel surprised, intrigued and excited, rather than feeling let down.Activity 20Click below to listen to an audio file in which novelists talk about the pleasures of working within existing genres or of subverting them