What is a Character?

In a manuscript everything changes just like it does in real life. All that is consistent is people throughout the day making choices that lead them to good deeds or bad deeds.

The identity I create for my characters is a culmination of all my past experiences. When a character is developing these past experiences make them wiser or jaded or sometimes a character is not in touch with the reality surrounding them at all. Doesn’t this sound like a few writers you know?

How a character responds to past experiences is expressed in their actions. Some actions elevate a character while others deepen their suffering. However a character reacts to their past experiences one thing that rings true is that a certain measure of growth and development occurs in every character.

Eventual if a character is to become a good character they need to experience some understanding of how their past experiences are guiding their choices in the moment. Not all characters experience this level of self-understanding. Not all characters are meant to be great or even good characters, some are just meant to be a distraction, a diversion for a moment so the writer can set a different stage for the action to take place in the story.

Characters, like writers, must accept who they are. Writing is about learning about our total self. Without learning about my total self I will never fully develop emotional maturity. Just like the characters I write who learn how to accept themselves and their circumstances on some level in the story I too must learn how to accept myself and my circumstance in my own life.

How many writers have committed suicide like Hart Crane and Anne Sexton? How many writers have drunk themselves to death because they wrote the truth about who they are all while being unable to accept and tolerate their true self? How many writers go unpublished, throw their manuscripts unfinished in a drawer because the self-exploration got too painful for them to continue and how many writers never start writing at all because they are unwilling to reveal their suffering and live it in their characters.  

I write of my shortcoming; those dark defects of character that separate me from the people in my life. My characters resolve their struggles before I resolve mine. How many authors have you read that have similar characters in various works? The three greats in this writer’s opinion Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Faulkner all wrote of their own shortcomings and developed acceptance of themselves by creating characters that were accepted by their readers.

Now acceptance is not tolerance. Fitzgerald drank himself to death because he couldn’t tolerate his powerlessness over Zelda’s disease or his own. Hemingway couldn’t tolerate his powerlessness over his decline as a human being. Faulkner the survivor out of the three not only was able to accept the truth of himself as a writer he was also able to tolerate seeing his reflection in his characters something Fitzgerald and Hemingway could not do.

No one said writing was going to be easy. In every relationship including writer and reader there is always a teacher and a learner. Many writers think they are a teacher when in actuality rejection after rejection is telling them they are still in a learner’s role.

In order to enhance and hone my skills as a writer I need to invite people into my world to teach me how to be successful at my chosen craft. I have to surrender my ego and pride and become and remain willing to be teachable. Ever writer has that spark, but not every writer finds that muse who ignites that spark.

Some of us wait a lifetime and are never able to ignite that inner being. Others destroy our lives because the spark has been ignited and the fire burned too powerfully within us. The pain and anguish were just too great.  And still others find a way to accept and tolerate and feed that being inside them and they nurture themselves into this prolific fire of words and sentences and manuscripts that just seem to be endless.

How much of a choice do we have in whether we write today or not? We are the only ones who have the ability to make the choice. Not even a muse can make you sit still and be comfortable enough in your own skin to write about who you are. Not even a muse………..