TECH: Nanowrimo Notes #6: Remember the little stuff!

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Headaches and meals and sleep, oh my!

Sometimes it can be interesting to include some of the mundane parts of life. Eating, sleeping, work, haircuts, clothes, toothaches, umbrellas in the rain (who can forget Dancing in the Rain?), and so forth. They may not be quite as exciting as saving the world, but every character probably has to deal with some of them sometimes. And it offers yet another opportunity for character interaction, a dash of characterization, and a few more words when you're trying to get that nanowrimo count pushed up, up, up and away. After all, even heroes and villains have to eat breakfast. And when you are racing across country, finding a restroom, getting a shave and a shower somewhere, and those other incidentals can be tougher than usual. Having your lawyer drop into a truck stop might be just the confrontation to let us know that he really does have the stuff we need.

You can take a look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs (psst? Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs ) if you want a quick reminder of various possible pulls on your character.

Start with the physiological -- breathing, eating, drinking, sex, sleep, excretion (yo! Give those kids a bathroom break, okay?), and shelter (warmth, dryness, you know :-) Keep the body in shape. That probably includes health needs -- toothaches, ear aches, and all the other bruises and scrapes of the world?

Then think about safety needs. People like to feel safety -- predictable, orderly world. Protection from crime, financial security, health (oh, there are the ear aches), some kind of security against accidents, illness, and other problems. Security of body, employment, resources, morality, family, health, property? Your choice -- you can have the character worrying about this stuff and taking steps to protect themselves, or you can show problems and breakdowns, and then have your character dealing with those.

Next we've got love and belonging. Friendship, family, sexual intimacy. Social belonging. Or, you can have loneliness and social anxiety. Lots of possibilities for mixing up your characters here, and for conflicts between your character trying to deal with that big plot problem and other characters trying to get time and attention for friendship. You skipped the poker game with your friends, just because you had a werewolf infestation? What kind of a fair weather friend are you?

In the fourth level is esteem. Self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect and trust -- how do your characters get recognition, gain a sense of contribution, build their own sense of acceptance and value? Are the external trappings of fame, respect, and glory reflected by internal self-image?

Finally, we get to the growth, aesthetic, and self-actualization drives. How about morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, critical thinking, and other drives like that? Reading, study, and so forth? Does your banker have a secret ambition as a painter?

But the keynote is to think about what your characters need in your plot, your setting, and your scenes. And remember that stopping to eat, sleep, change clothes, and take care of the other practical needs can provide you with small character sketches that can be useful for pacing as well as to add a taste of reality to your story. We all know that the gun needs to run out of bullets and be reloaded -- characters do the same thing. Fill them up with food, give them rest stops, and your reader will believe it more. And you can always spend a few more words talking about what kind of food they found in the only 24-hour restaurant open in the small town off the interstate. Or just what kind of room the Double-6 motel had -- magic fingers?

And don't forget to let your character brush his teeth. It's a great time for realizations :-)

tink
(600 words, more or less)

In Praise of Having Opinions

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

original posting: Thu, 13 May 1993 18:32:01 JST

Chatter, divergent discussions, flames, and other topics are endemic to this list, and often result in harsh exhortations to focus on writing or flurries of gentle reminders (depending on who notices that we've wandered afield again and how they respond to such wandering). However, on consideration, I think both the harsh "writing, the whole writing, and nothing but the writing" and the gentler urges are mistaken.

First, almost a non sequitur, the chatter and lively reactions on this list can provide any good writer with indications of interests that may be found among larger segments of the writer's prospective audience. For example, knowing that this group responds positively to nostalgic recollections of comics, certain older movies, or other bits and pieces provides the writer with cheap "audience testing" that such responses are likely to be found in the larger audience.

However, let us ignore that, since there are other sources of such information, including the general FAQs and such from netnews. Still, there is an important role for the back-and-forth "small talk" often seen in this group. That role lies in exciting and refining the reactions of the writer, who will find that the emotional involvement practiced here will pay off when constructing fiction. And this is the problem with those who try to "douse" the flames before they have reached a conclusion, because whether we feel comfortable or not (I don't enjoy conflict) there is a certain sense in which we can only become "powerful" writers if we are moved to our depths about the issues we are writing about, and that is much more likely to happen if those depths have been opened up, irritated, and aggravated as much as possible in "friendly" fighting here on the list.

I.e., the depth of apathy lies in the lack of reaction, and in that apathy there is no oil for the writer's lamp. Writers strike paydirt when they look inside at precisely those points which cause emotional, hot reactions - and must learn to see more than one side to those grounds, to realize that the protagonist and antagonist are struggling within their very soul. I don't know a better way to find these points or to develop them than through exactly the kind of chatter and diversions that are frequently castigated on this list as being "off-subject."

Perhaps it is my own confusion, but the lists of hints, the critiquing and other activities can be found elsewhere, in purer form. The rumbling flow of point and counterpoint is rarer, and harder to replace.

Again, let me suggest that while the chatter and reactions of the list provides you with some suggestions as to interests of your audience, its most important function is in driving your reactions, in provoking, teasing, angering, even boring you. For in those reactions you can begin to measure yourself, to calibrate the instrument you play within all of your writing, to tune yourself to the current jazz and jive, in short, to come alive.

Your writing will benefit.