3.2 Talk with your characters
It seems so simple, this idea, to just talk with your characters. Interesting how a writer can spend a year or two or more writing out the story of characters he’s never had a conversation with, not even once.
Let me ask you this…
What relationship do you want to have with your characters?
Do you want to keep them at arm’s length? Do you want to control them? Do you want to dictate to them what they can feel and think and do?
I heard a famous author say…
“My characters are my slaves. I use them to illustrate the themes of my stories.”
That’s exploitation. And what a terrible relationship to have with anyone, even virtual people who you’ve made up. There’s so much more fun in having your characters become robust friends and eager partners.
Now, let’s say you’re unhappy with the way the lead character for your novel is developing. You find yourself staring at your computer hour after hour tying to dredge up the answer you need. Not fun.
Instead you might try talking to your character, provoking her, getting her to surprise you, reveal secrets, give you tips, and…
Do some of your writing work for you.
For example…
Writer: Hey, Alessandra, I’m stuck, would you help me out?
Alessandra: Well, first of all I don’t like this name you’ve given me. It’s too dramatic. Too dressy. Call me Emily instead, because it’s quiet and ordinary.
Writer: But your inner life is so intense, wild even, that I wanted to honor that.
Emily: But here’s the thing, the reader doesn’t know that about me in the beginning, so don’t give it away.
Writer: You mean add the element of surprise?
Emily: Yes that, but more. I want you to make a sharp contrast between my inner life and my outer life. My inner life rocks and rolls through highs and lows and even gets chaotic. But I feel deeply. And my thoughts go deep. And I wouldn’t give that up for anything. Still, it causes me trouble.
Writer: Trouble? Tell me.
Emily: Sometimes I scare myself. I can barely handle all the feelings that happen inside me on any given day. And I’m scared that if people really knew what was going on inside me, they’d run away.
Writer: So…
Emily: I live a very conventional outer life on purpose. I have an ordinary job and live in an ordinary apartment and I make sure the way I dress doesn’t call attention to myself.
Writer: So are you saying that I should make more of that contrast between inner and outer?
Emily: Yes, I’d like you to do that. I think it would make me more interesting.
Writer: Okay, but what about relationships?
Emily: Relationships are a challenge. From the first page, you’re starting to drop hints that this is a romance story and at the end I’ll get the guy and the marriage proposal.
Writer: Well, yes, it is a love story.
Emily: But I don’t want to be in that story, not the way you’re writing it.
Writer: What do you want?
Emily: What I want, what I need, is a friend who really gets me and wants to be with me, including my inner wildness. Really wants to be with me.
Writer: How is it for you now as the story starts?
Emily: I don’t have that kind of friend. Not even one. I have lots of friends but with each one I only show them as much of me as I think they can handle. And I’m happy to have these friends, but still I feel this core loneliness.
Writer: So what do you want me to do?
Emily: Make the story about me finding one true friend. Show me what I have to do to find her. And show your readers.
Writer: But they’re expecting a love story. That’s my genre.
Emily: This is about love. And see, here’s the thing, if I can be deeply myself in a relationship with one true friend, then maybe I find more such friends. And if I can do that then I’ll be so much better able to go after the guy I want in my life, and that I can do on my own. You can run that as a subplot.
But what’s really hurting me, what I really need help with, is breaking my isolation and loneliness. Settling into a conventional romantic relationship is not going to fix that.
So will you help me? Will you help me live the story I need to live?
Writer: Okay. I have to admit, this is more interesting, a friendship story instead of a romance story, but where a deeper kind of friendship makes a deeper kind of romance possible. Yes, okay, I like it. And if you’ll pardon me, I’m getting back to my keyboard.
This is just one example of myriad possibilities. You can play your way into dialogues. And I do mean play. Some of my clients have told me that being introverts, they don’t like to do role plays. And I get it.
But these dialogues are not role plays…
They’re not a performance, they’re play.
Usually in role plays there’s pressure to come up with the right answer, to be smart, to look good, in the first go. When dialoguing, though, we’re not on stage, instead we’re going deeper in, and introverts are good at that.
In fact, not only do we not want to go for some kind of perfection…
We want our dialogues to get messy.
We want to run them three, four, five, six times, in different ways each time. They’re experiments. We want them to be a process of discovery. We don’t want to be control freaks, managing them carefully, keeping them within close boundaries….
We want to get surprised.
So the mood of these conversations can be whatever it needs to be, tender and vulnerable, rough and rugged, serious and urgent, goofy and tangential. You want the characters to take the lead and have a life of their own.
Some years ago I ran workshops where I used dialoguing to help nonprofit leaders deal with difficult staff or Board members. I helped those leaders, especially the introverts, get into a play state, a play frame of mind, and once they were there they were able to tear loose and have serious fun finding new ways to deal with the problem people in their life.
And there are different ways you can do dialogues. Personally, I do lots of them solo. I turn on my digital recorder and walk around my apartment playing both roles, capturing everything. And since it’s only me who’s going to listen back over the dialogue, I don’t feel any pressure to perform.
But you might want to do these dialogues with a friend or writing partner. I’ve done lots of them with my coaching clients, and I find that sometimes it really helps to have someone else working with you in play mode to provoke discoveries you might not get to on your own.
I find it helps to be physically in motion, gesturing, posturing, throwing up my hands, hugging myself. This opens me up in a way that sitting frozen in front of my computer doesn’t.
There’s a whole world of ideas, desires, feelings, and stories down there in our subconscious…
Dialogues use the element of surprise to give us access.
Sometimes dialogues get complex and deep and go on for quite a while before delivering their breakthrough. But sometimes dialogues can produce a great result quickly. Here’s Andy the antagonist talking with Peter the protagonist…
Andy: Peter, I’m pissed at you!
Peter: No big surprise there, we’re adversaries in this story.
Andy: That’s not what I mean. You’re letting me down because you’re not much of an adversary. You’re being lukewarm about everything. Your big goal is not very big. Your core desire doesn’t go very deep.
Peter: So? It’s an easy–going story.
Andy: But that doesn’t work for me. If you’re a pushover, I don’t get to show off my best villain stuff. I want you to fight with me. Really fight. I want a worthy adversary.
Peter: Oh.
Andy: So what do you think? Do you want to get in the game? I mean the thing the writing teachers all say is that the hero has to want something really important and want it really bad and really fight for it. Otherwise readers get bored and drift away.
Peter: Yikes. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be the hero of a nothing story. We’ve got to have a serious talk with our author right now. We have to demand that he ramp me up so you can ramp up and so we can hook readers and thrill them and chill them and keep them with us right through to the end.
Andy: And then when they’re done, they’ll go tell their friends about us.
Peter: Now that’s something I want and want badly.
There are myriad dialogues you can have…
Between a character and yourself as author.
Between characters.
Between a character and the personification of the story.
Between an imagined reader and the story.
Between a bunch of characters in a group therapy session you’ve tossed them into.
The more imaginative and creative your dialogues, the more imaginative and creative your story will become. That’s not always true. But it’s true a lot of the time.
Primal play is a way to bring your characters alive, first for yourself, and then for your readers.
