Icon versus I Met Him Last Week
By David Niall Wilson
Recently, following the news, I’ve been reintroduced to a concept that I think about now and then, and I thought I might bring it to the group for dissection. The idea is a simple one. The characters we write about, no matter how much of ourselves or our experience we invest them with, must never be real. We use a lot of stereotypes to connect with the “group mind” of our readers and draw out particular effects, but that isn’t exactly what I’m thinking about.
I’ve met a number of very important, very famous people in my life. I’ve read about some of these same folks and found myself shaking my head at the inaccuracy of the portrayals. Then, later, I began to understand. Real people are far too flawed for fiction or even the news. Real people’s quirks and foibles are not the stuff of good storytelling unless couched in terms of iconically constructed frames. It’s not just fiction that I use as a basis for this, but conversation, the news, literally every communication I have with other humans about a third party confirms it.
The leaders of Iran are a perfect example. I do not know these men. I don’t know what their understanding of the world is, or what they are thinking when they make public statements. I know how the statements make me feel. I know how their appearance and body language influences my thoughts and I can build a construct from this that I could, with some success I’m betting, use to write a story with one or more of them as characters and do so to good effect. The problem is I wouldn’t be writing characters based on reality, but on a perception of reality gathered from multiple sources and viewed from far away. It won’t make those characters less real for readers – but the characters they “see” when they read will be my perceptions bounced off their own experience and memory. In other words, I believe that if I knew these men well and tried writing them exactly as they are, no one would want to read it, and it would be difficult to resolve the story line to my satisfaction. What we present when we write is a perceived alternate reality within which framework our story works.
It is also likely that I will be unable to capture the sheer lunacy of reality in a character without giving up my hold on a reader’s attention. You see famous people every day committing errors of judgment, showing off their dumb/dark/clueless sides, and in general breaking the mold of whatever stereotype they are cast in. You see that stereotypical mold clamp back around them seconds later, sometimes passing without a glitch. Now and then it’s latched onto up by someone like Jay Leno and picked at for a while, but unless something catastrophic comes along and changes the way a person is viewed forever, they ARE that person in the eyes of the world.
Take someone like Michael Jackson. He’s always been considered eccentric, but he built himself a persona as a performer that seems unshakable. Despite most people’s discomfort or outright anger over his indiscretions and evil acts with children — despite reports that too much plastic surgery made his nose start slipping off his face — despite the fact he’s changed his appearance so much he could act the part of an alien with no makeup applied at all - he still sells out shows. People still think of him, as often as not, as that guy with the moonwalk who sang Thriller, and Beat It, and Billy Jean. You can write a caricature of him as a character and play on any of these oddities you like, but if you write too close to real life, and too close to a truth that doesn’t match perceived reality, readers will stumble over it. He is, in short, too unbelievable for fiction, too complex in his irrationality to ever make sense, and probably a lot more banal than folks would appreciate.
I guess the root of what I’m trying to say is that real life is far too flawed to be portrayed with exactitude in fiction. Readers usually want an explanation for irrational behavior and closure to problems and glitches. In the real world, those problems and glitches may BE the reality; often there is no resolution in the lifetime of the character, and irrational behavior is just that - irrational.
Writing is more symmetrical than life. In Algebra you have insoluble problems, equations that have no correct answer, irrational expressions. These irritate mathematicians. In life you have characters that are much the same, but a story – and it’s longer and more complex cousin the novel – can be simplified, solved, and have a rational answer. An irrational statement, like “Finnegan’s Wake,” irritates the mathematicians of the real world. They may discuss it to death, but it’s the very inability of the thing to be simplified that creates barriers. The nature of the form dictates that the equation be rational, and therefore, when you take characters from the real world and translate them, you have to saw off pieces, rearrange thoughts and come up with at least one possible solution to the sum and product of that characters thoughts and actions that you can present as part of the larger picture to your readers.
If you send Bob off on a quest in chapter two, you’d better – in some fashion – deal with what happened to Bob before the end of the book. If Sue stabs her little brother in the back with scissors she needs motivation, reason, and something must come of it. Anything less leaves an unsatisfied empty spot in the reader’s ability to follow the string of words you’ve presented, and makes it that much less likely to “work” for them.
What does this mean for our world? Well, in short, we will never understand it because no two of us can ever record its existence in the same fashion, but that’s okay. Being a free radical in the equation of life has its perks…being a mathematician of words has its rewards…and the more different ways a character can be brought to life, the deeper our understanding of the whole will – at the least – seem.
And the seeming, like the dreaming, is where the magic lies.
Onward!
DNW
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Comments
Truer words were never spoken, Sully ol’ pal. What did that really old guy say?
” All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.”
DNW
Excellent essay, Dave.
My theory is that fiction exists because we need reason and resolution–neither of which are prevalent in the so-called “real” world. –J.
Yes, an excellent essay, Dave, though I’m not sure I agree with you in every single case. I’m reading a novel now in which one of the characters is simply a mean psychopath and I think that’s essentially the way some people are. The author captures the essence of this type.
But in general, in the vast majority of cases (well over 99%), I dare say you are correct. You say life is too flawed to portray it and people exactly. That’s true. Life is almost formless and excessive. Writers have to select, reduce, highlight a few aspects of it and the people involved. There’s no way you could write a story about me and every single trivial thing I’ve done today.
I’ve afraid many or most of the Iranian and radical Islam nutcases would make poor fodder for fiction. Do they have any significant individuality, doubts, or a conscience? I’d like to believe they do, but I’m afraid the opposite is almost always the case.
I have met some psychopaths, John, and I’ve never seen one portrayed that was realistic to me. Most of them seem almost superhuman because authors concentrate on the weaknesses that a man with no conscience doesn’t have. Also, they gloss over the problems in life such a person likely DOES have, and portray everyone around them as weaker than — in reality - most folks are.
I know what you’re saying, though…I didn’t mean to intimate no one ever wrote a character who might really exist just as they are…just recommended against it in most cases.
DNW
You bring up some interesting points. I had a recent email from a fan who said, “Your gift is that you write characters I don’t like very much, but you keep me interested until I actually begin to understand and like them better.”
Of course, I like all my characters–even the despicable ones–because I can relate to some human element in them. But it did express the tightrope we walk in portraying “real” life or a facsimile to capture the idea of “real” life people.
Thanks for the thought-provoking discussion.
Here’s a thought on those characters. If you wrote ALL of the despicable elements of those characters into your book, no one could relate.
People love Hannibal Lecter - but would they if the reality of a man who could do the things he did was actually portrayed accurately? I doubt it. He was made into a superman of evil, but always given some sort of odd nobility through the actions of others, or through … whatever. I don’t know.
I do know that I find Hannibal fascinating, but that I don’t find Dahmer fascinating in the same way, or any other REAL serial killer. Wayne could tell you about corresponding with a few of those…banality rules, I’d say.
DNW
Good stuff, Dave. A number of perceptive points here — particularly that characters (and situations) built as they would be in real life generally don’t have the rational structure that must be present in saleable fiction. Finding a path that works rationally and creating a non-stereotypical, fictional mind is forever a challenge, wouldn’t you say?
–M
Good essay. We have to pick and choose what to share of each of our hand-selected fiction-world citizens or we’d never get anywhere. They would weigh us, and the readers, down.
Beth
From Stan Ridgley:
(Sorry Stan - Sorry Rick - Long week)
I wonder who Stan Ridgeway is, and why I posted THIS comment (which was from Stan Ridgley) under that name? (sigh) HERE:
For some reason Stan’s comment won’t post, so, here:
I agree with you Dave. There is something about our cognitive abilities that prevents us from accepting utterly accurate portrayal in fiction. I know a number of people who would not pass muster as fictional characters. They are too unbelievable, irrational, bizarre, evil, sweet. They must first be “humanized.” Trim the rough edges, shave down the ugly bumps. Heck, they must be put through a psyche-grinder.
Love the essay.
–Stan
I think the point about readers wanting loose ends tied up reminds me a lot of Berger and Calabrese’s uncertainty reduction theory.
The discussion of the Iranian president reminded me of Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. He presents each of us as actors on a stage who constantly adapt our script in response to our environment. In essence I think this essay resonates with people because that’s what we all do with ourselves every day.
“And the seeming, like the dreaming, is where the magic lies.”
How true, how true, Davey. And may I suggest that making the seeming and the dreaming into a kind of reality is, in fact, a direct measure of who we are, not just as writers but as people. Reality is what you choose to make it.
– Sully (Thomas Sullivan)