When it comes to writing embodied characters, a writer needs a good grasp on the basic mechanics of human nature – which undoubtedly seems an elusive thing at first. The truth is you probably have more talent in this area than you give yourself credit. As Virginia Woolf suggested in one of her famous lectures, “it would be impossible to live for a year without disaster unless one practiced character-reading and had some skill in the art.” We depend on our – often unconscious – observations of others to navigate our society.
Characters are the essence of our stories because people are at the centre of humanity’s attention: we’re captivated by how events shape people, where comfort zones end, and how much of ourselves we see in a stranger. So, as writers, we’re fiercely dedicated to crafting fictional people our readers can connect with – human to human. In my latest efforts to master truly embodied characters in my writing, I’ve discovered how truth-telling defines the relationship between the writer and their characters – how it differentiates a real person in fiction from an impression of one.
In his book, where he explores the underlying psychology of fiction, Keith Oatley tells us that characters are conceived by their creator’s knowledge of other people – love or loathe them. Oatley adds that characters are also shaped by what their creator knows of themself. It makes sense then, that by the end of the writing process, many of us come away with more insight into ourselves than we’d bargained for. Perhaps the murderous neighbour in your story bares a sudden similarity to a parent, or the love interest you’ve perfected strikes a resemblance to a colleague. As French author and philosopher Albert Camus said, “fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth”, and – because they are at the heart of meaningful fiction – it’s fair to say that this chiefly refers to our characters.
Neil Gaiman suggests that an honest character requires an honest writer. His theory is that embodied characters come with the writer’s bravery to be honest with how they see the world. He says that writing truthful characters is to “put yourself under the microscope” – this is how I see the world and how I see people. After all, I don’t believe a writer can simply throw together some impressions and approximations and expect a complex, conscious character as dimensional as you or I. Instead, Gaiman says that writers of truthful characters must show more of themselves in their fiction than they are comfortable with. I wonder if this indicates the price of an embodied character: the guts to unambiguously write the world as you see it – warts and all. Perhaps this is the roadblock that trips us up as writers. Is this trade for embodied characters simply too confronting?
The most celebrated, impactful stories throughout history have shown us time again, themes sourced from reality produces truthful fiction. So where do we source these truths? We return to Keith Oatley’s theory that our characters are the product of how we see people. In his old age, Charles Bukowski maintained that his “crappy life” was a blessing, an abundance of material to explore in his writing. So we have the globe of our own lives, which regardless of its course contains inspiration. But what about the people on the periphery of our lives that find their way to the page?
I’ll use the popular origin story of Joe Gardner from Disney’s acclaimed film Soul as an example of truth informing fiction. Co-writer and Director Pete Doctor reveals that the conflict behind the film’s protagonist was inspired by a conversation he had with musician Trent Reznor, best known for the band Nine Inch Nails. Reznor shared with Doctor that it took his ascent to fame for him to realise how much pressure he’d placed on ‘making it’ as a musician. We see this is the driving force behind the Disney character’s conflict. Joe Gardner represents an anxious, life-eclipsing kind of ambition that Reznor and many of us can relate to. This is a perfect example of how sourcing truth from real life can inform an honest, embodied character in fiction.
The protagonist of my current WIP represents a similar aspirational struggle. His character was harvested from observations of myself and the people close to me. Through my writing process, my protagonist has offered me insights into my own negotiations of purpose. I believe this was achieved through writing honestly. Crafting the character of my protagonist’s father, however, required me to open my aperture to the experiences of people further away from me – similar to Pete Doctor’s application of Trent Reznor’s experience. I sourced the bitter, career-driven father figure from the territory of another person’s life, as my own “crap” as Bukowski would have it, does not contain this particular antagonist. This cold, ugly character has consequently revealed how I view certain figures in the periphery of my life – exposing feelings that I’d perhaps set aside for how uncomfortable they are.
Award-winning author and professor of literary theory Andre Aciman warns writers however, that crafting people for stories requires ambiguity. This is not necessarily to avoid glaring similarities between your friends and your characters, but because people, in Aciman’s view, are not obvious when it comes to the “emotional life”. This might tie back to that roadblock of brutally honest writing. People are evasive as subjects and as writers, but in storytelling, writers are the ones who must sit still and face themselves. Subjects, however, are free to be ambiguous, and it’s by depicting that ambiguity that Aciman claims a writer achieves the uncanny.
I see the relationship between myself and my characters as a two-way street: I give lived and observed experiences to animate my character – the character in turn offers me insights, not into the world, but into how I, the writer, see the world. So you might wonder next time you’re hard at work sewing the terrain of a character – am I giving them the truth? And further down the line, not necessarily after the final page, but after some incubation – are they showing me the truth?
Milla Fargo is a creative writing student based in Queensland, Australia. Her work in poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction is characterized by explorations of the Self, existential anxiety, and the misadventures of queer identity. She is drawn to writing that heals and connects people through shared experience and identification.
Photos by Andrew Seaman, Julien Tromeur and Glen Carrie