Once again, the WSJ’s “Word Craft” column has some excellent pearls that I found compelling. The process of writing fiction is an elusive project to describe. Characters seem to come out of the ether and insist they know far better than I, their paltry creator, what actions they will take, what emotions they will feel. I’ve learned not to argue with them—they always win and they are always more interesting than my purposeful efforts. Thank goodness for the uncharted and never-to-be understood territory of our imaginations, so much richer than the concrete world.
In her column “Truth in Imagined Things” Amy Waldman, a seasoned journalist as well as novelist, crystallizes for me some of these ideas. My favorite part comes at the end of her column:
“As a novelist, you deepen your characters as you go, adding layers. As a reporter, you try to peel layers away: observing subjects enough to get beneath the surface, re-questioning a source to find the facts. But these processes aren’t so different. A character you think you know surprises you, complicating himself in a new scene or when seen through another character’s eyes.
Imagination, it turns out, is a great deal like reporting in your own head. Here is a paradox of fiction-writing. You are crafting something from nothing, which means, in one sense, that none of it is true. Yet in the writing, and perhaps in the reading, some of a character’s actions or lines are truer than others.
No less than when reporting a story, there is some reality you are trying to discover—even as you are also its creator.”
Just yesterday I heard someone say, “Look for the truth in the moment.” I am going to write that on the wall above my desk. Thanks for your comments this morning.
I suspect much of fiction writing is all about those key moments when we see through the veil and get those glimpses of what we sense to be true. And then try to put those ephemeral moments into words–yikes!
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