Zestful Blog Post #249
Our characters can open their own American Express accounts,
but they need us to give them the credit they deserve for complexity and
incomplete intelligence.
It’s impossible to know everything, so it follows
that it’s impossible to acquire and apply all knowledge and all skills in all
ways. We agree: There are ravines in everybody’s knowledge and skill set. But it
follows that there are also odd peaks. Sometimes those peaks are unexpected.
Fictional characters are the same. We learn from life.
I told my Ringling College students the following little story last
term and realized I should share it here too. I was walking through a parking
lot next to a marina and noticed a couple of guys struggling with a boat on a
trailer. Seems they were trying to secure it properly. The guys were the dirt-baggiest,
crummiest-looking, gap-toothed pair I’d seen in a while. Ragged clothes, grimy
hands, greasy hair, dangling cigarettes. The pickup and trailer were a filthy,
rusty mess, and the boat looked like it might have been seaworthy when Admiral
Farragut was firing on New Orleans.
Something slipped with a clunk, and one guy said, “Hey! You
ass, it goes the other way.”
The other guy said, “Don’t call me an ass.”
The first guy said, “I was speaking metaphorically.”
As God is my witness.
[The
steely gaze, the brass buttons… what can you shout but “Farragut!”]
Too many of us, when writing characters and dialogue,
oversimplify. A dirtbag kind of guy wouldn’t know the word ‘metaphorical’, let
alone use it properly in a sentence, right? Yeah no, wrong. He certainly might.
He might not know who Admiral Farragut was; then again he might. He might be
able to calculate pinochle scores in his head, but he might waste all his money
on lottery tickets. But if he does, he might not be able to bear his kids not
having shoes that fit, so he starts dealing a little meth on the side, so they
can wear decent sneakers. Who knows? Maybe he’s going to night school for
electronics.
By the same token, a character who is smart and accomplished
might not be able to chop onions properly. Might borrow money at rates only a
fool would agree to. Might get a pilot’s license, then decide to keep going in
the fog at low altitude because it’s only a little ways to the airstrip. Might insist
on getting a prescription for antibiotics when sick with the flu.
A while back, I encountered disagreement from some writing
friends as to whether a six-year-old boy would know and use the word ‘masculine’.
There’s no hard rule, because it depends! If he’s heard it at home or
somewhere, yeah, he certainly could know and use the word. If not, not.
Grab the freedom to let your characters be as complex and
contradictory as the people you meet in life. Therein lies authenticity.
What are your experiences with this subject? To post, click
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