3 Terrific Quotes on Character Flaws and a Poem

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Howdy, Campers ~ and Happy Poetry Friday! The link to today's PF host is below, as is my poem.

TeachingAuthors' current topic is Creating Characters. Bobbi started this series, discussing characters' inner struggles. JoAnn gives us the questionnaire she uses to get to know her characters, Carla shows us concrete examples of how small details reveal character in nonfiction characters, and each Wednesday in May, Esther offered us Wednesday Writing Workouts.

And me? I need help pulling 3-D characters from the blank page.

One criticism of my W.I.P. novel in poems is that except for the narrator, the other characters are one dimensional. Ouch! As a teen, I saw everyone as black and white. It's still hard for me to see people as three dimensional, hard to accept the fact that they are/we humans are imperfect. But we all have flaws, darn it.

I'll never forget the example Barbara Bottner gave in a class at Otis Parsons in the 1980's. The gist of what she said is this:

Let's say you want to tell a story about three characters in search of buried treasure. 

Okay--that's fine. 

But what if you told a story about 

Richard Nixon

Lucille Ball 

and Godzilla 

searching for buried treasure? 

NOW you have a story.

(I've forgotten the specific characters Barbara suggested--insert your own favorites.)

Wow. Talk about flawed characters! That's the moment I began to understand the interconnectedness between real characters (with real bitten fingernails and real raspberry jam stains on their clothes, who sometimes stomp on their little brother's toe) and story.

illustration from my book, New Year at the Pier by Stéphane Jorisch (Dial)

Still I struggle--both on the page and in real life--to see flaws in those I love. Or alternately, I dismiss a person entirely if I do discover a flaw.

One evening at a memorial service, I realized that everything that annoys me about my friends will be exactly what I remember fondly when they die. 

Ann Whitford Paul agrees:
"We all have flaws. Our characters must have flaws, too....Think about your imperfections. Think about imperfections in others that annoy you or maybe tug at your heart...Often...the strength and weakness are two sides of the same issue. Think of Frances in Russell Hoban's Bedtime for Frances. Her great imagination is exactly what makes her so fearful. It's what makes her sure spiders and tigers and monsters lurk in her room...Whatever the specifics, the main characters in our picture books must be human, and that means imperfect." ~ Ann Whitford Paul in Writing Picture Books

Ann Lamott makes this point, too:
"[Characters] shouldn't be too perfect; perfect means shallow and unreal and fatally uninteresting...I like them to be mentally ill in the same sorts of ways that I am; for instance, I have a friend who said one day, 'I could resent the ocean if I tried,'and I realized that I love that in a guy." ~ Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird

As does Madeleine L'Engle:

"I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation is never perfect." ~ Madeleine L'Engle

For today's poem I thought I'd describe a character by including a flaw and some eye-poppingly original details. But that's not exactly what turned out. The first line came to me immediately: "She takes out her teeth to chew on that." Hmm, I thought. We know who that must be.

But...you're a writer--you know how it goes. You fiddle and rearrange and think and unthink and finally that first line seems too cliche, so out it goes.
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I didn't include a fatal flaw or raspberry jam on her skirt, but here's a draft that came from my tweedle-dee and tweedle-dumming today:

CLARICE

by April Halprin Wayland

Ding-a-ling-ding, the telephone rings.

Her cat bats away a spec on wings.

She doesn't answer that telephone call.

Forget them all,

forget them all.

She watches this brave day's afterglow

then picks up the cat, tunes her radio,

leans into the umpire's gritty call.

It didn't have to happen at all,

it didn't have to happen at all.

She stares into space, chewing on that.

Her cat jumps into her tired lap.

How can it be the sun still sets

since Daniel's death,

since Daniel's death?

poem (c) 2017 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved.

Thank you, Buffy for hosting Poetry Friday!

posted with love by April Halprin Wayland with help from an invisible bee named Spinach.

A Real Character

This TeachingAuthors series is about creating characters.  I don’t create characters in the way most people think.  When most hear the word “character” they probably think of a fictional character.  Since I’m an author who writes nonfiction, my characters are real people.  I can’t change their character or create any facet of their true character.  But that doesn’t mean writing about real people isn’t creative-it is.  It takes a lot of creativity to breath life into sometimes dry and boring facts. 

I’ve always said, “I don’t create the facts, but I use the facts creatively.” 

In my biographies I show the character of real people though the details and quotes that illustrate who they are. Let me show you what I mean…

In The Many Faces of George Washington: Remaking a Presidential Icon I wanted to show the tender side of Washington and the love he had for his wife, Martha.  I used part of a letter he wrote her in 1775 where he is telling her that he has been chosen the lead the Continental Army and would not be coming home as expected.  Instead he is going directly to Cambridge, MA, to take command. 

He wrote that he would “feel no pain from the Toil, or the danger of the Campaign—My unhappiness will flow, from the uneasiness I know you will feel at being left alone.”

Letter from George Washington to Martha Washington, June 18, 1775

In my book Something Out of Nothing: Marie Curie and Radium I showed Curie’s character, not through a quote but by describing something she wanted to accomplish.  When Marie and Pierre Curie first married, Marie wanted to learn to cook.  She asked her sister’s mother-in-law to teach her. 

About this I wrote, “Marie approached cooking as if it were a scientific experiment.  She made careful notes in the margins of her cookbooks about the successes and failures of her attempts.” 

In my book In Defiance of Hitler: The Secret Mission of Varian Fry, I showed a glimpse into Fry’s character and the high pressure situation he was in as he waited for some refugees he was helping.  The situation was tense as he was waiting to make sure the refugees he put on the train in France had arrived safely across the border in Spain.  They were all crossing the border illegally and would have been arrested if caught.  Varian went to the guard shack to ask if his friends had arrived. 

I wrote, “The guards led Varian into the guard shack and told him to wait.  As Varian sat there he wondered where his protégés were.  He also wondered if he was gong to be arrested.  He smoked one cigarette after another.” 

I don’t manipulate facts about the lives of real people.  But I can choose the right details to show their character.  

Carla Killough McClafferty

A Spirit Tempered

One hundred fifty one years ago, twelve thousand Confederate forces gathered along Seminary Ridge just outside the small town of Gettysburg. Almost a mile away, at the end of an open field, a copse of trees marked the Union line standing firm on Cemetery Ridge. When the signal was given, the men marched across the field. The line had advanced less than two hundred yards when the federals sent shell after shell howling into their midst. Boom! Men fell legless, headless, armless, black with burns and red with blood. Still they marched on across that field.

And in the middle of this gruesome battle, the bloodiest of the Civil War, were The Girls of Gettysburg…

As I was researching another book, I came across a small newspaper article dated from 1863. It told of a Union soldier on burial duty, following the Battle at Gettysburg, coming upon a shocking find: the body of a female Confederate soldier. It was shocking because she was disguised as a boy. At the time, everyone believed that girls were not strong enough to do any soldiering; they were too weak, too pure, too pious to be around roughhousing boys. It was against the law for girls to enlist. This girl carried no papers, so he could not identify her. She was buried in an unmarked grave. A Union general noted her presence at the bottom of his report, stating “one female (private) in rebel uniform.” The note became her epitaph. I named her Annie, and I decided I was going to write her story.

Gettysburg Battle

Researching this story was a daunting task because no other battle has been studied so thoroughly. I read A LOT to get these facts right. But then, there’s the emotional truth, the story behind the facts. This became the heart of Annie’s story.

What would motivate a girl to disguise herself as a boy, and then go to war? Annie’s motivation was key to making her life authentic.

The character’s motivation creates empathy between herself and the reader. After all, readers can empathize with a character’s motivation, especially if it’s similar to her own. Readers want to know why these characters are in the mess they are in.

If the plot is what happens to your character, then her motivation is the force that sets the plot into motion and keeps it going. It’s why she goes after her goal in the first place.

As for Annie, it was the grief at the loss of both her brothers that set her off. Along the way, she discovers a deep need to be free, to create a life that she could call her own and find a place to belong.

Fiction is primarily an emotional exchange. The reader stays connected to the hero because she feels the story. The reader wants to see the character succeed, or at least wants to see what happens next.

Abraham Bryan House

Two other characters share space with Annie: Grace Bryan, the daughter of African American Abraham Bryan, a land-owning farmer living seven miles north of the Mason-Dixon line. Despite the danger living this close to rebel lines, Grace refuses to leave her home even as the Confederate army closes in, and the threat of enslavement by the rebels loom. And then, there's Tillie Pierce, the spoiled daughter of a merchant, whose romantic ideals of soldiering is broken in the midst of war and chaos as she flees for her life.

Each of these perspectives, grounded in the social and racial ideals of antebellum America, transcend their limitations as each struggle to survive. At the core of each character’s confusion of right and wrong is her inner struggle. Annie struggles with her grief, even as she yearns for a place to belong where she can be herself. Disguised as a Confederate soldier, she rebels against the social constraints of her gender. She endures the injustices of her fellow comrades in order to earn their respect, desperate to fit in, but all the while careful to keep her true identity secret.

Fleeing from danger

Grace struggles with her guilt for running away from her mother, who has fled to safety on the last train out of Gettysburg. Her father has stayed behind to assist in the war effort. It turns out, he is part of the Underground Railroad. She becomes trapped in town, where she discovers two runaways. The three of them together make a mad frantic dash out of town as the rebels march down the street.

Tillie struggles with her sense of social refinement, as she begins to recognize there is no right and wrong, no good and evil, and there is nothing noble about war. There is only life and death. Of the three, Tillie learns the hardest lesson of sacrifice and humanity.

Tillie Pierce

This inner struggle is what the character brings to the plot. It’s there before the story begins. It’s this struggle that is holding her back in life. And she’ll carry this struggle throughout her story.

The key to writing Girls of Gettysburg was finding the soul and voice to each of my three main characters. As I began to piece the story together, I took notes. I outlined everything. I wrote my first drafts in longhand. I find the relationship between pen and paper much more intimate, and demands me to go deeper into the character. Then, I transferred the story to the computer. But even as I edited the manuscript, I had to print the story out, and work with pen and paper again. I use recycled paper, to be sure!

But as we know, stories tend to be organic, and sometimes outlines, research, and all the “great plans of mice and men” need to be tossed as characters take over. In which case, I tag along for the ride. Even in historical fiction, with its challenging blend of story and fact, It’s as much about story-building as it is about story-creating.Molly Hunter explores this process in her book Talent is Not Enough in which she offers:

“The child that was myself was born with a little talent, and I have worked hard, hard, hard to shape it. Yet even this could not have made me a writer, for there is no book that can tell anything worth saying unless life itself has first said it to the person who conceived that book. A philosophy has to be hammered out, a mind shaped, a spirit tempered. This is true for all of the craft. It is the basic process which must happen before literature can be created.”

Thank you for reading!

Bobbi Miller



Photo Credits:

Gettysburg Battle: N.Y. : Published by Thomas Kelly, 264 Third Avenue, between 22nd & 23rd St., c1867 (N.Y. : Printed by Wm. C. Robertson, 59 Cedar St.). Library of Congress.

Bryan House: Gettysburg, Pa. The Bryan house on 2d Corps line, near scene of Pickett's Charge. Library of Congress. 

 

“Fleeing from Danger” from Tillie’s book, AT GETTYSBURG.

 Tillie Pierce. Library of Congress.