Pretense is a
syllable too many for most writers when they take account of the role they play
in their stories. It’s one word that don’t fit into the puzzle. Doesn’t spark a
vibe.
Feigning
their fictional people’s emotional roller
coasters is too… well, shallow. As a writer, you want to, really throw
yourself into the life of your characters to live out the peak moments with
them. Including the low periods, as well. If you want to give your fiction an
edge of reality and make it ring true in your readers’ ears, you must tackle this
important step.
A
writer is the best actor/actress of his own story. Let your characters be your
director. Step into the spaces where your characters live, mark their
footsteps, thread in them boldly. Face your fictional people’s fears and battle
their dragons; go from their darkness into greater darkness; fail in their weaknesses
until you drop off the lip of reality into a world that could only be magic. Until
the spectacular culmination of art where the character wakes to life within you
and walks out of your frame to a different plane, a unique personality separate
from you and no less alive.
A
New York Times review of his novel, Lisey’s Story, quotes Stephen King as
saying (about his perspective on writing),
“The question which haunts and
nags and won’t completely let go is this one: ‘Who am I when I write?’”
The
quote was taken from a 1993 Stephen King essay but in a scene in his novel The Dark Half the main character in his
novel makes a similar statement. (Did the author become his character or is his
character voicing the writer’s fears?)
Thomas
Harris wrote in the foreword to his novel Red
Dragon,
‘I want to tell you the
circumstances in which I first encountered Hannibal Lecter, M.D…’
Do
you sense the urgency in this statement? See how those words push you to believe
there might a real walking and
breathing, psycho among us and, who goes by that name? Hannibal is a creation
of Thomas Harris, a character in his books.
Writers
possess more than one soul residing within
them and these angle aggressively, for expression. Life often takes drastic
twists for a writer; he cannot be one man at every turn of the page. He must not or he’ll lose the very substance
which holds him in one piece, bonds his faculty together as a sane entity.
Keep
your pen bleeding.
Akpan
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