John Skipp - Writing Honestly - Passionate Fiction Hurts…
Over at www.storytellers.unplugged yesterday, author John Skipp issued another of his writing challenges. The central message of his post is something I’ve been preaching for some time (see the sub-title of my blog) - writing what hurts. It occurs to me that this is a topic that can never be hit too many times, so in answer to the “call” - here you go, Johnny.
Writing honestly doesn’t come easy, or naturally to anyone. I very much doubt that it’s an exercise a sane person would choose to put themselves through purposefully, which speaks worlds on the subject of famous literary and creative geniuses throughout time. It’s not that it’s difficult to know what to write, but that it’s difficult to make yourself do it, and to stop yourself from watering it down, muddying it, or rationalizing your way around it when the moments come.
Not all writing is deep, introspective pain-stirring, or even particularly memorable. What’s important is that when such a moment does arrive, you face it bravely and push on through. I have written before about how hard I was struck by Kathe Koja’s novel KINK. The novel is brutal. I’ve not been the honest, straight-forward, Lancelot I always expected to be. I’ve lied, I’ve cheated, I’ve taken advantage of others. I like to think that self-knowledge might pull me through this. I know a lot of people who do those things and say, “So?” Not me.
I am a genuinely empathetic person. I absolutely feel what others feel, the good and the bad. If I cause someone pain, unless I’m absolutely convinced they deserve it, it snaps off another little piece inside of me and makes it more difficult to maintain the inner “me” that I’m so proud of. You put bits and pieces of yourself on the line every day, trusting those who love you - trusting those you work with - trusting your government (such as it is) and trusting yourself to do the right thing in the face of the world’s temptations.
The thing I believe sets me apart is that I learn. I don’t go back and do the same things over and over again and wonder why people are still mad at me. I try not to hurt others with my words, but if I do - I try to, if not justify those words, then to at least explain them and put them in the proper light. Honesty is not rewarded in non-fiction, and that is why I believe it’s so important in fiction.
You write yourself into all your characters. Anyone who does not do this writes crappy flat characters that choke on their own vomit. If you can’t think and breathe the motivation of your character, you can’t flesh him or her out in a way that will ever matter. Does this make Thomas Harris Hannibal? Of course not. It makes Hannibal a character that Thomas Harris can believe in. It makes a real person that Thomas Harris may know, even if that character is made of the attitude of a boss and the stabbing, back-biting bile of an ex-lover, or the noble image he had of his father warped by some experience later on that laid bare something he hadn’t seen before. Cracked images make the best art. Perfection can’t be achieved without flaws. Characters have flaws, and writers have flaws.
Write about them. Write THROUGH them. If the character’s situation would put him near suicide - or if the situation would put YOU near suicide, that had better come out in the writing or you’ll have it buried inside you. You’ll KNOW how that character SHOULD have reacted, and that you chickened-the-fuck out. Don’t do it. You want to be remembered as a writer? Drag readers through the sort of pain a real person suffers on a daily basis. Wreck lives. Wreck relationships. Patch them back together. Live in obsession through your words. Pass it on.
And there’s my brutal bit of honesty, John. My characters and I are inseparable. They don’t exist without the bits and parts of me I gifted / cursed them with. Brandt, the down-and-out noble guitarist with issues? Dexter, the guy who sees patterns in everything and can’t seem to QUITE make them all fit? Christian Greve, the photographer embittered by how his models have kept him from fame and fortune? Judas, condemned from birth to be accused of treason? Montrovant, the dark, brooding rebel who never quite fit the model his sires - or his publishing company - really wanted for him? Love Constantine, who finds prophecy in the music and billboards and TV ads and follows a false prophet to hell? All of these have their roots in me. All of them do either as I would do, or as I — dropping myself into their “defining moments” would do. If I couldn’t picture in my mind what a serial killer might think, why he might do what he does, and how it would feel to do it - as well as to be the victim, the detective, the reporter, and all the rest, I’d never be able to write it.
Does that make me strange? I doubt it. It makes me honest. It makes me willing to risk tossing bits of my psyche and my world into the fire to see if they’ll be forged into something useful…or burnt to cinders.
“To thine own naked Ass Be True,” — John Mason Skipp
Here’s to you, brother.
To the words, and the darkness,
to the loves and the lies…
This one’s for you.
–DNW
