Creating story has always been to me more like downloading than programming. When it's really working, whether in the flow of the actual writing or in making an connection in my head that makes everything fit together, it always feels far more like I have recieved something rather than created something. The actual work, the physical meat of the process is in cleaning the channel, making the journey from ether to paper as smooth as possible, reducing the noise and minimising corruption of the signal. You hear the same thing about any artform really. Blocks of stone with sculptures already in them etc. The best work is always too surprising to be birthed from the artist alone. Going from this, the term "genius" has always meant to me not the people with the best ideas, but the ones who are exceptional translators of that which everybody has access to. Everyone is plugged into the same current, but some people are superconductors.
Art is on every level a process of communication. The artistic "product" is the telephone wire between the artist and the public, but also between the artist and the everything. A way of feeling out and pulling personal meaning from all meaning. I don't think I have to point out the parallels between art and magic (though I don't believe the two processes are seperate enough to even have parallels), because it's been said many times before.
Now what I'm trying to get at is how this fits in specifically with creation of character in story. If writing is an art and art is a dowsing process, then characters are recieved and not created. Every character is a larger archetype filtered through a personalised lens. A microcosmic version of the same process in which Gods are human conceptualisations of larger-than-human processes and forces.
Creation of characters is one of the oldest and most sacred practices we have as humans. A good character contains much of the writer, but is also, definately, a seperate entity.
Personally, I've always felt more comfortable working in a ritualistic sense with "my own" characters than with more established godforms. I've often wondered why this is. Is it playing it safe? Working with things I feel I have more claim on or that I am larger than? Is it to avoid having to learn a potentially complex and arcane code of conduct that makes my head hurt? I don't think so.
I think that working with and getting to know a character I have written is just as much a process of communication with the large unknown as, say, a more traditional working with Cthulu or Jesus or any other well known godform. After all, if what I've been saying above is true then there is no difference. You are still working with the same forces, though they are revealing themselves to you in a form that they find it easier to talk to you in and you find it easier to talk to them in. The likelyhood of its relevance to your current situation is vastly increased because your current situation is one of the biggest factors in how you interpret the signal.
The process is equally open to negative influence though. There is a danger, for example, of trying to exert too much concious control in the character's formation. A case of shaping hir to be what you want even if that is completely contrary to what you need. Which could be as much of a mistake as invoking Satan to impress the cute girl with black lipstick. It's a process that needs mental discipline in the same way as deep meditation does. Lust of result corrupts signal. In this sense it's a discipline like any other, one that needs care, attention and focus. It is not an easy way out. It's not a way of making things safer unless you're trying to make it safer (which would really make things worse, no?).
But character has no context without story. It is through story that characters are able to interact with us. It is their growth medium. Once transmitted with story, if sucessful, they will begin to grow stories by themselves. Sequels, fanfic.... they will grow story to perpetuate themselves.
Hmmmm. Rambling. If I don't pull this back, this post won't end. I'll elaborate further and hopefully get closer to what I want to say, but it's time to open up the floor. This is something I find fascinating and I want to hear what others have to say.
Why do you create characters and story? If you don't, what is it about them that attracts you to them? Is it to learn more about yourself? Is it, as Kurt Vonnegut says "a way of making your soul grow"? Do you think that working with something personalised is a bit of a cop-out as opposed to inviting an alien influence in and then trying to assimilate what it teaches when it's there?
Springboard to anything in related discussion. |
