Vincent D'Onofrio, Character Inspiration and Click Bait Headlines

A slightly prickly post illustrated by very prickly thistles! 

Many writers, me included, will often find themselves imagining actors playing certain parts in the fiction we're creating. Mostly, this is without any expectation or even remote hope that it will actually happen - especially since we often look at previous performances of people who, however talented, would be far too old for the role. Although if you tell me that the author of the Bridges of Madison County didn't imagine Eastwood in the role, I won't believe you! 

It's a more nebulous idea than that. Sometimes a character arrives whole, and you, the writer, can see them and know exactly what they say and how they say it. William, the narrator in my novel The Physic Garden, was exactly like this. He was who he was, he spoke to me and there was nothing I could do about it. But sometimes, it can be difficult to 'see' them, as you're embarking on a project. And sometimes we watch an actor in performance and think - there's something about the performance that I can use.  

It's no secret among my close friends that I'm pretty obsessed with Law and Order Criminal Intent, but only those episodes with Goren and Eames. I'm intrigued by the character of Bobby Goren, and yes, I know he's written that way, but a fine actor can bring so much to a role. As a playwright, I know that an actor and director can show you elements of your writing that you hardly even knew were there. Between writer and actor, this is one intriguing character.

I'm in the middle of a huge and complicated piece of non-fiction about my Polish family background, but - as so often happens - there's a new novel simmering away at the back of my mind, and in that novel is a character who is walking around saying 'here I am, look at me' relentlessly. There are certainly elements of this character that owe something to D'Onofrio's fine realisation of Goren in Criminal Intent, his vast intelligence, his solitary nature, his vulnerability  - albeit in a completely different way, in a completely different setting, in a completely different country. 

This isn't 'copying' or fan fiction. It's using a past performance of someone you admire as a springboard into creating another character, teasing out their unique story, using those insights in the creation of something new and different. 

I think a lot of us do this. We'll see what emerges.

Finally, somewhere online is an idiotic video titled the Life and Sad Ending of Vincent D'Onofrio. And no, I won't be linking to it, because it's clickbait, pure and simple. He's not dead. He's still a very fine actor indeed. He's just - you know - older. Which is no sin. I find these celebrity posts and videos so strange. As though growing older and wiser is somehow optional. 

I've news for you. We're all heading that way. You may be a few years behind - but it's coming. Nothing surer. 

First Person Heroines and Physical Descriptions

The other day, I had one of those insights that I think it might be worth sharing for the benefit of anyone embarking on writing a piece of fiction for the first time. (I hate that word 'budding' when applied to writers, so I'm not going to use it!)

One of the first things you have to decide, when you're starting out on a novel, is whether you are going to write it in the first or third person and whether, even if you are telling your tale in the third person, (he/she) you are going to be the all-seeing authorial presence with access to the minds and hearts of all your characters at once or, the more likely alternative, whether you are going to be with one or two of your characters, maybe with some insights into the minds of others.

Throughout the summer, I've been working on a new novel called The Posy Ring, with a past and present dimension, so I've been with two different people at different times telling two intertwined tales in the third person. Nobody goes back in time. These are parallel stories with connections between them.

In The Jewel, we are with Robert Burns's wife Jean Armour herself. But even though the whole story is pretty much told from the point of view of Jean, it's another third person narration. I wanted this to be her tale, but I also wanted to be able to have more of an overview than would have been possible if I had tried to tell the story wholly in her Ayrshire voice. The voice is there, of course. How could it not be? But I found I needed just a little distance which is what the third person narration gave me.

Today, though, I'm thinking about first person narration. I used this in The Physic Garden, mainly because William Lang, the main character in that novel, needed to tell his story and it seemed the only possible way of telling it. His voice in my head was very strong. I did, however, borrow a technique from that finest of writers, Robert Louis Stevenson, and made sure that an older and more experienced William was telling the story of his youth. This is the technique used to such good effect in Kidnapped, where an older David Balfour is telling the story of his brash younger self.

Sometimes when I read a novel written in the first person, especially from the point of view of the heroine, I find myself tripping over a certain aspect of the narration. For what it's worth, here's why. We are not, most of us, models of self confidence. When the older David Balfour looks back on the young David he finds himself doing what most of us do from time to time (usually in the middle of a sleepless night) and cringing at our own thoughtlessness or selfishness or bad behaviour. William does much the same in The Physic Garden, as well as trying to rationalise and come to terms with and forgive a terrible betrayal.

But even without that narrative distance, we do not, on the whole, gaze at ourselves in mirrors and notice our bouncing curls or our snub noses or our mouths, 'just too large for prettiness.' We do, sometimes, get up in the morning and gaze at ourselves and think 'what the hell happened?' And the older we get, the more inclined we are to think 'who is that elderly person gazing back at me?'

We are often beset by genuine doubts and uncertainties, by uncomfortable memories, hesitations, and the inconvenient and sudden desire for unsuitable people. But we hardly ever describe ourselves to ourselves in terms of our appearance. We reserve that for the few occasions when we are meeting strangers, and even then, we tend to say what we'll be wearing. Or send a picture.

Why, then, do so many heroines indulge in this form of self description? Tell us what your character feels. Tell us that she can't decide what to wear, and why she finally chooses some article of clothing. Let her express her doubts and fears, her memories, her wishes for the future. Let her tell us how she feels about the hero, if you're writing a love story. Or let the hero tell us what he sees and feels and why he likes or loves what he sees. But be very wary of those mirrors because they can become a cop-out.  Please, please, please don't have her gaze 'critically' in the mirror and then describe her own unruly curls, her green eyes, her inconveniently slender figure, her tiny feet, her long fingers, and so on, while this reader at any rate thinks 'aye right.'

In the Curiosity Cabinet, the heroine is given a mirror, but she doesn't want to look in it - not at first. The reason is that she has had smallpox, and it has left her with scars. She has seen them once, as a very young woman, and after that has avoided the sight of her own face. She doesn't gaze on those scars at all and the point in the story where she is eventually persuaded to look in the mirror is vital to that story, but not because of what she sees. Rather because of who persuades her and why.

Real People

Michael, in Quartz

In the course of one of our frequent discussions about each other's creative practice, an artist friend asked me a fascinating and thought-provoking question.
'When you create a character,' she said, 'Does that person seem real to you? I mean do you actually think of them as real in your mind?'
Now I've done many talks on the potentially thorny issue of creating a character, writing believable dialogue and all the other things that go into a writer's armoury of techniques. And I've been asked all kinds of questions. But I don't think it had occurred to anyone to ask this one before. Or not in so many words. The questions had all assumed a certain artifice, a certain control. How do you 'make' a character like this or this or this?
But the answer to my friend's question popped into my mind straight away. I didn't even hesitate. 'Yes,' I said. 'Absolutely and completely real. I think about them as real people existing in real places. Always.'
It's an uncanny thought, but when I write a novel or a play, the people are real. As real as anyone else. In some strange way, they occupy the same part of my mind. When I've finished a novel, they may recede into the background a little, but only because somebody else is more immediately in my mind. Currently, it's a mismatched couple called Joe and Helen who are hogging most of the space. I go to sleep thinking about them at night and I wake up still thinking about them in the morning. Sometimes I dream about them as well.
But somewhere in the bizarre landscape of my mind, easily summoned, as easily as any of my real friends,  Kirsty and Finn from Bird of Passage are wandering the hills above Dunshee together, while Donal and Alys, from the Curiosity Cabinet, are down on the shore, a different shore, watching a little boy called Ben gathering treasures from the beach. Somewhere, Henrietta is standing on a cliff top, while the sea-birds ride the wind, while elsewhere, a young man called Michael is making jewellery out of quartz. Somewhere, an ex fisherman called Rab is sitting in a cafe with a cup of cold coffee, telling his story to whoever will listen while in a different place and time, a pretty young woman is skating on a frozen pond - and even earlier, two young men called Thomas and William are meeting for the first time in a summer garden and finding that they have many things in common.
And all of them, every last one of them, seems as real, as alive to me, as my next door neighbour who is cutting his grass, and the kids who are walking past the window on their way back from school.
Until my friend pointed it out, I hadn't actually thought about just how odd this is. But it's the absolute truth.
Also - possibly - true, is that not a lot of  people do this.
Do you?