How do you write fiction with characters who are mysteriously human, who evoke empathy and compassion from the reader? Is it by making them understandable?
No. Geoff Wyss explains:
The better we understand someone, the more fully we should be able to respond to him. But we don’t understand people in real life, not in the sense of comprehending them and holding their keys, not even our friends, not even our husbands and wives, not even close; real people continue to hoard as you pick through them, do so exactly so you can’t pick through them; so it’s simply a question of whether we’re willing to let our characters be real people. This ought to be the point of literary fiction, the thing that makes it different from epigram or essay or encomium: to ask questions about people, not to answer them.
Read more of Wyss’s essay in the latest Glimmer Train bulletin.
And check out these other columns on fiction writing:
- Eating the Thousand-Year Egg by Doug Lawson: about moments you try to capture as a writer
- A Fatalist’s Manifesto by Micah Nathan: writing gets harder as you get better, not easier
Jane Friedman has spent nearly 25 years working in the book publishing industry, with a focus on author education and trend reporting. She is the editor of The Hot Sheet, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World in 2023. Her latest book is The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press), which received a starred review from Library Journal. In addition to serving on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund, she works with organizations such as The Authors Guild to bring transparency to the business of publishing.
I lost this aspect in writing my current novel. Deleted 20,000 words and started over, remembering character trumps all. Good post.
I just got a critique back on my first 50 pages of a manuscript. Now, what to do, what to do?
First Judge: we’re introduced to P.K., she threatens Sheridan, yells at a
reporter, beats the crap out of his son, and finds out Sheridan’s been murdered. This is five or six chapter’s worth, but it feels jammed into too tight a section. Give me more detail, setting, everything.
The second judge said: Immediately hooked with sensory and character details. Action begins immediately.
The third judge said: This is an interesting setup, lots going on. It does seem a
little rushed but is, overall, effective.
A rejection stated my heroine is too combative and readers can’t identify with her. My daughter said, “All women are combative.” 🙂
Wyss seems to have the answer. Thanks. Three excellent essays.
Wyss has stated my ambition. The best literary fiction I’ve read doesn’t answer all my questions about the characters. Readers do need some answers, but the best stories leave me with questions and mysteries that resonate long after I set them aside. I agree with this part: “I want to be held off as a reader, to be resisted. I want to have my readerly smugness frustrated. I don’t want a story to do what my checkbook does, “make sense.” I don’t want the puzzle to be a rectangle, and I don’t want to be given all the pieces.” But I don’t find it generally true. And when writers critique each other, the mysteries are the first things we attack.
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Making the reader love the character is the hardest task for me. I find it very hard to raise that emotional bar that gives dimension to the character… Wyss explanation is spot on.
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