Broadening Horizons

I think "literary" writers are especially prone to this: they'll go through a phase where their writing is very technically sound, and they're doing some very interesting things with structure and plot or whatever it is, and the point of their work seems to be to show the reader how incredibly smart and clever the writer is. I went through this phase in college, and it took a lot of harsh criticism and self-loathing before I was able to finally realize that if you can't make the reader connect with your character, if you can't make the reader feel something, then you're wasting your time.

A couple years ago I started working on a novel with no ideas in my head. All I had was a voice, and a decent sense of who the protagonist was. I found that bringing this voice and this character to the page was the most fun I'd had writing in a long, long time. So after about twenty pages, I made a promise to myself: I'm going to work until I finish this thing, and I'm not going to try to prove anything to anyone. I'm simply going to try to keep having as much fun as I've been having.

Sure enough, that's the novel that got me an agent. Those are the excerpts that got me a full ride in an MFA program.

My advice would be to find a workshop or a writer's group if you haven't already. Even if I didn't want to hear it at the time, I needed people to tell me that the work I was producing in college was cold and dead on the page (my classmates/professors didn't put it quite this harshly, but that was the gist of the feedback I was getting). I think the only way to overcome this problem is to be shamed out of it, unfortunately.

I'm reminded of something David Foster Wallace said:

I’ve learned more teaching in the last three years than I ever learned as a student. And a lot of it is that when you see students' work where the point, whether it’s stated or not, is basically that they’re clever, and to try and articulate to the student how empty and frustrating it is for a reader to invest their time and attention in something and to feel that the agenda is basically to show you that the writer is clever.

All the kind of stuff, right, when I’m doing my little onanistic, clever stuff in grad school, that when my professors would talk to me about it, I would go, “Well, they don’t understand. I’m a genius, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Now that I’m the teacher, I’m starting to learn—it’s like the older you get, the smarter your parents get—now I’m starting to learn that they had some smart stuff to tell me

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I'm not saying you have to abandon any sort of intellectual pretense. I'm not saying that you don't have anything to say. But I know, for me anyway, that it's usually bad practice to start with an idea. You create a character first. You write a story first. Almost every time, your ideas, your themes, the points you might make--these will surface later on. And they might actually be more interesting because the figure having those ideas/exploring those themes feels like an actual human being as opposed to a philosophical tool of the author.

A lot of postmodern stuff, weird fiction, and sci-fi is more about ideas and atmospherics and making points than about actual 3D characters, and that's fine for those fields. Likewise in thriller fiction, sometimes the characters aren't really developed--for example in Lee Child's magnificent Jack Reacher stories--you get Reacher, you get some temporary love interest or buddy, and the rest are props.

Indeed, there's a spectrum of character manufacturing, with mere props on one end, and "real" human beings on the other end, but the majority in between (in published fiction and the visual fields) is nauseating soap melodrama which passes for character development because most readers and viewers are content with this.

There's nothing wrong with concentrating on the depth only of the central character/characters, and the trick with the secondary and tertiary characters is to just assign them a specific trait or three, and the reader's mind will fill in the rest.

Someone bites his nails, someone gets jittery when there are dogs about, someone likes to babble about shopping, someone keeps complaining, someone swaggers around in a bubble of insecure masculinity--and that's enough. Check out any vintage sci-fi or thriller flick from the 1950's or 1960's--they are masters of creating character through rudimentary hints here and there.

To see how character depth is created in the context of short fiction, I would suggest the short stories of Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett (free legal download link), Scott Fitzgerald (free legal download link), and John Cheever. Others would point to the short fiction of say Capote, Nabokov, Updike and such, and yes, these work too.

Just remember: a) you can't please everybody, b) when people say stuff about character development or "show don't tell" or "invisible writing" and such--very frequently this is someone parroting undigested and misconstrued stuff, and c) be clear who you are writing for and choose your markets accordingly. There are markets for any at all type of short fiction, the point is to send fiction A to market A, not to market B or C, because they don't take that type of fiction, nor do their readers appreciate it.

In your specific case, I would definitely recommend checking out the short stories of celebrated weird fiction existentialist Thomas Ligotti.

Two of his short stories for free here: http://www.ligotti.net/forumdisplay.php?f=82

I agree with JC, but I'd point out that it doesn't have to be an either/or, and that the best literary writers can pull off technical feats and explore substantive ideas and write moving stories with compelling characters. Nabakov, who you mentioned, is a good example (although perhaps "moving" is not quite the right word in his case). Wallace himself is another. Pynchon, when he's on his game (Lot 49). I'd throw in DeLillo and Dave Eggers as well.

It goes without saying that OP should read all these and more.

JKDay said:

So, I suppose what I'm interested in is people's wisdom and experiences with:

A: Character work and character pieces in general.

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Don't bite off more than you can chew. Start small. Write flash fiction, then move on to short stories, then novels. And read a lot of what you want to write.

B: Breaking one's own mould and becoming more flexible as a writer.

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Purposely write in genres, styles and POVs you aren't familiar with. Push yourself outside your comfort zone.

C: Basically, anything that seems at all pertinent.

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Talking is great for getting advice and tips, but you've gotta knuckle down and just do it. Post online, get feedback, repeat. With experience, you'll discover your own way and will begin to feel more comfortable with what you struggle with now.

cmi0616 said:

/.../Nabakov, who you mentioned, is a good example (although perhaps "moving" is not quite the right word in his case). /.../

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It took me two years of draft revisions and negative feedback before I found my main character. I was so deep in my own "idea" that I didn't even realize I needed one.

In my case, my character had to deal with the effects of the idea. She was the person on the ground, so to speak, of a much higher concept that was going on around her. It brought the idea home in ways that I never anticipated, and was, for sure, more entertaining to read (and write).

I understand why some people hate him, but I'm a big fan of the way Jonathan Franzen uses character as a lens through which to work out ideas. Some women I've talked to found Pip from Purity shallow and lacking in real female experience, but I was so convinced by the insight on the obsession with beauty in her chapters that I originally thought the author had to be female! Lionel Shriver is also very talented at discussing really troublesome issues through believable and relatable characters.

Cmi0616 made a great point about writing some first, then seeing how the ideas play out. I don't know what I'm doing (in any creative media) until I've got my hands in it. I wrote quite a few chapters before I saw patterns emerge. What I found the most useful was to imagine yourself as the famous author in an interview and imagine what kinds of questions a keen interviewer might ask.

And I second Jcornelius' recommendation of Capote. His portraits of people were really evocative and masterful- you get a strong sense of humanity in so few strokes.

I think I know what you mean. When I first starting writing I had all these ideas in my head. These ideas burned so brightly that I wanted to get them down on paper as directly and immediately as I can. My ethos was "I think it so I write it".

The problem with that approach is that it can be very preachy. The reader can feel as if my ideas are trying to batter him or her into submission.

Then I read about "show don't tell". I started to tell stories which coincidentally expressed my ideas. Have people interacting with each other so that the reader can reach the same conclusions that I reached. Then I could express my ideas and the reader could see both the story and my ideas.

Later on I started to take my ideas out altogether and only show them in the story. An idea is much more powerful if the reader thinks they thought of it first.

Try this as an exercise. Take one of your ideas. Now portray that idea in a story with characters - without mentioning the idea explicitly. This probably won't come easily at first. It can take a bit of practice. But the more you do it the stronger your characterisation will be.

In the golden age of science fiction the master writers as well as their limited readership tended to have a temperament which we would call today "high functioning autism", and both sides were perfectly content with this arrangement, same goes for the likes of H.P. Lovecraft, but today one needs to be able to fake some character depth if one is to publish outside certain specialized markets for these types of fiction.

Unless one is perfectly content with that. But if, I say if, one later wants to reach a wider audience, then there are many resources about the mechanics of creating characters according to some templates, which will make readers happy in the sense of "Gee, I really liked reading about those characters!"

Again, any action or sci-fi flick between the rise of Hitchcock and the decline of coherent action storytelling circa the year 2000, any film at random can give plenty examples of how to fake character depth with a few central banalities and some peripheral mini-traits around those.

Today's mega-giant of faking character depth with gusto is Mr. Dean Koontz. Any of his more beloved works, such as Phantoms, or Whispers, are brilliant examples of how to fake it to great success, without leaving the realm of character depth of T.J. Hooker or The Blob.

...As are much of the generic YA and paranormal adventures of the last decade and a half, but I don't think the OP's organism can stand that, tastes appear to be too different.

I like the sound of your writing. By ideas, I think what you mean are themes, and that's a good thing. The danger is making your characters too perfect (perfectly good or perfectly evil) and making them cartoonish ambassadors for your theme. You can't prove a point with a straw man, and you need to make sure that your characters have believable reasons to act the way they do; don't just set up a flawed character to show how flawed that flaw is.

JKDay said:

...Essentially, she observed that my writing so far has been very 'insular' in nature - that is to say, preoccupied with ideas rather than people.

.. I feel it would be rather complacent of me, as a writer and just as a human being, to stick to this first instinct in a field (and life...) whose beauty derives in no small part from the unbounded range of its possibilities. I want to write about people, in all their diversity, and in dialogue with ideas that aren't my own, but doing this as of now requires me to go against the grain of my natural process...

So, I suppose what I'm interested in is people's wisdom and experiences with:

A: Character work and character pieces in general.

B: Breaking one's own mould and becoming more flexible as a writer.

C: Basically, anything that seems at all pertinent.

...

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Let's first say that there are quite a few successful writers who are "insular", as you call it. Meaning, there is audience for it, it's not a bad thing.
Second thing: the diversity and the people are all around you, all you need to do is observe and record. Dialogues and ideas-that-are-not-yours and personalities, everything is out there waiting to get noticed. Now, the bigger challenge is for you to master the ability to transfer all those into your writing. But fear not, there is just as abundant range of resources for that too - books on writing, including specific ones, such as how to create great characters. There's also this wonderful forum full of multiple wonderful topics on virtually everything. It's a real gem as a source of varied wisdom. The only pertinent thing is read, read, read. One thread is not enough.
Last but not least, breaking one's own mould is entirely down to one . It requires the will and patience to .... read and then putting what you've read to good use.

JKDay said:

. . . Essentially, she observed that my writing so far has been very 'insular' in nature - that is to say, preoccupied with ideas rather than people. I quite like writing this way, but I have a real fear about only doing this sort of work. . .

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My goodness, do I identify with this!

I've come to writing late in life - a life of both business and acedmic writing. I had no need to develop characters - I just laid out the facts and expressed ideas.

I had a very different experience when I decided to live overseas for two years. I loved blogging about my new life while I was in another culture. It wasn't bad writing - in fact I was complimented on it and I developed a decent readership. One of my encouragers was a journalist who had published book about his own experience living in the same country - the love story of meeting and courting his wife in a very different culture than America's.

"But Jim, I don't know how to link those blog stories together" I protested. Only after many months, when he showed me a "before and after" book of photographs and text of a journey others had taken, did I relent. "Yes, I can write around my photos." He was so supportive he told me he would edit it if I wrote it.

The result was something that was not bad at all - but it wasn't good enough to get an agent. I eventually self-published.

At a graduation party for my daughter after earning her Master's degree, I was talking to a writing professor who had read my book. "You could have done so much more with it" she said. I was hurt. (No thick skin then.) Three years later, I started with a new idea - I would write a chapter about the country where I'd lived during a period of time, then the next chapter would be about me in that same period of time.

And I threw myself into the project - researched the hell out of it.

But it was still boring. Once again, I was just just reciting facts - and I never developed myself as a character. I stopped writing. I didn't know how to do this.

While reading a series of novels, I suddenly had an epiphany about creating characters. I started writing again, but this time with the goal of truly building the main character. Yes, it is autobiographical, but it is a novel. Never saw myself writing a novel.

I dove into the project - took courses online that included critiques. Went through the exercises with a real desire to learn. Read books about writing - some good, some rubbish - but I gleaned what I needed from each book. I found a very critical reader who cut me no slack.

I have learned to be more flexible. Whether I have changed enough to find an agent is something to worry about in the future as the project continues, but for right now - I'm having a blast learning more about myself and my creativity.

I wish you the best.