The first in a series on...
I talked about Elizabeth George's Write Away in my last review. Because I am a firm believer in eating my dessert before my vegetables, I'm going to skip past my next planned book and go directly to Write Away, do not pass go, do not collect $500.
This book is a mixture of things I already know and things that were revelations to me. I am going to start from the beginning.
Chapter 1 is basically Elizabeth George telling us in no small words that she is a character writer and not a plot writer. This I respect, and it is part of why I feel indebted to her specifically - she comes from an allied branch of writing to me, rather than one I feel alienated from. There are specific imprecations here regarding character but none of them were new to me, so I will move along quickly into chapter two.
In Chapter 2, Elizabeth talks about setting and how it can be used to illuminate character. She believes that people are inextricably intertwined with their environments - a fact that I know all too well as someone living off my family's generosity. She thus introduces the idea of characterizing characters by their environments.
This topic is deserving of a whole article by itself, but suffice to say that illuminating characters by externalizing their character traits and history onto their immediate environment works wonders. The Urban and Rural setting thesauri I own have a whole section on each page (which describes a particular environment) for potential emotional splash damage a setting could have from its inhabiting characters. It's so important, in fact, that she spends the next chapter hammering it in. I won't go through her examples right now, though - read the book yourself if you want that vividity rather than getting the cliff's notes.
She then goes on to describe her process for character building, which I feel is quite illuminating. She starts with a name that suggests the right kind of character; then she gives that character a core need, a coping mechanism or pathological maneuver they use when that need is stymied, a detailed sexuality, and a circumstance in the character's past that had a huge impact on them. Finally, she gives the character a want to bring them to life.
Let's consider for a moment a hypothetical character on Starlight. We'll begin with a name. As I want this character I'm thinking of to represent the setting as a whole in some way, I immediately cast around for a name-like word that smacks of Starlight. I personally have a great weakness for flower names, as my characters Lily, Hyacinth, Hibiscus, Rosalie, Rose, Clematis, and December Morning-Glory all demonstrate. When I'm not doing flower names, I tend to pick descriptive nouns - Ember, Cocoa, Pigeon, Scythe, Songbird. These are the names that resonate with me, so of course characters' names on Starlight are formed similarly, as noun phrases. Star-Bright Songbird. Crow, Dove, Hawk. Heliantha and Honeysuckle. Orca Blackfish.
I want this character to be a little different, though. I want them to express a virtue - something that the people of Starlight consider to be worthwhile that Earth does not. I think at least one of her coparents is Asrai, and gave her a virtue name. But what virtue?
There are several that leap to mind. Beauty, clarity, pleasure, joy, creativity. But the one that is most lacking on Earth is probably pleasure. The trouble is, pleasure is a coarse word in English. There's something wrong with its connotations in this language; it feels déclassé to be named "Pleasure somethingorother". What then is there in the language that's in the same area but a higher register?
This word doesn't quite exist. Ecstasy is the name of a street drug. Simply Joy or Delight files off the sexual connotation too much. The problem is fundamentally that sex is bawdy on our world, in a way that it perhaps is not on Starlight.
Perhaps we can use a metaphor. "Sweetness", unfortunately, is too often subverted - I think of the ogrelike muppet named "Sweetums". "Candy", "Honey" and similar fall to the same connotational poison of Pleasure on our world. So then what is there to do?
Well, there is one word that's close, that's almost a virtue name. Bliss, or perhaps Blissfulness as a full name. This doesn't file off the sexual connotation fully - it is clearly a state of intense pleasure - but it is softened by its use in constructions similar to "martial bliss" and "spiritual bliss". It is a start.
So, let us say that our character's forename is Blissfulness, Bliss for short. What then is their surname?
On Starlight this is constructed from a two-word compound, ideally. Blackfish, Songbird, Treasuresong, Whitefur. I want something that acts as a counterbalance to the abstract floweriness of "Blissfulness" - something that's a little earthier, not quite coarse but more concrete. Let us consider some nouns.
"Blissfulness Sparrowhawk" - now that's interesting. Still "Bliss" for short, but I feel this is more textureful. "Hawk" is fierce, independent. "Sparrow" is common, drab. "Blissfulness" feels religious and textureful. It calls to mind, at least for me, the fable of a dove being released to find land in the bible. This feels clicky to me. I can envision the kind of person who would wear this name.
Blissfulness Sparrowhawk was raised in an Asrai household. She is the daughter of a sanctuary-bearer cult compound - the relatively harmless kind that mostly sees to the needy, supports the injured, and keeps to themselves as they try to follow grace. Her co-parents are Riverine Sparrowhawk, Vivacity Sparrowhawk, and Rosalind Grace-Bearer. Vivacity is the parent that did the majority of the parenting but her biological mothers are Riverine [trans woman] and Rosalind [cis woman].
Let us continue with Elizabeth George's character process. What is Blissfulness Sparrowhawk's core drive?
Well, let's give her a drive that resonates for me - she has a need for authenticity. And she has increasingly clashed with her family as she starts to lose her belief in the Asrai faith. Let us say she is eighteen. What is the manifestation of her drive to assert herself as different from her family? She's a competitive player of deception games.
Her pathological maneuver/coping mechanism, when she fails to feel authentic, is to minimize and hide. She goes her own way - pretends one thing to the people she cares about while in truth living another life on the side. A classic Star maneuver, to dissociate identities based on which people they are talking to.
Her sex life is rather torrid. She has had several complicated flings in character with other deception-game players as part of seduction plots, and enjoyed them, but something is missing for her. She has difficulty lowering her walls because she is used to always being in character. Vulnerability is hard for her.
The thing that affected her deeply is quite simple - being told sternly that good girls don't lie in response to a fib. This felt like the deepest of hypocrisy to her because she does not believe that her parents' religion is true, and yet they act like it is real. This drove a wedge between her and her family, and so far it has not healed.
What does she want? She wants someone who sees her for who she truly is. Not as a character in a game or a daughter or a casual friend, but as herself. In truth, she just wants to be loved for herself.
Isn't all this a cipher for things that have happened to me? For certain. But that's the nature of being a writer - you put pieces of yourself out into the world and hope others will appreciate them. Every good writer is an exhibitionist at heart, at least in my view.
This book is rather more extensive than either of the previous two, so I'm going to break here and consider this my first post in a series on Write Away, because otherwise I will tear my hair out. Worked examples take up so much space, unfortunately.
You can read part two of the series on Write Away [Here]!