Writing from Minor Character POVs: Getting Your Fiction Muscles Working

I miss writing fiction.

I'm thankful beyond words that I am writing as much as I am right now. I enjoy writing reviews and even, in a strange way, boring web content. Writing is writing. I love crafting sentences. I'd rather do it than anything else I do, even the workhorse parts of writing.

But oh, I miss writing fiction. It's not just a matter of finding the time to do it, though that is a perpetual challenge. It's a matter of being able to dive in and do it in the seven minutes here, three minutes there that I can squeeze in. It's feeling frustrated when I only have a little bit of time and discover that a lack of writing fiction over the past couple of weeks has made my fiction muscles rusty. We all know that sometimes it can take a couple of pages to warm up and even get to a place where you're writing anything worth keeping, and sometimes the warm up time is all I can manage.

The other morning I woke up from a dream about the characters in my novel -- the novel I haven't had time to work on for several weeks. Dreaming about characters is a lovely gift to any writer. You wake up hearing echoes of their voices, and if you're really blessed, you've got the contours of a scene all ready and waiting to make the leap to paper.

Dream scenes fade quickly though, and in this particular case, I had "one of those days" where I simply could not grab any space or time to write. The scene slithered away from me. Argh.

When it's been a while since I've been in story mode, I sometimes find that playing around in someone else's story world is just what I need to get my fiction muscles working again. It takes less creative and mental energy than diving into something completely original, but it can definitely provide terrific writing practice.

Yes, this is what most people call fan-fiction, and it can be fun to write it just for the fun of writing it (nothing wrong with that)! But I've been discovering lately that in addition to a mental health break, writing this kind of fiction can be a great exercise in story crafting.

It's especially helpful if you approach a story from the perspective of a minor character. Give this a try the next time you only have a few minutes to write and need to get yourself in gear quickly. Pick a favorite movie or a book, one you know really well, and dive into an already established scene. But dive into it from the perspective of a minor character --- someone who doesn't have a big role to play, someone in the crowd observing the action, someone completely on the sidelines. Maybe it's a character from another part of the story who isn't there in the original action, but whom you put there, eavesdropping behind a door. Maybe it's a character in the original scene who says one thing but looks like they're dying to say something else, and you, the writer, can climb inside their head and think through their unvoiced thoughts and motivations. This kind of writing becomes an exercise in thinking through character as well as plot and tone.

Writing a scene you already know but from an entirely different perspective is a great exercise -- both in thinking through what you want to include, and what slant you want to give it, and thinking through why the original author of a scene wrote it they way she or he did. Once you get going, you may find yourself inventing new scenes for the story -- scenes only hinted at but never shown, scenes that you wish had been there, scenes that must have been there in the skeleton background but were never brought forward.

Wonderful Storytellers: Pixar

We've always been a Pixar watching family. In fact, my husband and I laugh because the first movie we got out to see after we became parents (our first date after the sweet girl was born eight plus years ago) was Finding Nemo. We chuckled a bit sheepishly over the fact that we got a baby-sitter for our newborn so we could have some grown-up time...and then went to see an animated movie. But ah, what animation!

As amazing as Pixar's animation skills are, however, what has always set their movies apart is their amazing storytelling. They give us characters we really care about and compelling tales for them to walk (or run, swim, fly, or "fall with style" through).

We were reminded of that again this weekend when we went to the theater to see Toy Story 3. We don't get to the theater often; this was a belated birthday gift to the sweet girl, and our whole family was blessed by it.

The sweet girl has only become a Toy Story fan in recent weeks. When we realized the third film was coming up, we dug out our old library-sale VHS copies of the first two films and played them for her. (In general, she's more a book-girl than a movie-girl, and somehow we'd just never gotten around to them.) She fell for the characters and stories right away, and has become a particularly ardent fan of Buzz Lightyear. She especially likes to watch the second movie over and over...when she does fall for a story, she tends to like to inhabit it for a while, something I completely empathize with.

What's been particularly fun is watching how the well-crafted story shapes of these films are helping her become more aware of narrative art. She caught on right away to some of the "formula" elements of the tales, noting with great enjoyment how certain things seemed to repeat themselves (like the toys leaving Andy's house and needing rescue) but also got inverted (Woody saves Buzz, then Buzz saves Woody). She noticed more of those elements in Toy Story 3, which does a brilliant job of repeating those old motifs but keeping them fresh and lively. It also does an excellent job of paying off some story moments from the earlier films, including a couple I wasn't expecting.

She's had interesting questions that have actually led to some family discussions about story-telling, especially story-telling in the movies. She wondered why movies get so loud and exciting near the end, commenting on the extended sequences where that happened and where all the problems seemed to get solved. We actually got to introduce the words climax and denouement into dinner-time conversation!

She's also picking up on the joys of good characterization. This morning (the morning after our big Toy Story 3 in the theater moment) she made me laugh. She told me she'd been imagining a new Toy Story scene, this one involving a big bear with sharp claws. "And I know just what all the different toys would say," she said. Buzz would say "LOOK OUT!" The aliens would say "The CLAW!" Rex would say, "That's not just ANY claw, that's a bear claw! We're going to get stepped on!" and Woody would say "NOBODY is going to get stepped on!"

All of which seemed pretty spot-on to me (fan fiction writer in the making? or perhaps just fiction?)!

As for me, I realized yesterday just how far I trust Pixar's storytelling. I won't go into details (in case you've not yet seen the movie) but there's a scene of intense peril toward the end. It looks like all the beloved toys we've come to know are going to die for certain. I heard a plaintive "Mommy!" and turned to see the sweet girl looking thoroughly alarmed. I'm not sure, but I think she was actually physically trembling ~ and it was that intense. I leaned in close and squeezed her hand and whispered "It's all right. Keep watching. It's all going to come out all right," all the time my brain was working on another level. I was trusting that the outcome would be a satisfying one, praying that John Lasseter and the whole creative Pixar team was going to come through again! And on another level, I'd fallen completely into the story myself and was inwardly fretting about the potential outcome for Woody, Buzz and the gang, not seeing any conceivable way out.

It struck me anew how important it is to me to be able to trust a storyteller. That doesn't necessarily mean to trust a storyteller to always deliver a happy ending, or even the ending I exactly expect/hope for. But yes, I need to be able to trust that the storyteller knows what he or she is doing and is going to deliver an ending that's coherent, meaningful and satisfying.

It all makes me grateful, again, that we live in a world whose Storyteller we can trust, and that in the ultimate sense, we inhabit a Story of great coherence, meaning and sense, one we know is heading for a conclusion beyond all we can ask or imagine. And all the best stories echo that big Story, in ways big and small.

The Inner Life of Atticus Finch

Last night I finished reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. It's not the first time I've read it, but it had been a few years.

What amazes me about some books is their ability to pull you back in so completely, even if you've read them before. That happened to me this time around: though I remembered much of the story, I felt absolutely compelled to keep going. I literally couldn't put it down for about three hours (and three straight hours of reading is unfortunately not something I can often allow myself these days, unless I have the excuse of not feeling well, which I had last evening).

I was also unprepared for how incredibly moving I would find the ending still. You would think that, minus the "surprise" element, the impact would lessen. Not so. The near perfect-pitch of the writing in those final pages grabbed me all over again. I chuckled over barefooted Scout in her "ham" costume, falling asleep and then running onto the stage late, to the consternation of the school-teacher who had poured so much heartfelt sincerity into the Maycomb County pageant. And then as soon as we left the comfort of the school carnival, I felt my heart clutch with fear as Jem and Scout walked home on that dark, shadowy Halloween night, stalked by the shuffling footsteps of...well, they don't know who (though the reader has a pretty good idea, which only ups the fright). I felt myself almost faint with relief when their unlikely rescuer appeared. And I dissolved into tears, lots and lots of tears, as I always do whenever I get to those two precious, whispered words "Hey, Boo," spoken later by Scout, in the warm lamplight of Jem's room.

Truly this is a brilliant novel. Just brilliant. I think I finally had a glimpse of understanding last night, as I closed its pages again, as to why Harper never wrote another one. If you could write one book this powerful, this beautiful, this profound, would you feel a strong need to write another one? Maybe. I don't know.

Part of its brilliance, I'm coming to see, is the way it counterbalances the two major story-elements: the children's obsession with their reclusive neighbor Boo Radley, and Atticus' defense of Tom Robinson, wrongfully accused of heinous crimes. How those stories weave together, through Scout's eyes and in Scout's voice, is just amazing story-telling.

And then there's Atticus. Oh, how I love Atticus Finch. I've been realizing lately how often my favorite fictional characters are like Atticus: the ones where still waters run very, very deep. The ones we get to know only obliquely, through someone else's eyes, thus primarily through their actions. We feel like we know Atticus through and through when this story is over, having seen him through the respectful and loving eyes of his daughter (herself a grown woman looking back and telling the story of her childhood, which adds another layer of complexity) and we really do know almost everything important, or at least important to the tale. We know him for his courtesy to everyone, his firm but open and easy discipline of his children, his respect for their housekeeper/nurse Calpurnia. We know him for what he doesn't do, as well as what he does: he doesn't ever carry a gun, even when it would seem expedient, but as it turns out and we discover on the day a mad dog wanders into the neighborhood, he's one of the best shots in the county. The fact that this is news to his wondering children also speaks volumes.

There's so much about Atticus we'd love to know, but never find out. What does he think about in the evenings as he reads that newspaper, or reads books in his office? How much grief does he feel over his departed wife? Does he doubt his own wisdom in raising his children? (We get hints that he does.) Does he fear for his life more than he lets on, when so many people are angry at him for defending Tom? Why has he chosen to distance himself (but only so much) from his distinguished family? Where did he get his integrity, his honesty, his desire to be the same person in one place that he is in another? Who instilled in him those exquisite, authentic manners, and the vision to see other people the way he sees them? What are his prayers like? His favorite portions of the Bible? The novels he goes back to time and time again?

I love asking the questions. I love that Harper Lee has given us a character so richly layered, so real, that I feel like there must be answers somewhere, even if only in stories and books that never got written.