For reasons that anyone who is within a hundred miles of my house probably knows at this point, this past week has been about choices, and the difficulty of making them. Suffice it to say I've been watching the process go on, and it has been, in a word, agonizing.
It got me to thinking about making choices, because writing is a long series of choices. We start with choosing the story to tell, then fill it, every time we type something, with choices.
For me, the only choice that is really crucial is the central character of the piece. I tell my screenwriting students (and a small percentage of them actually believe me!) that character is the most important element of a story. You can have the most twist-filled, spoiler-proof, enticing plot since Genesis, and if you people it with one-dimensional characters, it will fall flat onto its face.
Unless, of course, you infest it with nine-foot skinny blue people, in which case the fact that it looks really cool will overwhelm the fact that we don't care about anyone who shows up to supposedly entertain us. But perhaps I digress.
At least when I'm writing, I have to be interested in the character. This is especially important when I'm writing in the first person. You have to be able to get into the character's head and think his/her/its thoughts, so they can be expressed accurately. And for me, that means the character has to have at least something resembling a sense of humor. People who don't possess one generally worry me.
But that's me. If you're writing, you have to decide what's going to get you through those difficult moments that tend to stretch into months. Your main character, at for my money, the supporting ones too, have to interest you. You don't always have to like them, but you do have to care what happens to them.
So think about the character before you sit down to write. Don't just worry about whodunnit and how they dunnit and why they dunnit. Those things are important, but in the long run, they're not going to be as basic to your readers and your own sanity as whose story is being told.
I love my characters. I just can't stand their names, most of the time. The idiot who makes those up must really be a dullard, no?
LP-to-Digital Conversion Project Update: When last we met, we were about to embark on the catalog of Ms. Bonnie Raitt. And so this week went. Suffice it to say that Ms. Raitt has a real talent, among her other talents, to do something that could be considered the same a number of times and make it feel fresh every time. That's no small feat. It's something that starts with her first album and goes on through the albums up to her "comeback" "Nick of Time," which I did not convert because we already had it on CD.
After three Bonnie Raitt albums (again, those brought to the marriage by the female in the house), I moved on to "Time Peace," better known as The Rascals' Greatest Hits. Truth be told, the Rascals only had about five great hits ("Groovin'," "It's A Beautiful Morning," "People Got To Be Free" and so on), and the other nine songs on the album are either filler or somewhat interesting that didn't come within miles of being a hit. One of those cases where iTunes actually come in handy--you can actually download the cream of the album, which is extremely worthwhile, pretty easily.
Lou Reed is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and is a legendary and respected New York rock icon. But I've always thought he was kind of boring, to tell you the truth. Reed's style is designed to make him sound like he doesn't care about what he's singing, leading me to wonder why I should.
Following up, we moved to The Roches, Maggie, Terre and Suzzy. The first album they recorded was a folky breakthrough, bringing harmonies to some of the quirkiest lyrics on the planet and doing it with style, but never discounting the effort being put out. A shame the girls don't work more often.
Coming up: my wife's collection takes over with Linda Ronstadt, Carole Bayer Sager and lord help me, Buffy Sainte Marie.
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