People Who Need People

This week I read the opening chapters of a novel manuscript by an aspiring writer and offered him some comments. The manuscript had several weaknesses, but there’s no need to go into all that here. One particular issue set me thinking, though.

It wasn’t just that his characters were flat, though they were. A couple of them weren’t even on the page. There would be a line of description, in general terms, as the main character thought about her family, and then the text would move on. I felt no connection to any of the characters, nor was I curious to learn more about their lives.

Why do people read fiction, anyway? I think it’s because we want to peer into the lives of other people. The fact that the other people aren’t real may even be an advantage. We’re not voyeurs creeping around outside our neighbors’ windows. Reading is safe. We can observe the characters in their most private or unguarded moments. We can actually know what they’re thinking!

I’ve been working on a series of mystery novels of my own, and I’m more familiar with mysteries than with any other genre. Let’s be frank: There are only so many ways to kill someone in a mystery. The murder part of the story is not really the point. The reason mysteries fascinate us is because we get to follow the sleuth around as he encounters the jealous wife, the pugnacious bartender, the confused teenager, the greedy businessman, the egotistical district attorney, and so on. On every page someone is troubled, or overconfident, or lying, or frightened, or whatever. We read mysteries in order to encounter all that.

These are things we may never encounter in real life, or seldom. In real life we keep our masks up, maybe even (or maybe especially) with those we’re close to. But in a mystery it’s all on the surface. Less so in cozy mysteries, I suppose. The people in cozies tend to be much more shallow and conventional. That’s why I don’t read cozies. But give me a good police procedural any time. I have no particular feeling for cops, but I can enjoy reading about the people they meet on the street or in the squad room.

I think mysteries are, in that respect, fairly typical of any other sort of fiction. Inventing people and then putting them on the page — on the page in such a way that the reader can see them, hear them, and participate vicariously in their triumph and heartbreak — that’s what it’s all about.

When a manuscript doesn’t make the characters real, it’s a bit difficult to know where the fault lies. Possibly the writer just doesn’t know how people think, act, and feel. Or perhaps he knows but lacks the skill to bring his characters to life on the page.

Fiction does other things too. It can propose a moral, cultural, or philosophical question. It can provide a travelogue. But if the characters aren’t real, none of the rest of that will matter. You need to put the people on the page.

To do that, you need to have a certain amount of empathy. By which I don’t just mean caring about people, though caring about your characters is highly advisable. What matters is the ability to put yourself, if only for a moment, in that character’s shoes. Shoes, trousers, and underwear. At a given moment in a scene, you need to be able to feel what that character is feeling, and not just in a raw state (as fear, boredom, or whatever) but filtered through what you know of your character’s character. Will he show the fear, or will he hide it? Will he sweat? Will he bluster? Will he run? Different characters will react to the same stimulus in wildly different ways. Until you know at a fairly basic level how this character will react, and until you know what verbs, nouns, adjectives, and grammatical constructions will best convey her reaction to readers a thousand miles away, you’re not quite ready yet to call yourself a writer.

I don’t think there’s a school where you can learn this stuff. Maybe you have to be born with it. But I don’t think I started out life with any special empathetic ability. If anything, perhaps the contrary. I may have started out deficient. By now, in my waning years, I think perhaps I’m starting to get it. Maybe.