Make the characters real

I got a smidge of characterisation to talk about in this slightly tardy post. 

But first, in terms of my poetry, it’s been a good two weeks. I did a double performance at SoFar sounds two Saturdays ago, two 25 minute sets, the first one being somewhat of a mediocre performance, the second one of my best, at least in my opinion. The audience was a room full of folks who had come for music, not spoken word, so entertaining them successfully was as satisfying as it gets.  And I won the Peel Street Poetry slam this year, which is pretty neat.

On the other hand, last week was not the best week for prose writing. I truly hate admitting I have writer's block, but I definitely hit a wall when it came to book 2. I'm at about 50k words, theoretically halfway there, but the last two weeks I've probably been at least 2-3k words behind my schedule. 

There is a downside to grinding through a quota of words. For me, it’s about becoming complacent and not aiming for the sort of quality that needs to be there for a story to keep moving forward. 

The quality I was lacking was half-decent characterisation.

When I started the second book I told myself I just needed to get the story out there, one event at a time, beat by beat, to make it through to the end and then one day come back and do a full edit and put in all that lovely detail that was missing, including in-depth consistent characterisation. 

After book 1 I should have these fleshed-out characters, these three protagonists. They’ve been through hell and had some revelations. But in my desperation to get to the end of the plot I stripped them down to caricatures. 

I try to remind myself that this all a new experience, so there’s going to be a learning curve. The second book in an epic fantasy series man! Never before in any of my writing have I had characters with such large arcs. I’ve never had to know my characters so well. They are meant to be people, but I ask myself if they act like them, or if they just dance when I tell them to so I can make the story move from point A to point B. 

And truthfully, at this point in book 2, I'm definitely just using them as props to keep the events moving. It’s a huge mistake. Mr. King, my cult leader, writes in The Book (on writing) that if he spends more than a few days away from a novel he’s working on then the characters stop acting like real people and become too vague. That is exactly what happened to me because of the gap between when I was writing book 1 and starting properly on book 2.

My girlfriend gave me the advice that broke through the writer's wall. She said to go back and look at who the characters are. To spend pages just writing out their thoughts and so I could get to know them again. See what they would do in the circumstances I've dropped them in, not what I want to make them do. She's damn right, of course, if the book is going to be any good at all. Characters ought to come first. Ideally, so that we fall in love with some of them. Cheer and commiserate with them. But turn them into caricatures and we tune out.

Through this process, I've learned a new technique for dealing with the wall. Going back and doing a deep dive on characterisation. Writing paragraphs about what the characters are thinking even if I'll end up cutting half, or even all of it. It’s worth it just so they remain in sharp resolution and so that the story is consistent and coherent. A lot of writers can do this in their heads, naturally, but because I have more than one protagonist its easy for me to get muddled up. Especially when I've spent so much time treating them as things that needed to be edited and cleaned up as opposed to writing new content.

I think that’s why I’ve been hesitating on writing a blog post. I’m a sucker for progress and without making any I get lost. 

And on that note here’s some progress on my magnum opus, HWTACSN,

Chapter 6: Exit

"Francesca, if I cannot eat him in the toilet. We must move the body."

Her eyes light up with macabre enthusiasm as if talking of corpses and body-disposal titillates rather than disturbs her. She purses her lips, placing one black fingernail upon them and leaning further against the hand dryer. The thing whooshes to life in a tumult that wakes me from my thoughts. I find myself keenly aware of my surroundings. How music pulses through the walls as if we are in the gullet of some eldritch abomination, a million-limbed city-sized monster, and us debating in one of its many sphincters from which drain the tears and vomit of the parasitical humans that populate its urban cells. 

Indeed, the music is not very good. 

My eyes find the dead billionaire in the toilet stall. It dawns on me that I am now complicit. If I do not tell the authorities, if I do not shove Francesca under a bus right now, I will be party to this crime. How could she do such a thing?

Magic, she said so herself. But what if that is a lie? Her tale is novella-worthy but perhaps fictitious. She knows me, knows me in a way I have always found unnerving. She knows the person I become when she is around, the one so desperate to show her the man she could be with. So when she has asked me to taste the flesh of a human being I do not instantly baulk at the horror of it. Instead, I wonder what to do with the bones.

I have not become a full wolf for a terribly long time. The years have allowed me to control the impulses, to lessen the change. Yet now in this overwhelming environment, the wolf threatens to come out in full force. "Francesca, I must confess and you must know: I do not promise to eat this man. It is a lot you are asking of me, Francesca."

"I know, Bob."

"You are asking me to become the animal that I have always feared. The one internal," I tap my chest, right over where my heart is, to convey my point with more force. Francesca crosses her arms and says, "Then we will have to take him with us. He is now our drunk friend. I am strong enough to carry him by myself, of course, but that will draw too much attention. Bob, you must pretend to be strong."

Pretend!? I feel my gonads shrink in real-time. The sound throbbing through the walls increasing in volume, piercing my eardrum like the high heel of a dominatrix. I am turning further, drifting towards the beast, gaining the auditory faculties of a wolf. She implies I am not strong and so the strength in me wishes to emerge. No! Calm! Calm the inner Lycan! She was speaking casually, not as an errant slight against my masculinity. So I must believe and so the sound fades, ever so little. Still, I wish to plug my ears and flee this literal shit hole.

So together we pick up Alain's body and awkwardly file our way through the toilet. It is a terrible ordeal; elbows brush the toilet seat, buttocks scrape against the toilet roll dispenser, all in our attempt to lift him. Right as we are about to open the portal we meet each other’s eyes and nod. Then we fling ourselves through a door, two thespians pretending at camaraderie, not conspirators in a grisly deed. Outside we place one of his arms around each of our necks. He is stiff, perhaps due to what they call rigor mortis. I am taking mental notes of the sensory experience to aid me in a future novella. 

No one in Club 97 gives the slightest shit as we bodily handle Alain, his shins nearly dragging on the floor as they flop. I can tell that Francesca is easily carrying the bulk of the weight with her extra-natural strength. Lurid thoughts of her pinning me to a bed before having her way with my wolfen form penetrate my mind. How she could overpower me! 

We stumble onward and down the hill, away from the bars and touts.

Once at the bottom of the hill we stand in the cab line, drawing some stares from the more sober and reasonable citizens outside of Lan Kwai Fong. I shake my head at them continually as if to say "I know, this is embarrassing for us both, but haven't we all known someone who has been here before? Come on, if it was your friend you would do the same. It will all be over soon and you will have quite the anecdote for your friends." I beam all of this with my eyes and the creases in my forehead.

The first taxi in line does not want to take us. That is understandable, but as I run my tongue over my molars I can feel their new sharper edge, inspiring me. I knock on the passenger side front door and give the driver a wolfish grin, displaying my new incisors. He stares in shock, till my long tongue laps out to lick my lips. He activates the door and we go inside unceremoniously thunking Alain's head against the cab door. Once we settle in, I say to Francesca, "Where shall we go?"

"Your place," she says. And a deep, primal thrill runs down my spine.

What if this is the night? I picture Alain's slumped corpse against the corner of my room as we make violent love in a multitude of positions as I am part-wolf and her all-vampire. But a second thought follows: You fool! She is storing a corpse in your home! "Francesca, I am not sure I am comfortable with having a body in my living room."

"What else do you propose?" she says, staring out the window and away from me. Who knows what conflicting thoughts permeate her skull. What she sees on the other side of the glass, where her reflection will never appear. The back of her head is like a black, perfect ski slope, a run I would stroke with the back of my hand, whizzing off at the end where they curve upwards. I reach a hand towards her hair before I realize what I am doing. She turns to look at me and I retreat. "Well?" she says. "Where else can we go?"

I could say her place, but I imagine she is staying in a hotel and that would be untenable. But my home is unprepared for visitors, especially her, of all people. Yet what choice do I have? I think of other possibilities. The new territories comes to mind. No one would find him in that vast jungle, perhaps for years. I always circle back to the inevitable, the next step in our twisted tale. My place it is. 

The cars behind us stop honking and the taxi driver stops swearing as I finally give him my address.

We drive through the colorful, neon-lit corridors of Hong Kong’s streets. Strange patterns, unknowable hieroglyphs, billboard stamps all flash against Francesca's profile, which I admire side on whilst pretending to study the back of the front seat. The city wanders over the topography of her face. She was made for this city, I can tell, despite her moving to London. See how when we stop at a red light, the circle of red perches like a nose bleed in her left nostril. See how her hair glistens as shimmering greens glance off them, hair so glossy it is as if she is in a shampoo commercial. I admire her throughout, till we reach my apartment building, a dim place sandwiched impossibly between two cha cha tengs. A narrow entrance with a narrower staircase ascending to the lifts. I am embarrassed she has to see it, but there is no other choice.

"I've got this one Bob," she says, fishing into her purse.

Of course, she is a generous soul. My heart expands with the gesture. 

Then we drag Alain up the stairs, into the lift and towards the metal gate of my front door. 

Only to find my door is open.

"Do you have a girlfriend, Bob?" Francesca asks. I wish I could say yes, to draw the jealousy out of her. "A roommate?" she says.

"No."

I have no idea who is in my apartment. Yet we are carrying a dead body into it and soon I will become the wolf. My heart drums in my chest as we see a shadow move within the living room.