Psychological Aspects of Fiction Writing 2 — Author Visibility in Characters and Plot
In the first offering of this series, I wrote about the relational attachment that an author can develop with her/his characters while writing a novel. In today’s blog, I explore another ‘author-to-writing’ relational connection that bears more risk for the quality of the final written product.
When writing a novel, an author must always keep in mind the final goal of the work. In most cases, that goal is the maximum satisfaction of the reader. Toward that objective, it goes without saying that the story must generate sufficient interest in both plot and characters to maintain the reader’s investment to the end of the action. Hopefully, the result for the reader is the reward of satisfaction for the time spent reading. This is not always merely an ‘entertainment’ type of satisfaction. It can be enlightenment, inspiration, terror, joy, or many other desired emotional responses.
From the fictional works I’ve read, my sense is that sometimes the author’s intent can wander beyond that primary goal. There may be one or more secondary objectives, whether these are consciously intended or not. And these secondary goals can sometimes be inappropriately in service of meeting some psychological need of the author. And this becomes a problem when these factors are in conflict with what ‘works’ for the story.
When it comes to issues of social import, I have to admit that I can be quite opinionated. Attribute this to my training and experience as a social worker, my early religious background, a parochial, small-town upbringing, or my involvement in social causes over many years. These all play a role in how I think about anything that makes its way through the filters of my brain. In my previous blog, I discussed how my perception of the qualities that constitute a ‘strong woman’ influenced how I developed the character Aubrey McKenna, the protagonist in my two novels to date. As I wrote both of her books, I was also aware that my psychological involvement with the social issues that emerged in the plots also influenced the storyline and how I wrote the characters’ behaviors and descriptions.
Now, this, I came to realize, can be a bit of a ‘tightrope’ performance for a writer. While I make every effort to adhere to that primary principle of fiction writing being for entertainment, I soon learned from what I was producing that I also wanted to inform, and perhaps persuade, on some of the plots’ implications for standards of fairness, justice or downright bigotry. For Aubrey McKenna to be a woman of substance, she would likely have strong opinions on issues of her time and place. So, in Murder at Mountain Tavern, she expressed herself on the abortion issue, male dominance in her sphere of policing, and a central thread in the plot involved sexual abuse of a minor and Aubrey’s passionate concern about the effect of sexual violence on women.
The ‘tightrope’ for a novel writer in this is that in addressing such issues, one must ensure that the intent to inform or persuade does not overwhelm the goal of entertainment and interest. My sense is that this boundary was more of a challenge for me in my second novel, ‘The Loner,’ than in the first, ‘Murder at Mountain Tavern.’ Perhaps this was informed by the social upheaval in our country that was present during the period when I was writing the second book.
How much focus on a topic is too much when the topics include white supremacy and systemic racism — issues that are prominent in “The Loner?” After reading my first draft, I had that feeling that a writer wants to avoid — the gut twinge that says, “Okay, maybe too far.” I knew how strongly I felt about these issues. Was I as an author too visible in the story? Was I projecting too much of my own positions on these issues into Aubrey, the other characters, and the plot? To my mind, excess in that is something a fiction writer must avoid at all costs. The reader needs to be able to clearly see the characters and the plot without being encumbered by sidelong thoughts of, “Oh, that’s how the author feels about this or that issue.” The story should carry the day.
For example, the maleficence of Aubrey’s antagonist in “The Loner” evolves throughout the plot. This was my intent. Evil can often not be fully comprehended at first sight; its true nature emerges only with additional exposure. I wanted this to be the case with Daniel ‘Red’ Strauss, the novel’s white supremacy advocate. “Well, I think that’s inbounds,” I told myself. It’s reasonable that a villain should reflect extremes; better to evoke a reader’s revulsion and disdain. But here again, take that too far, and the character becomes a caricature and not believable.
And then, the issue of ‘how far is too far’ arose for me in writing a chapter in which the protagonists celebrate the Thanksgiving meal together, in the midst of their ongoing investigation of the possible plot of Strauss’ white supremacy group. In my original writing of this chapter, Aubrey and her cohorts decide to avoid discussing the actual investigation as a device for keeping the holiday gathering out of the ‘talking about work’ sphere. Instead, they explore the more general topic of systemic racism, prompted by how this seems to be at the root of the threat that they are investigating. This became the dominant focus of that chapter.
In my edit rereading of this, and with feedback from beta readers, I decided that this was likely out of bounds for both plot continuity and soapbox preaching. My opinions and my psychological involvement with both the plot and the characters on these issues were not just overly visible in that chapter. They were predominant in its tone and content. It is for this reason that I decided to excise the bulk of that chapter from the novel.
However, I must note that while I did rework the Thanksgiving chapter in the novel itself, I felt that the conversation that the players had in the original version was too important to not address in some way. So I included this as an outtake in ‘Additional Content’ after the end of the book. My self-indulgence is at work in this, I suppose. But, at least, I give readers the option of reading that material without their having to incorporate it into the story.
I suppose time and feedback from readers will determine to what degree I have succeeded in my ‘tightrope’ quest for the type of author psychological invisibility that I have tried to achieve in my writings.
When writing a novel, an author must always keep in mind the final goal of the work. In most cases, that goal is the maximum satisfaction of the reader. Toward that objective, it goes without saying that the story must generate sufficient interest in both plot and characters to maintain the reader’s investment to the end of the action. Hopefully, the result for the reader is the reward of satisfaction for the time spent reading. This is not always merely an ‘entertainment’ type of satisfaction. It can be enlightenment, inspiration, terror, joy, or many other desired emotional responses.
From the fictional works I’ve read, my sense is that sometimes the author’s intent can wander beyond that primary goal. There may be one or more secondary objectives, whether these are consciously intended or not. And these secondary goals can sometimes be inappropriately in service of meeting some psychological need of the author. And this becomes a problem when these factors are in conflict with what ‘works’ for the story.
When it comes to issues of social import, I have to admit that I can be quite opinionated. Attribute this to my training and experience as a social worker, my early religious background, a parochial, small-town upbringing, or my involvement in social causes over many years. These all play a role in how I think about anything that makes its way through the filters of my brain. In my previous blog, I discussed how my perception of the qualities that constitute a ‘strong woman’ influenced how I developed the character Aubrey McKenna, the protagonist in my two novels to date. As I wrote both of her books, I was also aware that my psychological involvement with the social issues that emerged in the plots also influenced the storyline and how I wrote the characters’ behaviors and descriptions.
Now, this, I came to realize, can be a bit of a ‘tightrope’ performance for a writer. While I make every effort to adhere to that primary principle of fiction writing being for entertainment, I soon learned from what I was producing that I also wanted to inform, and perhaps persuade, on some of the plots’ implications for standards of fairness, justice or downright bigotry. For Aubrey McKenna to be a woman of substance, she would likely have strong opinions on issues of her time and place. So, in Murder at Mountain Tavern, she expressed herself on the abortion issue, male dominance in her sphere of policing, and a central thread in the plot involved sexual abuse of a minor and Aubrey’s passionate concern about the effect of sexual violence on women.
The ‘tightrope’ for a novel writer in this is that in addressing such issues, one must ensure that the intent to inform or persuade does not overwhelm the goal of entertainment and interest. My sense is that this boundary was more of a challenge for me in my second novel, ‘The Loner,’ than in the first, ‘Murder at Mountain Tavern.’ Perhaps this was informed by the social upheaval in our country that was present during the period when I was writing the second book.
How much focus on a topic is too much when the topics include white supremacy and systemic racism — issues that are prominent in “The Loner?” After reading my first draft, I had that feeling that a writer wants to avoid — the gut twinge that says, “Okay, maybe too far.” I knew how strongly I felt about these issues. Was I as an author too visible in the story? Was I projecting too much of my own positions on these issues into Aubrey, the other characters, and the plot? To my mind, excess in that is something a fiction writer must avoid at all costs. The reader needs to be able to clearly see the characters and the plot without being encumbered by sidelong thoughts of, “Oh, that’s how the author feels about this or that issue.” The story should carry the day.
For example, the maleficence of Aubrey’s antagonist in “The Loner” evolves throughout the plot. This was my intent. Evil can often not be fully comprehended at first sight; its true nature emerges only with additional exposure. I wanted this to be the case with Daniel ‘Red’ Strauss, the novel’s white supremacy advocate. “Well, I think that’s inbounds,” I told myself. It’s reasonable that a villain should reflect extremes; better to evoke a reader’s revulsion and disdain. But here again, take that too far, and the character becomes a caricature and not believable.
And then, the issue of ‘how far is too far’ arose for me in writing a chapter in which the protagonists celebrate the Thanksgiving meal together, in the midst of their ongoing investigation of the possible plot of Strauss’ white supremacy group. In my original writing of this chapter, Aubrey and her cohorts decide to avoid discussing the actual investigation as a device for keeping the holiday gathering out of the ‘talking about work’ sphere. Instead, they explore the more general topic of systemic racism, prompted by how this seems to be at the root of the threat that they are investigating. This became the dominant focus of that chapter.
In my edit rereading of this, and with feedback from beta readers, I decided that this was likely out of bounds for both plot continuity and soapbox preaching. My opinions and my psychological involvement with both the plot and the characters on these issues were not just overly visible in that chapter. They were predominant in its tone and content. It is for this reason that I decided to excise the bulk of that chapter from the novel.
However, I must note that while I did rework the Thanksgiving chapter in the novel itself, I felt that the conversation that the players had in the original version was too important to not address in some way. So I included this as an outtake in ‘Additional Content’ after the end of the book. My self-indulgence is at work in this, I suppose. But, at least, I give readers the option of reading that material without their having to incorporate it into the story.
I suppose time and feedback from readers will determine to what degree I have succeeded in my ‘tightrope’ quest for the type of author psychological invisibility that I have tried to achieve in my writings.
No comments have been added yet.
