Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

connecting with characters

6 Ways Writers Bring Verisimilitude to a Character’s Experience

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We fiction writers attempt to create authentic character experience, largely from events we have never experienced. Of course, we often draw from memories to bring verisimilitude to our writing, but just as often, if not more so, we write of things we have never seen, touched, emotionally felt or responded to.

Writers attempt to create the familiar and unfamiliar daily. If we
are true in our creation, our readers will believe in the moment we
depict.

Writers attempt to make readers sympathetic. We
turn them into partners who can feel what our characters are feeling to such a
degree that, however momentarily, they are in the same emotional instant
of being as the character we painstakingly created.

In other words, our
readers laugh, cry, wince, tremble, and smile just where we want them
to as they read. Either the reader never experienced the situation or
they have. In either case, they deepen the connection through
imagination and through their own personal experience.

With
the desire to develop our characters so our readers commiserate and
celebrate with them comes the need to grasp the nuances of these unique
and often powerful incidents.

There are six main ways writers do this:

  1. We talk to friends, family and professionals who can provide the needed information
  2. We research by reading texts, maps, and internet sources, etc.
  3. We seek the experience
  4. We keep copious notes about what naturally occurs in our lives
  5. We observe closely when others go through events around us
  6. We draw from our imagination, using all of the above to produce something that has yet to be experienced by anyone

Consider the following list:

  1. getting married/divorced/widowed
  2. childbirth
  3. being burned
  4. breaking a bone
  5. being hit by a car
  6. falling a great height
  7. sneaking/breaking into a home/business/institution
  8. stealing
  9. lying for the sake of survival
  10. flying a plane
  11. grave illness
  12. flying in space
  13. crashing a car/plane/motorcycle/boat
  14. losing a limb
  15. fighting a monster
  16. being shot at
  17. shooting someone
  18. making a movie
  19. abusing
  20. being abused
  21. building a house
  22. crafting a work of art or necessity
  23. fixing a machine
  24. programming a computer
  25. building a computer
  26. running a country
  27. taking over a country
  28. assassination
  29. jumping on/off a train
  30. falling in love
  31. hate
  32. raising a child
  33. teaching a skill or knowledge
  34. running a plant/warehouse, business
  35. running from an enemy/attacker
  36. running any complicated machinery
  37. running a marathon/extreme sports
  38. climbing a mountain
  39. hunting
  40. dressing a deer/pig/cow/etc. (I don’t mean with clothes; however, that might be something a character might have to do, so perhaps that should be on the list)
  41. cooking a complete meal
  42. painting a picture
  43. losing one’s mind/memory
  44. caring for the elderly
  45. raising a child with a disability
  46. training a horse/dog/monkey/donkey/etc.
  47. sculpting
  48. treating an injury
  49. designing clothes/interiors/architecture/etc.
  50. drowning 
  51. miscarriage of a pregnancy

Key:
red – events I acquired information about or observed from family, friends or professionals so I could use it in something I’ve written
purple – what I have personally experienced and may have used
orange – what I had no experience in but I did use in my writing and augmented through additional research
white – have not needed to know yet

Obviously, the list is incomplete and infinite in potential length.

We writers are busy creating characters who go through believable experiences. If you are a writer, what unusual or challenging experience did you have to craft for your work? If you are a reader, what experience did a character go through that captured an emotional and physical connection from you, that made you respond because it felt that real?

#writing
#research
#characterization

Seeking the perfect junction: crossing the gap between what is written & what is read

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Readers need to connect the content to their own lives.

Recently I was reading Jane
Eyre.  The narrator and main
character Jane was describing a view of Rochester seated alone in a darkened
room, and suddenly I was transported back about ten years and the memory of
walking into my father’s office to see him seated at his desk, quiet, lost in
thought, came quickly to mind. 

My father
had lost much of his vision, which for a man who loved to read and tinker with
electronics in his retirement was tragic. 
He did not know I had entered, so for just that brief moment I saw how
disappointed he was in his situation.   One of his hands reached to run fingers over his watch and prompt it to tell him the time. A magnifying glass mounted on an articulating arm was close to his face, and just inches beneath the glass a second magnifying glass hung. 

Of
course, as soon as he was aware I was there, his whole countenance changed to
one of pleasure and good cheer.  He
joked, worked hard to track my movements with his eyes, told me how much I
looked like his father, but I knew I was mostly blur for him.  His once lovely penmanship was a broken
scrawl, and the confidence at which he moved about the house or located things
was because he had memorized where everything was and was precise in keeping
each to its proper place.

Moved by this memory of my father, I could not but be moved by poor Rochester’s fate.  This is how writers connect their work to their readers.  They strike a chord that links to some piece
of our lives, one we have or one we wish we had, as well as those we wish we didn’t. 


My beta reader, Marcy Peska, read the first book in my series Students of Jump (In Times Passed).  In her notes on my draft, she would comment on what a scene triggered in her or how a piece of dialogue caught her attention.  At one point halfway through the novel, she had written in a note “Nooo, I did not see this coming. I have to break away.”  Then the note continued explaining that she had needed to stop for a “mini-meltdown.”  Marcy had been immersed in the scene and what occurred had caught her up so emotionally, she could not go on reading without some distance to recover her equilibrium.  She loved the scene and hated it at the same time because it had bridged the gap between the text and the imagination.  Goal achieved.  It was a tough scene to write and tough to read, which was precisely what I was going for.

Rochester’s injuries had that effect on me.  I hated seeing my father that way, but because of the quality of Bronte’s writing, I could imagine what Rochester must look like and what Jane must be feeling. The scene was real to me. I had sympathy for both characters, and the scene was authentic because it bridged the two events: fiction and reality.

This is the challenge of every writer and the need that every reader wants filled.  We want to connect, to find some essence of our own experience that draws us into the scene.  The writer must still supply well-written dialogue, description, imagery, finely drawn characters, etc., but what is most vital is that the reader have a way to travel the created moment with a sense of familiarity and originality combined.

What work of fiction or biography caught you, the reader, in such a moment?  Please share that moment of connectiveness, the author, text scene.

#writing
#readers
#connection

For writers, tragedy is a good thing

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Caught up in the moment

No one wants to read about everything going right.  Readers want things to go wrong so they can watch the characters find their way through their difficulties.  Houses burn down, people get sick or lost or lose their jobs.  They get angry and lose their temper.  We readers know this happens in real life.  Watching someone go through these kinds of difficulties and come out the other end stronger gives us hope.

In my classes, my students often ask me questions after we have finished a book.  So many times they are questions I cannot answer because the characters aren’t real, and I cannot call them up and check on their progress.  But often my students see them as real, that there is more yet to come.  Every writer should aspire to the kinds of questions my students ask.

  • Did he go back and find her?
  • Why did she leave him if she knew he needed her to stay awhile longer?
  • Will they every see each other again?
  • Did she have an unhappy childhood?
  • What did her family think about what she did?

All I can say is, “I am not sure.  Why do you think they did it?” Or some other statement to put it back on them to consider the possible answers.  Their question are proof that my students have connected to the characters.

Readers find understanding, lessons and experience in the books they read.  This is why writers find tragedy a good thing.  It makes our characters live in reality in a way that brings our readers insight and emotional release while they are “safe” from reality at the same time.