Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

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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

Focus on the details of living

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Well, Christmas is here, so enjoy your time with family and friends.  Soak it all in.  Bits of it will foster your writing, and all of it will grow your relationship with family.  So I hope you haven’t been hanging out on the internet reading this blog and my prompt yesterday (for if you had then you would have noticed I was late in posting my writing prompt, too busy soaking in the family).

Quick list of the books I have recommended on my blog

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I have posted about many of the books I consider useful.  So this post is sort of a gathering of those posts in one place.  Now you don’t have to search about for them.

Grammar and revision:
Eats, Shoots and Leaves

A Writer’s Reference
Spell Friendly Dictionaries

Creative inspiration:
A Writer’s Book of Days
Lu Chi’s Wen Fu
Lu Chi’s Wen Fu 2
The Worst Case Scenario 

Good books to read:
The Catcher in the Rye
Tale of Two Cities
You’ve Got to Read This

Writers need to be readers: suggested read

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You’ve Got To Read This is an anthology supplying short stories that are the favorite reads of some of the finest writers of the 20th century.  Every writer should be reading, especially the most exemplary works of well-written prose.  “Goodbye, My Brother” by John Cheever is one of my favorites due to the family dynamics it portrays with simple, straightforward narration, and it is introduced by Allan Gurganus.

This book, though not a recent publication, is a great start for the writers looking to learn by reading.  The short introductions given by the author that selected each piece adds to the reading of each work.  Not only do I get to read a great short story, but I also get to understood what drew the accomplished writer to be moved by the work and name it as one of his or her favorites.

So track down this text and sit down for that occasional short read that you can examine both for the writing skill itself as well as for what  an establish writer might find worthwhile in it.

As said in Lu Chi’s Wen Fu, “When cutting an axe handle with an axe,
surely the model is at hand.”

Advice: DVD stuck in TS-T632A ATA drive

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I know this little bit of advice is going to have a very small audience, but when I consider that just a couple of days ago I spent considerable time searching for the answer which this advice would have provided, I think it is worth my effort and your time.  It would have saved me considerable frustration.

CD/DVD slot

Let me begin with a little back story:  My computer has a built in CD/DVD drive like most computers.  However, mine is one of those slot drives which has no cover or eject button and only the slot is visible.  Now imagine my consternation when I put a brand new program DVD into this drive and my computer did not recognize either the drive or the disc.  As a result, I could not eject it and try another drive.

My device manager stated that the drive was not functioning properly, but that was the only part of my computer that admitted that I did have a CD/DVD drive.  I spent about one hour searching for an updated driver for the unit and confirming that no such update existed.  There were plenty of trails to lead me to believe there was a newer driver than the 2006 version I was currently using (or not using depending on how you view a situation when the computer does not know the drive exists in the first place), but it turned out not to be the case.

I spent another hour trying to find out if there was a manual eject.  I am very familiar with computer components as my father was a fiddler of electronic things (engineer) and I inherited this vice (but am not an engineer).  I expected there to be a manual means of removing this disc. But all my searching only provided me with three options.

  1. Use the software eject.  Open My Computer, right click on the drive, and click eject.  This was not a viable option.  Remember my computer is not recognizing the drive, so it was not showing up on My Computer.
  2. Use the built-in keyboard eject button.  Would you believe I never noticed this before?  It did not work, no matter how many times I pressed it.
  3. Take the back off the computer, remove the shroud underneath, remove the CD/DVD drive, remove its cover and then remove the DVD.  What?! You want me to open a CD/DVD drive, completely exposing its delicate innards?  YIKES!  I went looking for more options.

I know that most (all?) such drives have a tiny hole in which one can insert a wire (modified paper clip) and like magic (with a little pressure applied) activate the mechanism that will eject the CD. This drive did not appear to have one.  Some will hide it inside the slot up high or way low.  So I tried inserting the wire and working by feel to find this mechanism without result.  I spent the better part of an hour muttering about the engineer who designed this particular drive.  We were never going to be friends.

I gave up my fruitless search for answers on the Web and carried my computer to the kitchen table.  The back came off easily.  I complimented the engineer.  The shroud also came off with amazing ease.  I complimented this engineer also.  The drive slid out of its bay like it was greased.  I really liked this engineer.  My husband stood by encouraging my efforts.  (He will take apart anything from remote control boats to shotguns, but not a computer.)  I was explaining how any intelligent engineer will supply a manual means to remove a disc from a drive.  At this point I leaned over and looked at the drive’s slot edge-on now that the shroud no longer hid everything but the slot.  A tiny hole about an inch and half from the top of the drive caught my eye.  I ran for my modified paper clip.  Feeling much like a safe cracker, I eased the wire in, applied gentle pressure and out popped my DVD.  I could have done it without removing the drive from its bay, but could not have done it with the shroud and cover in place.

Moral of this story:  I am going to assume every drive has that manual means of ejecting discs.  I am very glad I did not take the drive apart.  The computer was well-designed for easy access.  Accept for the manual release being hidden when the computer is all together, the engineer was not so bad after all.  So always check for the manual eject hole and keep a paper clip close by.  Chances are 100% likely (or nearly so) that the drive does somewhere have a manual means of ejection.

I turn yet again to Lu Chi’s Wen Fu

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There is a reason why writers must read from the genre that they wish to write in.  They must know what others are producing and most importantly how they are going about it.  It is necessary to examine the art to grow into the artist, to watch the masters to learn to master the craft.

Lu Chi said it best.

When cutting an axe handle with an axe,
   surely the model is at hand.
      (Lu Chi’s Wen Fu:  The Art of Writing, Translated by Sam Hill)

These words are so apropos.  It is not the plot, the setting or the characters used.  It is how the plot is imbedded in the story and how the characters are designed and put into motion.  It is the choice of the right word and the reason why it is right.  It is the reader crying even when the character’s eyes are dry. 

Writers must apprentice themselves to the masters.  We must look closely in the same manner that the jeweler puts on his magnifying lens so he can evaluate the emerald and its unique setting.  Do the same as the farmer who runs the soil through her hands, or the wine maker sniffs the wine.  We must understand the process and product of the art of writing.  We must read closely the models at hand.