Last week on “Fresh Air,” a talk radio show on NPR that generally interviews people in the entertaiment industry, they had Nick Hornby on promoting his new book. Nick Hornby, for those of you who don’t know, is the author of High Fidelity, a book that was turned into a most excellent John Cussack movie. Now, I’ve never read the book, nor even heard of the author before that point, but that isn’t really the point here. At some point in the interview Terry Gross, the host of the program, asked Hornby if his characters all essentially him due to their general love of music. This particular question got me thinking.
It got me thinking largely because the novel that I have been working on is a fictionalized autobiography. Meaning, the book is basically about me. As such, the main character is about me as well. And this isn’t necessarily a good thing. I think all authors infuse their personalities into their characters, particularly their main characters. So it isn’t necessarily a bad thing I don’t think to do so. It makes the character believable. But one particular problem is that if I make this, my first character, too much like myself, I may be forfitting my ability to infuse those traits on future characters without seeing great duplication.
So the challenge then becomes how do you make a character not like you to avoid you just constantly writing about yourself. I mean part of this is to make it fictionalized right? This is what I am contemplating now with my main character. The character already isn’t as intelligent as I am, or at least as intelligent as I think I am. But what else could be done to change him up and how much should I change?
The how much becomes a tricky question and my goal is to make at least three major differences between him and I, though I think five might be a little more safe. Like I said, the more distant the character is from myself, the better.
So one major feature of the character that I think is important is that he is anti-social but generally liked by other people. This makes him a little smarmy and sarcastic which I like in the character, and myself. However, one charactistic of this anti-socialness that I possess is a general dislike of being around other people. I tend to be scared of putting myself in social positions and I think this might be a great opportunity to reverse this for my character. For one, it helps my character get more social interaction and thus make it a more interesting story to read. But it also serves as helpful to me, to explore one of my weaknesses… perhaps seeing what I might be like if I were a more brave person.
It is this kind of thought that I think is very constructive to thinking of any character really though. I mean generally you have a base understanding of what the character you are writing is about. But this type of thought is what really fleshes the character out. How to change the character from what you are, which I realize is writing 101, but it is still something that is easy to forget.
Hornby’s answer by the way was that the character started out similar to him, but what really makes the character unique is when you get the character to do things on their own. And it is this that makes the character different from yourself. I agree to a certain extent, the key though is really getting the person to do things that are different from yourself. And I think for one that getting the person to be more courageous will help him get in those situations. Now, I just need to think of other traits that will put my doppelganger into better positions to be unique.