See here for part 1, part 2, and part 3 of the interview.
9) How do you see your work on non-violence fitting into your discussions of co-crucifixion and theosis?
I have a whole chapter on this in Inhabiting, but basically because I see the cross both as the definitive theophany and as the display of God’s nonviolent way of reconciling enemies, participation in the life of this God must take on God’s nonviolent character. I think that is Paul’s perspective, and for him it is part and parcel of justification by faith/co-crucifixion.
10) How do you think Paul`s understanding of participation in Christ relates to the Platonic and Aristotelian understandings of participation?
I am not an expert on either Plato or Aristotle, but I suspect that Paul is not indebted to either tradition for his experience and understanding of participation. Paul’s participation in Christ is fundamentally narrative, kinetic, and missional by virtue of being a sharing in the story and reality of God’s self-giving love displayed especially in Christ’s incarnation and death. Thus participation is neither an end in itself nor static, both of which may be more appropriately attributed to certain philosophical traditions.
11) Could you comment on the timing of justification? It seems that you describe justification as a process in distinction to those who make it more an ‘already’ kind of thing, which could make some Protestants a little uncomfortable.
I am not sure I would describe justification as a process as much as it is a mode of existence that has an initial point and an eschatological culminating point. That’s somewhat similar to Tom Wright’s idea of justification having two moments. I would also stress the time between the two as part of justification. The justified live a life of justice, not as some supplement to justification understood as a finished reality, but as the embodiment of justification itself.
Here’s a relevant quote from chapter two:
What justification by co-crucifixion will imply, however, and not surprisingly, is that a theological rift between justification and sanctification is impossible, because the same Spirit effects both initial and ongoing co-crucifixion with Christ among believers, a lifelong experience of cruciformity or, in light of chapter one, theoformity—theosis.
If that makes Protestants uncomfortable, so be it!—and blame Paul, not me. He’s the one who won’t limit “”just-“ (dik-) language to some past event. In Christ we become the justice of God. That’s justification! That’s theosis!
Mary Mackey is the author of a new historical novel, The Widow’s War, just published in paperback by Berkley Books (a division of Penguin). It is the story of a woman’s life and struggles set against the backdrop of the approaching Civil War. As in many of Mary’s other sweeping historical epics, it portrays a strong and courageous woman caught up in historic times.
Maxine Hong Kingston said of The Widow’s War: “We thrill to the story of Carrie Vinton, as she courageously takes the side of freedom over slavery.”
Mary has been a professor of English and Creative Writing at California State University for over 30 years. She has published 12 novels and 5 books of poetry. Her works have been translated into 11 foreign languages including Japanese, Hebrew, Greek, and Finnish. Her best selling novel, A Grand Passion, sold over a million copies and made The New York Times bestseller list.
Mary will be reading and discussing The Widow’s War on Friday, September 11, at 7:00 PM at Book Passage Corte Madera, California.
Andy: Mary, I want to talk to you today about writing historical fiction. It is a genre that I love to read and that you, it seems, love to write. But first I’d like you to tell me a little bit about your new book, The Widow’s War, which has just been published by Berkley Books.
Mary: Well, we might start with the fact that Carrie Vinton, the heroine, is a widow because she’s just shot her husband.
Andy: Wow. That starts things off with a bang. I presume she had good reason, yes?
Mary: A whole list of good reasons. This is a novel about the first African-Americans to fight in the Civil War. They’re a fictional cavalry unit, but they could have existed. The story that surrounds them is filled with Afro-Brazilian magic, heroism, history, and a passionate love affair that borders on obsession. But it also explores the subject of betrayal: personal betrayal, political betrayal, and, of course, sexual betrayal.
The heroine, Carrie Vinton, is an American who was raised in the jungles of Brazil by her father, a botanist. Carrie is passionately opposed to slavery. In the fall of 1853, Carrie finds herself alone and pregnant in Rio de Janeiro after William, her abolitionist fiancé, disappears. William’s stepbrother, Deacon Presgrove, arrives in Rio, tells her William is dead, and convinces her to marry him for her baby’s sake.
After they return to the states, Carrie finds out she’s been tricked: Deacon is a fortune-hunter who’s married her for her money and William is still alive. From that point on, the novel is one series of betrayals after another. Believing that Carrie is dead, William has emigrated to Kansas where he is running slaves out of the slave state of Missouri on the Underground Railroad. Carrie goes to Kansas to search for William. This isn’t the Kansas Dorothy went back to after she returned from OZ. This is a Kansas convulsed by a violent civil war that raged for seven years before the official Civil War broke out. Two years earlier, in 1854, President Pierce had signed a law which gave the residents of the Territory the right to vote to determine whether or not Kansas would come into the Union as a free state or a slave state. Almost immediately fierce fighting broke out in the Territory as proslavers flocked over the border to vote and abolitionists, mostly from New England, emigrated to Kansas to bring the state into the Union as a free state.
William and Carrie are reunited but their happiness is short-lived. Attacking Carrie’s home, proslavers kidnap William, Carrie’s newborn child, and thirteen fugitive slaves. Desperate to fight for what she believes in, to get her child back safely, to prevent innocent people from being sold back into slavery, and to be reunited with the man she loves, Carrie arms a cavalry unit of African-American soldiers and leads them on a rescue mission into the slave state of Missouri. These soldiers have been trained by John Brown, the same John Brown who attacked Harper’s Ferry in 1849. Brown believed armed insurrection was the only way to end slavery and he was very active in Kansas at the time.
I don’t want to give away any more of the plot, so I’ll leave you with William with a noose around his neck and Carrie riding into Missouri to try to save him.
Andy: Can you be bribed to tell us if she makes it in time?
Mary: Afraid not.
Andy: Okay, then, the next question: This is your second book that takes place in the time of the Civil War. Your first was: The Notorious Mrs. Winston .[ picture of book. ] What caused you to become interested in this historical period?
Mary: My great-grandfathers fought on opposite sides during the Civil War. One died for the Union at Shiloh; the other was a Confederate Army surgeon. I grew up hearing both points of view, and by the time I was twelve, I had decided that slavery was a great evil, and that if I had been alive in that period, I would have been a abolitionist. Of course, I’m not the only person interested in the Civil War. Hundreds of thousands of people are still drawn to the subject. It was one of the great turning points in American history, and many of the issues it raised are still with us—racism, for example. You can’t understand American in the 21st Century if you don’t know what happened when this country was almost ripped apart in the mid-19th century. In the 1850’s slave owners came very close to controlling Congress. If Kansas had come into the Union as a slave state, all the western states, including California, might have become slave states. The North might not have won The Civil War; we might be two countries instead of one. You might say we escaped by the skin of our teeth.
Also, as a novelist, I’m always trying to create a plot that’s exciting—one that sweeps the reader along. There are few periods more exciting than the years just before and during the Civil War.
Andy: It seems to me that historical fiction as a genre has an enduring attraction. I have always loved it because it seems to focus on the heroic virtues (and vices) of humans. In the best works, I always come away being uplifted by these kind of epic themes. What is it about the genre that allows you to –well- get away with these kinds of portrayals. After all, most contemporary literary fiction seems to dwell on more intimate and private subjects.
Mary: I love writing historical fiction because it allows me to set my stories in times when people face serous adversity. I think you really get to know a character—or a real person for that matter—by the choices they make under stress. When the going gets tough, does the person endure or fold; show compassion or shove the children aside, jump in the lifeboats, and save him or herself at the expense of everyone else?
At present in the industrialized world, most people have few opportunities to show how heroic (or how deeply wicked) they are. We live sheltered lives. If we drink the water that comes out of our faucets, we aren’t likely to die of typhoid; most women survive childbirth; the majority of babies don’t die in infancy; our homes are warm in winter; most of us have never really gone hungry, and although we may deplore the violence in our cities, an army is not likely to attack the town we live in, burn the buildings, and massacre all the men and boys (which is what actually happened in Lawrence, Kansas in 1863).
Writing historical fiction gives me wide-ranging, exciting possibilities that allow my characters to be heroic or foolish on a grand scale with important consequences. I have an opportunity to examine the point where personal life and history intersect. Tolstoy does this masterfully in War and Peace. Dickens does it in A Tale of Two Cities. I learned from them that historical fiction can also be literary fiction.
Andy: So now here is the big question. What is the greatest historical novel ever written? Or let me rephrase that. What is the greatest historical novel ever written other than War and Peace?
Mary: I’d say Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (a.k.a. Remembrance of Things Past), all seven volumes of it. It’s not usually classified as historical fiction, but it covers the first decades of the French Third Republic and fin de siècle. Published between 1913 and 1927, it has a timeline that begins in the early 1870’s. Proust is one of my mentors. He’s influenced the way I think about psychology and style. He taught me that concrete detail and well-developed, complex, vivid characters can recapture the past and make it come alive.
My next favorite piece of historical fiction is Mary Renault’s novel The Persian Boy. I’ve read it several times and each time I go back to it, I’m impressed by how beautifully Renault integrates the history of Alexander The Great’s conquest of Persia with the intimately personal, first-person narrative of Alexander’s lover, the eunuch Bagoas. Like Proust, Renault has strongly influenced my writing, particularly my pre-history novels The Year the Horses Came, The Horses At the Gate, and The Fires of Spring.
Andy: Lately, when I have tried to sell publishers any book, fiction or non, publishers seem obsessed about the books not being too long. It seems that the internet has created a generation of readers with ADD. But historical fiction seems to be able to get away with more words. I see 800, 1000, 1400 page historical novels. Got any thoughts why this is so?
Mary: I suspect readers are willing to buy and read long historical novels because historical novels are offering them a history populated by human beings who love and suffer in ways that haven’t changed all that much over the centuries. Also, I think many people (myself included) like to learn history in an enjoyable, painless way. Reading primary, or even secondary, historical documents can be a complex, difficult, boring process. I do it all the time, and even though I’m a trained academic researcher, I often find myself exhausted as I try to sort through events and make sense of them. Good historical fiction spares the reader this process. Ideally, the author tells a good story and in the process of reading that story, you learn a lot of history, but you learn it without having to spend two or three years consulting hundreds of books and articles. Better yet, you remember it. Once I read The Persian Boy, I never forgot that Alexander The Great made it all the way to India in his attempt to conqueror the world.
Andy: When I saw the movie Zorro 2, there was a scene that took place when California was admitted to the Union in 1850. The scene included Abraham Lincoln and a Confederate general. So my question is when the historical record clashes with telling a good yarn, who wins out?
Mary: History, at least in my novels. I think my readers rely on me to be accurate. That said, I’m writing fiction, which means that, among other things, I’m inserting fictional characters into real history, so sometimes I rely on possibility rather than on the exact record. For example, in The Widow’s War, I have a fictional pro-slavery senator named Bennett Presgrove help a South Carolina Congressman nearly beat an abolitionist senator nearly to death on the floor of the U.S. Senate. The beating is a real, historical fact—one that shocked me when I discovered it– but in real life, the South Carolina Congressman conducted his infamy solo. At the end of the novel, I have an Author’s Note. In it, I tell the reader what’s fact and what’s fiction. I would never consider putting Abraham Lincoln next to a Confederate general in 1850. If I were reading a novel that did this, the entire illusion of being transported back to another era would be ruined for me. Even small mistakes in the historical record bother me. For example, I’ve read novels set in prehistoric Europe where people sit around drinking tea.
On the other hand, some novels intentionally set out to distort history or change history. For example, there is a whole genre of science fiction alternate history novels that take as their subjects things like the South winning the Civil War or Hitler dying as an infant. As long as the author tells you at the beginning that this is the game plan, I don’t mind. Fiction is just that: fiction. The joy of fiction is that you can do anything you want with it as long as you are honest with your readers.
Andy: I know you have been writing about the Civil War period now. But have also written about Czarist Russia and European pre-history. Are there any other historical periods that you find really appealing?
Mary: My doctoral dissertation was on the influence of the Darwinian Revolution on the 19th century novel, which is why the 19th century always attracts me, but I’m also particularly interested in ancient Rome, Britain as the Roman empire was crumbling, the Middle Ages in general, 17th century France, and Latin American just before and during the Spanish and Portuguese conquest. I read about these eras constantly, although I don’t know if I will ever set a novel in them.
Andy: So what is it with the God damned Tudors? It’s like one novel after another about Elizabeth, Henry, Mary Scots, that stupid rogue Essex, the Boleyn girls. Is there really anything new to say about these people? Why do they seem to have such an enduring fascination?
Mary: I think some of the appeal is celebrity gossip. “OMG! Henry the VIII beheaded 2 of his wives!” Plus the women wear really beautiful clothes and are very rich and live in palaces while the rest of us are trying to pay the mortgage. I have nothing against these novels. They provide entertainment and escape, and in the best cases they bring history to people who would never read it otherwise. Some are very well-written and well-researched. I particularly enjoy the work of Philippa Gregory. I think the problem with the Tudors is that they are being mined to death. It’s like the Jane Austen craze. Jane Austen is a great writer, but you can only take so many rewrites of Pride and Prejudice. I’m reminded of great songs that are played until you can’t stand them. At this very moment, someone who has never heard it before is listening to Stairway To Heaven and being blown away by it. But when I hear it for the 6,000th time, all I want is earplugs. It’s the same with the Tudors.
Andy: Ok Mary. I want to write an historical novel. I’m thinking of doing a kind of mystery. Maybe Sherlock Holmes teams up with Otto Von Bismarck. Maybe a murder in the Hapsburg court. A lot of scenes with generals in cool outfits doing the waltz. Is this a good idea. What periods of time do you see really working right now for a successful novel?
mary: Right now I’m hoping that the Civil War period is the best for a successful novel. Seriously, Andy, if you’re planning to write a historical novel, you should start by finding a period you love and set your story in it. If waltzing generals in cool outfits make you happier than Roman emperors in togas, go for the waltzing generals.
Historical Novels that Mary recommends you read:
Mary Mackey suggests you read all of Andy’s suggestions (below) plus:
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
The Persian Boy by Mary Renault
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Eagle in the Snow by Wallace Breem
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Memoirs of a Geisha by Authur Golden
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
The Year The Horses Came by Mary Mackey
The Widow’s War by Mary Mackey
Ten Historical Novels that Andy recommends you read.
Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears
The Dream of Cicero by Iain Pears
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
The Three Musketeers s by Alexander Dumas
Saints and Villains by Denise Giardino
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Lincoln by Gore Vidal
The Notorious Mrs. Winston by Mary Mackey
The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
If N is the number of column inches, R is the relevance to current news obsessions, I is the importance of the academic whose name is attached to the press release and ∂ is a greek character that I introduced to make the whole thing look like it came from a university rather than the desk of a public relations consultant, then the formula for press coverage of a made-up scientific formula is too depressing to invent.
I’ve just been at the British Science Festival where journalist, author and enemy of chiropractors everywhere Simon Singh presented Why Journalists Love Stupid Equations and Other Problems in the Media. If you have been under a rock and so missed the stupid equation trend, over at Apathy Sketchpad there’s a collection of the Telegraph’s miserable Formula For stories. Also, the same blog’s collection of PR-concocted science from the Mail, and then there’s the Sun story on the formula which tells us if a boob line is too low – which, as Ben Goldacre points out, doesn’t even work. Idiots. You can read more detail about what Singh had to say here.
I declare an interest: a few years ago I was called in by a PR company to work out why the newspapers had stopped printing stories for their price comparison web site client. The answer: because all they did was make up increasingly asinine formulae for the tabloids, freesheets and women’s magazines. At the time they were desperately pushing the formula for a perfect bargain (I’m not making this up), which had half a dozen variables to consider, and eventually gave a number between 100 and 700 which you had to compare to a table of results. You were meant to use this calculation while staring into a shop window FFS, and they couldn’t even be bothered to (or didn’t know how to) make it come out as a percentage.
I suggested to Singh that naming the PR companies who rely on this guff might act as a deterrent. “Problem is, if you name them, then people who want to get in the papers are going to say, fantastic, we should go to that PR company,” he pointed out.
Like an internet survey of 23 people, or a the story of how some type of vegetable will save your from cancer, the fake formula offends me because it is cynical lowest-common-denominator PR. It offends me because as journalists we all know this is crap – but we publish it anyway. And it offends me because we assume this is all the science that readers can tolerate without their heads exploding while they’re reading the paper.
I recently had a telephone interview for a Java position which was going well until they asked the first technical question – “How do you implement a hash map?”
My first thought was that it was a very mean question to ask a Java applicant as you never need to implement your own hash map, rather using Java’s implementation of a HashMap. My second thought was “Whooopeee – I’ve done this stuff in a C++ module at Uni a few years back”. I then launched into a rambling explanation of hash functions and ways to deal with collisions. I wasn’t prepared for that question and the fact I was trying to dredge up memories from a few years ago left me less coherent than I would like. The voices at the other end of the telephone seemed a little confused and after a couple more questions about my answer, I finally gave up and asked them what they were looking for. Their answer: a collection of key value pairs.
Well, yup – that’s what a hash map is and if they had asked for a definition, that is what I would have provided. While they thought they were sliding into the interview the easy way, I had jumped into the technical deep end and splashed around until ultimately drowning on the easiest of questions…
Which leads me straight into one of my pet hates – technical vocabulary! The amount of technical jargon that is thrown around in interviews is astounding, yet so often the terms are really general whilst the person using it is thinking of something specific. One example that springs to mind is “Agile” – a term used to describe a group of different software methodologies, yet you can be sure the person using it is thinking purely of the methodology they use. Half the time people aren’t even using the terms correctly anyway.
I once went for an interview and was immediately given a 22 page technical quiz to complete. One page consisted purely of acronyms that I had to expand (Oh wow, I know what JMS stands for, I must be a real good programmer). The rest of the questions consisted mainly of definitions and other “book knowledge” questions. I was really disappointed not to find a single question where you had to think about a problem and solve it (even in pseudocode). To make things even better, I could hear the interviewer & friend talking about me just outside the paper thin walls of the interview room. I was ready to walk out of there right then but for the sake of politeness (and pride – I didn’t want them to think their quiz had got the better of me), I completed the interview.
This last interview has helped me realise I am sabotaging myself. I am so nervous during the interview that I am always looking for the trick or diving into the technical deep end without covering the Oh-Duh! stuff, which just might happen to be what they are looking for. I can clearly imagine the discussion on my last interview “Oh my word! She didn’t even know what a HashMap was! …And she calls herself a developer! *tut.tut* …the candidates these days!”
for a dude who threatened you constantly,talking bout how good he was, and how hard his ‘hood was, lamont was one the greatest new york rap singers ever.
for me personally, he was better than biggie.yeah,i said it.
a new flick about his life.hopefully not a whitewash, like the others, where the most foul, gangsta dudes suddenly turn into angels who love their mom, and never sold drugs.
metaphor master.he lived by the gun, and died by it.he sure could rap though…
deep.
completely hypocritical,after “streetstruck”, but dope, none the less…
d.i.t.c tribute.actually touching…
Big L – Lifestyles of Da Poor and Dangerous [320]
Click on images for ‘On The Go Interview’ from 1995
Stephanie Davis with students from the Bridgeport Lighthouse Afterschool Program
“Volunteering is not just an activity, it is a way of life,” says Stephanie Davis who started volunteering 10 years ago when she was only 6 years old. She has two cousins with autism, and this inspired her to start participating in walkathons and fundraising. To this date, she has raised over $30,000 for autism by making and selling “have a heart” pins and other products in her community and has been recognized by the U.N. for World Autism Day in 2008 for her personal advocacy efforts. She has since expanded her advocacy scope to include human rights issues and tutoring children locally in Bridgeport, CT.
What subject in school are you most passionate about?
I’m just starting the 11th grade, I don’t really have a favorite class, although I find biology to be interesting, and I love Spanish because I want to be able to spend time living in a different country when I’m older.
What do you see yourself doing as a long-term career?
I want to spend all the time I can exploring opportunities in the world that will help me find something I am interested in to spend my life doing. I want to do something I feel passionate about and that benefits other people. I want my career to be one that inspires or helps people in some way.
Share the story of how you got started in volunteering.
I was six years old when I started walking in walkathons for autism for my cousin David with my family. It was a few years older when I started volunteering with my mother taking care of children in Operation Hope in Bridgeport while their mothers searched for homes/jobs. I was in sixth grade when I started asking my mother every day to find me a volunteer job so I could help young children in need of education and tutoring. She finally found me one when I was 12 years old and I began volunteering weekly at Elias Howe Family Resource Center in Bridgeport, CT.
How many hours per month / what kind of volunteering do you do?
I spend about 2 hours every Wednesday (sometimes Thursdays as well) helping the Lighthouse Program Students in Bridgeport with their homework and giving them the one on one attention that they deserve. For the past four years I have been doing an annual fundraiser for these children at Cesar A Batalla Elementary School. When I was 13, I made my Bat Mitzvah project a mural painting for the school. The next year I did a winter clothing drive. For the past two years I’ve been doing a letter writing campaign to all of the Bridgeport businesses, raising money for scholarships for the students of The Lighthouse Summer Program. I am also team captain of my Autism Speaks team, “Curing Cousins,” inspired by my two autistic cousins. Since I was 9 I’ve been raising money to support autistic people by making and selling heart shaped pins. Now I involve young children in helping with this cause and advocating for autism awareness in their elementary schools, along with autism fundraisers I do with my friends. In my school I am also co-president of The STAND Club, Students Taking Action Now in Darfur. However we have expanded the club to help not only Darfur, but all of Sudan which is in dire need of aid and restoration. I am also Community Service Officer of the buildOn Club which provides community service opportunities for students.
What keeps you motivated in doing community service?
I am very passionate about the causes I am involved with. My desire to help and make a difference motivates me.
How has volunteering affected you?
Volunteering has definitely shaped the way I view the world. Knowing that the world can be a better place with the effort of every person being kind and caring about others is an amazing thing. I love spending my time doing humane things, especially when others get inspired to do the same.
Share an incredible experience you had through volunteering.
Every week when I enter my classroom I am knocked over by the door with the endearing hugs of the children. Leaving the room is always a struggle, but what the kids don’t know is that I don’t want to leave them even more than they don’t want me to. I’ll never forget the kids that I’ve connected with, helped, and grown to love so much.
What advice would you give to other youth about getting involved?
Everyone needs to find their place in the world by doing good, starting with their community. It is important for people to play their role in giving back to the community and making helping others a part of life. Reaching a hand out to someone in need opens doors that one could never imagine.
What would you say to someone who says it takes too much effort to volunteer?
If someone feels passionately about something and wants to make a difference or help out, then they should. If it means that much to you, then you will find the time. If there isn’t something specific that excites you, give anything a chance. You may be surprised how much you like it.
What benefits have you found in community service?
The feeling I get when I volunteer is my benefit. Just knowing that I have affected someone else’s life in a positive way is the best benefit I get.
What perspective have you gained that could be useful to a future job?
I know the volunteer work I’ve done will help me to have a positive and passionate outlook on any work I do.
Anything else you’d like to share?
Last summer, the summer of ‘08, I was fortunate enough to go on an amazing trip to Costa Rica on a teen tour. I went with a group called “Global Works”. The program’s purpose is to allow teens to see the world while doing community service and learning the language of that country. For me, Costa Rica was one of the most memorable experiences of my life because of the connections I made with friends on the trip and the people I met in the town we lived in. We spent ten days living in a town called Parcelas where we got to stay with a Costa Rican family while helping out in the town. I learned how to communicate with people there speaking Spanish and surprised myself as to how well I could keep up in conversation. I still keep in touch with the people I met there and the people who joined me on this incredible journey. The people I met, the friends I made, and the experiences I went through on my Costa Rica adventure have all changed my life substantially. After living in the conditions in this developing country, I have grown a stronger appreciation for what I have in my own life. Also, I feel that this trip has shaped me into a happier, more outgoing person. I am so fortunate to have had such an amazing opportunity so early in my life, and hopefully one day I will make my way back to Parcelas!
I’ve been reading more and writing less the past few days. Chapters on showing versus telling, viewpoint and narration, and characterization (still within Mr. Lukeman’s guide). Not a nail-biting Stephen King saga, but for a struggling writer the material is absorbing– especially characterization.
A few bulleted problems he lists: not establishing characters before diving into the story, cliche characters, too many characters, and the unsympathetic protagonist. I was initially concerned that some of my characters were too “out there” or unbelievable; however, I realized that many best-selling books contain characters who, if described in two sentences, would seem completely unrealistic to the reader. It’s the humanistic qualities these characters possess– their plight, motives, quirks– that keep readers bound to the pages. Two words can verify this: Harry Potter. Two more words: Star Wars.
My characters are off-beat, but you can relate to them. Even Sigmund, the bovine who wants so desperately to be someone else that he slowly starts to believe he’s someone else. (Something we can understand, yes?) The tricky part is showing this. The act of showing that these characters have specific desires instead of telling the reader straight out is the goal. It takes time, but creates an engaging story.
To make this happen, I think you must know your characters well. I knew a few of my characters well, but was clueless to the motives behind the other characters’ actions. So I thought I should ask them.
Enter the interviews.
I began to interview characters using a Q & A type of format. Or at least, that’s what I had planned. Believe it or not, interviewing imaginary characters doesn’t always pan out as smoothly as you’d like to think it would. My first chat, with one ADHD-soaked Dick Kabonic, owner of Kabonic Wet Divide Exploration and Other Stuff, Too, began the series of interviews with semi-contained chaos. Sigmund, the determined bovine, followed up brilliantly with his endearing madness.
Am I myself mad for doing this? I don’t know. I question whether my fetus is going to have normal brain functioning.
At any rate, starting tomorrow I’m going to post these interviews just for the hell of it. You’ll either have a chuckle or feel immense gratitude for your own mental stability.
