I put my heart and my soul into my scripts. I tell things that I think are essential. The characters all have something of me in them.
If you know this, do you think you can read one of my scripts and know me afterwards?
I don’t think you can.
I think a reader that does not know me, can know a little about my moral and values in life after exploring a script of mine, but not much more.
The bare thought that someone might assume a character I had written is me, gives me goose bumps. It would limit me so much if I felt that all characters represented me.
I want my characters to be multi dimensional and engaging, and also make intriguing constellations. To make them so, I don’t clone myself and make them all do and think as I do. I must pass the borders of what I think is okay to do, how I talk and how I think.
Yet, all characters have something of me because I am the writer. To understand how the character thinks and acts, I need something to relate to, something from my own experience.
Like when I’m angry and behave like a “bad guy”, what thoughts did I have, what triggered me, those kinds of things. It could be the nervousness from an event, or the panic in a specific situation, all strong emotions.
It does not need to be my own thoughts and actions. It can be someone else’s, a person I met or a friend. The crucial thing is that I can understand the – likely - underlying mechanisms, even if I disagree.
The characters are there to tell the story, transfer something I think is of significant value. They are not me. Just because a character is nasty and angry and rude, it does not mean that I’m that way, or promote that kind of behavior. Every character’s behavior serves the overall story.
I’m not uneasy about what a reader might think of me. I’m much more nervous about what the reader might think about my script. It is the final handiwork that counts. The writing skill merged with the craft of telling a story.
I’m not being judged. It’s my work under the loupe, like a jewel being examined if it is real or fake.
As it is for a jewel, it is a matter of if you have something you can sell or something you keep for nostalgia.
Made by Mauro Cateb, Brazilian jeweler
Photo edited by the writer
2 comments:
Of course you're right. If we limit ourselves to "what we know, first-hand", there wouldn't be much left to write about.
Our character and values influence our choice of what to write about - I never would write truly pornographic pieces, for example. But I might write about violence, not because I approve of it, but because it's a part of life.
People do project a lot onto writers. There are people who think I'm a political conservative, people who think I'm a free-living hippie, people who think I'm a raging feminist and people who think I'm an old stick-in-the-mud. Who's right? Maybe everyone - or maybe no one!
Thank you for sharing your experiences.
I think what you write only shows some of your personality. For instance, I think anger is pretty foolish, and might very well write something on that theme, but that does not mean that I can't get angry myself.
Then we are not just one thing in every situation. You might very well be a stick-in-the-mud about some things, and a free-living hippie when it comes to other things. We are pretty complex.
Maybe we try to convey things that are too complex to tell others about? So what ever we do we will be misunderstood? That was not a very cheerful thought.
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