The Writing Process: Visualise Your characters as a Galaxy

Newsletter 7 Thursday April 2^nd 2014

Hello again! Thank you for returning to my Newsletter. If this is your first time, welcome.

 My newsletter is an outcome of  focusing on my process to support writers in their own process and to give readers the inside track on how a complex novel may emerge from a single consciousness. 

The Galaxy
Charactersinhabit  and define a novel!

I have talked in earlier Newsletters about gaining distance on the structure of your novel by visualising it in graphic terms. My notion of The Balloon Game is, I feel, especially helpful towards the beginning of the novel when you are labelling and also writing stand-alone events that could possibly appear in your narrative, and afterwards making tentative connections between them for future writing.

Interestingly A.G. my American correspondent, has written to say this about the Balloon Game: I like this idea. I sometimes have poems in progress for months, adding phrases and images occasionally as they spontaneously come to mind. But a mess can result. Much needs discarding as I realize it is redundant or irrelevant to my purpose (yet to be made clear). I'll experiment with the balloon idea - see if it helps me organize/clarify thoughts as I "raise my eyes to the horizon", as you say, and "see" what I mean.

        A.G's words made me think that as well as poems The Balloon Game might help some writers to structure and develop short stories and novellas. Halleluiah!

        So now, inspired by A.G., I am will try it with my own half -finished novella.

This week’s spotlight is on characters and their role in the novel. This graphic visualisation is rather more useful when you are well into your novel   – perhaps half or two thirds of the way.

Let’s imagine that in the first half of the novel you have enjoyed making strong progress with you free drafting (See earlier newsletter); your brainstorming (See earlier Newsletter); and your creative transcribing (See earlier Newsletter) 

I know your initial characters were probably there in the beginning – at least in terms of names (Look out for a forthcoming Newsletter on naming…) and some characteristics and some dilemmas. They will have been in your head from the start, emerging from observed fragments of people you have known and – crucially – fragments of your own character and personality. 

They are not yet themselves.

As your creative drafting and transcription establish your story the fragmentary nature of these skeletal plumps out and they become their unique selves. They start to elbow themselves to the front of your brain and demand their independence.

           So as you write and draft on, these characters begin to speak in your ear. You now begin to make them out on that screen at the front of your brain. They start to bring their friends – people you didn’t know at all before to you set up this novel party.
           These people elbow their way in and insist on being part of your action. They acknowledge your role as Pathfinder (See earlier newsletter) but insist on nudging the action this way or that almost despite you. Sometimes they throw a grenade in the midst of your neatly contrived action, forcing you to change the direction of your novel.

         One day – quite insanely - these people become as real to you as your neighbour, or the friend of your friend.

         This is the point where you decide to take control of this sprawling mass of creativity by some means other than mere ‘writing on’ as I suggested in an earlier newsletter. 

        Escaping from the anarchy is especially important if you, like me, are given to strange landscapes, eccentric characters, extended time-scales and challenging events. Without some believable structure, some eventual comforting order and sequence, your novel will resemble a firework display where all the fireworks all go off at once.

         Visualising, ordering and developing a pattern, an order underneath the apparent anarchy become necessary for you if you are to go on develop both the storytelling and the prose in your narrative.

      In the early stages of writing my new novel* to get some sense of the whole thingl I did play the Balloon Game and it helped me to progress.

        Much further on, - say at 50 – 60 thousand words - I felt the need again to visualise the whole novel.

         I decided to visualise this by thinking hard about these characters of mine who had begun to inhabit my consciousness during the process described above.

         I thought perhaps I could show them to myself by visualising a series of concentric circles. As I worked on this process - with the help of my writing friend Avril Joy - this visualisation developed into a series of concentric circles interacting with ellipses. Avril commented that on the page of card this really looked like a galaxy. 

So now, perhaps I will call it The Galaxy 

to go with my Balloon Game.

I started my own Galaxy by asking myself who  truly was the 
central character staying there at the Maison Bleue alongside six other writers. That was when I realised that, although at the beginning (at the Balloon stage…) I thought the main character would be Ruthie, the crime writer who invented and established the retreat by the Canal du Midi.

          I thought again and and realised that I had been wrong; as I wrote on and on, it seemed that it was Francine, the elderly romance writer who insisted that - with her unique World War 2 memoir - she must be at the centre of the novel. ‘I must, my dear! It is my country and my story.
         Then there was Joe, the 19 year old who became Francine's friend, who nudged himself in beside her at the core of the novel.

At that point I thought that the trio of Francine, Joe and Ruthie should remain there at the centre of my novel.

So I experimented with a graphic representation of the novel with Francine, Joe and Ruthie at the centre. Avril and I worked on that precept and we worked on and on – using arrows, triangles and one word commentary to clarify the importance and role of the various characters in the novel.
       Now it started to feel for a while that the anarchy I started with 

What a mess!
But an exciting
part of the creative process!

had now worsened .What a mess! It didn't look good…

But while the graphic result seemed confused and inchoate, our challenging discussion had really clarified my thoughts about every character. And there are seventeen of them: after Francine there are nine main characters and seven other minor characters.  
        So later, up in my little room with the narrow window, with my big sheet of card and my coloured markers I designed a graphic representation of the significant characters in my novel in a more coherent order of importance.  As I drew my circles and ellipses I tried to show graphically how relationships between my characters worked and further the nature of their relationship with Francine, who now sat determinedly sat at the centre.

At first I had tried it with Francine, Ruthie and Joe in the centre circle, but Francine insisted on being there on her own. Looking at it now, I think she was right.

I was happy now with the graphic representations of the characters

Now, neat and organised

in its own way.in my novel.

 I will pin this graphic representation of the structure of my novel on the board in my little room with the narrow window. But the truth is that I may never really look at the graphic again.

     I would never see it as a 'guide' or a 'plan' which demands my slavishly following it. It is the creative  thinking that counts in the creation of the graphic .          In going through this creative process I have learned so much about my story:  from the thinking, the discussion, the making the false starts and now to the final graphic image.  My Galaxy has become part of me and now I can luxuriate in the drafting on and on, transcribe on and on. I can finish my novel because my characters are urging me to do so on from inside their world and inside mine.

I know and rejoice in the fact that this writing process is quite the opposite of strict planning and formulaic writing; it is the opposite of writing within the straight-jacket of genre. (Now there’s a graphic image!)

But I firmly believe you create a novel by allowing your characters to breathe, develop and find their proper place in their narrative.  This truly has a positive influence the energy, nature and direction of your novel and therefore the way a reader can enter in it and enjoy it. 
Your novel will certainly be original. And who knows? You might have a renegade best seller on your hands.

Link: Avril Joy