Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply, on Fictional Identity | Word Craft - WSJ.com

Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply, on Fictional Identity | Word Craft - WSJ.com:

'via Blog this'

Fiction writers tell lies. They get inside the lives of others, whether real, nearly real, or imagined, taking the identity on a journey sometimes far different than what might have occurred in reality. People often ask writer Dan Chaon which character is the author in disguise? It depends. So much of what we write is part of our life experience, what we're comfortable with; however, the fun of fiction is that the author gets to steal the person's identity and convince the reader the new course is authentic.

As I discussed with my daughter/writer (Eliza) this morning as we observed a truck loaded down with the driver's ragged possessions: tied-down with very little twine, packed loosely, bouncing harshly with the road, and going nowhere fast, what was happening today? Did this chapter closing make it necessary to start the next chapter in another city, or was this person moving just across town? Are they upset, happy, or distracted by the traffic? We were creating fictional characters, depending on the commute, it could become a short story or a novel.

Mr. Chaon reports that researchers say this activity begins early in life. Infants imagine shapes resembling a face, nose, or mouth, and by 2-3 babies already have a complex entourage of fictional characters. By the time kids play with dolls, toys, and action characters, they often take up the voice of these personalities with incredible empathy. The question for professional fiction writers is how far outside their own experiences will they reach?

Authors like Pat Conroy, John Grisham, Stephen Hunter, Michael Lewis, Daniel Silva, and Emily Giffin, all seemed to have used significant portions of their life experiences to color their novels; however, Stephen King, Paulo Coelho, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Larry McMurtry, and Charlotte Bronte bring material to their stories from utterly foreign places, from which they have no firsthand knowledge. [These names are quickly taken from my bookshelf, there are numerous other examples]. The point is that living inside the story can be rational and contemplative, at the same time it is an out-of-body experience. Always it is an attempt at empathy.

"How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for awhile? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it that no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?" Don DeLillo's White Noise (Viking Penguin 1985).

Abraham Lincoln frequently quoted a poem by William Knox called "Mortality" written by a Scottish descendant of John Knox the 16th-century Protestant reformer. The President recited the poem so much that some people assumed he had written it:

"For we are the same things that our fathers have been.

We see the same sights that our fathers have seen.

We drink the same stream, we feel the same sun.

And we run the same course that our fathers have run."

Writing is the authentic practice of empathy, making connections, sharing fears, following a story to its conclusion, even if that is one or two degrees off course. The secret to fiction writing is looking behind the disguise of the ordinary; what is obvious is boring. Fascination begins with the focus of the reader's attention, warding off distractions or over-writing, making the type connection with the reader that rings true but seems fresh and creative.

With fiction we might recycle some of the same courses of those around us, but the chance to reach up and out of our own existence, to expand one's mind to the point of going beyond anywhere we might know directly, is a powerful force rarely experienced. As Mr. Chaon writes, "Suddenly, you might get out of your own body, your own mind; it's a rare and powerful stimulant that makes it seem like writing true, utter fiction is totally worth it."

Twitter feeds:
@DanChaon
@markpills

©Mark H. Pillsbury