Aug 28 2008
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
I am reading The French Lieutenant’s Woman right now; it was on the summer reading list for one of the courses I will be taking this fall: Fiction as Non-Fiction, Non-Fiction as Fiction: “Authenticity” and “Reality” in Modern and Contemporary Narratives. This is the course I am most looking forward to so far - based on what I know about them, and on their reading lists.
I found The French Lieutenant’s Woman pretty slow going at first - as in, more than a little boring - and almost left it in favour of one of the other novels for the course… several have shown up just this week. I ordered them all in one online order, but several were available only through associated second hand dealers, so they are all coming in separately.
But then I reached Chapter 13, which is, so far, my favourite bit of reading from all of the novels and texts I have read this summer. It is excellent, and I would bet, one of the main reasons the book is on the syllabus at all.
It begins with the answer to the questions asked at the end of Chapter 12:
Who is Sarah?
Out of what shadows does she come?….
I do not know. This story I am telling is all imagination. These characters I create never existed outside my own mind. If I have pretended until now to know my characters’ minds and innermost thoughts, it is because I am writing in (just as I have assumed some of the vocabulary and voice of) a convention universally accepted at the time of my story: that the novelist stands next to God.
I won’t type the entire chapter out for you - but it is a fascinating discussion of the nature of fiction.
It excites me as it relates to my research interests in fiction - and also, as it pertains to my work as a writer.
The author, John Fowles, discusses the behaviour of his characters as something he does not - really - control. Charles went off and drank milk earlier in the work - that was, Fowles suggests, Charles decision, not Fowles’.
I have had that experience with my own characters.
While writing my YA novel (no Stephanie, not finished yet) - I had in mind an incident between 2 of the main characters. Amanda, the protagonist, was supposed to go AWOL with Candi, the resident pain in the posterior. Candi talks her into it …and then, as they were about to run - Candi stopped.. and ratted Amanda out. That was not my plan- but it is what I ended up typing. And it was clearly ‘right’.
Sometimes, it is as if the characters develop minds of their own.
Margaret Laurence, one of Canada’s most well known authors - and certainly one of my personal favourites - wrote about the same sort of thing in some of her letters to her friends and other authors.
It is a fascinating phenomenon, and I look forward to the opportunity to explore it in more depth as I continue my studies.
Have you experienced characters with minds of their own in your own writing?
OK, I thought it would automatically include my info on this and I could stop filling it in.
flit, I’ve always written this way. I concoct characters, devise a situation, then send them on their way, licking my pencil tip and saying, “You all go on. I’ll take notes.”
That is probably why plot is not my strong suit but characters are. Sometimes, it’s a challenge to try to explain to the reader what my characters clearly feel the need to do.
Hey flit
nice blog
My characters pretty much do what they want. And they leave me in awe. I find, like many parents, that my “children” rebel if I push them around too much. I tend to give them an overall plan (a climax and ending to look forward to), and then let them get there as they want to.
And they do. They just don’t do it the way I intended originally. And that’s okay with me.