One of the most fascinating aspects of creative writing is character development, an unfortunate term for an organic, unsettling and enriching activity that is central to real fiction. I have labeled the term ‘unfortunate’, because the word ‘development’ implies a level of control that would strangle this fundamental aspect of creative writing before my characters had matured into real, breathing, willful persons, inhabiting the settings and driving the action of my stories.
My objective in characterization is to actually see, and feel the world around me as if I were the spirit inside the bodies I’m describing. At some point, the writer has to think in the first person from his characters’ points of view, and that’s a skill I’ll always be working on, as part of my existentialist toolkit – it’s a way of living, of getting to know the world, as much as a writing technique.
Lately I have been trying to suss my way into Harry’s mind and heart to find out whether he’s a reactive or responsive type. In my first descriptions I have placed him toward the responsive end of the spectrum, an elderly gentleman who may be cranky, but who’s also self-deprecating, and thoughtful of those around him. He uses a crusty brand of humour to remind himself and his community that his crotchetiness is not really to be taken seriously, but is something to be forgiven, even ignored.
This version of Harry doesn’t fit, though. It might – probably does – describe a real, believable person, but if I centre my story around this Harry, it won’t work as well. The Mural Gazer has to be a person who generates tension. He’s the one who resists redefinition and change, and reacts instinctively to scare off anyone who suggests he should mend his ways.
What that points to is the classic tough-exterior character, who has an unactivated or dormant or hidden inner emotional intelligence. Harry believes he’s the person he’s always projected into this world: tough, reliable, resilient, adaptable, smart, confident. He’s my notion of a retired ‘gyppo’ logger, but I have to do more research to determine if gyppos operated in the Chemainus area during Harry’s working years – roughly 1945 to 1990, when he would have been 70 years old.
To survive in that world you had to be thick skinned, and would probably be inclined to make sure your heirs developed tough hides, too. You would lead and educate by example, and avoid exposing your inner fears and doubts (your weaknesses) to anyone, least of all yourself. That inner contradiction and tension are going to be the tight-coiled workings of Harry’s psyche, where to live by any other motto than a tough guy’s shrug and grunt would be admitting to some degree that he’d been unauthentic in his demeanour, if not his actions, for most of his adult life.
With age, comes wisdom, though, and in Harry’s case a sudden, long-delayed graduation into elder-hood, a transformation as startling for those around him as it is for himself. Challenged and pushed by Bernice, who sees through to Harry’s ‘inner child’, he yearns to shuck his accustomed persona and reveal a deeper aspect that better explains the man he’s always been, the one he’s never been confident enough to believe in or admit to.