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On Being A Real Character

Jul 072010

Characters are the heart and soul of any fiction, erotic or otherwise. You can have a great plot, vivid descriptions, and nuances up the wazzo, but if your characters act like sock puppets – spouting endless clichés, doing stupid things for stupid reasons, and in general acting nothing like real people – the reader’s disbelief is not suspended and the story doesn’t work.

So how do you breathe life into a character? In my experience as an editor, I can tell you that stiffness instantly shows in a poorly written character. What is stiffness? Well, some of the best examples I can think of aren’t in writing, but in movies or television. You’ve seen it: an actor or actress gives a bad performance, being stilled or monotone with no inflection. On the page, that shows up when a character thinks, does, or says something wooden, lifeless, or obviously forced to get the author’s point across.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Do you know how to make a character live on the page? It’s kind of scary, which is why I suppose a lot of writers don’t do it, and it shows in their work. Are you ready? Are you REALLY ready? Honestly? Okay, here goes: look inward, my child.

Thank ewe, thank ewe; just put some money in the basket on the way out. What, you want more? Sheesh! Okay, kidding aside, my favorite way of adding depth and … well, call it character to a character is to get into yourself, your own emotional landscape, and your own history. Do you honestly look at someone and think: I would like to have sex with him or her? Nah, and if you do, I suggest immediate therapy. What really happens is much more primal and base. It’s like your subconscious takes over and snaps your head around, or you find yourself absently daydreaming, imagining what sex with them would be like. Your imagination runs wild.

Let’s say you’re straight: you don’t know what gay sex is like. Fine. But you do know what sex is like for you: the nervousness, the heady arousal, the way your mind races, your senses go rocketing, and so forth. The rest is just mechanics. The problem with this, and the main reason I feel why there are so many bad characters out there, is that it means exposing yourself on the page. Adding yourself (your feelings, emotions, and so forth) to a character is like a voodoo spell. Your fictional shade becomes connected to you. If the story gets rejected, it hits really hard. It’s like a part of you being turned down.

Still, I think it’s the way to go. But what if you’re describing someone who doesn’t share your experience? Let’s say they are in mortal danger, or in jail, or unstable; how the hell do you make that character real? What I do is close my eyes and put on that person, and walk a while in his or her shoes. Are they frightened? You know what fear is like. Angry? You know what being pissed off is like. What draws their attention? What are they looking for and why? These are not just plot points here, but perspective: how the character relates to the world and themselves. Even characters that are supposed to be disliked need this kind of thing, to make them look real as opposed to being soulless puppets there just to move the story.

Reality, of course, um, you know, er, can go a bit; no, a tad … or is it bit? Damned if I know, you know. Okay, my point is that too much reality, especially in dialogue, can be just as annoying as a wooden character. We all talk with a bunch of ums, ers, and ahs; adding that kind of thing, or vocally exact phrasing, might be real, but it also makes you want to throttle the speaker, not sympathize with them.

So, like a lot of things in writing, it’s a balancing act. On one side is having characters that act as well as Kevin Costner and on the other is having dialogue and characters whose reality makes them confusing and frustrating (think David Mamet).

As a writer, I hope that they liked this article I just wrote, M. Christian thought.

Definitive Definitions

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May 272010

A pal of mine asked an interesting question once: what’s my definition of erotica, or of pornography? Other folks have been asked these questions, of course, and the answers have been as varied as those asked, but even as I zapped off my own response I started to really think about how people define what they write, and more importantly, why.

It’s easy to agree with folks who say there’s a difference between erotica and pornography. One of the most frequent definitions is that erotica is sexually explicit literature that talks about something else aside from sex, while porno is sex, sex and more sex and nothing else. The problem with trying to define erotica is that it’s purely subjective – even using the erotica-is-more-than-just-sex and porn-is-just-sex-analysis. Where’s the line and when do you cross it? One person’s literate erotica is another’s pure filth. Others like to use a proportional scale a certain percent of sex content– bing! – something becomes porn. Once again: Who sets the scale?

What I find interesting isn’t necessarily what the definition between erotica and pornography should be but why there should be one to begin with. Some writers I’ve encountered seem to be looking for a clear-cut definition just so they won’t be grouped together with the likes of Hustler and Spank Me, Daddy. While I agree that there’s a big difference between what’s being published in some of the more interesting anthologies, magazines and Web sites Hustler and Spank Me, Daddy, I also think that a lot of this searching for a definition is more about ego and less about literary analysis. Rather than risk being put on the shelves next to Hustler and Spank Me Daddy, some writers try to draw up lists and rules that naturally favor what they write compared to what other people write: “I write erotica, but that other stuff is just pornography. Therefore what I write is better.”

This thought process has always baffled me. First of all, it’s completely subjective. Who died and made you arbiter of what’s erotica and what’s pornography? It sounds like those drawing the line have something to prove to themselves, or hide from okay to hate pornography because what I write is erotica. More importantly, this little fit of insecurity opens the door for other people to start using your own definitions against you. Even a casual glance at the politics of groups out to ‘save’ us all from the evils of pornography shows that they will use any device, any subjective rule (otherwise known as ‘community standards’), any nasty tactic to arrest, impound, burn, or otherwise erase what they consider to be dirty words. You might consider yourself an erotica writer, and be able to show certain people that you are – or, more importantly, convince yourself that you are – but to someone else you’re nothing but a pornographer, just like the stories and writers from whom you’re trying to distance yourself.

So I don’t I’ll tell you that personally, I use all the terms pretty much interchangeably: Porn, erotica, smut, literotica, and so forth. You name it, I use it. Depends on who’s asking. If I’m writing to an editor or publisher, I use erotica. If I’m talking to another author, I playfully call myself a smut writer. If a Jesus Freak gets me out of bed with a knock on the door, I’m a damned pornographer. In my heart, though, I just call myself a writer because even though I write stories of butt-fucking bikers, lascivious cheerleaders, horny space aliens, and leathermen, I’m more turned on by trying to write an interesting story than what the story may particularly be about. Half the time I’m not even aware that what I’m writing is a sex story because I’m having way too much fun with alliteration, character, description, and plot! The fact that what I’m writing may appear in an anthology or book with erotic in the title has nothing to do with how I approach my writing: a story is a story no matter the amount or manner of the eroticism I may include. A good example of my commitment to writing, pure and simple, is that I use my M. Christian name no matter what I’m working on: science fiction, mystery, literary fiction, non-fiction, or even something with erotic in the title.

If there’s a point to all this, it’s that you’re in charge of your own definitions, but try and pay attention to why you define, or why you feel you should. Erotica, pornography, smut, dirty words – be proud of what you write but never ever forget that genres, labels, brands, and all the rest are meaningless. If you’re a writer, you write. And you get to call the fruits of your labor whatever you want because you created it.