Tag: Writing

Writing Characters …

I recently went to a writers’ open mic in Birmingham. I listened to a wonderful writer with long, thick red hair and a short-sleeved dress (I was distraught about her chilly arms) read a section from her work-in-progress. She wanted to ‘write as if no one I know is going to read this,’ she said, and it seemed to unlock something for her. The section was about her experience of aphantasia.

Aphantasia, she explained – just as well, I had no idea – is the name of a condition where you cannot picture things in your mind. You can think about things as concepts and ideas, but you can’t ‘see,’ say, a house, you can’t count its windows, decide and cast into being, say, steps leading to the front door, an iron railing, trailing hanging baskets and long sash windows. It’s an absence of visual imagination.

Damn. That must be hard for a writer.

I thought of my characters. The little people I have set free in my mind to move about and do their mischief and decided (rather dramatically) that I must have aphantasia, too. Because my sulky attitude to my failing characters is obviously entirely on a par with genuine neurodivergence.

But I do have real trouble with these imaginary people. I feel a sort of heavy dread at having to ‘think up’ stuff for them to do – and heavy is the word; it feels like a sort of dragging climb. My characters can seem real enough, but it comes in flashes. The sly smirk of the Cunning Man as he hints to Clara about her mother’s past, the impatient sneer of Margot – I know exactly what they all look like. I watch wonderful Carmella flap her arms so wildly that her heavy upper arms swing like washing, and listen to her tell me where I’m going wrong in life; listen to the clear voice of an old man with estuary vowels, drinking half pints of beer and talking about being a pirate.  

But then it goes. I can’t see them anymore, there is the absence of the visual. I build them out of snatches of voices, lips and eyes from people I know, then sit them down and they just … lay there. Inert. That heavy weight comes again in those questions that come so easily to other writers; if this happens, what does she do, what if she met this person, where will she go after that talk, what does she pick up off the ground, a table, a bench? The vividness of seeing it never comes. My characters are not like the ones I read, who leap out of other books with their afros or laddered tights, with their bitterness and longings, and punch you in the face.

Perhaps I’m not very good at people.

But I had a bit of a revelation this week. I finished a piece that I started in a workshop; the premise was: your character is taking something back to a shop. Create the voice. It was my voice, of course, the description was of … well, a ridiculous middle-aged short woman in a purple anorak – the memories she had were mine. And I was struggling because I was trying to justify the grumpiness, the prejudice, of this character. I was trying to show the moment of revelation, the ‘she’s not an arsehole really!’ moment. Because the character was me. And it was getting didactic.

After chatting ‘Karen redemptions’ with my writing partner, I had the idea to just … you know … not make the character myself. I could … make her up. Crazy idea for a writer. Then if she is a dick, it’s not on me. At first it did take quite an emotional effort. There was a wrench, a metallic and squeaky uncoupling of me from her. But then leaning her meanness became addictive. Punishing and embarrassing my ridiculous short woman in the purple anorak became enormous fun; it was easier to write; it was a satisfying ending. I did it!

So by all means, draw from life. Use bits of yourself, your friends, your family, what happened when you were twelve, to get you started. But then: depart. Turn left at the memory and cross over the road. It will set you free.

JOKER – A Review

My interest in Joker was, obvs, artistic. I’d finished a workshop on writing negative and positive character arcs and having seen adverts for the film around, it was the first solid example I could think of. This stunned Yates when I suggested we go as I’d never before shown the least interest in the whole Batman franchise, and he’s right; implausible, one dimensional, predictable superhero action movies hold utterly no appeal for me. However, dark retellings with alternative perspectives and reinterpretations, as my love of Angela Carter testifies, very much do.

Still reeling, Yates gave me a heads up on some of the reviews which my appropriately woke approach would find important. So I read some reviews about incel calls, shooter glorification, anti-feminism, racism and then the alternatives that call for robustness instead of humanity for a well loved villain. And here’s me throwing in my two pence.

For a start, it was great. I have no interest in superhero films with all their fecking explosions because the characters are boring. Joaquim Phoenix wasn’t boring. Nor was his development. You watched throughout, empathising uncomfortably, and wondering when he was going to crack. That is way more interesting to me than tense car chases and fights. And the music’s cool. And the dancing. Which unavoidably make a great film. A personal favourite moment is when Arthur Fleck, on a real downer, just gets in the fridge. Yup. Opens the door, pulls out all the food and shelves, and just gets in. You know those times when you’re feeling rough? Get in the fridge.

Flippancy aside, a lot of the articles you’ll have read will discuss how it glorifies the loner who goes on shooting sprees, revealing justifiable motivations. Pretty distasteful in the light of the (most) recent shootings in the U.S., and the rise of the crazy incel online movement where maladjusted blokes who don’t have girlfriends spew on about how they’re going to kill everyone who won’t have sex with them. So did I think it romanticised the lone wolf, helping the audience to understand that the world really is against him and totally deserve to be killed in the face?

I guess there was a bit of that. I don’t reckon those murderers genuinely do perceive the world is against them. Arthur Fleck is badly educated (as obvious from his appalling spelling in his journal, from which the audience get frequent half-obscured glimpses of sinister looking pictures), has a mental health disorder and a shit job. He’s a full-time carer for his crazy mother. This is all outside of his control to a degree. He also has a shit load of bad luck. Being beaten up by a load of people who are delinquent or drunk or just assholes is not his fault, or the bullshit get-the-audience-all-fired-up-about-the-unfairness disciplinary for losing a sign at work…because he was beaten up. Combine single carer with poverty, poor education, mental health issues and loneliness with a load of bad luck and you genuinely do have a lot of difficulties that few people have the resilience to overcome. Sounds like a regular description of any kid on a List in UK schools, or crime factors the world over.

Then come the bad choices, like taking a gun to a kid’s hospital, which actually was so farcical when it falls out his clown trousers while he’s dancing for the under tens leukaemia ward that it’s just hilarious. Here’s where we have to examine where systematic factors run out and personal responsibility comes in, sure, but also, I’m watching the Joker, and I know he’s a bad guy and I’m waiting to find out when he becomes the joker. Convenient for me I guess, to suspend belief at the point when the social issue gets complicated. 😉

So yeah, when he starts shooting drunk abusive rich kids and stabbing people with scissors, you do feel like he’s taking some control over his life and question yourself about why you think that’s acceptable. There’s a beautiful scene after shooting dudes on the subway when he locks himself in a toilet and dances. Not jolly clown dancing, but slow, euphoric waltzing to compelling cello music. Which, by all accounts, Hugh Grant found unpleasantly noisy. But it does challenge you to examine why, as he develops in self-assertiveness, and …joy, you’re rooting for him because it all sounds a bit stroppy. ‘Yeah, you’re all bastards so I’ve bloody shown you, now!’ Can I identify with that?

Some of this wilful teenager-ish behaviour is validated by very teenager-ish daddy issues – wishing Tom Wayne would accept him. The one time I couldn’t follow him all the way was his cringy outburst when invited to the Murray Franklin show where he whined about being abandoned by society and tipped over from frustration to blame. Seeing as it was all shot with a TV screen frame, it’s now showing us perhaps how the rest of the world sees the fantasy existence Fleck has built himself. Perhaps as his grip on reality loosens, his increasing madness is what is actually gives him the feeling of power and joy more than murder.

But it ultimately worked for me because he did seem justified striking out at an unfair society. I don’t know if I’m being duped here because I’m sure that’s what righteous film makers would also assert as justification for his actions, but sometimes the means of production must be seized by the workers in any way possible. Ok, I picked up on this because the social ills of a capitalist society is my background and may not be the overriding concern of other people’s human experience.

On which, I did notice the black thing straight away. Why were most of his early aggressors were black women? That’s a director’s choice! It’s a black woman who holds tight-lipped, disapproving ‘therapy’ sessions in a miserably cramped and messy office who looks like she just wanted to get him out the room, and totally fails to show any compassion or practical help. It’s a black woman who chastises him aggressively on a bus when he smiles at her little boy. Other reviews have pointed out that the murders of black women were invisible, hinted at offscreen as the women aren’t important enough to have their deaths made explicit.

But I’ve also read lots of articles that condemn the amount of screen time given to vicious acts of violence against women. The Fall was guilty of sexualising violence against women in its split screen shots, despite foregrounding the immense charisma of Gillian Anderson’s character who is surely a portrayal of female power and agency. So…what’s it gonna be? Have the makers of Joker decided to not join the long line of film makers depicting brutality against women? Or did they leave it out because black women have no voice even in death?

In my ignorance of the lived experience, I’m not sure. There are a couple of wonderfully sympathetic black characters. There are also a lot of arseholes who are white. And it seemed more to me that if you combine mental health issues with the poor education and humiliating poverty that is found in systematically unfair societies where power and wealth is in the hands of a select few who make no effort to understand the experience of the masses, nor use their wealth and power to alleviate it, then you will have …well, crime. And we do. We have it in the U.K. and Australia where we don’t have guns or the lone gunman figure.

Fleck makes the point to one ex co-worker clown, David that he was the only one who was ever nice to him. He doesn’t kill him. In the hilarious scene, he gets up from the corpse of another guy, covered in blood, to let David out of the locked apartment with a friendly kiss on the head. The audience, holding their breath, wait to see if he’ll flip out again and murder this guy too. But he doesn’t. He’s not completely mad. This guy was kind. Fleck repeats the sentiment throughout the film that ‘what’s wrong with a little human decency? And kindness?’

So who’d have thought? Compassion for each other, kindness, inclusion and a fair and just society are essential for a well-adjusted public? Maybe we should ask governments those questions before condemning directors for glamorising gunmen. And fucking ban guns.

Secret City (hiding the Secret of its soul)

I have, of course, joined a book club. And our first book is the above titled Secret City; a thriller about political subterfuge and scandal in Canberra. I imagine the Brexit equivalent would wilt in comparison. The verdict? In a nutshell: pile of wank.

There is a Foxtel series based on this book. And no doubt it’s very compelling; I’m looking forward to watching some of it myself. Because by watching scenes of Canberra, filmed with well timed lighting, with real people to represent characters, you can engage your own emotional responses where the writers’ choice to not really bother describing anything frankly failed to do so.

Canberrans who have seen bits of this show do find it a bit of a chuckle. It portrays our small little town (beautiful and remarkably well designed, but little nonetheless) as somewhere glossy, sophisticated and impeccably suave. Which from what I’m gathering has about the same impact on a native as a show about the suave and imperatively important life of a bunch of people working in Chelmsford local council would. The writing does the same; name dropping places with the carelessness of a toddler with lego, adding adjectives to help you out because no one really knows Canberra – ‘prestigious,’ ‘stylish,’ ‘sophisticated,’ ‘exclusive.’ Which conspires to kill your very imagination and effort to find a bit of soul in the place. The descriptions of places are done without heart, without love, just bland one-worders that create a half-hearted image of somewhere cool and interesting. Like when you walk past an All Bar One after a long day at work, and think it looks all fun and stylish with people drinking cold wine in nice shoes and there are fairy lights and warm wood surfaces…but it quickly passes because you remember the atmosphere is about as barren as a salt field and you congratulate yourself on a lucky escape; nice shoes and tall wine glasses are not for you and you retire thankfully to your local that smells a bit and get a pint of warm ale. Because it has soul.

Soul in a place is important and I am worried this book has killed my poetic imagination of soul in Canberra.

I like to read about places. I like to immerse myself; building a construct, a sense of beauty and wonder about a place that I can romanticise is half the anticipation of travel. It’s how I connect to place. These two writers; ex political journalists, must have been excellent headline writers with their sassy verb and adjective choices, but they are not great writers. Miles Franklin, Kim Scott, even fucking Lawrence (and as you may know, I have a lot of opinions about D.H. Lawrence, but damn me, at least he creates a sense of place) actually bother to inspire you with a bit of love in a setting. These two didn’t. And to be great literature, writing must do that, as people and place are tied intrinsically, constantly referring to the other to create the human experience.

Perhaps I’m totally over thinking the thriller genre. Great Literature is not its scope. It just makes me cross that good writers wouldn’t bother. And Henning Mankell made a better job of creating atmosphere and engendering the whole scandi-noir genre, so there’s no excuse. Now: the nitty gritty. The book was hideously formulaic. Every new character introduced had a one paragraph fecking CV; description of their degree and previous ten years, peppered with adjectives like ‘high flying,’ ‘razor sharp mind’ and ‘holy roller’ so you get the idea that, you know, this guy’s a big deal. After that, nothing else they either did or said did a damn thing to develop that one dimensional character any further. Sloppy. So imagine my surprise when I read the blurb for the third book (yes, it’s still not fucking over) introducing ‘loveable journalist Harry Dunkley.’ He wasn’t loveable!! He was a bland bloke whose love of ‘chasing down a good yarn’ and ‘getting the papers in the morning’ was described at least four times in exactly the same goddamn way as if that sufficiently constitutes a personality. An effort to give him depth was the throw away mention of his estranged daughter who occasionally he’d miss a bit but couldn’t be fucked to do anything about it for 784 pages. If anything, he was a bit of a dick. He had a girlfriend, right, which was supposed to be a bit of a tension riser isn’t it, because now he’s got something to lose as he closes in on stuff he’s not supposed to know, and he could never get over the fact she was twenty two years younger. He mentions it three times. It must have been written explicitly for screenplay because there were these periodical recaps and I’m like, Harry? Have you forgotten you told me this already, 300 pages ago? I know, it was a long time. *It felt like it for me too.* Then when the young girlfriend goes off in an unconvincing childish strop and the inevitable attack happens (we saw it the minute he got with her, chaps), she dumps him, and later she tries to ring him, and he ignores her call!! She’s taken a knife to the throat for him, and he gets a bit wrapped up in himself and is now too busy for her, despite being gutted about being dumped and ‘racked with guilt’ as he kept saying. Well, not that guilty.

The Pencil of Rage came out with the portrayals of China and the Chinese. I’ve been reading books on China since these two journos turned up in Canberra as green little reporters twenty five years ago; you know, there’s a lot there what with thousands of years of culture and history and a billion people and I’ve never read such boringly obvious portrayal of a Bad Guy. A character defects, overcoming a life time of carefully tuned ‘education’ because….ooh, we need something emotional to make it convincing…er….fuck it, dead mother. Again, not developed enough to suggest why this character would defect in this circumstance when thousands of others wouldn’t. Lovely bit of world building in ‘Beijing’ ‘a Chinese melody drifted in the background.’ Who needs research eh? And a Chinese woman was described as ‘delicate’ no fewer than three times on one page, confirming all negative stereotypes about the submissiveness and mutability of Chinese women.

Then there was the needless transvestite. I don’t really understand why one character had to be trans. It added nothing to the story. But it was made a big deal of, so it’s not just a general diversity of some characters are black, some are Asian, some are trans. In fact, apart from a couple of Chinese, conspicuously painted as sinister or subversive, there was a complete lack of diversity. And this is the point for me.

Because all these people, swelled with power, feeding their greed and arrogance by dashing about the city at high speed were essentially dicks who demonstrated, despite all their qualifications in economics, no understanding of the real world and its struggles at all. The effects of poverty. Mental health (despite the ‘Mental Health Plan’ the fictitious government unsuccessfully tries to get through the house of representatives, mainly to show the Prime Minister is ‘a good guy,’), the ostracization of first nation people. As an immigrant outsider whose qualifications seem to count for shite, having daily battles with getting out of bed and the wine, it was quite depressing reading. Like I should have tried harder in my career to be important high fliers like these dudes. More assurance from Australia that I’m not good enough, from terribly constructed not-real people.

It is fascinating ear-wigging conversation in this town. Walking past people on their phones or those strolling in pairs (invariably young, athletic types in brown shoes and blue trousers; no blazers) you do catch snippets of Very Important Sounding Things. But is there a disconnect between them having coffee and important conversations (soooo different from teaching where you GET in your classroom, STAY in there, DON’T come out for seven hours, BE inspiring, NO you can’t leave to piss) and the real people they serve?

Look, like the aboriginals. The big elephant in Australian society who are miraculously unrepresented in this city. I have never seen such a white city. Lots of young east Asians at the university and, it seems, applying for hideously boring accounting systems jobs, but apart from that, very little diversity. And this troubles me. Before finishing the crap book, I read a great one about Noongar people of western Australia; struggling with their disenfranchisement and the bad choices they make based on their…lack of choices. Drugs, alcohol, abuse. How to reconnect with an ancient past that is spiritual and beautiful, solace against the modern world that probably many also want to engage with; combining success in modern Australian society through education and inclusion with celebrating traditions. These people were returning to their homeland as traditional owners, but now there are fences, a certain area is a holiday caravan park and the owners don’t have much sympathy for their free movement. After visiting the aborigine exhibition at the national museum, I was quite appalled and upset. How can white people live on the land, daily staring in the face of those they stole it from? Even in America, they wiped out most of the first nation peoples so used the place as a blank canvas to construct their national identity. Which is something Australians struggle with – a sense of belonging, constructing their identity out of ANZAC day – bloody violence and war. That’s not a cultural identity. I’ve had many discussions about this with Morris dancers, who feel connections with the village of their ancestors in England (I did mention this was merely inbreeding, and not meaningful), who know more about regional dances than I do and sort of sometimes miss the point of it being ‘folk;’ of the people, who change and grow. Australian identity is something that is still growing. And I think it should. Because, being a remainer, right, I’m quite into immigration. I am one. And after considering, then rejecting the idea that we can’t send all the white people in Australia back (I would revolt if someone said the reverse in England), there has to be a way for first nation and immigrants to unite over their love of this land. Because we do love it, I love it. I love beaches and emus and kangaroos! Anyone who doesn’t has no soul. And that is something that can bind us. Love, of course.

Which brings me back to finding soul. Apparently the hill where Parliament sits is a significant site for the Ngunnawal people – it is a woman’s mountain and important for their rituals. Not so easy to wander up there anymore and continue your culture. It’s like there was soul here, but perhaps nasty politicians took it all. And in looking for soul, I see it more in the trees and the hills than I do in this city. So I’m still looking for it. I’m finding it in odd little alleyways, cluttered with parked cars, murals painted on the wall and a load of bins…which is the secret entrance for a funny little windowless cocktail bar. I’m finding it under the trees at a cheap taco place round the corner from my flat, where they always seem to have secret meat you can just ask for. (Not a euphemism.) And I find it in the brilliant Smiths Alternative bar and music venue that doesn’t get a look-in in that stupid book because its ripped up, weathered sofas that render the pavement a hazard under the arcades of the Melbourne building is the sweet home of the Lost. Students lie on sofas all day, homeless men and women take their rest and drink the free water, smoking and reading the books; hippies resolutely not wearing shoes will play the piano and there is a particular smell. And, marvellously, good wine.

There we go.