Guest Blogger: Emma Bull
October 13th, 2007 by Edie Ramer
An Interruption
“What are you doing?” says a voice from over my shoulder.
It’s…a male voice? Soft, as if its owner is saving his breath for something else, and scratchy, inclined to break. Does he smoke? No, I’d smell it if he did.
“I’m writing about me. It’s for a guest blogging gig.”
He–yep, it’s a he–walks over to the other rolling chair in my office and rumbles it over to the table where I’m typing. He’s skinny and dark-complected, and his brown hair hangs around his collar not as if he intended it to do that, but as if he keeps forgetting to get it cut. He’s so skinny it’s hard to figure his age, but my guess is mid-twenties to early thirties. One of his eyes is brown; the other is hazel. It’s not immediately obvious, but once I notice, it’s creepy. He’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt that looks as if it’s been washed more times than I’ve done the laundry in my life, and newish-looking jeans. His feet are long, bony, and bare.
He sits in the chair and folds both legs up under him. He looks like a praying mantis doing yoga. “You’re writing about you?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s that working out?”
It doesn’t sound like sarcasm. He tilts his head on his stalky neck and widens his eyes. I can tell he expects a real answer.
So I say, “Not so good, actually.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
I’m annoyed. Don’t get smart with me, mister, I think. I’m pretty sure I made you up. I could pitch you into the trash there in the corner of the screen anytime I wanted. The problem is, that’s not always true. Some of them even know it. This one, for instance, has a sort of coyote-cleverness in his face that causes me some doubts about which of us is running the show.
I’ve seen his kind before. They can always outlast me. “Fine,” I say. “Why wouldn’t you think so?”
“Well, that’s not what you do, is it? Writing about you. You write about us.”
“You’re all aspects of me. You have to be. That’s where you come from.”
He smiles, wide with his lips closed. It’s a froggy expression. I want to tell him so, just to bring him down a rung, but he probably already knows it. Most of them look in mirrors now and then, but never when they’re on stage. “Oh, I’m from you. And, um, three television shows. A couple movies. Four books you read when you were a teenager. And your first two boyfriends in college.”
“You didn’t exist when I was in college. How would you know?”
That stops him. He blinks. “Huh. I’m not sure. Maybe one of the others told me.”
“You can’t have talked to them. They aren’t in your story.”
He’s happy again–bad sign for me and what’s left of my upper hand in this discussion. “Of course not. They’re in yours. We’re all in yours. Yeah, some of me grows out of you. But the reverse is true, too.”
“What?”
“It is. You’re as much made of pieces of us as we are of you.”
“I’d say you’re on crack, but I know it’s not so because, hello, I made you up.”
“How did you decide what to make for dinner tonight?”
“By looking in the refrigerator and the cupboards.” But I feel a finger of creepy-cold at the back of my neck. He’d made dinner. He was the reason I’d put the canned green chiles in, and the fake chicken; I’d added the sweet potato because it was good for him. His hand had closed over mine on the knife handle, deciding how fine to chop the onions. “Okay, that’s got to stop right now. I have no interest in reenacting pieces of your spectacularly messed-up life.”
“Lucky for you that’s not how it works. Though you know you’re wondering if you really are too scared of heights to take up climbing.”
“Bite me,” I tell him, because I’m a writer and articulate.
He shakes his head, grimaces. It looks sympathetic. I think. He really does have an odd face. “This isn’t your first time out of the gate. You know how to get rid of me, if you want to.”
I do. But this one isn’t going to be easy. None of the people in his story are. My God, I can see the frayed spots at the edges of his shirt cuffs and smell his shampoo. I know what his mother’s voice sounded like. This one will take an awful lot of exorcism.
“The only way out is through,” I say. There. I’ve just committed myself to him and his ensemble cast, their appalling work, their personal demons, their harrowing lives. Their complex and rewarding friendships, their courage, their running jokes. Even their food. They have nice taste in food, these people.
“I’ll try to help as much as I can. I can be pretty talky, once I get going.” Suddenly his eyes drop to his hands, which are clasped around his crossed ankles. “I’ll change you, you know.”
“Yes,” I say. “I know.”
They always do, after all.
–Emma Bull
(usually found at http://coffeeem.livejournal.com/)
(Her latest novel, Territory, is a historical fantasy, and available from Tor Books.)
27 Responses to “Guest Blogger: Emma Bull”
Emma, thank you so much for guest blogging with us. I LOVE your blog. It makes me want to go through my wip and make my characters so real I can see and hear and smell them. Make them as alive as the phouka is in your blog and in War for the Oaks. Your character has come to life in this blog, and that’s something I need to do with my characters too.
Emma, like Edie, I bow down to your amazing characterization.
I bought War for the Oaks just the other day (hey, it takes time for news of good things to filter down to us here in South Africa
) and it came in the post on Friday. I just can’t wait to read it now, or Territory.
Lovely post, Emma. A muse who will even help you make dinner.
Are all your characters so visual, do they just show up and tell you what they’re going to do in your stories? I love how you threaten him. I made you up, I can take you out! Literally 
But you’re right, that’s not always possible. Well done.
Emma,
This character is amazing, totally comes to life for me. I’d love to see him at work in a story, is he in a current WIP, a future WIP– or someone who is just starting to stake his claim on your time?
Terrific blog, Emma. Thank you for joining us. You wrote that character so perfectly that I have a clear picture of him. I’m an extremely visual person and need to “see” my characters or the characters I’m reading. What you just did was brilliant.
And also so right. The characters we right is drawn out of ourselves. Whether its pieces of ourself or pieces of what we’d like to see in ourself.
I loved WAR OF THE OAKS and am so looking forward to reading TERRITORY.
Thanks, guys! This was great fun to do.
The character is part of a Secrit Projekt that will appear (poof! Like magic!) next year. (A Secrit Projekt on which I am collaborating with three extremely cool writers who I bet you read and like. We’re having what I believe is referred to as “Too Much Fun.”)
This person and his friends have so completely eaten my head that there was no room left in it for an essay. So it was only fair that one of them should step up and help me with this. Heh.
One of my favorite writerly tools is point of view. When I’m writing description, I try to concentrate on what the point of view character would notice and what he or she would think of it; it gives me a better handle on what to describe and how. Here the point of view character was a fictional version of me–so though I knew her pretty well, I still had to pick and choose what she’d see and how she’d see it.
I’m pretty sure even a fictional version of me would growl at her characters. I don’t think it would work when she did it, either. ;>)
Taking Territory to Japan tomorrow–better be good cause hardback is a real commitment on a 11 hour flight.
Sue–Eeep! I hope it does the job…
Emma, I’m thrilled we got a peek at your Secrit Projekt, especially this character. When I’m ready to revise my wip, I’m coming back to this blog and will read it about three times to get into my head what I need to do to bring my character to life.
I should ‘fess up and admit that he made me cook dinner last night, too.
He’s an equal-opportunity headmonster, that one. Probably because he’s also got bits of several of MY ex-boyfriends in him. *g*
Wow! Like Michelle, I bow to your character development. Although I don’t normally read historical fantasy, I can’t wait to run out and buy yours.
Thanks for the subliminal workshop!!
Emma and Elizabeth, none of my ex-boyfriends are as interesting as this character. The downside of marrying too young. I’ll have to meet these fascinating characters in your books.
Hey, Bear! Yeah, the kid was busy last night.
See, Bear is one of the collaborators. She knows this guy even better than I do. Which gives me a chance to talk about revision.*
When I was writing that post, I was trying to figure out how to address the fact that this character was in my head, and from my head…but since he’s a collaborative work, he’s also in and from three other people’s heads. And address it in a way that still made the point about a writer’s relationship to the characters. But no, my brain was too full of fog, and I finally proceeded on to the end and posted it.
Ah, the miracle of daylight, sleep, and brain rest. Because now I think I see where it goes.
“Oh, I started out from you. But you don’t know where I’ve been.”
“Yes, I do.”
He bounces a little, gleeful, on the chair, and it rolls back three inches. “Nope. You know which direction I went, is all. You shared me. So part of me is you. Part is from the other people who are thinking me up.” He squints and grins, like a kid about to tell a dirty joke. I had no idea that expression was one of his. “For all you know, I could have wolf cooties.”
I refuse to give him the satisfaction of laughing.
“Besides, the part I got from you? That includes three television shows, a couple movies, four books you read when you were a teenager, and your first two boyfriends in college.”
Revising: It’s not just a good idea; it’s a really good idea.
*How not to do a transition. Just saying.
He makes a pretty good eggplant parm, too.
The point you make about revision is very important. My first drafts are basically a mess. They’re almost the bones of the story, and I have to go hang the flesh on them later.
I’ve got a really strong feel for what the characters will do and why; getting those motives and actions on the page is sometimes a struggle.
What’s very interesting is that in a character as realized as this guy (see how seamlessly I avoid using his name?), with a collaborator as brilliant as Ms. Bull, the character really does take on a life of his own. One of us says, “He’d do X in Y situation.”
And the other one thinks a minute, and nods, and says, “Yeah, he would.”
It’s very nearly eerie.
I think I was the one who suggested he was a rock climber and BASE jumper; Em mentioned that he in-line skates, too. And there was never any disagreement. It just kind of clicked. “Oh, of course. That explains so much.”
It can give the writers the creepy illusion that the character has an independent existence, too.
Emma and Bear, I’ll have to eat and sleep with my characters more often. They come alive as I write them, but the character you created seems to be alive independent of both of you. If you’ve seen the movie Miss Potter with Renee Zellwegger talking to her rabbit drawings–and the rabbits start hopping around–that’s what it seems like.
Yep, after a while a character can achieve a level of internal consistency that’s alarming. Not that you need to create his entire past (though in the case of these characters, we created a lot of it, to give us a running start on their motivations and voices). But you’ll always know more about the character than appears in the story.
It’s equal parts frustrating and satisfying. I know stuff about Jesse Fox and Mildred Benjamin, from Territory, that I’m never going to be able to get on paper. Not information the reader needs–but I needed it, to know what makes them do what they do when they’re on camera.
The times when I’ve made a big history for my characters, that’s when I start to write and everything changes, lol. Their hair color, their age, their names … It all changes. I learn about my characters as I write, jotting things in notebooks, so I can go back and fix what I’ve written already. It’s best for me to do this in revisions, although I can see in a collaborative process that won’t be a great idea.
Wow, Elizabeth and Emma, thanks so much for a great look at your process. Elizabeth, my greatest struggle is also getting the motives and actions on the page, even though I have such a strong idea of what my characters are going to do, so it makes me feel better knowing I’m in really esteemed company
.
This is such fun! I like meeting he-who-has-no-name.
And, um, hey. I’d love to read the other stuff you know about Jesse Fox and Mildred Benjamin, and I bet other people would, too…
Great discussion going on. I’m one of those people who cannot write up the background of my characters before I start. They already exist in my head. Not fully formed, but real enough to start and go on from there. They flesh out as I go and I certainly have no problem with going back and adding a characteristic that explains an action that occurs later on in the book.
Its a fascinating process.
I think I’m in love. But wait, he’s not real! Oh well, it won’t be the first time. I don’t reread books often, but I know I’ll reread Territory soon and I will be looking for that Secrit Projekt.
Thanks to Emma for using such a simple way to show us how to show characterization and thanks to Edie who brought you to us in her blog!
You sooo showed us without telling us.
Mary Marvella Barfield
Dittos to previous posts, and thanks for a fascinating blog! Wonderful!
I’m reminded of an old Twilight Zone – Keenan Wynn (I think) played a Hollywood screenwriter who’d created a wife. I love how they take over. Your guy is so incredibly real. I look forward to picking up Territory.
Oh, Territory would have kept me engrossed during a flight all right– I just don’t think I could have made it last 11 hours! I think I’m about ready to re-read it to catch some of the errant details. Wonderful.
Aww, thanks, gang! I think the process is different for everyone–which goes for all the other aspects of writing, as well. But I like to hear about what’s worked for other writers, and get a look into their process. Even if it’s not what I do, it usually teaches me something. Even if that something is, “Okay, that? I don’t ever want to have to do that.” *g*
Emma, sorry I’m chiming in late…crazy weekend! We loved having you at Magical, and I know this will be one book we’ll all be reading! Can’t wait to see this guy in action.
Oh I love this! Thankee Emma m’dear – I’d love to taste that eggplant parm. Funny how they ride us even when we think we’re the ones steering, eh? I had the fourth of my cast of conflict pop full-blown from my forehead last night as I was killing undead in an electronic forest, and she won’t shut up already. She also loves eggplant parm, I have just been informed.