When Your Characters Talk Back
Authors often say that their characters seem to take on lives of their own. Amos Oz, author of My Michael (Michael sheli מיכאל שלי in Hebrew) reported getting into long, heated arguments with his main character, Hannah.
Below is the record of an argument I had with a character of mine. His name is Zakaryah, and he’s one of the principal characters of my novel Light of Exile, coming this September. I was having trouble fleshing him out. I tried to cheat and he didn’t like it, not one bit.
The story just wasn’t working.
I paused in my typing, looked over at Zakaryah. He had shown up in the chair next to the table while I was concentrating on the manuscript.
He grimaced, fumbling at his left forearm with his right hand. The hand sank through his arm without any obvious resistance, stopping only when it encountered the wood of the table top. He bit his lip, turned to look at me.
I realized he had said something a moment before that I had missed.
– See? This is what I mean.
He sounded like a normal twelve-year-old.
He was wearing a rough wool robe which came down to mid-calf. Where it gapped at the waist I could see the top of a loin cloth. Didn’t the wool make his bare chest itch? He shifted his weight in the seat, squirming right, squirming left, now leaning on one chair arm, now on the other.
I asked if he was uncomfortable.
– I’ve never sat in anything like this . . . this . . . whatever it is.
I told him it was called a chair.
– So you’ve got me sitting in something I’ve never heard of? What sense does that make?
I felt my face reddening. He was right, of course. And what answer was there to that?
– And I have these terrible gaps in my memory. Some things I remember clearly. My sister Hannah who never cries. The ox that crushed my father to death. The fire. Especially the fire. I remember the tablet-house and I remember Gimillu. But I don’t remember my mother’s name. How can I not remember my mother’s name? He buried his face in his hands, elbows resting on the table, his back shaking silently.
I looked down at the floor and mumbled that he had enough.
– What? What did you say?
I thought I had given him enough, I told him, still gazing down.
– Enough? Enough for what? Look at me!
I looked at him. I could dimly see the high back of the chair through his head.
But this wasn’t getting me anywhere. Time for a new approach.
I said he should draw open the bag in front of him.
He started, apparently noticing the linen sack for the first time.
– My mother’s bag!
I told him his mother’s name was Kashaya.
I said she had loved him very much, that giving birth to him and his sister were the two greatest events of her life, that when she knew she was dying her deepest sorrow was that she wasn’t going to see them grow up.
I told him to go ahead and open the bag, that he should reach in and take out the first thing his hand fell on.
He loosened the draw string and tugged at the opening, spreading it wide. He pulled out a round copper mirror.
– I remember it! My grandmother gave it to her. She told . . . Kashaya . . . that it had been given to her when she was just a girl, when she was as sad as she had ever been in her whole life, that she wanted my mother to have it. Every woman should have a mirror, she said.
I told him he obviously remembered more than he thought he did, but he shook his head.
– I need more.
There was a limit to what I could give him, I responded.
I didn’t have enough time to give him everything he wanted. There were others to consider, they needed me too. But I told him about the years his father had spent scraping together enough silver to buy the family ox. I told him about the letter his grandmother had received from the army commander saying that his uncle Gedalyah had died of a fever at his encampment near the border town of Upi. I told him about that day at the tablet-house, when his arch-foe Gimillu had stepped outside to relieve himself, and he had surreptitiously written in the fresh clay of the boy’s tablet that the master was a buffoon. Didn’t he remember how hard it had been to stifle his laughter when Gimillu was thrashed with the switch?
With every story, Zakaryah’s eyes widened a little more and his body became more opaque, until the chair was just a vague shadow behind his torso.
He clasped his hands together. They sank into each other a little. He pulled them apart with a slight effort. He sighed.
– Still not enough.
This was it, this was the moment I needed.
I told him to look in the mirror and tell me what was missing, what I could give him in the time we had.
He peered closely at the polished copper.
– I see my face.
I gestured at him to continue. His brows drew into a V. He stared at his reflection, then stared some more. The silence became thicker, deeper, longer.
– I . . . I see it!
He was fully opaque now.
He had to tell me what he saw, I exclaimed.
It was a demand, not a request. I was desperate to know. My fingers hung poised over the keyboard.
He didn’t speak, just reached over and poked me in the breastbone. It hurt.
Tell me! I insisted, rubbing my chest.
He looked at his finger, looked at me and smirked. Then he faded, the smile lingering long past the point when the rest of him had disappeared. There was a slight pop and it too vanished.
I scratched my head and turned my thoughts back to my manuscript.
I would just have to do it the hard way.
I sighed and closed the laptop.
I grabbed Characters & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card, opened it, turned to page 1.
I began to read.