Borrowing characters from real life
By Marion Dane Bauer - May 7, 2012
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January 31, 2012
When my daughter was ten or eleven, she used to say from time to time, “Mom, write a book about me. You could call it Heavens to Elisabeth.”
“Beth-Alison,” I’d say, “I can’t write a book about you. I don’t know you well enough.”
“Oh, Mom,” she’d say, in utter disgust, and that was the end of the discussion.
But the truth is I didn’t know her well enough to use her as the perceiving character in one of my stories—and still don’t—though I know her about as well as most mothers know their daughters. Inevitably, though, I know her only from the outside. If I’m going to create a character on the page, one through whose eyes I view the world, I have to approach from the inside.
There is only one person I’ve ever known from the inside, and that, of course, is myself. And so every character I have ever climbed inside of to tell a story is, on some level, me.
The reality, however, because we are all so complex, is that only scraps and pieces of my psyche—of the longing I talked about last week—ever reach the page. Nonetheless, every main character starts with me. The most basic question every writer asks when approaching a story is “What does my character want?” and it is in the depths of my own longing that I find the answer to that question.
This is true even when the character I am passing through to reach my story is an animal . . . such as the dog, Buddy, in Little Dog, Lost.
With Buddy I did what I rarely do when I’m creating human characters. I began with a real dog. I don’t mind borrowing from a dog for a very simple reason. Dogs can’t read.
I don’t have to worry about Buddy—or Ruby as she was called in real life—feeling invaded. Nor could she tell me that I didn’t get her right on the page.
And the truth is, actually, that I began not so much with Ruby—she has an interesting story, but I didn’t use any of it—but rather with her ears. Ruby had “airplane ears.” So does Buddy in Little Dog, Lost. And Ruby’s ears create a pretty good metaphor for the way I draw all my characters. One small bit stands in for a much more complex whole.
That’s Ruby in the photo at the beginning of this piece, the dog whose ears I borrowed for Little Dog, Lost.
And here’s the artist’s, Jennifer Bell’s, rendition of Buddy, who ultimately earns the name Ruby in the story.
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To see the photos for this article or to leave comments: http://bit.ly/JnKns0
“Beth-Alison,” I’d say, “I can’t write a book about you. I don’t know you well enough.”
“Oh, Mom,” she’d say, in utter disgust, and that was the end of the discussion.
But the truth is I didn’t know her well enough to use her as the perceiving character in one of my stories—and still don’t—though I know her about as well as most mothers know their daughters. Inevitably, though, I know her only from the outside. If I’m going to create a character on the page, one through whose eyes I view the world, I have to approach from the inside.
There is only one person I’ve ever known from the inside, and that, of course, is myself. And so every character I have ever climbed inside of to tell a story is, on some level, me.
The reality, however, because we are all so complex, is that only scraps and pieces of my psyche—of the longing I talked about last week—ever reach the page. Nonetheless, every main character starts with me. The most basic question every writer asks when approaching a story is “What does my character want?” and it is in the depths of my own longing that I find the answer to that question.
This is true even when the character I am passing through to reach my story is an animal . . . such as the dog, Buddy, in Little Dog, Lost.
With Buddy I did what I rarely do when I’m creating human characters. I began with a real dog. I don’t mind borrowing from a dog for a very simple reason. Dogs can’t read.
I don’t have to worry about Buddy—or Ruby as she was called in real life—feeling invaded. Nor could she tell me that I didn’t get her right on the page.
And the truth is, actually, that I began not so much with Ruby—she has an interesting story, but I didn’t use any of it—but rather with her ears. Ruby had “airplane ears.” So does Buddy in Little Dog, Lost. And Ruby’s ears create a pretty good metaphor for the way I draw all my characters. One small bit stands in for a much more complex whole.
That’s Ruby in the photo at the beginning of this piece, the dog whose ears I borrowed for Little Dog, Lost.
And here’s the artist’s, Jennifer Bell’s, rendition of Buddy, who ultimately earns the name Ruby in the story.
--------------------------------------------------------
To see the photos for this article or to leave comments: http://bit.ly/JnKns0
