Lecture 4: Fictional Characters, Imagined and Observed

Fictional Characters, Imagined and Observed .................................

Lecture 4

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ll writers draw, both consciously and unconsciously, on behaviors

and traits we have seen in ourselves or others, with the result that

all the characters you create combine to form a portrait of your

view of human nature. But although the roots of any character lie in your

observations of yourself and of other people, those observations are refracted

through your imagination. In the last lecture, we talked about the continuum

between complete intimacy with a character and no intimacy at all, and

in this lecture, we’ll look at three other continuums: between observation

and imagination, between exterior and interior approaches, and between

psychology and circumstances in creating characters.

The Continuum of Imagination

z Some writers hew more closely to observation than to imagination,

basing their characters almost entirely on people they know. Others

write convincingly about characters or experiences they’ve never had

themselves. Some writers even create characters who are a different

gender, age, background, ethnicity, or temperament from themselves.

z Of course, there many variations along this continuum between pure

observation and pure imagination. In historical novels, for example,

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imaginary characters from the same period.

z Whichever pole a writer tends toward—observation or imagination—no

writer relies purely on one or the other. Although some writers may base

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all must exercise their imaginations to the extent of seeing the world

through the eyes of these characters and relating how the characters

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have found themselves.