Only black letters on a white background

Every writer sooner or later faces the question - how should he treat his own characters?

We have our own position on this, we have solved this issue for ourselves once and for all, but more on that later - towards the end of the article.

But for now, let's say that we noticed two equally great trends - the first completely separates the character from its author, and the character's freedom of will becomes no more. The author of the text endlessly repeats - "And I did not expect, but he! And they! And the characters did so and so!" At the same time, the author is almost infantile amazed at the behavior of his own heroes.

The second trend is exactly the opposite - and equally exalted - is to completely merge the character and the author's will together, indicating that the characters "are just black letters on a white background"

Both trends look, as for our taste, superfluous... unnecessarily categorical.

And if the first approach is often excessively carried away by novice writers, then the second is often preached by venerable authors, with big names, and beginners. and ... and in general, it is very popular, which is even surprising.

Let's not beat around the bush, and let's put it bluntly - the statement about "black letters on a white background" belongs to Pan Andrzej Sapkowski. The author of that very "Witcher" voiced it willingly and repeatedly, in interviews, at conventions, in his own articles. Actually, licentia poetica - how it treats its heroes. But we see either exaltation or a fair share of flirtatious cunning behind both categorical statements.

It is very difficult to sincerely "not expect" any actions from a person whose features you have carefully considered and recorded. It is very difficult to treat a person whose features you have carefully considered and prescribed as a "set of letters". Maybe it works differently in someone's head, but that's how we see it - it's very difficult to fall into evaluative extremes when your character has a fully built character. Yes, built by you, but not equal to your own. that's what-that's what-is really important.

In this case, we immediately recall the preface of another, no less famous author, Stephen King, to his most important book for him, namely the Dark Tower cycle.

He himself has repeatedly called the book about the Tower his most important work. This cycle was written for a long time, and sometimes painfully, and for more than a dozen years. And returning to history after a serious break, after life shocks, after his own collision with the inevitability, death, the discreteness of being - King writes this: "I reread my first books about Roland and his comrades in order to feel more fully what they are. For me, these are separate people with their separate world" Individual people.

Living people.

Living, albeit fictional, people. With their character, goals, fears, love, hatred and all that makes a person a person. Alive and present.

And actually, our position is here. Our characters are not equal to the author and his will. Our characters are living, albeit fictional, people. The situations they get into are created by us, as well as the original characters, habits, and so on. But th actions - actions are not invented by us. They are logically born from what we know about the character. Not suddenly, not out of the blue. They come from the packages we have given out, but the characters do not blindly follow the will of the author. We don't invent actions - we notice patterns. But they already live by themselves.

The author is somewhat like a chronicler who writes down what he sees - we create the outlines of the world and people.... and you know, just before writing this article, the author of it came across another statement by King, where he also compares himself to "a chronicler with this absurd old cowboy Roland" - and you know, this is a damn right remark. Although it is also not devoid of a certain amount of mysticism, but, in the end, would it not be permissible for authors writing about the mysterious and strange not to fall into some mystery themselves? At least a little.

In fact, the mystery here is all nested only in the fact that spiritual impulses, the very inspiration in writing, without which it is only a bare craft, is a thing generally inexpressible in words... like that very Tao. Tao, as you know, is a process, and words cannot be expressed. Inspiration, too. Namely, it creates that degree of liveliness and authenticity for really good books.

So we ourselves can safely say that on the scale of the attitude to the free will of the character, expressed from, relatively speaking, Sapkovsky to King, we are still next to King. No matter how funny it was to understand it - knowing the King of Horror's love for complicating the lives of his heroes. But you can't get the words out of the song, and our heroes are not letters on any background at all. They are personalities. But for the set of adventures of these personalities, for the depth of the world and the complexity of situations, of course, the author is fully responsible, and no one else. We'll talk about the depth of the world next time, but that's it for today!

The unkind chronicler of unkind stories, Mr. King and his companions on the waves of the litprocess (photo taken from open sources on the Internet)