Purgatory

I’m in purgatory.

Today I spent the first half of my shift working with a bunch of married men who are just five to ten years older than me who were referencing TV shows and websites that are just before my time. The shifts of the 30+ men ended midday when the college and university students started their shifts. I was doing a nine to five, working half of my time with both. The evening coworkers talked about turning eighteen, the memory of wounds still fresh from finishing high school, and being too afraid to get credit cards.

After work, I went to the creative writing club I’ve just joined. This time, I was the youngest person in the room. Instead of being thirty and up, the age group for the club is largely fifty and up. Despite it taking place in a college, no college students actually attend. I am one of the few members who doesn’t have white hair.  You would think that the shared purpose uniting us, writing, would enable me to connect with these people, but it doesn’t because I’m just so far out of their spheres of life experiences.

We were silently scribbling away, responding to writing prompts, when the music from the campus bar in the room next door started thumping. The college Halloween bash was in progress while I was sitting in a room with a bunch of people double my age. Half of me wished that I could join the party next door, but I knew that I would likely be the oldest person in that room. I wouldn’t belong there either.

I recently had to let a romantic interest go because despite ticking off many boxes that match my own situation, he’s at a point in his life where he wants to experiment with drugs. To use the terms I told him: drugs are a deal breaker. Why? Because I’m beyond the point in my life where I want a partner who’s doing activities like that. Even though I’m the right age in some respects, in the end I turned out to be just slightly wrong. Close, but no vape.

I feel like everywhere I go, I am either too young or too old, too accomplished or not enough, too mature or too immature. The void I’m stuck in seems to be enveloping this city like the vaporous fingers of mist. I keep bringing out my flashlight, thinking I’ve seen movement and found another survivor in the fog, but the shadows in the dark keep turning out to be trees or buildings. The truth is that I’m alone out here.

Purgatory.

Writing Character Arcs: The Lie Your Character Believes

When a fellow blogger, robertcday, told me that he was a pantser, I assumed it meant that he was someone who yanked down people’s pants in public for fun. However, after some research, it turned out that a pantser is someone who, “flies by the seat of their pants,” meaning they don’t plan out anything, or plan very little (thewritepractice.com). The world is safe from having to see your undies if you run into a pantser (admittedly, I am feeling kind of upset about the hilarity I’m missing out on because of this).

If you’re a pantser, the kind of person who writes without planning, you probably think that you don’t have much need to think about character arcs and that this article won’t be useful to you. However, this article isn’t about writing: it’s about revision. Once you have the story written out, elements like character arcs are things that you need to consider if you’re looking to get published.

Revision is hard especially if you don’t have the disposable income to spend on a professional editor and your friends can’t seem to ever get around to reading your work (Hint, hint. Was that passive aggressive enough?), or can’t provide any critiques other than, “It’s good!” I’ve been working on revising a draft of my completed manuscript for over a year because of these struggles. My strategy has been to break down the revision process into important elements, and my current focus is the character arcs in my novel.

Character Arcs

Firstly, what the heck is a character arc? A character arc is the evolution of your character throughout the story. There are arguably three basic character arcs: the positive change arc, the negative change arc, and the flat arc.

The Positive Change Arc occurs when a character begins their journey with some sort of unfulfillment or denial; after going through a number of trials that challenge their beliefs, the character will ultimately end up changing positively.

The Negative Change Arc is essentially a backwards version of the positive change arc: the character will have degenerated and changed for the worse by the end of the story.

The Flat  Arc centers around a static character who doesn’t change throughout the story; they are already complete, and it’s often the character arcs of the minor characters that change because of them.

 The first two arcs involve The Lie Your Character Believes.

The Lie Your Character Believes

We all have things that we cling to even if we know that they’re not necessarily true.

The lie I’m currently believing is that there’s a chance I can not only meet a quality person online, but also like said quality person when in reality, the chances of me liking anyone I meet in an inorganic situation are astronomically small. 

We resist accepting that these things we believe are lies because quite often, the alternative is unappealing. In my Tinder example, if I accept that I won’t like someone I meet off of a dating site, that takes dating out of my control, and my depressed brain will likely think, “OH MY GOD, I’M GOING TO DIE ALONE.” See? Not appealing at all.

When it comes to writing, this resistance against the truth is good. Resistance creates conflict, and conflict creates interesting plot lines.

Helping Writers Become Authors provides and excellent list of lies characters from pop culture believe:

• Might makes right. (Thor)
• The only way to earn love is through servitude. (Jane Eyre)
• Kids aren’t worth taking care of. (Jurassic Park)
• The people you love will always lie to you. (Secondhand Lions)
• Your only worth is in being the favorite. (Toy Story)

Only a few things can happen over the course of a story when characters believe lies. They will:

A. recognize the lie they believe which will make them into better characters than they were at the beginning of the story (positive character arc).

Or on the flip side of the coin:

B. the characters will still change, but for the worse (negative character arc). They will either never recognize the lie and continue down a path of delusion, or even worse, recognize the lie only after it’s too late (see: Othello).

Accounting for The Lie Your Character Believes is a great way to develop any character because no matter how your character responds to the lie, the character won’t be static, and will change over the course of the story. A character that has believable change over the course of a story is a well-written one.

The best part of this character element, is that it doesn’t just apply to the protagonist of your story, but to the secondary characters as well.

Let’s look at the villagers in The Beauty and the Beast. The lie they believe can best be summarized in this line from the mob song:

We don’t like what we don’t understand, in fact, it scares us.

That is their lie. If they don’t understand something, they must fear or dislike it. They exhibit this all throughout bith the the cartoon and the live action movie. They don’t understand Belle because of her passion for reading, and therefore label her as “odd.” This lie reaches its climax when the villagers are incensed to violence because of their misunderstanding of the beast and storm his castle with the intent to slaughter him.

After the curse is broken, the villagers learn that their lie, fearing what they don’t understand, is wrong because it lead them to fear their forgotten loved ones. If they hadn’t learned to stop fearing what they don’t understand, they likely would have been very frightened to see clocks and candlesticks transform into men, but they didn’t because they have a positive character arcs.

The villagers are just background characters to the plot, but even they have a lie that they believe. When they respond to their lie (ie alienating Belle, nearly murdering the Beast, and recognizing their fault by accepting their enchanted loved ones), it makes them believable characters. They’ve grown. This makes for quality writing (not saying that Beauty and the Beast is the epitome of English literature, but you get the idea). Character’s believing lies exists in essentially every well-written work.

 

To Do

When revising your work, analyze each of your characters and answer the following questions about them (including the minor characters): What lies do they believe? How do they develop over the course of the story? Do they have positive or negative character arcs? Do they have an arc at all?

If the answer to the last question is no, then I think it’s time to take creating a Lie for them into consideration.

I answered tgese questiond for my manuscript, and it really highlighted the characters which are well developed, and more importantly, those who aren’t.

I have a character, Jaclyn, who systematically tortures my protagonist, Scarlett, whenever she encounters her because of a lie she believes. However, after Scarlett deals with the lies she’s been holding onto, Jaclyn’s lies are never addressed again, leaving the story feel somewhat unresolved. I would have never noticed it had I not revised for the lies my characters believe.

Whether you’re a pantser, a planner or a plantser (a mix of both!), accounting for the lies your characters believe will improve the quality of your writing.

Surviving Not Thriving

One of the worst things about mental illness is that it tends to creep up on you when you don’t even realize it. If I was aware that I was getting bad again, I would have dedicated time to work on my mental health with mindfulness meditation and self-reflection. But I thought I was doing fine. That is until I went to see my doctor.

I’ve realized that one of the main reasons I dropped out of school with only one practicum left isn’t that I don’t want to be a teacher (I mean, that was pretty significant part of my decision, but I could have gritted my teeth and finished the program), but because I don’t know who I am when I’m not on anti-depressants.

After I got off of my anti depressants, I expected to go back to the stellar state of mental health I acquired before withdrawal. But I haven’t. I’ve been having major issues regulating my emotions which is very unlike me. I am notorious for my cold unemotional nature among friends, family, and even my practicum supervisors (the critique I continually received from them is that I’m robotic). Now I’m losing my temper and crying all the fucking time. I knew that I couldn’t put myself in a position to care for a bunch of kids when I’m having issues like this, so I dropped out.

I told the head of the education department about my withdrawal and feelings of instability, and they agreed to hold my position in the program if I provided them with a doctor’s note verifying that yes, withdrawal is actually fucking awful (hey, that kind of rhymed) and a leave would benefit me for mental health reasons.

So I went to my doctor, and told her about my emotional regulation issues. And she gave me a test to evaluate anxiety and depression. And I scored high on both. And she suggested that after going through the hell of withdrawal that I go back on medication. Sigh. At least she gave me the note.

Although only vaguely aware that I was struggling, I attributed my current feelings of unhappiness to the tumultuous nature of my life right now–dropping out has provided me with an endless amount of judgement and condemnation from friends and family alike. It has affected me more than I’d like to admit. In addition to that, applying to a plethora of jobs has meant that although some places have shown interest in me, I’m getting repeatedly rejected. I also ended a friendship with one of my closest friends because she dropped off the face of the earth when she got a boyfriend which has made me feel like I meant nothing to her after years of being there for her. But I didn’t think I was depressed or anxious again.

I’ve been playing the ukulele, crocheting, and going for walks every day which are things that usually die a fast death when I get depressed. But I hadn’t been going to the gym, reading, or writing. In fact, my last blog post was about forcing myself to write when I didn’t want to. I had interpreted my reluctance to write as laziness, not depression. It was the latter; I can see that now.

But here I am, writing again. It’s part of my plan.

When I saw my therapist last, he walked me out after our session and he asked me what my plan was. I told him to apply for jobs. He responded, “No, not that. What is your plan to cope with everything that’s happened?” Oh. I mumbled something about going to zumba every now and then and left.

But now that I’ve recognized that my state of mental health really is in decline, I realized that I needed to made an actual plan. So I decided to start meditating again, watching what I eat (easier said than done. All I ever want is pizza or sushi), exercising, reading and writing. Most exciting is the latter. Because of my plan, I wrote chapter one of a new manuscript!

I’ve been working on revising the completed manuscript of my other novel for so long, that I haven’t let myself write anything other than short stories and blogs in years. But now, thanks to taking care of my mental health, I’ve started working on this new piece, and I’m so excited about it. What a lovely gift to myself.

I think what I’ve learned from all of this is that even if things seem to be going well, I need to stop and check in with myself at least once a week to evaluate my mental health to prevent decline and promote happiness. Everyone should do this.

In the meantime, I found a job yesterday and I have a date tomorrow!

 

Sometimes

Hemingway’s Guts

I’ve always argued that to write creatively, you shouldn’t force yourself to follow any prescribed daily habits to be successful because it’s an art. Like sex, it should happen during the throes of passion, otherwise you’ll just be despondently participating while thinking about what to eat or how much laundry you have to do later.

I once studied a text about the writing process in which the author describes the process as a supernatural phenomenon very much outside of their control. They describe working in the middle of a field when an idea for a story or poem smacks into them as if it was carried to them by the wind. The author would dash home in a furious panic because if they didn’t make it to a pen and paper in time, that the story would blow away and be gone forever. I loved that idea. It’s much more romantic than Hemingway sitting at his typewriter bleeding his guts out.

However, I’ve begun to wonder if I was wrong.

 

In fact, I am now so certain that writing when I’m only in a fit of creative passion is a poor strategy that I’m forcing myself to write this blog right now. All I really want to be doing is playing my ukulele. Have I achieved manic pixie dream girl status yet?

 

I’ve been trying to learn how to sing lately to accompany my new instrument, and singing is one of those things that I thought you could either do or not.  I assumed I was the latter despite friends telling me otherwise when I drunkenly serenaded them. My response was usually to intentionally screech whatever I was singing (very likely Don’t Stop Believing by Journey) so that they would have no false illusions about my talentlessness.

I’m trying to learn how to sing now because the Youtuber I’ve been fangirling over lately, Jonathan Young, changed my perspective on whether people are gifted with talent or not. He has without a doubt the sexiest singing voice I’ve ever heard (hence my obsession). And in high school people told him that he sucked at singing. I know. What?!

In a couple of his videos, he adamantly argues against people who say that they wish they could sing because he’s proof that you can do it if you work hard at it. Like learning an instrument, it’s all about practice. He wouldn’t have the ability to drop women’s pants with his voice now had he not practiced (I mean, I don’t know if he actually has that ability, but I’m pretty certain he does).

I feel that it’s the same way with writing when you’re uninspired. The more you practice at it, the easier it will become. Hopefully. I mean, only writing when inspired is a life long philosophy I’ve held, and this is the first time I’ve forced myself to write when I didn’t want to in a while. It’s felt like pulling teeth. But here I am, at the end of the blog post. We did it, guys!

Of course some people will always be more naturally talented than others. But I would rather be someone who works hard to achieve a mediocre level of competency than someone who doesn’t earn their rewards.

Perhaps Hemingway meant that he was bleeding his guts out at his typewriter not just as a metaphor for baring his soul in his writing, but also the suffering that comes with forcing yourself to write as well.