Vulnerability
A long time ago, I decided I didn't have to be so tough. Life was too short to worry about people who will hurt you, guarding your heart, any of that. I am usually the most exuberant person in the room, the most joy-filled. I clap my hands like a kid over the Christmas lights, and will gladly run through a pile of fall leaves. I'll make snow angels, and I am the first person to get up and dance at a wedding. I let my puppies lick my face and my baby smother me in sticky kisses. And I will cry at the evening news, weep big tears when they run the St. Jude's Children's Hospital commercials, and sob with happiness at my kids' Christmas pageants--and don't care who's watching. I'll laugh until tears roll down my face, cry until I need a big box of tissues, and smile until my face hurts.
But . . .
There are the secret parts. I mean the REALLY secret parts. The grief I carry with me over events long gone and people long buried, the stabbing I feel in my chest when I see my grandmother's handwriting in the note I carry with me everywhere. When I open my wallet and see certain photos, the pain that is right there. In the quiet places.
And I think that's the best way to show your characters. In my current wip, I have a grief-stricken man and a woman used as little more than a human biology experiment by the government. And it isn't their big splashy scenes and dialogue that tells you the most about them. It's the quiet scenes. When no one but the reader is there. The secret vulnerability. That tells you all you need to know.
It's nuance and whispers. The secrets.
Is that how you feel you know people best? What about your characters? When no one is watching? In whispered prayers and tiny gestures?
But . . .
There are the secret parts. I mean the REALLY secret parts. The grief I carry with me over events long gone and people long buried, the stabbing I feel in my chest when I see my grandmother's handwriting in the note I carry with me everywhere. When I open my wallet and see certain photos, the pain that is right there. In the quiet places.
And I think that's the best way to show your characters. In my current wip, I have a grief-stricken man and a woman used as little more than a human biology experiment by the government. And it isn't their big splashy scenes and dialogue that tells you the most about them. It's the quiet scenes. When no one but the reader is there. The secret vulnerability. That tells you all you need to know.
It's nuance and whispers. The secrets.
Is that how you feel you know people best? What about your characters? When no one is watching? In whispered prayers and tiny gestures?
posted by Erica Orloff at 7:25 PM
5 Comments:
Hello Erica,
What a beautiful entry. I believe that learning how to accept your vulnerabilities comes with experience and with maturity. When I learned to deal with what life had thrown in my path I was less afraid to show the tears and let loose some of those secrets. For me, admitting that there is pain that I carry in my heart makes it easier to accept, sometimes. You know what drives me crazy? People who guard the secrets so closely and never take a stand to fight for what they believe in.
I'm not a writer and never hope to be but I do enjoy reading your blog. Thanks.
Hi Mszapp:
I agree. Very guarded people . . . I have difficulty relating to. I actually have a couple of acquaintances that I don't ever expect will evolve into true friendships because there's something so guarded about them, and they reveal so little of themselves. It's just very different from who I am.
I am glad you enjoy the blog. I try to incorporate a lot of "life" into the writing aspects of it because for most writers, life is what drives the art and vice versa.
I couldn't agree more.
I just need to figure out how to do it.
Great post, Erica.
It is important, I think, for our characters to be vulnerable in some way. If the readers (and opposing forces) realize the existence of an "Achilles Heel," it ratchets up the tension in ways impossible with a "perfect" character.
sweet pea:
Good point. Knowing those weak spots makes characters relatable. I know in my first novel, Spanish Disco, my character was a high-functioning alcoholic and a bitch . . . but I deliberately had scenes with her father, who had Alzheimer's, and they were extraordinarily tender, and you realized so much of her hardness was trying not to feel that pain. As one character tells her, "You're just angry. Angry that people LEAVE." They die, they get sick, they leave you, one way or the other. It's the human condition, and we all need to, in come way, make our peace with that.
E
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