About Memoirs

About memoirs

Yesterday, I realized that there is a clear distinction in the level of understanding between author, fans, and readers, about what a character knows and feels. For the author, he is the keyholder for all the ultimate secrets of the character's inner workings, and the intricate movements of the world. The fans can do a lot to contribute to the progression of the story through speculation and discussion, but it is ultimately up to the author to decide, or in a greater sense, to discover what is true and what is not.

I use the word "discover" to reflect my own experiences with writing, where I might start out with something that is merely attractive to me, an idea, a character, a conflict, or what-have-you, but once I end up assigning qualities to the characters within and attempt to reveal the resulting interactions, things often move in an unpredictable manner, in directions that I did not expect, because my characters live within me once created and guide my fingers to the keys.

That being said, a character is only as deep and complex as you give time and credence for. If you reveal a character in only one scene and do not revisit this character in any other context, than your understanding of that character, as an author is going to be thusly limited. It is important for the author to have a profound and intimate relationship with his characters, especially the important ones, even if they are only in the story for brief moments, because the reader's experience is going to reflect how deeply connected the author is to his characters. If the author has a vague understanding on his characters, his readers will have an even less connected understanding of those characters.

Any reader that is familiar with  that author, their world, and their characters, excels into fandom, where they can view events in the story from a perspective of hindsight and perhaps even have meta knowledge to accompany their enjoyment of those stories. As a reader, you are presented information in a calculated manner, whereby the author intentionally leaves out details until a chosen moment to reveal it to the reader. In this sense, a reader and a fan, who are often one in the same, have a different understanding of these characters. However, it is perhaps those dedicated fans who go beyond the story and wish to experience more of that world and those characters who are the most impacted by the depth of character that is bread through intimate exploration of a character's deepest thoughts and reflections.

And so, in the most long-winded manner possible, I wanted to take a moment to introduce to you a new practice of mine that will not only aid in the completion of this first novel but will greatly impact the further improvement of the story in the revision process, something that I call, memoirs.

A memoir is a journal, or a monologue, where a character expresses their reflections as if trying to explain those thoughts out loud or on paper. These memoirs perhaps reflect things that a character may never admit out loud, even to their closest friend, but things that they perhaps have only admitted to themselves, or even things that they knowingly wish to admit to themselves. It is the deepest and most intimate exploration of a character's thoughts and feelings, and I intend to do this often and for the vast majority of my characters. And the best part is, I will most likely post all of them here for you to read because I don't really intend to make them part of the novel. They are merely an exercise for me to learn more about my characters, and by proxy, a good way to introduce you, as a potential reader, to my characters, my world, and my story, without compromising my ability to get it published (for fear of copyright conflicts).

So please stay tuned for the next post, the first of the memoirs, Elrin Frostborn.