My first post on Writer Unboxed was eight years ago next month! In that post, I wrote about how I spy and snoop on people around me to get story ideas. Now, the long-awaited sequel.
In Part 1, I gave the basics: How to successfully gather information from people and things around you, and the tools you need to do so (iPhone or recording device, paper and pen, etc.). In this post, I’ll make it even simpler. I’ll help you spy on yourself and your nearest and dearest. In short, all you need is your family, yourself, and your inner thoughts!
Let me explain.
I’ve been going to a therapist to help me get back on track with my writing. If you’ve been reading my posts, you know I’ve stumbled a bit and have had trouble finding my way with my writing. I’ve felt lost. One of the things my therapist has had me do is a kind of “expressive therapy.” She helped me identify “characters” inside of me—parts of my identity from now and when I was younger—then had me name them. And write about them. And imagine conversations between them. Her theory is that some of these parts of me that may have been useful in the past or even now are currently either holding me back or creating problems for me in my creative life.
The Characters Within
Using this method, I find myself with a small internal cast of characters about whom I can easily learn more (because they are all me!). They help me create characters for my stories. Here, without too much self-exposure, I’ll go through a few of them. (Names may have been changed to protect the innocent.)
Baby Julia. My father left when I was a toddler—I only saw him twice more before he died—and I have spent my life figuring out how to deal with his abandonment. Enter Baby Julia. She is someone who is always searching. Always wary. She is both afraid of being abandoned but also feels a need for reassurance and stability.
The Rebel. My mother remarried when I was five, and after that we moved a lot, for a while every year. When I was in fourth grade, we finally moved to our “permanent home,” but then my parents began to take us on multi-year research trips out of the country. While it was amazing to live in places like Belize and Kenya, it also took a toll. I felt disenfranchised from my friends and schoolmates. The Rebel ran away in Kenya. She almost made it home to California. She got in all kinds of other trouble, too.
The Middle Child. She grew up between two brothers, one older but very close in age, one much younger. Both demanded a lot of time and energy from her parents in different ways, and The Middle Child learned to keep her mouth shut and her feelings to herself. She acted out in ways not easily detected. She was highly secretive and passively aggressive in getting her needs met.
Your Nearest and Dearest
Leaving the psyche, it’s possible to follow my inner characters to the outer world—to people in my immediate family who helped create my inner selves—each of which is a wealth of characteristics in his or her own right.
Older and Younger are my two brothers. They are joined by Step—a brother I’ve met only three times in my life. Each of these men are rich in possibility. I don’t need to leave the comfort of my couch to spy on them. I have my memories, my feelings, and in many cases their very own words in letters and other ephemera.
Along with these three boys-turned-men, are Bio Dad—the man who abandoned me—who I see through Baby Julia’s eyes, through sixteen-year old The Rebel—and that gives me at least two characters for the price of one.
Lurking in the shadows nearby is the ever-present Mother who first protected then suffocated Baby Julia and ultimately attempted to control The Rebel. She used every tool in her vast toolbox. Mother might give birth to a character who could fry an innocent bystander to a crisp. Given another set of better circumstances, Mother could become a savior or provide enlightenment.
Finally, entering as a stranger, eventually becoming a regular, is the character of New Dad—the man who raised me. This man, aloof at times, supportive at others, might find his way into any stoic character—hero or cad.
Try Not to Judge
To try the same exercise I went through, think about the aspects of yourself that seem to be either holding you back or creating conflict in your creative endeavors. These parts of you are the things you can label as characters. Try naming them. And talking to them or writing about them. I should warn you, spying on your inner characters requires a great deal of introspection and sometimes bravery to face past demons. Like me, you may want to do this with a professional.
I was skeptical when I first heard about this technique. Particularly when I had conversations or wrote them between myself and one or more of my characters, but this technique has been incredibly useful for character and story development in addition to helping understand my current struggles. All the characters within you or your immediate family are vast fields of possibilities. No need to follow people at the grocery store or take photos of strangers, just open your family album or wander the hallways of your mind and watch the movies you’ve recorded.
The point of this exercise is not to find fault with (or glorify) yourself or your family members. Rather, I am suggesting that we each have everything we need within ourselves to do both character development and analysis and give depth to our characters.
By using what’s within, in addition to what’s outside, I mine what is mine. I develop the novel within my mind. In a very simple example, maybe The Rebel will actually make it to California. To make sense of the world in a way that makes sense only to me, maybe BioDad is tracked down by BabyJulia and she finds out why he left. But more importantly, in the process I may find a way to get back to who I want to be and what I want to do—write.
Who are your inner “characters” and those within your inner circle? What are the ways you can mine them? How might that help you on your writing journey?
Wish you could buy this author a cup of joe?
Now, thanks to tinyCoffee and PayPal, you can!
About Julia Munroe Martin
Julia Munroe Martin (@jmunroemartin) is a writer and blogger who lives in an old house in southern coastal Maine. Julia's other passion is photography, and if she's not writing at the dining room table or a local coffeeshop, you'll likely find her on the beach or dock taking photos. Julia writes The Empty Nest Can Be Murder mystery series as J. M. Maison.
Wow, Julia, what a powerful post! The ‘characters’ you discovered and share seem to shed so much light on you, the person, yet provide an opportunity to write from a place of knowing that is unique and special to who you are.
Plenty to ponder in this gem–keep up the good work!
Thank you so much, Micky. My inner characters really have shed so much light on why I do the things I do — the opportunity to write about them was an unexpected but welcome byproduct. I am definitely working at keeping up the work… hope it’s going well for you, too. Thank you for your kind words!
Hey Julia – I found out it can really help to have a family member as a beta-reader too. My sister identified aspects of family members in my characters that I hadn’t even realized as I wrote them. It was truly eye-opening. And useful in an ongoing way.
Thanks for an honest and insightful post!
Hi Vaughn, That’s wonderful that your sister is such an insightful reader for you… with the knowledge of your inner characters. I’m envious of that! Thank you for your kind words!
Julia, this was an amazing post, and thank you for your openness in sharing it. At the recent UnCon 3, Barbara O’Neal inspired us to connect our stories to our childhood and it was a mind-blowing revelation for me. Today’s post is exactly what I needed to find direction and go deeper. I’m not someone who likes to revisit the early years and it’s shocking how much of that is exactly why I’ve had trouble moving forward. Did your therapist use any prompts to get you started?
Thank you so much for your kind words! I missed Barbara’s session at the UnCon and heard such wonderful things about it! I’m glad I could lead you in even deeper from her revelations. (I know what you mean about not wanting to revisit the early years; it’s not something I like to do either and it’s caused problems for me moving forward as well) My therapist didn’t provide prompts per se — we discussed the things that were causing me problems, and then we talked about them and I named them and wrote about them.
Got it. I can work with that. Ah well, there’s no plot without conflict, right? I guess I needed to name those demons before I buried them. There’s so much power in a name. How could I forget? :D Tysm. Wishing you all the best.
I also sent you a FB message with a little more info that may be useful! Wishing you the best, too!
Hi Julia, so honest and full of depth–a post that guides your writing and can help others. I would add that a novel can also spring from one experience, the characters lining up to help tell the story as you live through the experience. I just finished reading one of Alice Munro’s story collections. There is no doubt in my mind that Munro has met some of the characters in these pages and then gone on to create their lives and reveal what she believes are their secrets.
Hi Beth, Thank you for your kind words. I agree that a novel (or story) can spring from one experience. I’d love to know what collection of stories you read of Alices Munro’s. I love that you describe some novels as “the characters lining up to help tell the story as you live through the experience.” Really cool. Thank you again for your kind words!
The stories we tell are really about ourselves. In a way, what else can we do? Then again…
I am greatly envious of writers who are brilliant observers of others. Anthony Powell was one. His twelve-novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time chronicles British society through the Twentieth Century. Hundreds of characters are traced across decades. Every one is unique, believable, subject to back story burdens, and behaves like no other.
The narrator, Nick Jenkins, tells us very little about himself. He is wholly fascinated with others. The inspirations for Powell’s characters are subject to scholarly study, and give one something to pursue even after reading the sequence for the fifth time.
I haven’t got Powell’s ability–or is it security–to detach from himself, but in a larger sense I think what your post is saying, Julia, and what Powell in a different way was telling us, is that story–indeed, history itself–is most powerful when it is a felt study of people.
Thanks for your comment, Benjamin! I’ll definitely need to check out Anthony Powell — his word sounds remarkable. I agree that regardless of whether we are telling a story personal to ourselves or more of the outside world, characters and stories are still infused by our emotions and feelings. I am looking forward to reading Nick Jenkins!
I love this exercise, Julia, especially recognizing the variety of “stock characters” or distinct personalities we carry within us, and which we can find reflections of all around us in other people, providing countless variations on the types. Add to that your insights about the unique experiences that forged these identities, and you have a method for developing fully realized characters from these insights.
I can’t confirm this, but I believe Chekhov once said, “Everything I know about human nature I learned from me.” This is an excellent example of how that is both true and not quite true.
Thanks so much, David — I appreciate your kind words. I am still sorting through my cast of characters, and there are many, and as you say there are it seems countless variations on the types especially once I add in my insights about the way my personas were forged. (By the way, I think I’ve read that same thing about Chekhov!) Thank you again for your encouraging words.
What an unboxed and genuinely fascinating concept, Julia! Thank you for this post and for sharing your example; it’s clear how useful this exercise could be for writers–especially blocked writers.
Thanks, Therese! That means a lot. This technique really has been helpful getting me less blocked with my writing. And it has been pretty fascinating in the process.
Julia, the mining for character content can apply for nonfiction as well. I’ve written the outline and first chapter of a memoir on the period between age 15 and 19, when I ran a small shoplifting business until some jail time put a crimp in my enterprise.
The arrogance, fearlessness and foolishness of that kid I was is still a presence in my internal archives, but through a pen darkly. But I’ve dug up some tangled roots from that time, and taken extensive notes, so I think I could write about it with the confidence that if the memories aren’t all accurate, they are certainly absurd.
But I couldn’t quite get it from your telling: did the kid who ran away in Kenya get out of Africa by herself on the way to getting to California, or are those two stories? Anyway, your post is great fodder for story foddering.
Your memoir sounds absolutely fascinating, Tom! I would definitely read! And I know exactly what you mean about digging up tangled roots; I’ve done a bit of that myself. It’s been a fascinating process, and it sounds like yours has been as well.
As for the Kenya story. No, The Rebel was stopped at the airport, and she/I were not happy about it, and it led to many more interesting conversations with her/my parents. But it most definitely was real (in my story rendition, The Rebel makes it all the way back to California). That period of my life — I was about the same age as you were during your shoplifting business time — provides a great deal of fodder and at times it truly is hard to believe that The Rebel was me. Especially when I remember riding around Kenya on the back of a Norton motorcycle in the middle of the night…
Here’s to the cast of characters within us applied to fiction or nonfiction as the case may be. Looking forward to your book!
Julia, I’ve been revising a historical, not very well, until I came to the realization that I actually need to give more of my emotions from that time to my narrator, instead of distancing her from me. More honesty, more truth, instead of the braver façade.
This exercise is really wonderful in excavating not only plot-lines but giving stories their heart. You and I can both write a story about abandonment, but how different mine would be from yours. I want to write the stories that only I can create. Thank you and the best to you in your writing.
Thank you, Vijaya — it’s so true that we both write totally different stories because of what we’ve been through on our paths. And I love that you realized you need to give your narrator more of your emotions that required you to be more honest and truthful instead of a braver façade. I actually really know what you mean because I have trouble “going there,” as they say. Here’s to both of us writing from the heart!