There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
-- David Foster Wallace's
Kenyon Commencement SpeechFunny... and it goes on to talk about stuff that's like actually like relevant to writing:
Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice
Soon, Wallace posits what I consider a vital conceit for writing:
Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of.
[snip]
Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.
Want to write characters that are real? Make them the centre of their own worlds, not the world of your protoganist.
That Retail Chick who gives lip to your protoganist? Yeah, well she's got a blog and
she's fucking tired of the human scabs.
Not only are ALL your characters selfish, they all to different extents suffer from
cognitive dissonance and are innately capable of justifying their behaviour. This is especially true of your antagonists -
One Slack Martian in his
'villian checklist' added this eight criterion for villains:
(8) (Addition from Olaf Legend) The Villain must never consider that what he is doing is villainous. For in his world, the villain must view himself as the hero.
Do you think you're evil? Are there reasons behind all your bad habits, your bad moods, your bad breath? Do you think you have bad taste in music? I don't mean in the ironic 'i love trashy 80s music' way (that means you damien) but firmly believe that your taste in music is shit?
No?
If you don't believe any of that - and I'd be surprised if you do - then why should *any* (and by any I mean all) of your characters?
Make your characters live, not merely exist.
They'll pop off the page and conflict will arise naturally.
