Cast of Characters
Hi, friends.
Here we are in the middle of February. Hope you are well. Things are starting to bloom a little early here, a reminder that spring is sliding closer and closer to us.
I’ve finally finished my read through on the novel and have cut 17k words. Doesn’t it feel good to complete a task? To shed some the dead weight. Even if there’s more to cut and to write and to figure out, there’s something nice in striking through something on the ever growing to-do list.
Several scenes in my novel have lots of characters in them and I took a seminar on handling crowded scenes a few months ago. One of the main take-aways from this class was to get two characters away from the crowd—stepping outside at a party, say—so that the scene could become more manageable. Which, sure, I guess this is a way to do it. But sometimes, especially in a novel, you need the messy party scene. (See also Joyce’s The Dead) The dinner that goes awry. Sometimes you want to give a broader scope than a handful of characters can portray.
Story.
And that’s what’s happening in this week’s story. I’ve long admired Cary Holladay’s Merry-Go-Sorry and I’m so happy that there’s a (sideways) version of it online. It’s a masterpiece of distilling characters into defined details and wants and it deserves a broader audience.
Craft tidbits.
By my count, there are 59 (!) characters in this fictionalized tale of the trial of the Memphis Three and the subsequent fallout in the community. West Memphis, Arkansas is certainly a character unto itself here.
The drainage ditch, called Ten Mile Bayou, where the three young boys’ bodies were found, still trickles through West Memphis past the truck stops and car washes. Now and then, somebody still leaves a wreath of flowers there; other such offerings, of wire and withered white silk, lie askew in the sludge, stuck in the ditchbank.
Some of these characters make brief appearances and some are a matter of their function only—the judge, the prosecutor, the reporter—and are never named. We can certainly use this for our own purposes. But that doesn’t mean that Holladay doesn’t afford them interior lives. Take the unnamed reporter for instance:
For years afterwards, while he entertains eligible young women in restaurants, he grows moody over his wine, imagines rescuing Victorine, taking her to the casinos she dreams of.
Constructing a character with clear wants and desires is the building block to any workshop. What does this character want? What are their limitations? So often we try and show these wants in various ways. Here, Holladay just comes right out and clearly states what they are.
Humble dreams, Sid Treadway’s: to e a trucker in one of those rigs that whiz along I-40 and I-55, staying up all night to cover, oh, six, seven hundred miles. Even after months in jail, he has not realized, not really, that this will not happen for him.
Already there is talk among the juniors and seniors of holding the prom at the Holiday Inn, a place of such sophistication that Crystal’s heart nearly bursts with longing to go there, but no, she tells herself, I will not.
Both of them are so simple in their wants. And therein lies another layer of heartbreak.
Another way Holladay makes so many characters memorable is through description and detail. Victorine’s mother is
Thirty-two but looking sixty, sits beside her embroidering the face of Jesus on a pillowcase. Nobody loves her, she tells reporters, and she’ll be grandmother to the devil, but she has a sweet lovely daughter, she says; I want the best for my girl.
Just four sentences show the juxtaposition of the pillowcase (which we remember long after the scene) and how she feels about this unborn child, her own jealousy at the expense of her daughter, who she loves, but these are complicated feelings.
Crystal is easily remembered through the pink stationery on which she writes love letters to Robert Abt.
There’s the couple who dressed up as the moon and the sea at Halloween. (The moon happens to be the one who yells every day in court.)
One of the more remarkable tricks is the distance afforded by the God-like omniscience in the point of view. And Holladay isn’t sympathetic to the victims or their families:
Daily the trial ends with a curse: the father of one the victims (who will himself be on trial within the year, for stealing furniture from a neighbor’s moving van)
And
Matthew, had he lived, would have committed sins at least equal to those he suffered; this secret was written in his genes and known only to God and to his mother, who had seen something that terrified her in his eyes one day.
The narrator, like the people in the town, want to pinpoint when things got so off track. “It begins” becomes a sort of refrain from which she can study the ripples of the crime in the community.
It begins in an Arkansas courtroom: the trial of a young man for the deaths of three boys. It begins in late May, a year after the murders, on a day so hot that the airconditioning can’t keep up.
It begins again in the trial of Benedict James
Oh, it begins, it begins a thousand times, as many times and ways as a heart can beat or break. It began when the victims were conceived…
It’s a circular story. Beginning again and again. Blame and guilt and suspicion falling on nearly everyone. Even you.
Where were you that afternoon, that witching-hour of suppertime and twilight, that full-moon evening of sticky mild air and fierce mosquitoes, when the boys disappeared, leaving two of their bicycles mangled deep in the woods?
Sparks.
What event has captured the imagination of a place you know well? How would you begin to tell this story? What would fictionalizing it allow you to do?
Revision: Where could you identify the want of a secondary character to create more texture? What details could you give them that would make them more memorable?
Other tidbits.
Need a pep talk from George Saunders? Of course you do! I found this one useful for stemming the overwhelm of revision: making one decision might also solve other problems in the work.
Need some writing accountability? Diablo Writers, friend of the newsletter, offers co-writing on Zoom Wednesdays at 9 a.m. pst.
If you’re seeking a beta reader or writing group, Bianca Marais is do her matchmaking through the end of the month.
Submission-wise: Necessary Fiction is open for stories until Feb. 19. Fatal Flaw is seeking fiction, poetry, and non-fiction on the theme of agency by Feb. 26. Split Lip Press is open for short story or flash collections through Marcy 1.
That’s it from here, friends. Hope you have a good writing week. Pencils up~
Marsha