Phillip Lopate & Flawed Characters (19/08)

In Retrospect 15
This is an extract from [CLASS] #21: Wednesday August 19th Class. The original post was uploaded 26/08/20, but I fixed it here so it's the correct date.

Phillip's advice here definitely struck a chord with me, and will no doubt continue to. Writing flawed characters. NOT characters with "weaknesses" (eg. clumsiness), but genuine flaws. Things they may not be proud of. Things that puts them into the grey part of the moral spectrum. Interesting characters.

I was concerned about being seen as "still overall a good person", by hiding the more implicative details of me in my earlier drafts, but as I started to come out of my shell more and more, exposing these sides of me, my essay wound up becoming an incredibly relatable piece. It became better as a result. And Phillip Lopate's one of the people I have to thank for that.

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Phillip Lopate On the Necessity of Turning Oneself into a Character

"...if you are writing a memoir essay, with chronology and narrative, it is often liberating to have the "I" step beyond the observer role and be implicated crucially in the overall action. How many memoir pieces suffer from a self-righteous setup: the writer telling a story in which Mr. or Ms. "I" is the passive recipient of the world's cruelty... There is something off-putting about a nonfiction story in which the "I" character is right and all the others wrong, the "I" infinitely sinned against than sinning. By showing out complicity in the world's stock of sorrow, we convince the reality and even gain his sympathy.

How much more complicated and alive is George Orwell's younger self, the "I" in "Such, Such Were the Joys," for having admitted he snitched on his classmates, or James Baldwin's "I" in "Notes of a Native Son," for acknowledging how close he came to the edge with his rages about racism in restaurants."

 

God, was this relatable. Absolutely so.

I've already been distancing myself from my piece so I can write about my experiences without getting self-conscious via calling myself a "character". G, N and L (I've decided to change my sister's initial) are all "characters" too. It helps a lot with the writing process.

It's also been great writing about a flawed version of myself. It's normally so vital, especially in an Asian family, to uphold a righteous, pure image, that you've done no wrong, have nothing to hide, etc. I don't think I'll be purposefully showing my parents the finished book any time soon, maybe in the future. Heh, it's really funny, isn't it? I won't purposefully try to show them the essay... but I can let other people read it.

I didn't fully understand how to write a "flawed" character people will relate to before... I've seen guides online, and heard that clumsiness is NOT a character trait, at least! The most human piece I've ever written was for my semester one fiction folio, which was about the spirit of an older Asian man apologising and speaking to his daughter. I'm not sure what I'll do with it... it's too good to throw away, at least! It hit a bit too close to home so maybe it won't see the full light of day for a while.

Writing the flawed character of past me was fun. Whilst I didn't go for the "Subject 3" route like I had initially planned, I felt like I was observing anyway whilst writing about her actions. Even though it's self-reflective, you can tell there is distance from both the narrator and the past self she is talking about, both in terms of time and in memory. Maybe she's viewing it with more nostalgia than there was in the moment? Memory can be so fickle!