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Lecture 4 Fictional Characters Imagined and Observed

Fictional Characters: Imagined & Observed

All writers draw, both consciously and unconsciously, behaviors and traits we have seen in ourselves or others, with the result that all the characters you create combine to form a portrait of your view of human nature. But although the roots of any character lie in your observations of yourself and of other people, those observations are refracted through your imagination. In the last lecture, we talked about the continuum between complete intimacy with a character and no intimacy at all, and in this lecture, we'll look at three other continuums: between observation and imagination, between exterior and interior approaches, and between psychology and circumstances in creating characters.

The Continuum of Imagination
Some writers hew more closely to observation than to imagination, basing their characters almost entirely on people they know. Others write convincingly about characters or experiences they've never had themselves. Some writers even create characters who are a different gender, age, background, ethnicity, or temperament from themselves.

Of course, there many variations along this continuum between pure observation and pure imagination. In historical novels, for example, the novelist may combine a real figure from history with both real and imaginary characters from the same period.

Whichever pole a writer tends toward observation or imagination- no writer relies purely on one or the other. Although some writers may base their characters on real historical figures or close family and friends, all must exercise their imaginations to the extent of seeing the world through the eyes of these characters and relating how the characters behave in fictional situations in which their real-life models may never have found themselves.

The Exterior-Interior Continuum
The exterior-interior continuum relates to creating a character from the outside in versus creating a character from the inside out.
As mentioned in the last lecture, one of the defining features of fiction is that authors can give us direct access to the thoughts of their characters, even if they sometimes choose not to. But even for those characters whose thoughts we do have access to, there are many different ways to express them.
If you think of the continuum between observation and imagination as one axis, consider that there is another axis at right angles to this one, and the poles of that axis are the exterior approach and the interior approach. -James Hynes.

This continuum can be done in the vice versa way that is what and is happening with our apex predatory endangered animals like the tiger in (Asia ) the great white sharks and brown bears and polars in the U. S. common civilians only see the exterior man killing machine whereas Biologists, Naturalists & Zoologists actually understand the animal's inner workings of their brains. -Lumna10.

To help understand this idea, consider the difference between the British and American styles of acting as they were practiced during the 1950s and 1960s.
During this time, the method style of acting became popular among young American actors; this approach required the actor to identify with the character he or she was playing, to analyze that character's psychology in depth, and to use elements from the actor's own memories to evoke the emotions the character felt. In contrast, British actors at the time were trained to build characters out of small physical details and bits of behavior: an accent, a gesture, a prosthetic nose.
In this analogy, the American actor is using the interior method, building a character from the inside out, while the British actor is using the exterior method, building the character from the outside in. Fiction writers often use similar exterior or interior approaches.

Comparing Emma and Jane Eyre
In the opening pages of her great comic novel Emma, Jane Austen lays the title character bare simply by telling us point blank almost everything we need to know about her: "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to vex or distress her."