Thomas Sullivan: HOW TO LOVE A VILLAIN, RIDING DRAGONS ON PANDORA & AVATAR
I don’t know if I can do this. I want to, but I don’t know if I can. I want to tell you about characters, about heroes & villains and the necessity of empathizing with them, but I think it’s a lot like telling you to go through psychoanalysis.
That’s because you have to be bigger than your characters. You have to contain them. All of them. The ones of the opposite sex, the sinners and saints, the cowards and fools, the twisted and the pure, the children, the obese octogenarian of another culture or another race, the thieves, the liars, the cheats, the Einstein, the Forrest Gump, the suicidal, the politically opposite of what you believe, the warrior and the pacifist. Fight or flight must be in you in every possible equation. Fear and desire in all proportions. You must be in a wheelchair and you must train with Olympians. So, if you want to be a writer — or even a complete, empathic, insightful, creative human being — you need some serious psychoanalysis.
Whatever makes you snuggle comfortably into your demographic works against this, of course. Whether you are Joe Sixpack camped in front of the TV or the bored woman who was promised it all when she hauled her advanced degree to the altar, you won’t outrun your own borders without a mental overhaul. It’s relatively easy to sympathize/empathize with yourself. Even if you are filled with self-hate, confusion or depression, you can probably recall specific things and events that changed you from positive to negative and therefore you remember a time when whatever you were seemed justified and worthy. But as an exercise, think of your worst enemy or someone you hate and try to empathize with them. That’s the acid test if you’re going to assume the God power of creating people, or even the insight to understand the human blueprints for every person. Creativity doesn’t fit a mold or follow a stereotype.
But how do you achieve such broad-mindedness without sometimes compromising or even contradicting your beliefs and values? And doesn’t the inherent contradiction in trying to represent everyone’s POV convincingly where they differ from your own threaten who you are? Ya, you betcha it does. Small writers — small people — who reach mindlessly in that direction are almost doomed. They are at risk of losing their souls, of becoming intellectual and emotional whores, or of simply drowning in more life than they can sort out. But I’m not making a pitch for you to become some giddy, singsong, bleeding heart, all-inclusive, ex-patriot hippie who is so open-minded that their brains are lying in the road behind them. What I’m saying is that you can let go of your demographic without abandoning it. You can reach across the aisle into truth about the human condition in all its stripes; you can walk the walk, share the passion, talk the talk. All you need do is drop prior expectations, judgments (and maybe even a few biases) as you meet/create characters with unique histories and independent motives. And at the end of the day you can still flee back to familiar things you have chosen to define yourself.
Of course, that’s where the psychoanalysis comes in. Because you may not want to go back. Not completely. You may change, learn, grow, if you open up in this way. It’s really quite emancipating — and sometimes even a relief — to go outside the appearances of your life. And it’s exhilarating to work in the same industry as God, Nicholas Sparks and Dr. Frankenstein. You never know what you’ll come up with, plus — oh, boy, here’s the door prize — know that above all you will learn to live more honestly within yourself. The genuine, authentic, uncompromised, absolutely core Version 1.0 of YOU may re-emerge and trump the accumulated Version 99 with all its patches, fixes and updates. But I hasten to repeat that it doesn’t have to shine a new light over your entire outward life. It may be enough if it just shines a new light in your head, heart and soul during those times when they are up on deck. True, you will then be schizophrenic. Sort of. But hey, you aren’t all that real when you’re living mostly appearances, if you want to know the truth. Now at least you can be honest about it half the time. And for all you know, that might be the best half of your life.
S’pose I should finish off here with a little show ‘n’ tell by way of example. I’ve never been in therapy, but I’ve been in way deep self-analysis all my life. Can’t tell you exactly why. Maybe I was the class clown who got attention by being different; maybe I couldn’t win anything so I took my bat and ball and went home, refusing to play the game; or maybe I really was just different. Doesn’t matter. When you don’t belong anywhere, in a sense you belong everywhere. I had circumstantial help. A certain rootlessness anchored me to the broader universe — I had lived in a dozen countries by the time I was six, and maybe the different languages were part of the reason I seemed to be tuned to shadows and echoes rather than taking everything at face value. But whether or not you have circumstances conducive to force you to look over walls, you DO get to choose where to put your borders. Probably at critical or even life-defining moments. As Jake Sully (no relation) says in Avatar, “Sometimes your whole life comes down to one insane move.”
The movie Avatar says quite perfectly some of the things I’m trying to say here. It’s one of those films in which you can find what you want, and its premise is an ancient Hollywood cliché, but the real magic is in its fantasy culture (the Na’vi) and how the characters relate. The Na’vi are driven by tradition, but their individualism trumps mere appearances of tradition. Though the chief’s daughter is socially ordained to marry the heir apparent to the chief, the reality of her love for Jake Sully wins unhesitatingly. They simply mate after vowing their mutual love in a natural setting one afternoon and that bonds them for life. When a clash of cultures annihilates their home, the Na’vi begin again without looking back. There is a kind of freedom implicit in their openness to all of nature. And because they are open to all of it, it is open to them, from messaging through tree roots to riding dragons. They embrace reality without losing their souls. They will survive any change because their minds and their spirits are not narrowed into a subset, a demographic. They live by the truth within themselves, as we all secretly yearn to do.
That’s the kind of childlike honesty that flows through the veins of creativity. Purest reality and yet, because of its searching honesty, it becomes the hyper-reality of romantic idealism, of perfect empathy. It is not a short-term perception that fits mere circumstances. It is an unfettered perception that links beyond one’s circumstances and thus opens the door to understanding and creating truly believable characters. Any and all characters.
When your writing drags on, try riding dragons.
May I invite you to follow me on Twitter? It’s just something fun you can peep at without having to interact. Samples of recent Tweets: Valentine’s Day: I shall visit a place where a woman once married me in her heart, mind & soul, and loved me with her body. And… I keep seeing what I think is the same deer in the same place. The buck stops here… And… Just driving around all night, dodging recalled Toyotas. Missed Toyotas but witnessed a disaster while listening to Howie Day’s “Collide.” Here’s the link: http://twitter.com/thomassullivan . I’ll also be happy to put you on the mailing list for free newsletters packed with stories and adventures, including photos, if you email me at: mn333mn@earthlink.net . Past newsletters w/photos are archived at the author’s website below under News & Articles (http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com/News.htm ) and usually go up within 1 day of being sent out. Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued.
Thomas “Sully” Sullivan
