Diaspora Dialogues

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July 2013

Unsavoury Characters

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As a writing instructor, I’ve noticed that students usually have an easier time creating “likeable” characters than unlikeable ones, which are sometimes glossed over and written superficially. Here’s a simple exercise I’ve used in the classroom to help emerging writers give unsavoury characters more depth and humanity:

Choose a scene from a story-in-progress in which you think you have given short shrift to a disagreeable character. Rewrite that scene so that the character continues to hold our attention but also arouses our sympathy or understanding, at least to some degree.

dowry

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my mother left me
four flat rooms
three washloads
two fivefoot boys
one tenfoot man
when she went under

she took her breasts
her rippled hair
she left me
bonestuck
bare

they say i have
my mother's mouth
they say i have
her eyes

Lunch at l’auberge

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He arrives in murmuring blue
tie puffed like a poised rattler

He has brought a ruby flower
scent of languorous hours

"Have you never been to France?"

His face is sluggish
but his fingers fly

He finds a dear spot
behind her ear

"Tell me. Tell me."

Her eyes are ruby wine
and his
his eyes
his eyes are the ports of Le Havre

Author of the Month: Cynthia Holz

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Tell us about yourself.

I began writing poetry at an early age and dreamed of becoming a writer, though I had no idea how to go about it. I grew up in New York City, the daughter of European Jewish immigrants, and came to Toronto in my mid-twenties to work as a journalist. Eventually I married a Newfoundlander, had a son, and started writing short stories. My first collection, Home Again, was published in 1989, which led to a job teaching creative writing at Ryerson. Soon after that, I switched to writing novels and have published five over the years, most recently Benevolence.

When did you realize you had a passion for writing?

At seven, I was a lonely, introspective child. My second grade teacher at P.S. 6 in the Bronx encouraged me to write poems and recite poetry to her during lunch hours and after school. With her guidance I discovered the joy of euphonious words and a literary world I longed to be a part of.

What pieces of writing/authors have had the greatest impact on you?

I’ve been influenced by a wide range of American and Canadian fiction, including works by Marilynne Robinson, Flannery O’Connor, Doug Glover, and Alice Munro. Anything evocative and beautifully written that has something to say about the human condition inspires me. Recently, I was impressed by Linda Spalding’s novel The Purchase, Anthony Marra’s A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce.

How and when do you find time to write?

When writing a novel, I go at it every morning, seven days a week—unless life intervenes and turns my plans upside-down, which happens frequently. My routine is to write a few hours before lunch, have a break, review and revise what I’ve written, then move on to other tasks.

What has been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a writer?

It’s always challenging to maintain confidence in my subject matter and writing style in the face of rejection or pressure to write what others think will sell. Astute criticism can really help improve a work-in-progress, but sometimes it’s not easy to find or even recognize.

How have you changed as a writer over the years?

What I write about has changed over time, so that the romantic entanglements that interested me as a young writer don’t really engage me now. Larger questions of purpose, morality, and how to behave in the world are what’s spinning round in my head these days.

Edward

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Edward laughs like a loon. He sits splay-legged on the beach on a perfect summer day with the sun high and hot and the sea a shimmer of slate-blue. Beside him his best friend Harry wears a smile as broad as the slick of sand they sit upon. This is the best moment in both of their lives.

They have been walking. A trail of footsteps marks the way they have come—from beyond the rocks where the beach curves out of sight. They have lost their shoes and hats and their uniforms are a mess of tears and dark stains. But they are laughing nonetheless. Harry’s arm, alongside Edward’s (because now they are lying side by side, becoming quiet) is dark and smooth and gleams with youth and health in the sun. Beside his, Edward’s arm is smaller, and while his brown skin, painted with a palette of sun and wind, is darker than it was, it is still lighter than Harry’s. His bicep does not roll in his arm like Harry’s, but he is muscular and strong.

Harry’s other arm is loose and broken. The pain has started and now he moans rather than laughs.

“We’ll be alright,” says Edward, gripping his friend’s good hand. “Hold on. Help will come.”

Beyond the rocks where the coastline curves from view, the beach is strewn with the bloated and torn bodies of boys and men. These lie among the detritus of their smashed ship. All of them, ship and boys and men had been blown high into a smoke filled sky.

The noise of the blast still rang in their ears and the shriek and scrape of tearing metal, the horror of the screams of men were the cacophony of nightmares. The ship had seemed to rise from the water. They’d been sorting supplies together, in a box container, side by side as they are now. They had never let go of each other, holding wrist and hand like children because each knew his survival depended on the other.

Harry and Edward found life jackets and desperate, clung to a piece of floating wreckage. And all the while the awful dark water had roiled and heaved in the stinking air and the screams of dying men grew mercifully, tragically less. “This is a miracle of God,” said Harry, when they knew how alone and alive they were.

They lie side by side upon the sand. Edward’s face is turned to Harry and he holds Harry’s good hand whose palm and fingers swamp his own. Harry’s face is turned to the blue sky though his eyes are squeezed shut. Tears run down his cheeks and he moans his pain. Edward makes soft sounds of comfort, like a mother, learned from the love and caring that was given to him long before his memory formed. He hears Celia in the soothing murmur though it comes from his own lips.

He’d signed up for the duration but nobody thought it would keep going like this. He hopes Celia still gets her share of his wages. He hopes she is safe. He prays that she still loves him. ‘When I come back I’ll be a man that can get a job,’ he’d told her. ‘The government will look after us because of all the sacrifice.’ That was what he’d believed.

It seems a lifetime ago now. It was a few lives he’d lived on that ship that is now in pieces scattered from here to Timbuktu. He doesn’t let go of Harry’s hand even though he’s stopped moaning. “No V.C. for us, Harry,” Edward whispers. The sea is calm now, waves rolling up onto the beach and washing back, the soothing rhythm a comfort. It’s good not to be on the water.

Edward’s legs are damaged, but he won’t know that until he tries to stand up. They’ve lain on the sand for more than an hour since making their way from the wreckage, but they won’t rest for hours yet.

Emerging Author of the Month: Sheila Murray

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Tell us about yourself.

My English mother and Jamaican father raised me in England until I was seventeen when we all moved to Toronto. Since then I’ve earned a degree in Journalism and a Masters in Immigration and Settlement Studies. Now I am older, wiser, and certain of a couple of things: life gets more complicated and there’s never enough time.

Tell us about the piece you’ve decided to share.

The piece I’ve included here is an excerpt from a finished book (supported by DD). What you’ll read is about a man whose life—past and present—is chronicled throughout the novel. The book’s central story is the first eighteen months of a young man’s challenging, contemporary urban experience. This novel, Edward, is about relationships and race, and how some things change, but not all of them.

When and why did you realize you had a passion for writing?

When I was a kid I’d win essay contests at school. I liked the prizes, but I hated having to read the pieces to the school assembly. I was so shy that I couldn’t force my voice above a whisper, so, despite the microphone, the audience had to endure until it was over, signaled by my leaving the stage. What I’ve learned is that if you’re a good reader (and I’m told that I am), hearing your own written words spoken into a silent room full of listening people is actually really nice.

What pieces of writing/authors have had the greatest impact on you?

I read lots of Iris Murdoch when I was a young teenager. I love the surprises in her books, how her people go about their lives in the ordinary way until everything spins out of control and they’re suddenly overwhelmed and steered by buried passions that they can no longer keep quiet. Even though Murdoch’s intellectual discourse sailed way over my head, and I’d lose track of the dozens of characters and muddle the plot, the core human stuff was always so compelling that I loved it all.

What kind of writer do you aspire to be?

I’d like to one day write a paragraph that is as good as any page of Marilynne Robinson’s Home. She has an extraordinary ability to reach right through to the source of human feeling.

How and when do you find time to write?

I am usually self-employed. When I’m not too busy I can create a schedule that gives me time to write in the mornings—my best time. If I can do that for an hour or more a day, then I’m a happy writer.

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