As I’ve said, I tend to avoid (or try to) the black-and-white manifestations that present themselves to me in my life. By this I mean the uncorrupted or totally corrupted of anything. I really don’t believe that the absolute bad or good exists in anything; that is, giving exception to such things as tornados and Gold-Medal trout streams. But, as an author, my interest here concerns people, humanity, and specifically literary characters. Of course, I have no problem with authors and readers who prefer the black and white, the exactitude of good is good and bad is bad, and don’t upset my expectations and applecart, and certainly don’t throw me any gray-tinged curveballs, or you’ve got a one-star home run coming your way. I guess that’s why somebody created brown and white rice. But my life is too short to finally be anything other than discriminating in how I spend my time, and who that time is spent with. Again, in this instance, fictional characters that have been created from the wisps and dust of an author’s imagination. Or to put it another way, I can’t imagine having lived my life without rubbing figurative shoulders and minds with the likes of such flawed-good characters as Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina or Lisbeth Salander; or the flawed-bad ones such as Judge Holden, Iago or Mephistopheles. Now I’m not sure how well I truly understand any of these creations (though I feel more kin to the enraged Lisbeth than that snake-oil creation of the underworld; the Devil’s demon, that is, not the Indian scalper), but I am sure the more time I soak myself in their enigmatic presence, the richer my own life becomes for me, as well as the desire to seek it out and know it even more.
As I grow in my writing, I find the way I approach my characters grows simultaneously simpler and more complex. That is, in the beginning I guess I went about it similar to many others in the gist of it. I “created” them, usually from scratch, into people-devices I then placed in my “story” and wrote the damn thing. Nowadays I more often have the feeling these wisps and dust of my imagination are creating me. They are making me trust my imagination and intuition to ever greater degrees as I pursue this weird habit of world-building. And more often than not I find myself on a journey without the best of maps. Of course, I still do enormous preparation prior to beginning that trip—research (my God, the research), ideas, sketches, snatches of dialogue that pop into my head from nowhere—but now when I’m underway, I feel a Zen calm I was unaware existed in the beginning. Perhaps it’s maturity. Life experience. Wisdom from so many mistakes and screw-ups. When actually I think such things, questions or otherwise, end up at the same place as that eternal quest for meaning of our existence: Knowledge unavailable to the living. And to be honest, an insight I prefer to remain priviless as long as possible.
I’ve found that being on a journey without a good map to fall back on has allowed me certain freedoms of movement previously unknown. A flexibility, at least for me, most valuable when dealing with my characters. And that, even more so when dealing with minds that are morally damaged. That are evil within the endless layers of gray that evil presents itself. Again, I don’t really trust absolutes. Arguing nature versus nurture comes off as so much navel gazing to me, and I start to nod off. But at the same time, why someone suddenly pops up fully-fleshed in media headlines as the latest incarnation of Satan is the tantalizing secret spice that makes great, evil characters great. Pathology in medicine is the examination of the causes and effects of diseases, and I’ve borrowed that approach, that method of examination, in pursuing the hidden truths of my own characters. How much evil are people capable? Is there no bottom an evil person would refuse to reach in pursuit of their desires? Or, bringing it home, is there no awful gray layer—in painting the character portrait—a writer will not brush down to capture the essence of that figure before them? There could be an argument about taste. A writer is in control of the words they write, and my take is, to each his and his readers’ own. I remember how shocked I was the first time I read Titus Andronicus, where even the highest cornice and poor cuckoo bird in a cage were, by the slathered end, drenched in blood. But creation is a moving target. It involves risks. Sometimes stunning risks where the struggle between value and result, cause and effect, is monumental. And, in the end, to deny an artist from taking risks is to deny art and creation itself.
Also in the end, I can only tell you what motivates me. What I try to achieve for my readers and hope entertains them. And to find the compassion, the shades-of-gray empathy, in a truly twisted soul, and to have the reader (often deliciously against their will) feel that, is one of the things that makes me want to take my own stunning risks. After all, how many times have we all sat there watching the latest TV reporter interviewing the latest neighbor about the latest monster to emerge in our midst, asking: “What kind of person was he (or she) really?” And the neighbor saying, “Seemed like the nicest, quietest sort. Kept their lawn mowed and always playing with the kids. Would often see them walking the dog and waving. I mean, who would ever have thought?”