One of the most interesting new
wrinkles in the world of writing and publishing in these days of
hyper-marketing and social media is that every writer, at every stage of
his/her career, is suddenly expected to become a marketing expert. They have to have
extensive FB pages, both for themselves and their books--likes and shares ad infinitum; tweets and Riffles and
Pinterests and tumblrs, links and friends with people they barely know. They
are expected to be involved, more or less constantly, in the business of making
themselves, as opposed to their books, a
celebrity of sorts.
They must walk the fine line
between honestly promoting their titles, blogs and other works; actually being social,
and spamming. They are also expected to respond, buy,
celebrate and review their fellow authors’ works. They must build a platform of
online presence and further support that presence through virtual blog tours,
book signings, giveaways, comments and all the attendant merchandising
efforts. Developing the knack of
“relating” to the sheer numbers of people with similar interests and products
to sell can really ratchet up the average author’s anxiety levels, not to
mention that all the networking can make a serious dent in the hours they spend
on actual writing.
It’s because we have become a
culture of personality, as opposed to
a culture of character.
The media makes celebrities of
personalities—the TV preacher with the huge following; the teen god or goddess
gone wild, the pregnant Princess or the fallen “star”. We become obsessed, sometimes unpleasantly
so, with what these public personalities look like without makeup; who they
slept with, or why they should never appear in public in a bikini. Some may
call it a guilty pleasure, some may deny the impulse to point and click, but we
all do it, and it’s all too easy to do it, given the sheer amounts of
information coming at us on a daily basis.
To exacerbate the problem, the
current construct of independent publishing insists on unrelenting
productivity. The more copies you sell, the more you books you produce, the
bigger your platform, the greater your chances for success.
While it might be argued that this
approach only serves to reinforce the corporate model of success (Write Bigger!
Write Faster! Write More!) formed by the
megapublishers the indie was only trying to avoid in the first place, the irony
of the independent author’s current job description goes deeper, if only because writing== good
writing anyhow== demands an entirely different skill set.
I won’t venture to speculate on
just what personality type is best suited to the task. Writers come in as many
shapes, sizes, personalities and ambitions as the rest of the population. Some
are natural extroverts, some are introverts; some see their book as the
ultimate marketing tool to building an even bigger platform, bestseller status
and even celebrity; some just need the money. Some hate networking; some love
it. Some genuinely want to share their stories, and some just want to write
their books and be left the hell alone to do that.
What I do know, however, is that
the construction of a story requires
more from an author than being marketable, and in that sense, the task of
marketing begins long before a book is released. A writer has to be willing to
step back from his public personality and be willing to embrace the relative
isolation, emotional distance and creative free time involved in the creation
of character.
The concept of character, as it exists in the
novel, is the painstaking process of creating a whole person, not just a personality. Traditionally, a protagonist demands more
depth from an author than mere description. Real characters are never based on
a mere collection of attributes; what they wear, or who they’re sleeping with,
or how they look in a bikini, but rather on the traits and values that define
that person. What are their virtues—integrity, loyalty, curiosity, courage in
the face of adversity? What are their flaws--naivete, cowardice, dishonesty,
compromising their truth to fit in? All of those qualities may, or may not,
emerge in the course of your novel, but if you’re too busy social networking
and comparing your characters to those
in books already written, or yakking about their wardrobe, or what kind of car
they drive, it’s not going to make a big impression. Though you may raise your
stats becoming an online personality, readers demand more of writers and the
books that they buy.
An author must find a way to
construct character by trait, as opposed to outward appearances and labels.
Real characters leap out on the page in full, living color. They interact with
the twists and turns of your plot because they are living through it. And so
the reader’s interest in an excess of detail about their age, wardrobe, body
type, job description or whether they had plastic surgery, is bound to wane
when the book they are reading has no more substance than an online slide show.
Equally, they become less concerned
about plot if your plot is not something that happens to character but you have
a character that “happens” to the plot. And if, as a writer, you hope to steer
a mere personality through a pre-constructed, formula plot, rest assured,
neither is going to emerge as remarkable. Much less, marketable.
If the online network demands that
we all become “personalities” in order to market effectively, the writer’s task
demands more depth. Good books and real characters offer readers a glimpse of
who we are as human beings—brilliant, flawed, stubborn, heroic and faithful.
Self-serving, cowardly, driven by passions we can’t always control. We try, but
fail; and we often succeed. A novelist’s characters must journey through a
story of extreme circumstances and come out better people for having made that
journey. True character is always in search of more than a neat and tidy plot
resolution. Memorable characters at least, are seeking their truest identity.
And readers will celebrate their struggles, no matter how big your online
personality. Because that’s why readers read stories—to learn something about
how to navigate our lives that the culture of personality or celebrity fails to
offer.
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