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Terry Purinton came into the workshop one night hyped up. In fact, I don’t recall ever seeing him so fired and wired. He was talking as he walked through the door, and without so much as an hello, without even sitting down, he began telling us about this new character he’d discovered by the name of Miles. A little background is necessary before Miles takes center stage. When Terry first started working with me about two years earlier, he had a completed novel, based on a true story, a local murder in which a caretaker on a suburban estate marries and then murders the daughter of his boss. It was clear from the first page that Terry is a good writer. He uses language beautifully, but his characters were lacking in dimension as well as emotion. Terry came to my house for a first meeting and we didn’t talk long before I felt fairly certain I knew the problem. Terry’s profile is gentlemanly and funny. He’s easygoing, friendly, somewhat preppy. But he is also drawn to the darkside. I knew that from reading his novel about this guy who murders his rich wife. "Do you have a thug inside you?" I asked Terry. He looked somewhat surprised. "I’m not sure . . . I don’t know what you mean." "Well, you’re writing a thug. This guy, Kyle, he’s a murderer, a thug. What about you? Do you ever give yourself over to be a thug?" He laughed. "Not really." "Do you ever get angry? I mean, really angry." "Sure." "Often?" He shrugged. "Not too often." "But you know anger." "Yes, sure." "Embrace your thug." "Huh?" "I want to feel this guy emerging from the pages of your book. Your basic problem is that you’re too language oriented. You’re substituting language for character development. Forget language. I want you to hand yourself over to your thug. I want you to become him. I want his emotions, his feelings bleeding onto the page. This book is about jealousy and a hatred so deep that it ends in murder. Go home and write from your gut. Let it rip. Go places you haven’t thought about. I want you so close to this guy, you can smell his sweat and feel his heartbeat." Terry fell down the Rabbit Hole faster than I expected. When he came back for our next meeting, I felt as if I were reading the work of a different writer. Character and passion replaced his focus on language, although his use of imagery and his finesse with language remain strong points in his writing. They will always be strong points. This is what I told Terry and what I tell all my students. You can let go of whatever you are innately good at in writing, whether it be language, plot, dialogue, whatever, because you will never become bad at what you’re good at. The problem is most of us use what we’re good at as a crutch; we over-use one technique at the expense of the others. A writer needs to have facility with all aspects of writing and storytelling. Then, as in Terry’s case, his strong point will no longer dominate but feed and inform character and story. For a while, Terry was moving along at a fast pace. His caretaker/thug split into two different people, Kyle and Paul, and a story he hadn’t expected began to reveal itself. Then, after about a year, the novel seemed to dead end. Nothing was working. Terry was at first frustrated and then desperate. We met privately and went through an endless number of what ifs trying to get the spark lit once more. Finally, I asked, "Are you ready for something totally out of left field?" "At this point, I’ll do anything." "This is pretty radical." I hesitated. I thought my idea might send him running out the door. Then I blurted out, "What if you change the setting totally? Take it off the estate, change Paul’s profession." He paled. I paused. He said, "But that’s the whole thing. Paul is a caretaker. If I change that . . ." "It’s too close to your own reality, Terry," I said. Terry is in real life a caretaker on an estate. "You have to cut Paul loose to be whoever he really is. Now, this is only a suggestion," I cautioned. "But I once moved the setting of a book from New York City to the coast of Maine. I had as many pages written as you have and I had also dead-ended. I knew I’d lose most of the story if I moved it to Maine, but it felt so right. The idea actually excited me. So I did it. In the end, I kept only one chapter from my original couple of hundred pages. But you know what? Being in Maine was the right move. I began to write again. Not just write. The story poured out of me. It seemed effortless to rewrite because the angst was gone. I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning and go to the computer. If you were going to change the setting of your book, where would you put it?" "Would you believe Maine? I love Maine!" His face lit up. The tension was gone. "Great. Go for it! And here—I have a collection of rocks I gathered from along the Maine coast." I led him to my rocks that were surrounding a large rubber tree by the couch. "Take the one you like best." He kneeled down and closed his eyes, picking blind. When he stood, he was smiling sheepishly. "I don’t believe in things like this," he said, cradling his rock. "Sure you do," I said. "You just didn’t know it. Do you want to talk anymore?" "Nope, I think I want to go home and write." Terry moved the setting of his novel to a fishing town on the coast of Maine. For a while, the change was fantastic. It unleashed the life-force of the heroine, Lucy, and a gripping story of love, jealousy and vengeance began to unfold. It was when Terry tried to transfer the hero, Paul, from the suburban estate to the coast of Maine that the writing began to slow down, and eventually, what had been a gushing river dried to a scantily flowing trickle. Paul seemed not to like the Maine coast very much. And Terry was getting more and more frustrated. When he walked into class that night, however, I knew he had made a breakthrough. The first thing he did was announce that he’d "sent Paul packing." This was pure Terry schtik, and I wish I’d had a tape recorder running, because he was the walking, talking embodiment of a person in the embrace of his Inner Writer. A non-writer hearing this would think Terry had lost his mind. Actually, he had. He’d lost his conscious mind, fallen down the Rabbit Hole. We in class loved it! "So I sent Paul packing," he explained. "He wasn’t doing his job. I took out a classified for a new character—that’s right, an ad. I wanted someone hungry, someone who’d open up and spill his guts. This reporter guy Miles Douglas walked in from the New York Post and I liked him right off. I said, you know how to use a knife and he said he did. I said, you got a lousy past? You work for me you got to have a lousy past, and your future’s not going to be so rosy either. And he shrugged and said, yeah, sure, he’d do it, and he’d work cheap. He’s making good money. Cheap is important to me at this point..." I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that whoever this Miles Douglas was, he was hot stuff. Terry already had merged with Miles. This energy that exuded from him was something we hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t Terry energy, but Miles. "So I asked him if he’d mind being interviewed," Terry went on, finally sitting down. "I mean, you can’t hire the first good-looking blade off the street without asking a few questions. And Miles said, why not? But then he’s a journalist. Anyway, we talked. I have the interview with me. I wrote it down. You want to hear it? He told me about this black kid, Raphael." Was there a chance we didn’t want to hear? Terry Interviews Miles "What’s your name?" "Miles Douglas." "What do you do?" "I’m a writer for the Post. I wrote a novel and I’m waiting to hear from my agent." "What’s it about?" "A black kid who fought his way out of the ghetto. While he was doing it, he turned around the life of a jaded reporter working for a city tabloid." "Sounds autobiographical." "Halfway. The kid hasn’t made it yet, but he will." "How about the reporter?" "Yeah, yeah," he said. He had a dreamy look. "What are you thinking about?" "I’m thinking about this kid—his name is Raphael, I mean in real life, not in the book. I was thinking about the time I took him to Central Park. He was eleven—no eight. He’d never been to Central Park. He lived in Alphabet City and he’d never been north of the Forties. We walked through the woods up near the reservoir and you never saw such a face of wonder. His big brown eyes, his mouth open. He was in a trance. I’m telling you, he opened my eyes, too. He started digging in the dirt in the woods, coming up with worms, finding salamanders and tree toads. Now you tell me where they come from in the middle of this city? They didn’t crawl in from the suburbs. Their ancestors were here when this was farmland." "That opened your eyes?" "I’m talking about getting me back to my roots. I’m talking about a hole in my shoes I’ve been ignoring for twenty years." "You’re southern, aren’t you? That’s a southern accent." "Uh-huh." "How’d you end up here?" "I came here when I was eighteen. I ran copy and then wrote stories for the Voice and then for the Daily News. I came to the Post in 1990." "You like it? You’re well known." "Am I? They know what? They don’t know me at all." "Describe yourself." "I’m a nature lover. I live in the woods in a cabin and I sail on the ocean. That’s what I think about on the Times Square subway platform with a no-legged panhandler on my right and a slicked-back two-bit salesman on my left. That’s where I am." "And this kid showed you the way back to that?" "Yeah." "Just by digging around in Central Park?" "It’s more than that. It’s his whole expression, the way his face opened up like light coming in for the first time. He’s this scrawny little black kid blacker than tar with bad teeth and bad hearing on account of his brother firing a thirty-eight next to his ear when he was six. Smart kids and a smart mom, sat with him every day for two hours and taught him to read and write before he got to first grade. He’s the hope for this city." "And for you?" Miles looked away uneasily and scratched the back of his neck. "Yeah." "Maybe not yet, huh?" I said. "Maybe." "Why not?" "I got to—well, quittin’ all you build up. You know—" "You’re afraid to quit the paper and move?" "I’m not afraid. I just got to save a little better," he said, not looking at me with those dark warm blue eyes of his that let in more light than eyes I’d ever seen, eyes not hardened at all, more bruised, eyes that wouldn’t let him hide his feelings, just like he couldn’t hide his feelings in his writing . . . I let him finish his coffee before I asked, "So you left the South and the country for the big city, and now the city’s starting to weigh you down, and this kid comes along and shows you a way back to your roots by digging in the dirt?" He half-groaned, half-chuckled. "The wind, too. You know, this kid’s half deaf and he hears things in the wind, conversations, music, drug deals going down, quarrels. You’ve got to talk loudly in a crowd for him to hear you, but when it’s quiet, he hears things in the wind you can’t. It’s uncanny." He smiled rather slyly and proudly. I said, "Why do I have the feeling it’s you you’re talking about and not him?" "You’re very intuitive." "Is this boy just another one of your fictional characters?" "No, Raphael’s real. I’ve never admitted to anyone about my hearing. You know how I’ve gotten the idea for half the stories I’ve done? Listening to the wind. If I told that to my editors they’d have laughed me across to Bayonne and back." "What’s the dark cloud come across your face for?" "The wind’s been shifting lately. I don’t hear the talk of deals being made in the mayor’s lavatory or the prostitute selling her food stamps for cash to buy her son’s insulin shots. I don’t hear the guns popping off in the Tremont section of the Bronx or the baby wailing for milk while her mother nods off from the crack." "You’ve gone deaf," I suggested. "You’re burned out." "I’ll tell you what I hear. I hear the thrushes making their nests in the park. I hear the sea gulls down at the Seaport. I hear the rustling of sails on the sloops crossing under the Verrazzano Bridge." "You got anyplace to go from here?" "Yeah, my parents left me a place in Maine near the coast. We summered there when I was a kid." "I can’t imagine Miles Douglas in Maine. Doing what? Chopping wood?" He smiled. That’s exactly what he imagined. The love and the growing symbiosis between Terry and his newly emerged character, Miles, is visceral. You can literally feel the trust between character and writer, no matter that Miles clammed up at the end. Eventually, he’ll tell Terry everything, just as surely as eventually Miles will leave the city and go up to Maine and meet Lucy and become involved in the drama being played out up there. The character of Paul the caretaker is gone. Sure, there’ll be some things about Paul that will be part of Miles, but Miles is his own man and he’s gotten Terry to tumble down the Rabbit Hole right after him. There are several facets to Terry’s success with Miles. First of all, Terry had become clear in his mind that the character of Paul wouldn’t work in the new version of the book. Secondly, Terry was desperate; he had to find a way to make his character work or he was headed toward a major block. So he took a risk. He sent Paul packing, and in so doing, handed over the reins of the book to his Inner Writer. He became inventive and playful. He said, I’m opening the doors and will welcome in any character no matter who he is. Mining the Interview Terry has agreed to let me run two scenes that he wrote immediately after the interview broke off. In fact, it probably broke off because these scenes were bubbling up from Terry’s unconscious. They are unedited first drafts, and although they are not complete, they are wonderful proof of the power of creativity unleashed. By the way, it’s pretty hard to imagine that Terry was ever a writer whose characters lacked emotion and passion. Notice, too, how he goes back and forth in the spelling of Raphael’s name. Scene One "Why do they call them butterflies?" "A long time ago they thought witches in the shape of butterflies stole butter and milk." Rafael’s mouth widened around his crooked teeth and he scratched his hair. "These are witches, man. Awesome!" "And if you find one of these—" I opened the field book to a monarch butterfly—you’re going to have luck for the rest of your life." Rafael looked up and in the light through the trees, his round unfinished face, blacker than tar, was awash in hope and dream. "You’re going to find it," I whispered and grabbed him in my arm and hugged him. He giggled and pushed against me and looked around self-consciously, but I held him and playfully scoured his nappy hair with my knuckles and he laughed. I felt the grind of the streets and another week of deadlines and frantic copy and arguments with my editor lift off my chest once again, as only this eight-year-old kid could do, and had done in over a year of Saturdays. "Man, you’re a fagot ass," he said, squirting out from under my arm. "Let’s go." He put on his ball cap that was too big and made him cuter than sin and picked up the new kite I bought him and ran for the field. I’d met him at the subway stop. I couldn’t go into his neighborhood anymore [my emphasis]. Scene Two Where did that sentence come from? I’d met him at the subway stop. I couldn’t go into his neighborhood anymore? It was a bleep, a message from Terry’s unconscious, and it was hot. Instinctively, Terry understood this. He has learned to read his first draft for messages from his unconscious. And he left Miles and Raphael flying the kite in Central Park and went back in time to find out why Miles couldn’t go into Raphael’s neighborhood anymore. Notice he doesn’t begin with setting or description. He’s looking for the gut stuff, so he goes right into character and dialogue. "Hey, look, it’s Lincoln. It’s Lincoln come-free-the-slaves," sixteen-year-old going-on-life Denzel "Prince" Smith said as the guys on the stoop laughed, but Denzel did not laugh. He had a knife and was playing with it, twirling it in his hands. The street stunk of garbage. "Denzel, nobody’s going to free your sorry ass," I said, and in a chorus of "oohs" I asked, "Where’s Raphael?" "What you be comin’ here talking shit, white boy? Man, you walk on my turf like nobody touch your shit, but you ain’t nobody. You white sugar daddy taking my brother and turning him into a Twinkie, man. All those books and shit." There was an attitude in his trash this morning, more than ever before. Still, it was familiar enough. I walked right up to him, and his friends skulked their heads away like I might burn the night out of their eyes, but not Denzel. He glared. "Cops been down here swinging club, man. They everywhere now. What the fuck you think you are?" "Are you serious? Your guys getting busted?" "Look at you. Actin’ all concerned. Goddamn liar." "I’m not acting. Are you in trouble?" "Shit man." He shook his head. I looked around at his friends, who looked at me like the way they used to look when I first started coming down here. "You’ve got to believe me. It’s got nothing to do with me." "The fuck it doesn’t. Ever since you write that shit the police have been up our fuckin’ ass." "It’s anonymous, Denzel. I never mentioned a real name or place. You know that. I keep my word." He flipped the knife around faster like it was a toy, the same way he played with his thirty-eight. Somewhere a baby was crying. "You get outta here before you get popped, Whitey. You stay away from my little brother." I leaned forward so as to get the full effect of my tall body over him. A year ago I’d have been peeing in my pants. Now I wasn’t half as intimidated as I was angry. "Look, man, I’m not causing you any trouble. If you have a problem with your business—" "I’m serious, man!" He stood up with the knife in his fist. He was built. The others stood up, too. "This shit of yours gonna stop." I backed off. I looked past the scar that marred his face, to his eyes for signs of the crack he dealt, but I couldn’t tell. "You damn right I got a business problem. How do I know you ain’t a dick in the first place? I was a fucking fool to let you talk to me. You put anything more in the paper, I’m going to kill you, you got that? You got that?" "I’m telling you there’s no way the cops know anything about you from my stories." I shook with anger. "I’ve never revealed anything to anybody. Not once, not a street, not a neighborhood, not a name. Nothing. And nothing I’ve ever written has anything to do with how you conduct your business or with whom. It’s not about you. It’s about your family, man. It’s about surviving. It’s about the hope your mother’s given your kid brother by sitting down with him every day and teaching him to read and write and think for himself." "You preachin’ to me, white boy?" Denzel stepped on the sidewalk. "You motherfuckin’ white man tellin’ me what’s right? You make the slick writin’ about us like we some geek show, like some entertainment for you white folks, and you preachin’ to me now? Get the fuck outta my hood before I kill you." I backed to a car parked at the curb. He had the knife and it was like it was a part of his arm, the way he glared at me and held it at his waist. The others egged him on. "I don’t want trouble, man," I mumbled through my teeth, which were clenched shut. I stared at the knife and all I thought was, I know knives, I know knives. And I felt myself rent through the blank terror of the moment and get strong again. "I’m not your enemy, man," I said, reaching for breath. I stared into him. "I’m making a wage, just like you." He sneered. "No you ain’t." Wolves smell fear, I thought, standing firm, not blinking. The others wanted blood. Denzel wanted more. "You’re the man on the street," I said. "The man who gives justice." He stood in front of me. He stood and stood, his chin up, spitting on me with his eyes, and I was beginning to crumble inside. "Hey, Miles, man!" It was a voice from heaven. Raphael came bounding down the steps of the tenement, his enthusiasm oblivious to everything. "Let’s go, man! I gotta try this new kite. Hey, Denzel, what you doing with that? You gonna cut his beard?" "Get outta here." "Come on, Miles, let’s go." "I said, get outta here." Denzel raised his voice. "You ain’t goin’ nowhere with him no more." "I go where I want, mother fucker!" Raphael said in his high kiddy voice. "Miles is cool, man." Denzel lifted his knife to my face. He held it there, let it down and turned to his brother. He flexed his jaw muscles and got antsy with his hands. It was tearing up his pride to see Raphael with me. I cursed myself for ignoring it when I saw it coming months ago. "Man, you don’t understand," he said, upset. "What would fuckin’ Dad say, man?" "Dad don’t have nothin’ to do with me, man," Raphael said. His eyes teared up. His dad was upstate for dealing. "We’ll go another time," I said. "Get out! I want to go to the park!" Raphael said. Denzel grabbed his arm and pointed the knife at me. "Number one, you stay away from my brother. Number two, you write anything more and you’re dead." "Get off me!" Raphael screamed and broke free. "It’s too late, man," I said. "There’s two more parts to the series. It’s done. I can’t stop them." Denzel gritted his teeth. For me, the secret of Terry’s success with these scenes is that they are totally character driven, which means the characters produced scenes filled with tension and plot. And the writer had to do little to get this success. He knew nothing, planned nothing. He was little more than a channel through which the characters could speak. And speak they did. The Art of Fiction Writing or How to Fall Down the Rabbit Hole Without Really Trying has both a chapter in the workbook and a journey on the audio tape devoted to interviewing your characters. Each has, 52 interview questions that lead to scenes.
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