Mimesis | On Characters

In preparation for this post, I reread all prior editions of Mimesis. The catharsis in those posts stemmed from extracting meaning from existing media. I look back on them with a conflicted sense of pride that permeates most of my other writings. Uncertainty before submission has throttled my creative endeavors more times than I can count.

I have tried and failed a hundred times to write a novel. The first fruitless attempt was done in my living room on a seventh grade school night, using stained notebook paper and my friends at the time. In high school, I tried again. Adella is a witch infiltrating a sick city that hates her kind. With the help of a suspicious guardsman, she uncovers a corrupt priest’s plot to outsmart a demon. 

In some other universe, I wrote that Adella cuts down the priest and makes peace with the demon. In another nonexistent reality, her guardsman companion saves his sick children but dies trying. In this version, the story culminates in nothing and collects dust in a Google Drive.

My work is often a combination of other media that I hoard and stick together. This process results in what I can only describe as a mass of half-chewed gum. So much of my writing history is prefaced by a movie viewing or a game playthrough or the reading of a book that the core idea is rotten before it forms. I write from beginning to end with a loose plot. I can’t approach a story any other way.

My latest idea has undergone so many changes in form and name that I struggle to recall where and when they were first conceived. Main character, hitherto referred to as MC, is a duplicitous man that earns the trust of his given side character, now known as SC, for selfish gain. He fosters a genuine connection to his companion and must decide between his goal or the safety of this new friend. MC has been a cowboy, a vampire, a poacher and a soldier. He has chosen the life of his friend, has gotten them killed, has left them for dead, has fumbled both options, but has never received an ending — especially not a good one. More than anything, MC is steeped in regret. 

I often consider the fate of his companion. I see both the main and side characters as extensions of myself, but I feel the heartache of the side character like it is my own. In every iteration, the side character is doomed from their first appearance on the page. Always struggling in their own right, they are never free. 

There is an archive of documents on my laptop consisting of half-baked scene work and ideas in no particular format. I revisit them every once in a while to remember when MC was Jameson and SC was Abbott. Or when MC was a runaway knight and SC led a holy war in his absence. MC was once a vampire posing as his own hunter and SC was the butler-turned-hunter that helped track down his own master. SC is rarely MC’s senior, save for the story of crossing country in the Old West. In his most recent form, MC tracks a unicorn with the help of his silversmith SC and stolen warhorse. 

MC is always male and SC is male more often than not. For the many pieces of me embedded in these characters, I always leave that one distinction to keep us separate. It’s a natural, unintentional process in the conception of each version. It is still a complete mystery to me. I wonder if it’s possible to outgrow these characters, or if their new selves will continue to age and to learn and to fail. Neither of them will succeed with satisfying completeness — or completeness at all.

I’m tempted to conclude with the vague assertion that I will give these characters justice through writing some new story in which they reach one ending or another. Betrayal will come, but resolution will follow. Guilt gives way to acceptance. Loss is heavy and carried closely. The truth is that I am writing miniature, fictional autobiographies over and over again. My life is nonfictional and, thankfully, ongoing. I don’t know if such a solution exists for these two poor souls that represent so much more than themselves. 

I also don’t want to throw up my hands and say that this is the nature of writing creatively. That it’s a big mystery, never to be solved or understood. While I think there’s truth to that perspective, there is greater truth in witnessing writers who cracked it somehow. The ones who buckled down and got something out there for others to read. Their many characters percolated for who knows how long, and experienced career changes, name swaps, and whole alterations to the world around them. And there they are — static little versions of their creator that represent a past self or no self at all. 

It brings me some level of comfort to look back on Adella and see that the “me” who inspired her no longer exists. My teenage self has grown into someone who has overcome the trials and tribulations of that period. I could sit down and conclude her arc, resolve her story. The demon and the priest and her hidden identity all represent a wave of experience I’ve already ridden. Assigning her name and likeness to a character in the present would mean the creation of a whole new character. MC and SC were conceived in an era of rapid, exponential growth. Their existence was predicated by changes and an uncomfortable transience that still has yet to stabilize. 

I’m still living in the thick of MC and SC’s story. They are flawed, dangerous people. They both have betrayed and been left behind a great number of times by both myself and each other. Yet, there is space for grieving, for truth, for forgiveness. All three of us have time to learn.