Mannequin Monday – No Car Chase Without a Driver
No story without a character. This week I talk about the people who inhabit a story. The mannequin itself, before it’s dressed. So many memorable characters in fiction.
And I offer you a short piece inspired by a Rodin sculpture.
Enjoy!
What I’m Reading
I remember the driver, not the car chase. No story comes to life without good characters. Their efforts to survive, to conquer, to love, to find a place in the world.
I remember the detective, not the crime. Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch lives, grows, through dozens of crime novels. Louise Penny’s Armand Gamache commands our attention through all of her crime novels.
I remember Hemingway’s Santiago, the fisherman, not the great marlin he caught in The Old Man and the Sea.
While I never finished re-reading Moby-Dick, I do remember Ishmael and Ahab, not so much the white whale.
his fierce determination to survive
I remember Gary Paulsen’s Brian Robeson, the thirteen-year old boy in Hatchet. I recall his fierce determination to survive. Memories of the environment he found himself in are secondary.
I remember this week’s read: Elizabeth in Raymond Fleischmann’s How Quickly She Disappears. Her engrossing adventure, much of it emotionally wrenching, dealing with a psychotic man who claims to know where her missing sister is. I won’t recall the details of her search. I will remember her. Her strength, her resolve.
I remember Kieran Elliott in Jane Harper’s The Survivors. Kieran heads an ensemble cast of characters, carrying guilt over the deaths of two men in his small town, now dealing with a missing girl and a murdered woman.
I remember U. S. Marshall John Whicher in John Stonehouse’s Whicher series. Breathless adventures, thrillers. True page-turners. Yet nothing without the MC, the main character.
Needless to say, story and plot, setting, are important. Those are the world the characters live in. But it will always be the characters who live on in my mind.
What I’m Writing
This week I used one of Rodin’s sculptures for inspiration in a writing exercise. Here’s the photo. I focused on the hand on the left.
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