The Usual Suspects

I’m pleased to announce that I have recently started writing a new novel, which I will discuss in more detail soon. For now, let me say that I am making good progress, and that it is exciting to once again be engaged in a major creative project. People often ask me how I develop the plot for my novels and create my characters. Do I write an outline? Do I already know the ending? Are my characters based on people I know? For each writer the approach is different. Nabokov was known to write his stories down on index cards that he could shuffle to create the preferred plot progression. Some authors use a white board or tape butcher paper to the wall to document the traits, personalities, and appearance of their characters and to list the events that will occur in each chapter. Others like Kerouac have sat down and knocked out a draft of a novel in a fever of inspiration over several uninterrupted days. Indeed, the strategies and techniques to writing novels are as varied as the authors who write them.

In my case, I develop the plot in my head without writing it down. This is an ongoing process, whether I am walking on the beach, hanging out with friends at a potluck dinner or in a bar, or lying in bed at three in the morning. During this incubation period the things I experience in my daily life catalyze a story that may have been on my mind for many years. Something as simple as a crow pecking at a paper bag, a wilted rose in the gutter, a lingerie advertisement, or a busker in a sailor’s cap playing the guitar can start a chain reaction in my head as I make connections between things that are apparently unrelated in time, space, or logic. As for character development, all my characters are hybrids of people I know, strangers, archetypes, and often myself. To develop literary characters is to shuffle the fragments of appearance, personality, behavior, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, morals, and history, and create beautiful mosaics. Every experience a writer has strengthens his craft, and every individual he meets is a potential source of inspiration. There are talented writers who have stayed in one place all their lives, and others who have traveled the world in search of novel experience. It can take a lifetime to know one place well and even in a small town one never knows everyone. Many people can travel the world without perceiving anything but themselves and their own preoccupations and prejudices. Both the sedentary and wandering writer are good at their craft when they pay attention to their environment and listen to what people have to say. They are similar in that they are inherently curious and want to acquire some understanding of people and the world they live in.

The final scene of the film The Usual Suspects (1995) provides an excellent illustration of the creative process of a writer. For those of you unfamiliar with the film, it centers on the narrative of Roger “Verbal” Kint, an apparently crippled con man who is under police interrogation as a suspect of a massacre and boat fire in San Pedro Bay, Los Angeles. The film is essentially Verbal’s retelling of the events leading up to the incident, the people involved, and their motivations. In his story he makes frequent reference to Keyser Söze, the criminal mastermind who everybody fears but few have ever seen, and who Verbal claims is responsible for the killings on the boat. Verbal’s story, it turns out, is a fabrication created from bits of information gleaned from a bulletin board on the wall behind U.S. Customs Agent Dave Kujan’s desk, and other visual clues, including the manufacturer of Kujan’s coffee cup, Kobayashi. Verbal skillfully mixes these facts with his lived experience and imagination, and, conscious of his audience, tailors it to convince Agent Kujan to let him walk out of the police station a free man.

Like the aptly nicknamed Verbal, the fiction author also draws on his experience and environment for inspiration and, with the help of the imagination, modifies it to create a credible and compelling story. In the end, only the author knows what the origins of a character or a scene really are: how many parts this and how much of that, how much fact and how much fantasy. Writing fiction is complex in that it is both a conscious and logical, and subconscious and instinctual act. The plot is developed in a logical way to a certain end, with each scene having a specific purpose, but once the characters with their unique personalities are released into their artificial environment, all bets are off. Like real people they behave irrationally, say strange and inappropriate things, mock themselves, dawdle when action is needed, refuse to die or die prematurely, become murderers, love the wrong people, find luck without merit, rebel against their fate, and often fail to learn their lesson. Who could have known? I believe these surprises are the subconscious part of writing, and more abstractly the result of instinct, or knowing what is right for a scene when logic comes up short. The writer seeks to explore themes and answer questions, and develops a plot to that end. Fiction is fascinating because, with its unique blend of fact and fantasy, it takes both the writer and the reader on unusual journeys with surprising conclusions and revelations.

Fiction is an artistic discipline that acknowledges by definition its own falsehood, while ironically revealing general truths about the human experience that we often ignore or are afraid to recognize. In our daily interactions we spend too much of our time lying to ourselves and to each other. These are white lies, lies by omission, lies of defense, lies of malice, lies for personal gain, etc. What fiction allows us, under the guise of fabrication, is to face the truth; non-fiction, on the other hand, while containing extensive factual information, cannot escape being a lie, or the subjective interpretation of events about which others would disagree. What the writer discovers in the pursuit of his profession is that all of human civilization is a fiction generated by human imagination. Everywhere the writer looks, he cannot help but see the absurdity of certain beliefs, attitudes, and behavior perpetuated by force of habit or laziness, or through violence and repression. Consequently, he considers anyone who accepts the world at face value either a coward or a fool. Ultimately, he feels compelled to sit down and explore in writing the mystery of human existence. He chooses fiction because within its pages he enjoys a freedom of expression frequently absent in the physical world. Like Scheherazade, the writer endeavors to make our precarious and finite existence as meaningful and rewarding as possible by spinning a good yarn. To that end he creates the usual suspects for his next book, knowing that they will acquire a life of their own and surprise us, like the gangster Keyser Söze.