Guest Post by Jud Widing

If you are a human being who has ever spoken to another human being, I

would wager an improbable sum of money that you have suffer through a “you had

to be there” anecdote. I can only hope, for your sake, that you were on the receiving

end. There are few things more excruciating than beginning to recount a moment

when you were literally gasping for air between braying laughs, fully expecting a

similar reaction in your audience...only to be met with glassy-eyed stares and polite

chuckles. Because you can’t well pull the ripcord on the whole story, can you? No,

you’ve got to finish it, and then conclude with a shrug.

How does that happen? Why is it so hard to distinguish a story that

everybody is going to love from one that only people who love you could even begin

to tolerate? Well, that’s rather outside the scope of this post. But what’s important to

note is that it is hard. And the only thing more painful than watching someone

flounder their way through a “you had to be there” story at a party is reading one

that somebody wrote, revised, edited and published. And more often than not, this is

the result of somebody writing about their own experiences.

Now, everybody has to write about themselves, to a greater or lesser extent.

Empathy is mighty but finite in its scope - and even if it weren’t, the author can only

investigate other people’s experiences through the framework of their own. And

really, that individual experience is what gives people their voices. I’d no more try to

attain any kind of Authorial Objectivity than I would be interested in reading the

works of someone who had. But there is a flip side to that, one that’s just as

undesirable, but much more attainable.

Let’s say your best friend has lived a fascinating life. She’s overcome

adversity, she’s achieved enlightenment, she’s the world’s most prolific

neurosurgeon. Whenever you go hang out at the local watering hole, you and your

other buddies are falling all over yourselves to get her spinning the next crazy yarn

that just so happens to be true. You encourage her to start writing these things

down – you would absolutely read a book about her life. Instead, she suggests you do

it. Hardly believing your luck at being handed such an unforgettable saga, you run

home, sit down at the keyboard, and write a thinly veiled novel about her story (you

forgo a biography approach to tone some of the more unbelievable happenings

down, so remarkable is her past). It has almost all of her adventures within its

comparatively brisk 436 pages, and ties up beautifully at the end. You self-publish

the book, and wait for the world to marvel at her exploits.

Here’s what a reader who doesn’t know you or your best friend will know:

they get the book, whether on the strength of the synopsis or on a whim, which

carries itself as a work of fiction. It comes, they open it up, and read about the wild

life of a fictionalized version of your friend. And then they put it down after about 75

pages. Why? Well, it could be that the lead character is fairly static, simply reacting

to a laundry list of ostensibly exciting events. Or maybe there’s no clear room for her

to have any kind of arc. Or maybe it’s...

Here’s a hard truth about fiction (and, really, even nonfiction): on page one,

nobody cares. A fan or family member might be invested your success, and so hope

that the book is good; a casual reader will likely expect some degree of

entertainment out of this latest literary investment, and so wish for a quality read.

But when it comes to your character, nobody actually cares about them on page one.

It’s the author’s job to make the reader care. And there’s only one way to do that:

create a character. Don’t just transcribe the experiences that mean the most to you.

Maybe they’ll work on the page, and maybe they won’t, but that will all be

dependent on how much you’ve transformed them from an experience that you had

and are now relating, into an experience that you, your character and the reader are

having together. To wrap up the above example, don’t scrawl out a stand-in for your

friend who says all of those funny things, because a stranger who has never met

your friend has no immediate reason to care about this character unless you give

them one.

Think of it this way: if you’re building a character from the ground up, even

you probably don’t care about them right away. I can only speak for myself here, but

once I figure out my lead character’s name...I’ve figured out their name. That’s it. I

still have to figure out who they are and what they want and why I should be

invested in their attempts to get it. But if you’re basing your character off of

someone for whom you care dearly, or heaven forfend yourself (the author’s-stand- in can certainly be done well, but if not done well I personally find it to be equal

parts insufferable and amateurish), then you skip the part where you have to make

yourself care about the character. It’s not a conscious decision, it’s just something

that’s suddenly so simple to overlook. Of course this character is likable – it’s based

on my brother, and I like my brother a whole lot! So do all of his friends!

And then what? You have a story about a person who you care about a lot,

and you’re telling it to a lot of people who don’t have the first clue why they should

feel the same way. In a tragically time-consuming and costly way, you’ve just spent

months or years honing a “you had to be there” story.

The good news is, unlike in real life, the author has the power to put their

audience there. And we all want to come! Just because nobody cares about your

character on page one doesn’t mean we can’t be totally on board by page two.

And if you can be careful and get us invested that early, just imagine how

we’ll feel by page 436.

Jud Widing was born in Philadelphia, and raised in Reading, Pennsylvania. He attended Emerson College in Boston and graduated with Film and Philosophy on his degree, then got it into his head that it would be fun to live in Los Angeles for a few years. He now writes novels in New York City and thinks very hard about the decisions he's made. https://www.judwiding.com

If you wish to check out Widing's book, click here: http://amzn.to/2qzL3dC