Writing the Novel_ From Plot to Print - Lawrence Block [33]
That didn’t go anywhere, but it gave me this image of Tanner as a devotee of political lost causes. I thought of him from time to time and figured out other things about his character. I decided he’d have lots of time on his hands, not having to spend eight hours a day sleeping, and I thought he could put that time to use by compulsively learning one language after another. This sort of scholarly devotion seemed to fit the occupation I decided to give him—I had him write theses and examination papers to order for students with more money than industry.
Tanner’s gradual evolution over a period of a couple of years was such that, when Providence provided me with a plot, my character was all set to go. It was easy to plot the book to suit the particular character I had already created in my mind. And that character, quirky and highly individualistic, was one with whom I could identify profoundly, because for all our differences Tanner was very clearly a projection of the author. He was precisely the person I would have been had I been wearing his skin and living his life.
Another series character of mine illustrates the manner in which one can adapt and define a character to suit the requirement of author-identification.
Two things inspired the creation of Matt Scudder. First, it was an opportune time for me to do a detective series for Dell Books. Second, I’d just read On the Pad, Leonard Shecter’s excellent book with and about Bill Phillips, the New York City cop, admittedly corrupt, who’d collected evidence for an investigative commission and who had been tried and found guilty of the murder of a call girl and her pimp. What struck me was the notion of a corrupt cop, living with and on corruption, running his own hustles, and functioning all the while as a very effective policeman, breaking cases and putting criminals in jail.
As I began working on the character, I realized that the cop I had in mind might make an absorbing character, that I might very well enjoy reading someone else’s interpretation of such a character, but that he was not a character with whom I could identify sufficiently in order to write books about him myself. I’m not comfortable using viewpoint characters who function within a bureaucracy. For one reason or another, I’ve always felt more comfortable from the point of view of an outsider. I didn’t feel at all sanguine about my ability to render a crooked cop believable, let alone sympathetic.
So I let my imagination play around with Scudder, and then I sat down at a typewriter and began writing a long memo to myself about the man. I decided he was something of a burnt-out case; he had been a cop, had lived with wife and children in the suburbs, and had been both a proficient detective and a man to whom small-scale corruption was a way of life. Then, while thwarting a tavern holdup while off-duty, his ricocheting bullet killed a small child. This led poor Scudder to an agonizing reappraisal of his own life and enough existential angst to drown a litter of kittens. He left his wife and kids, moved into a monastic hotel room in Manhattan, quit the police force, picked up the habit of visiting churches and lighting candles, and became a serious drinker. Occasionally he would earn money as an unofficial and unlicensed private detective, using his contacts in the NYPD and investigating cases with the special sensibilities of a hip and hard-nosed cop.
I wrote three novels and two novelettes about Scudder and took enormous satisfaction in them: I like the books as well as anything I’ve written. They worked, and Scudder worked, because I was able to take a generally sound character idea and transform it into a character who came to life as a projection of the author. I identified strongly with Scudder. For all the apparent difference of our lives and our selves, he and I had any number of underlying aspects in common.
All characters in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
The earth is flat.
The above