{"id":9554,"date":"2022-03-08T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-08T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9554"},"modified":"2022-03-07T19:25:48","modified_gmt":"2022-03-08T00:25:48","slug":"where-do-writers-ideas-come-from-who-are-these-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9554","title":{"rendered":"Where Do Writers\u2019 Ideas Come From? Who Are These Women?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Archer Landis, the Manhattan architect at the center of my forthcoming novel, Architect of Courage<\/em> (publication date: June 4), has been married and faithful to his wife Marjorie for thirty-odd years. But Julia Fern\u00e1ndez<\/a>, a new associate in his firm, has unexpectedly stolen his heart. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my manuscript, describing these two women and their worlds didn\u2019t happen all at once. At first, my thoughts were akin to a pencil sketch I kept going back to\u2014adding, subtracting, refining, and shaping details\u2014so that their ultimate descriptions show them to be distinct three-dimensional characters. Writing the book\u2019s early drafts, I did not understand them well enough to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where They Live<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the novel\u2019s first chapter, you see Julia\u2019s Chelsea apartment as Archer, with his strong design sensibility, sees it. He appreciates all the references to her Spanish origins\u2014the sangria-colored walls, the chaise longues upholstered in deep carmine velvet, the glittering matador suit on display. \u201cIt would require all his French curves and a full palette of rose and violet pigments to reproduce the effect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In sharp contrast, Archer and Marjorie\u2019s penthouse in an Upper East Side high-rise is light-filled, with floor-to-ceiling windows and views of the East River. All straight lines and pale gray walls, white leather upholstery, with a painting by Joan Mir\u00f3 providing only \u201ca confetti of color.\u201d A totally different woman lives there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What They Wear<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Archer thinks of Julia as the bright bird in his office. She wears simple silk dresses in shades like watermelon pink, lime, and saffron. She has licorice-colored hair. You get the picture. In Landis\u2019s eyes, she\u2019s delicious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marjorie wears long knitted skirts and tunics with drapey attached scarves in the palest rose, taupe, beige, and off-white. Colors so faint that, over successive scenes, Archer cannot always identify what they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How He Feels about Them<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My intent is that these details say much more about the differences between Julia and Marjorie than their taste in interior decorating and clothing. Much later in the book, Landis muses on his love for them both, calling Julia his dazzling sun, and Marjorie his moon, the one who could regulate the tides within him and light the darkness. This analogy (I hope) recalls to the reader the earlier evocative descriptions constructed from specific details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the Superficial<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a new character is introduced in a story, the standard inventories (height, hair, eye-color, clothing, voice) tend to be flat and uninteresting. They read like the author is ticking the boxes. They\u2019re nothing like the telling details that reflect the real person and help illuminate their character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s Flannery O\u2019Connor\u2019s description of a woman at the beginning of her short story, \u201cParker\u2019s Back.\u201d O\u2019Connor starts by having the woman doing<\/em> something (snapping beans), rather than stopping the story action while Mrs. Parker stands there, as if waiting to have her photo taken. Then \u201cShe was plain, plain. The skin on her face was thin and drawn as tight as the skin on an onion and her eyes were gray and sharp like the points of two icepicks.\u201d From these 35 words, you learn as much about Mrs. P. as a person as you do about how she looks. Such insightful descriptions are something to aspire to!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Archer Landis, the Manhattan architect at the center of my forthcoming novel, Architect of Courage (publication date: June 4), has been married and faithful to his wife Marjorie for thirty-odd years. But Julia Fern\u00e1ndez, a new associate in his firm, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The value in describing who characters are, not just what they look like.\n","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[61,174,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-character","category-first-draft-blog","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2u6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9554"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9556,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9554\/revisions\/9556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}