“Thing To Do Numero Uno:  Keep from going crazy.   But how?”

THE RULES OF DREAMING

By

Bruce Hartman

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 A novel of madness, music — and murder.

 A beautiful opera singer hangs herself on the eve of her debut at the Met.  Seven years later the opera she was rehearsing—Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann—begins to take over the lives of her two schizophrenic children, the doctors who treat them and everyone else who crosses their paths, until all are enmeshed in a world of deception and delusion, of madness and ultimately of evil and death.  Onto this shadowy stage steps Nicole P., a graduate student who discovers that she too has been assigned a role in the drama. What strange destiny is being worked out in their lives?

 EXCERPT

Nicole had mixed feelings about going home after two weeks at the Institute.  She occupied a dingy garret in a dark rambling house that had been converted to apartments, overseen by a nosy landlady named Mrs. Gruber who owned several cats but never seemed to feed them.  One bright spot: the computer was still on, waiting faithfully for her return.   The screen was blank but all she had to do was touch the space bar and a magic technicolor world rose up before her.  Out of habit she opened her “Things To Do” folder.  Most of it was out of date now—unminded reminders, dead deadlines, pointless appointments.  With one sweep of the mouse she consigned the entire contents of the folder to the trash bin.  It was a grand feeling, having nothing to do, but it was short lived.  Now the computer stared at her with a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun.  Tentatively she started typing:

Bread, milk, eggs, corn flakes.

Pick up dry cleaning.

Find a thesis topic.

Keep from going crazy.

Let’s put that one on top and keep it there.  Thing To Do Numero Uno:  Keep from going crazy.   But how?  Much as she liked Dr. Hoffmann, she wanted to accomplish that particular Thing To Do in her own way, without any help from the pharmaceutical industry.  She reached in her purse and found the pills he’d given her, and without thinking very much about it she ran into the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet.

Now, she thought, I’m on my own.

BRUCE HARTMAN discusses how he comes up with story ideas and characters.

I usually start out with a concept rather than characters. Then I try to imagine characters and situations that fit that concept.  There’s an old adage that the story begins when the conflict begins.  In other words, you have to conceive the story as a conflict between characters.  For this you need characters who contrast in important ways, such as age, gender, occupation, ideology, family status and social position.  Apart from such characteristics, something in the story concept must put the main characters in conflict with each other.  This is best envisioned as a clash of goals.  Each of the main characters should have a primary goal, consistent with their defining characteristics, which brings them into conflict with the other characters. This goal may arise out of an existing relationship or the events of the story itself.

The approach sketched above isn’t the only way to write a novel.  Many writers start with a strong character and let the plot take care of itself.  Even with that approach, however, the story typically emerges from the clash of this character with others who stand opposed in some way.

Whether the characters emerge from the story or the other way around, the writer’s most important and difficult problem is the characters’ motivation.  “Realism,” if it means anything, means realistic motivation.  This is critical in commercial fiction: readers simply will not tolerate characters doing things that don’t seem properly motivated.  In theory, if the writer follows the characters into the story, motivation shouldn’t be a problem: the characters will only do what is well motivated.  In practice, human motivations are never as unambiguous as readers of fiction might prefer, and they often lead to actions that are unadventurous, repetitive or downright repulsive. This might make for a boring or unappealing story.  The compromise is often to present an account of motivation that is simplified or falsified, yet within the conventions of commercial fiction.

In plot-driven fiction, the writer’s task is even more difficult.  What will happen in the story has already been determined, and it’s invariably something unusual if not bizarre: a string of murders, a kidnapping, an thwarted love affair.  Now the writer must make all this seem like the natural consequence of people acting in well-motivated ways.  I can’t claim to have always succeeded in tackling this problem. The only sure approach is to devise a plot which, in its basic conception, makes psychological sense even if it describes a series of events that would never actually occur. The conventions of each genre provide some cover to the writer in this regard.  Certain actions by certain types of characters have taken on the status of realism even though they never happen in real life.

Finally I should say something about likeability.  If you conceive of the story first, you might (especially if your imagination runs to the dark side, as mine does) end up with a bunch of characters that nobody likes. Why should the reader have to like the characters?  It’s a practical problem: the writer is asking you to spend several hours hanging out with these people.  If you can’t find someone you like, you’ll probably leave the party early.

But there’s something else going on here.  Apart from how the reader may react, I don’t see how any writer worth his salt could write a whole novel about people he doesn’t like.  (Some writers, such as Tom Wolfe, have done this, and I find their books unreadable.)   I would even go so far as to say that the writer must love his characters in some sense—even the bad ones, perhaps especially the bad ones.  They are his creatures and he must be able to look into their hearts with sympathy and understanding.  Paradise Lost began as a Christian epic but ended with Satan as its strongest character.  Was this because Milton was “of the Devil’s party without knowing it,” as William Blake suggested?  Or was it because Milton knew that Satan brought the main dramatic conflict to the story?  As a character he had to be worthy of our attention.  Not likeable, to be sure, but powerful and noble by his own lights—not a devil, in fact, but a fallen angel worthy of understanding and admiration if not sympathy.

In this sense every good writer, in his imagination, must be of the Devil’s party, whether he knows it or not.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 Bruce Hartman has been a bookseller, pianist, songwriter and attorney.  He lives with his wife in Philadelphia.  His previous novel, Perfectly Healthy Man Drops Dead, was published by Salvo Press in 2008.

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