Exploring Character and Place in A Seared Sky #13

Corphanda

This is the 13^{th (Oooer, not superstitious, are you?)} in a series on characters and places featured in Joinings:A Seared Sky. This background information isn’t covered in the book but will enhance the reading experience. For some of my people there are character drawings, supplied by Alice Taylor or myself (but I'm still learning how to draw, so bear with me!), maybe a video interview, and accompanying script. I’ll do short pieces of fiction, deepening knowledge of certain minor characters as well.

For the places, I use sections of the map to indicate location or a sketch to illustrate the place, along with a description of the place, as I see it, and, where appropriate, links with characters. Sometimes, I indicate the way of life there with a short anecdote or story.

I don’t reveal any of the main story, either as already published or as written in the series, simply enhance readers’ enjoyment of the trilogy by providing more information. I hope this gives pleasure to those who’ve bought the book and, perhaps, persuades others to take that step.

Pronunciation hints:

Corphanda – cor-fan-da (as in ‘dad’).

Names are pronounced phonetically. But this is my take on them; how I hear them in my head. You may pronounce them as you wish, of course; reading is, after all, active rather than passive.

Interview with Corphanda, who’s along as chaperone for the Virgin Gifts. She’s a chatterbox, opinionated, fun, stern at need, a great confidante, as she doesn’t gossip. An older, rather chubby widow, she still enjoys men and sex. Her voice is full of underlying chuckle and slightly sultry.

SA:         So, Corphanda, how would you like to tell us a bit about yourself?

Corphanda:        Well now, for a man as good lookin’ as yoursen, I’d be ‘appy to chatter for a good while. Me? Well, I’m as round as I’m tough, so don’t go thinkin’ there’s no solid stuff under this layer of warm softness. An’ I don’t stand no cheek, neither, so watch what you say. Grey and past me best, I may be, but I could still give you a good go.

SA:         I see. Well, thank you for the compliment, I think. But let’s talk about you and your role in the story, shall we?

Corphanda:        I’ll talk about me till the Skyfire returns. Mind you, that’s just an expression, you know. I mean, there’s a rumour goin’ round that the Skyfire might well be on it’s way back. But I don’t listen to no gossip. I’ll wait till I hear it from the village priest. You’ll know more about what’s expected of me than I know meself. Come on, lover boy, tell me what I need to know.

SA:         Well, you’re to be guide and guardian to a party of young virgin women on a mission back to the ancient homeland. How’s that suit you?

Corphanda:        Whoa there! That’s a lot to take in one bite. Guardian? What, to keep them virginal, like? I can do that. Yes, I can keep young lasses in hand. I’ve a swift slap for any that doesn’t want to do as she’s told. An’, even though I’m a bit portly, I can walk as far as the next man. That’d be you. I’d walk as far as you’d like to take me, if you understand my meaning? That a blush? I like a modest man. Well, Truth be told, I like any man willin’ to take me on.

SA:         So, the prospect of foreign travel doesn’t daunt you, then?

Corphanda:        I’ve lived too long to be daunted by such as that. There’ll be others along to deal with problems, like. An’ I’ll have me herbs and roots to cure any ailments. I’m good with medicines, you know. Me old mother was a proper healer and she taught me all she knew afore she went off to the Garden of Delights.

SA:         Why do you suppose you’ve been chosen for the job?

Corphanda:        Who else would do? I’m the obvious choice, like. Folk know me as reliable and down-to-earth. A woman with a strong character and a good knowledge of the ways of the world. I don’t stand for no nonsense, you know. Folk always know where they stand with me. What you get is what you see, if you understand my meaning. I know what I know and I don’t care who knows it, neither.

SA:         Well, thank you very much for your time and…

Corphanda:        That it? You call me all the way over ‘ere for that? Well, I ‘ave to say I’d wished for a bit more than that. I mean, ‘andsome fellah like you. I could do us both a favour if you…

SA:         No doubt, Corphanda. Another time, perhaps? I’m a little busy at present. But thank you for the…er, offer.

Corphanda:        Well, if that’s it, I might as well be getting’ back. You’re not the onny one as is busy, you know.

SA:         Of course. Thanks again. Well, that was a close shave.

Corphanda:        I ‘eard that!

That's Corphanda. And you'll find her amongst the people populating the epic fantasy series, A Seared Sky, book 1 , Joinings, available in print and digital formats online and in bookshops.

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Clouds, by Michael Frayn, Reviewed.

First performed at the Hampstead Theatre, London, in August 1976, this two act play is another of Frayn’s comedies. However, I’m at a loss to know for certain what it’s really about.

Set in Cuba (though the stage is a blank arena with stepped surfaces, chairs and a back-projection screen to receive the images of the sky that give the play its name) the action revolves around a trio of writers who are there to report on the state of the island a short time after Castro’s takeover. As a teenager during the time of the Cuba Crisis, when we held our collective breath as Kruschev and Kennedy postured over the issue of nuclear missiles sited on the island, Cuba holds a resonance unlikely to echo through the blood of the modern reader.

There’s a love story in here, though it may be that simple lust is the driver, in spite of the protestations of the protagonists. There are cultural misunderstandings, cynicism on an epic scale, subtle, and not so subtle, political asides, and, of course, humour. The go-getting American, the lady novelist and the reporter from the UK are stereotypical yet manage to convey some individuality. The tired diplomat-cum-guide-cum-minder is just that, but hovers between his sense of duty and the lust he develops for the lady novelist. The driver is a rogue, philanderer and wide-boy with an obvious eye for the ladies and the only male in the cast who appears immune to the charms of the novelist.

So, an interesting cast with an intriguing span of relationships. We follow them on their odd tour of the island, a typical itinerary for a communist regime, ensuring these foreigners see all the technical and commercial developments but are excluded from intercourse with the actual people wherever possible. There is the standard misunderstanding, deliberate or otherwise, between the eventual would-be lovers. There is the expected friction between the American and British writers. There is the unconscious condescension shown by the writers for their guardian and driver. But, in the hands of this master, the sometimes spare dialogue is made to say so much more than the mere words.

I imagine the sparse setting would enhance the dialogue, which is what the play is all about, removing visual distractions so that all attention is given to the characters as they set about their tasks of  misinformation, professional and personal rivalry, seduction and petty jealousy.

The text made me laugh where I was expected to find humour. It made me react emotionally to the various scenes of conflict, co-operation, misunderstanding and attempted sexual conquest. But I was left with an ending that seemed unfinished and flat. I didn’t expect an explosion, merely something that wound up at least something of the action that had preceded it, rather than the rather vague conclusion that the experience had changed nothing.

Would I go to see the play performed? I wouldn’t queue, but if it were easy to attend, I think I’d give it a try. Make of that what you will.

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The Pitfalls of Stereotyping.

A multinational crowd in Paris, taken from the Eifel Tower.

You do it; you know you do. We all do, usually without realising it. We have a tendency to put all people from a nation, class, occupation or whatever into the same pot and accuse them all of the same faults. It’s a form of laziness, sometimes a simple resort to shorthand because we find it too onerous to look beneath the surface, sometimes because we lack experience, sometimes because our circle of friends and acquaintances simply isn’t wide enough.

Here, today, I want to look at the way we, as writers, can easily be persuaded into making our characters into stereotypes; specifically, national stereotypes. Of course, what we should strive for is the archetype instead, if we are attempting to portray a ‘type’ at all.

So, let’s start by understanding what a stereotype actually is. My SOED (Shorted Oxford English Dictionary - 2 large authoritative volumes for those who don’t know), my personal bible for definitions, defines the noun, for the purposes of this piece, as follows: A preconceived , standardised, and oversimplified impression of the characteristics which typify a person…often shared by all members of a society or certain social groups; an attitude based on such a preconception. Also a person…appearing to conform closely to such a standardised impression.

And, because it’s germane, let’s also look at what inspired me to post this today. My wife and I have just (Tuesday 2nd October) returned from a 10 day holiday in France. It’s a country I’ve not visited before, so my expectations of the people were formed by impressions from friends and colleagues. Now, it’s well known that the Brits and the French aren’t natural buddies. They’re said to consider us conservative, dull and uncultured. We, especially the English, apparently consider them arrogant, dirty, sexually predatory and unwelcoming to strangers.

 

But, Paris is as cosmopolitan as any major city so I also expected to meet people of many other nations. I wasn’t disappointed. We were greeted at Charles De Gaul Airport by a charming Frenchman, who drove us to our hotel in the city, speaking excellent English and quietly informative. The receptionist, Karolina, was a pretty, efficient, charming and multilingual Polish girl who greeted us warmly and answered all our questions with knowledge and confidence. The lady who prepared breakfasts and cleaned the rooms was a black Frenchwoman, with no English, who smiled and greeted us with warmth.

We’d booked an all day walking tour of the city and found the French staff at Cityrama helpful and competent with no trace of the arrogance they should have displayed with their superior knowledge. Our guide for the day was Chantal, a charming mature French lady who conducted the tour with skill, humour and encyclopaedic knowledge, shepherding our small group of five around the crowded Louvre, Eifel Tower and Notre Dam with casual expertise and patient attention to our varied needs. The group consisted of my wife and I, both from the north of England, an English woman from London and an American couple from a small town near Cincinnati, Ohio. The latter pair, who made no effort to speak even a greeting in French, could have impressed me with an idea of Americans as being selfish, self-important, inconsiderate, grouchy, complaining, demanding and generally rude. However, not only was this initial impression softened slightly during the day by the addition of a glimpse of inappropriate humour from the man, who seemed to think it okay to mock the armed guards patrolling the Eifel Tower, much to the distress of his wife, but also by his willingness to engage our lone black English lady in conversation.

It helped modify my first impressions of Americans that we sat next to another couple, from Texas, in the first floor restaurant at the Tower (lunch there was part of the package), and they proved charming and interesting neighbours with no trace of the gung-ho attitude displayed by our tour companions. When they left and were replaced by a couple from Washington State, my impressions were further improved due to their quiet and almost shy responses to our conversation.

I could go on to describe the French staff at the Tower restaurant (all charming), the Italian staff at the restaurant where we ate one evening (also charming), the Japanese group who shared our carriage on the train from Paris to St Raphael (amusing, multilingual and helpful), the French taxi driver who waited exactly as arranged via my pigeon-French emails to collect us for our ride to St Maxime and proved to be friendly and welcoming, and the various groups and couples we met on walks, boat trips and in restaurants - Swiss, German, Australian, English and French. But I think you get the picture.

Perhaps the one fly in the ointment, for the French, was the utter lack of customer care shown by the owners of the holiday resort where we spent our week in St Maxime. We were greeted there by an envelope stuck on the outside of the door of the reception point. An inadequate map directed us to our accommodation, where we were expected to make our own beds, and where there was nothing in the way of a welcome pack - no food or drink to refresh the weary travellers, not even any paper in the toilet, and no information about where we might buy such items. This theme extended throughout the week, with an early morning meeting demanded for the following morning, which we attended but for which they failed to show up. This was followed by a departure, where we were expected to allow an inspection prior to leaving, for which they also failed to arrive as arranged, leaving us concerned in case we couldn’t finalise things before the taxi arrived to take us to Nice Airport. As it happened, both these failures were dealt with efficiently and in a friendly manner by two English maintenance men who happened to be on duty, cleaning the swimming pool, at the times.

If I’d based my impressions of the French on the behaviour of the owners of that complex I would have left the place with a very different impression from the one I gleaned by contact with many other people. And that’s my point: apologies for the convoluted trip to arrive here.

If we, as writers, have no contact with the people about whom we write, it’s clear that we can’t rely on the impression provided by minimal contact with a few representatives of a nation or on information given by friends and acquaintances, no matter how well-meaning. The popular habit of labelling people from other countries as if they were all the same is patently absurd. The world, as a whole, seems to regard the French as arrogant, Germans as aggressive, Americans as obsessively self-important, Italians as incurable Lotharios, the Swiss as boring and the English as dull and repressed. If, as writers, we employ such lazy categorisation to describe fictional characters, we do the citizens of the whole world a serious disservice.  

People are different or the same according to our own perceptions, ideas, philosophies and personalities. Whilst the placing of a descriptive label on a whole nation may be considered acceptable for everyday reference (and I don’t think it is), it’s certainly not a satisfactory way for an author to represent a character. If I’ve learned anything about the peoples of various nations it’s that they’re all as complex and individual as we are ourselves. It’s an insult to make a box, label it ‘French’ and stick inside it every person from that nation, unless, of course, it’s a shorthand joke intended to create humour rather than offence.

We’re more than the seed of the country of our birth, however proud, or otherwise, we may be of that origin. Americans are more than America with its brash, overconfident, hypocritical, Bible-bashing, superior and dominating world image. Germans are more than Germany and its efficient, calculating, aggressive, bullying and precise global persona. And the English are more than England with its quaint, bumbling, reserved, atheistic and self-effacing world picture. Each nation is seen as a specific type by every other nation and these types differ according to which nation is describing which: a proof, if ever one were needed, of the inaccuracy of such stereotyping.

So, when you decide to make your villain an Englishman, your business tycoon an American, your lusty lover an Italian, your artist a Frenchman or your engineer a German, please call to mind the simple fact that people are individuals first and national types, if at all, a long way down the line. You’ll make your writing so much more real and accessible and, perhaps more importantly for a writer, you might even collect some foreign friends and readers along the way. 

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Are Your Characters Written to Fit Movie Stars?

I ask this question quite seriously, since I’ve seen a few articles suggesting people do precisely this. It would be a waste of time for me as I’d have difficulty in putting faces, let alone other characteristics, to more than half a dozen actors. It’s not that I don’t admire their skills, simply that when I watch an actor at work I lose myself in the character portrayed rather than watch the person playing that part.

For me, the essential aspect of a character is personality. Hemmingway suggested we should write about people not characters, as he described characters as caricatures. I agree with his first point. But his second is off the mark. A character is only a caricature if it portrays the person in an unlikely or exaggerated manner. A character, as used in drama and fiction, is or should be an imagined person drawn in such a way that the reader or audience will accept them as real.

Having said that personality is the vital aspect, I don’t mean to suggest that appearance is unimportant. It’s simply that appearance is a secondary consideration for me. In fact, when I create a character I always do so with some image in mind. I generally use a picture of a person collected from the internet. These are unnamed human beings who I use as visual frameworks to which I apply a history, relationships, likes and dislikes, traits and faults to bring them to life. Having a picture of the person I intend to create helps me develop a more rounded human being for the story.

I suppose I could search the internet for pictures of actors and then apply my method to those pictures. In fact, I suspect I’ve done so occasionally, without actually realising it. There is, of course, a very ‘good’ reason for using the physical type of a known actor as, if the work is seen as suitable for a film or a TV play, the producer may recognise the character more easily and use that recognition for casting. On the down side, however, if the chosen actor has always played ‘baddies’ and my character is actually a ‘goody’, such recognition could well prove an obstacle.

For me, applying the idea of the actor to the role of a character in my fiction would involve extensive viewing of films and TV works simply to identify potential models. I don’t have time to do that. I do, of course, watch TV and go to the cinema. But I do that in the spirit of escapism and don’t want to turn my leisure into an extension of my writing. In any case, I prefer to use my imagination, and employing ‘unknown’ human beings gives me far more scope to overlay the model with the characteristics I determine as necessary to the story I’m telling.

So, for me, picturing Emma Watson as other than Hermione Grainger, Johnny Depp out of pirate’s costume, Julia Roberts outside the role of Pretty Woman, or Robin Pattinson other than Cedric Diggory would be difficult. It’s not that I’m unaware of them playing other roles, simply that my experience of them is in these parts only. So, these images would overlay them as characters in my fiction and that would be counter-productive. It would limit my choices. I don’t blame the actors or their roles, simply my own lack of cinematic attendance.

So, to return to the opening topic. Do you make your own characters in fiction fit particular movie stars? And, if so, how do you get past the roles they’ve played? I’m intrigued, you see, and you may be able to pass on valuable lessons to me.

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