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elise_rashaOr How to Spew Out Words of Wisdom When You Don't Feel Like You're Particularly Wise. ^_^
Many years ago - many, many, MANY years ago (try like in the last ten years) - when I worked on my first novel, I struggled with writing the sage character. You know the one. Old, venerated, wise beyond capacity - a drunken version of Gandalf the Grey, if you will. I even tried to apply wise to another character, a much younger character, and, as with the wizard, I struggled with how to write the wise character. This was mainly because I myself did not feel particularly wise. My interactions with others were quite limited to those who I worked with and who I lived with and, on some very rare occasions, with the one so-called friend. I didn't know the truth of what made a person wise. I always believed it to be age. After all, with age comes experience, right?
Yes and no. While it is true the more a person experiences, the wiser he or she might become, the older one becomes doesn't translate into being wise. And I was trying to adhere to the idea that wisdom came from age and my personal experiences rather than what the character experiences throughout a story or even the backstory that no one in the readership will ever know about because that's an "off-screen" experience.
Some of this goes back to what I said yesterday about the upcoming Doctor Strange movie where the Ancient One is a woman of Celtic descent. Some of this is also coming from having watched the cartoon series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, in which the Avatar is a very young child with little in the way of life experience but is the storehouse for a great deal of ancient wisdom. As readers, there are backstories we will never know about. We can imagine Gandalf's journey to Middle-Earth and how he became to be regarded as one of the wise before his trial against the Balrog. The same applies to the Ancient One in the Doctor Strange comics and Professor Dumbledore from Harry Potter. As readers, we're not meant to know the backstories the authors dreamt up in order to create these unique individuals. Some things are best left unsaid, unexplained, after all, in order to keep the imagination alive.
As writers, however, we owe it to ourselves to explore the backstories of our own creations. We know we want a wise character - not to be confused with a wise-ass character; for the sake of posterity, I will point out a wise character is someone another character seeks out for wisdom and advice, the other is the one offering sarcastic remarks and is often the one someone wants to punch in the throat - but how do we get to that point? Sure, we could spew out old lines of wisdom like the early bird gets the worm or watch movies where the wise one says random, vague lines like "Master your anger or your anger will master you" (Mystery Men). Such are certainly valid lines of wisdom, but they can also leave one feeling follow, like they're just blindly following a trope instead of breathing life into the character and learning what has made this character wiser over another (Gandalf vs. Saruman over the One Ring).
While I can honestly say I'm a wiser person now than I was when I first created my ancient wizard archetype, I can also honestly say that my personal experiences amount to not much of anything because my characters may not have gone through the same things I have, like war, for instance. I've never been on a battlefield. I've never seen the carnage of a sword battle or a gun fight. Yes, I've read books and have watched movies, but those are pale comparisons to the real thing. Even newscasts fail to capture the reality of the real thing, but they're enough to offer insight as to what a wise character might have seen in the course of his or her life.
And a wise character does not need to be old and grey. In the past year alone, I have come to the conclusion that the people younger than me have their own brand of wisdom. It's very different from the type my grandparents' generation might dispense, but their age does not invalidate them. I have no idea what these young people have seen; the same goes for the previous generations, but it does not take a wise man to understand that things are in a constant flux of change and rebirth. Understanding this adds to the variety of the types of characters I, as a writer, can have at my disposal.
One day, I will revisit that old manuscript and make the necessary editing and revision changes for publication. And I will feel confident when I do so because I will be armed with the knowledge that the experiences my characters go through will be what makes them wise, not their ages.
Many years ago - many, many, MANY years ago (try like in the last ten years) - when I worked on my first novel, I struggled with writing the sage character. You know the one. Old, venerated, wise beyond capacity - a drunken version of Gandalf the Grey, if you will. I even tried to apply wise to another character, a much younger character, and, as with the wizard, I struggled with how to write the wise character. This was mainly because I myself did not feel particularly wise. My interactions with others were quite limited to those who I worked with and who I lived with and, on some very rare occasions, with the one so-called friend. I didn't know the truth of what made a person wise. I always believed it to be age. After all, with age comes experience, right?
Yes and no. While it is true the more a person experiences, the wiser he or she might become, the older one becomes doesn't translate into being wise. And I was trying to adhere to the idea that wisdom came from age and my personal experiences rather than what the character experiences throughout a story or even the backstory that no one in the readership will ever know about because that's an "off-screen" experience.
Some of this goes back to what I said yesterday about the upcoming Doctor Strange movie where the Ancient One is a woman of Celtic descent. Some of this is also coming from having watched the cartoon series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, in which the Avatar is a very young child with little in the way of life experience but is the storehouse for a great deal of ancient wisdom. As readers, there are backstories we will never know about. We can imagine Gandalf's journey to Middle-Earth and how he became to be regarded as one of the wise before his trial against the Balrog. The same applies to the Ancient One in the Doctor Strange comics and Professor Dumbledore from Harry Potter. As readers, we're not meant to know the backstories the authors dreamt up in order to create these unique individuals. Some things are best left unsaid, unexplained, after all, in order to keep the imagination alive.
As writers, however, we owe it to ourselves to explore the backstories of our own creations. We know we want a wise character - not to be confused with a wise-ass character; for the sake of posterity, I will point out a wise character is someone another character seeks out for wisdom and advice, the other is the one offering sarcastic remarks and is often the one someone wants to punch in the throat - but how do we get to that point? Sure, we could spew out old lines of wisdom like the early bird gets the worm or watch movies where the wise one says random, vague lines like "Master your anger or your anger will master you" (Mystery Men). Such are certainly valid lines of wisdom, but they can also leave one feeling follow, like they're just blindly following a trope instead of breathing life into the character and learning what has made this character wiser over another (Gandalf vs. Saruman over the One Ring).
While I can honestly say I'm a wiser person now than I was when I first created my ancient wizard archetype, I can also honestly say that my personal experiences amount to not much of anything because my characters may not have gone through the same things I have, like war, for instance. I've never been on a battlefield. I've never seen the carnage of a sword battle or a gun fight. Yes, I've read books and have watched movies, but those are pale comparisons to the real thing. Even newscasts fail to capture the reality of the real thing, but they're enough to offer insight as to what a wise character might have seen in the course of his or her life.
And a wise character does not need to be old and grey. In the past year alone, I have come to the conclusion that the people younger than me have their own brand of wisdom. It's very different from the type my grandparents' generation might dispense, but their age does not invalidate them. I have no idea what these young people have seen; the same goes for the previous generations, but it does not take a wise man to understand that things are in a constant flux of change and rebirth. Understanding this adds to the variety of the types of characters I, as a writer, can have at my disposal.
One day, I will revisit that old manuscript and make the necessary editing and revision changes for publication. And I will feel confident when I do so because I will be armed with the knowledge that the experiences my characters go through will be what makes them wise, not their ages.
