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Knowing Characters From Their Marrow 3/17/2008 12:52:15 PM
What's in the marrow is hard to take out of the bone. – Irish Proverb
This sentiment really speaks to me. Its simple truth – that what’s deep inside us cannot be easily removed – is moving on so many levels. The essence of who we are is imprinted upon us early on. Life has the ability to bring out or beat down our own marrow – often to the detriment of ourselves and others.
What I love about this is that it includes the word marrow. (I collect favorite words, and this is one of them for both its sound and meaning.) When I was working out my novel, I thought a lot about marrow and all its definitions.
- the soft substance that fills the cavities of the bones
- the inmost or essential part
When I charted the course of Janeology, I really wanted to understand a character from her marrow. And what better way to understand someone than from her family? (I mean, if I learned your mother liked to sew and her mother responded to EVERY piece of mail she received – junk or not – that might explain why you give me presents I adore that you’ve made yourself.)
So before outlining my story, I went first to my pedigree chart software. I wanted to understand the time this woman Jane was born and also, the era in which her mother was born. Turns out the way her mother was raised had a huge and tragic impact on young Jane and what she subsequently thought about men.) The further back in time I ventured, the more I played with the family line and toyed with the kinds of spouses they attracted, the jobs they chose and how they responded to their history – all with several key common traits – the marrow of the family line.
This archaeology became the whole story, the centerpiece of the story, making Janeology something of a novel-in-stories, showing eight of Jane’s ancestors from present-day to the 1800s. I think I will do the same pedigree research for future works. And you might try it to. Some writing tomes advise that you must know the brand of laundry detergent your character would choose. Or the brand of cigarettes she smoked in her youth. But just knowing these facts isn’t as important as knowing why she chose them. Because a lot of these small choices were probably influenced by her mother. (I know I use Tide to this day for no other reason than it was present my whole life.)
