The other choice the funny boy or the pretty girl can make is to deny the choice. To continue living according to the pattern for success he or she has established. But now that the trap is recognized, the funny boy becomes the bitter, snarky guy. He’s the clever, hard-drinking put-down artist who lives to inflict pain. The pretty girl becomes the evil queen in Snow White, ready to destroy anyone who might be prettier.
Most of my own books are about characters who’ve reached the limits of one, early form of power. They’ve been the good, obedient boy (Fight Club) or the stunningly attractive girl (Invisible Monsters) and they’ve reached the point where they must find a new form of power. Or to continue, in bad faith, to live according to the old, failing pattern.
Think of Jay Gatsby, rejected by Daisy but already plotting to chase after her, to launch a fresh campaign to win her hand. Even once he knows in his heart that she’s not such a great prize, he’s too threatened by the idea of choosing a new dream.
Holly Golightly can’t give up her strategy of always evading commitment, so she’s doomed to roaming the world without emotional attachment.
Sally Bowles wants the love of the whole world so she rejects her suitor and is consumed by the chaos of Nazi Germany.
For perhaps the best example of this bad-faith choice, read Dorothy Parker’s story “The Standard of Living.”
So choosing a character’s body of knowledge isn’t merely about how their past and their priorities color their view of everything. It’s also about the pattern for success that they’ve chosen as children. The funny boy walks into a room looking for details to poke fun at, and listening for good setup lines he can riff off for laughs. The pretty girl walks in looking for potential competitors with clearer skin, better figures, brighter teeth.
If you were my student I’d tell you that Playgirl ultimately rejected “Negative Reinforcement.” And instead of a luxury high-rise condo all I could afford was a three-hundred-square-foot shack in a neighborhood without clear television or radio reception. Cable television wasn’t available, and the internet was decades away. The roof leaked, but in that tiny house with no distractions I wrote my first four books—five if you count the disastrous attempt If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Already.
I’d ask you: What strategy has your character chosen for success in life? What education or experiences does he or she bring? What priorities? Will they be able to adopt a new dream and a new strategy?
Every detail they notice in the world will depend on your answers to the above questions.
A Postcard from the Tour
Did you see my Super Bowl commercial?
No, I’m not joking. It was a television commercial for a bank, slotted to air during the 2016 game, not nationwide, not like, say, a Budweiser beer commercial. An advertising agency pitched me on behalf of a bank, explaining that it would produce the commercial for a “regional” audience, meaning only a few million eyeballs instead of a billion, but the concept was simple. An actor would stand in the center of a bare stage and deliver a monologue lifted from my book Fight Club. The “We’re a generation raised by television to believe that someday we’ll be millionaires and movie stars and rock gods…” Yes, that speech, which Brad Pitt gives in the film. Short and sweet, followed by the bank’s slogan, in voice-over, “Own your life or someone else will.”
On the page, it sounded good. Okay, what sounded good was the money—they were talking six figures, a sum ten times what I made annually in my last day job. And the million eyeballs, those eyeballs would feel great. The only downside was the idea of selling out. My books aren’t like cherished children to me, but I stand behind certain ideas. My counter-proposal was that, in lieu of an actor, I should be the one to deliver the speech. On television. During the Super Bowl. I should sell out in person.
Not to boast, but I’d been rejecting suitors for years. First was Volvo, poor Volvo, who asked me to write a series of enticing stories. This was in the age of “viral” internet advertising, and the stories would all center on an obscure hamlet in Sweden where an enormous number of Volvos were being sold. The concept could go anywhere, they assured me, but my impression was that an element of vampires would be welcomed. Each fragment of the story would be planted online, and the advertiser hoped the audience would coalesce around assembling the bits and discovering the ultimate reveal. They were offering, as I recall, tens of thousands of dollars.
I said, “No.” In truth, you never say no. You say some polite version of “Thank you for thinking of me. This sounds like a terrifically exciting project; however, I’m overcommitted. Please keep me in mind for any future work…” Because you never know. This year’s advertising designer is next year’s movie director.
After Volvo came BMW with the proposal that I should write a collection of short stories. These would be recorded as an audiobook and provided on compact disc as a perk with the purchase of any new BMW. Once again, the money was enticing. Money always is. But I told them, “This sounds like a terrifically exciting project…”
Mind you, I’d read the castigating piece David Foster Wallace had written in response to Frank Conroy writing the copy for a glossy cruise ship brochure. Conroy had gotten his large family a fancy ocean cruise as payment, but later regretted writing the love letter used to sell similar vacations to his readers. But…but I’d also cracked my share of old National Geographic magazines and found full-page advertisements wherein Ernest Hemingway endorsed some brand of Scotch, William Faulkner flogged a certain cigar, and Tennessee Williams raved about—what else?—an
