{"id":7895,"date":"2010-09-11T14:00:17","date_gmt":"2010-09-11T18:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=7895"},"modified":"2010-09-12T14:12:54","modified_gmt":"2010-09-12T18:12:54","slug":"paying-attention-to-the-momentous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/paying-attention-to-the-momentous\/","title":{"rendered":"Paying Attention to the Momentous"},"content":{"rendered":"

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With apologies to Mr. Thoreau, I don’t honestly believe that the great mass of humanity lead lives of quiet desperation. Most people, I have come to think, live lives of simple routine, blended with dollops of making-it-up-as-you-go-along. They come to crossroads in their lives and turn one way or the other not because they’re desperate and not because they’re dazzled by a sunbeam highlighting a particular path. They choose a direction based on whatever information and other resources they’ve got available right then. Only in hindsight does it become “obvious” that they had<\/em> to go straight, or left, or in sudden reverse, or whatever.<\/p>\n

But fictional characters: ah, yes, things are a bit different with them. They plod along, unaware they’ve been ascending a ramp rather than a simple road, and suddenly they realize they’re at a fulcrum. The course of their lives hasn’t been up a mountainside to a peak. It’s been up a see-saw: to take one step further will throw them off-balance, if not dump them entirely (as Dad used to say) ass-over-teakettle.<\/p>\n

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For a writer, there’s often a question of whether or not one’s characters should recognize the significance of such moments just before they happen — experience an epiphany — or simply deal with the consequences. It’s a tricky balance. Too few moments of truth, and the characters may seem too static. Yet too many epiphanies seem unrealistic, if not manipulative. How many times can you say He suddenly realized…<\/em> before the reader thinks that your character’s just an unobservant dolt?<\/p>\n

Take the New Testament story of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus — the bright light bursting from the heavens, the supernatural voice of a god speaking just to him<\/em>…<\/p>\n

Now imagine this guy stopping in roadside taverns and bars, telling all who will listen of this moment in his life. But then he goes further, and he goes further, and he goes too far<\/em>: “And then there was the second time it happened!… And then just a couple months later, wouldn’t you know, it happened again<\/em> only this time it wasn’t a bright light but a siren…”<\/p>\n

Yeah<\/em>, his listeners think. The siren of the <\/em>booby-hatch <\/em>ambulance<\/em>. And then they turn their backs to him. Repetition doesn’t reinforce epiphanies. It waters them down, makes them ridiculous. So you’ve got to be sparing with them.<\/p>\n

And yet sometimes a moment of epiphany appears before you, the author. You’re as surprised and eventually as altered by it as is your character. You can’t ignore such moments.<\/p>\n

In Seems to Fit<\/em>, most of the action takes place in 1988, in a small town in eastern Pennsylvania. But the main characters have known and been friends with one another for decades. Now retired, they’ve got lots of time to consider the course of their intertwined lives. And one of them remembers, in excruciating sharpness, the moment when his own life, under the influence of the others, suddenly turned<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This character’s name is Pierce de Borron, and from the very first draft of the book he surprised me with how important he became. From a conventional perspective, the book is not really his story at all; from a different one, it is no one’s story more than Pierce’s.<\/p>\n

I’ll introduce you to him in a moment. For now, you need to know what the reader will know by this point:<\/p>\n