GCSE Creative Writing Tips: Find your character’s sacred flaw.

Creative Writing:  Find your protagonist’s sacred flaw.

‘Because things fit together, doesn’t mean they’re the truth.’ (William Shaw, A Song from Dead Lips).

Compelling characters deceive themselves. They believe their own version of the truth. Their ‘truth’ is sacred to them. Their sense of ‘rightness’ compels them to behave as they do and face the consequences.

In Will Storr’s superb, recent book, The Science of Storytelling, Storr recounts a conversation with eminent psychologist, Professor Jonathan Heidt. Heidt directed Storr thus: ‘Follow the sacredness. Find out what people believe to be sacred, and when you look around there you will find rampant irrationality.’

Stories need change and so, according to Storr,‘our characters need to start off broken.’

Exercise ONE.

• Look at the following extracts from  several famous novels and decide what type of ‘sacred’ beliefs are creating trouble for the protagonists.
• What realities are they immersed in?
• How are they ‘broken’?
• How does their sacred flaw define them?

Someone is in trouble. What has happened? ( Will Storr).

Jane Austen, Emma, (Chapter 16) .

CHAPTER XVI

The hair was curled, and the maid sent away, and Emma sat down to think and be miserable.–It was a wretched business indeed!–Such an overthrow of every thing she had been wishing for!–Such a development of every thing most unwelcome!–Such a blow for Harriet!–that was the worst of all. Every part of it brought pain and humiliation, of some sort or other; but, compared with the evil to Harriet, all was light; and she would gladly have submitted to feel yet more mistaken– more in error–more disgraced by mis-judgment, than she actually was, could the effects of her blunders have been confined to herself. 
“If I had not persuaded Harriet into liking the man, I could have borne any thing. He might have doubled his presumption to me– but poor Harriet!”

How she could have been so deceived!–He protested that he had never thought seriously of Harriet–never! She looked back as well as she could; but it was all confusion. She had taken up the idea, she supposed, and made every thing bend to it. His manners, however, must have been unmarked, wavering, dubious, or she could not have been so misled.

• Is Emma performing repentance here?
• Is repentance a novelty for her? Is she sincere?
• Is the scene theatrical?

Dickens, Great Expectations,  (Chapter 44).

“You will get me out of your thoughts in a week.”

“Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since – on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!”

• If Pip accepts Estella’s denial of affection, what will happen to his stories?
• How far does Pip’s language of Romantic love, define him?
• Why does Pip use so much hyperbole?

 Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day. (p.110).

The narrator, Stevens is a butler in a large house and carries on working despite his father suffering a fatal stroke in the middle of an important dinner.

Of course, it is not for me to suggest that I am worthy of ever being placed alongside the likes of the ‘great’ butlers of our generation, such as Mr Marshall or Mr Lane – though it should be said that there are those who, perhaps out of misguided generosity, tend to do just this. Let me make clear that when I say the conference of 1923, and that night in particular, constituted a turning point in my professional development, I am speaking very much in terms of my own more humble standards. Even so, if you consider the pressures contingent on me that night, you may not think I delude myself unduly if I go so far as to suggest that I did perhaps display, in the face of everything, at least in some modest degree a ‘dignity’ worthy of someone like Mr Marshall – or come to that, my father. Indeed, why should I deny it? For all its sad associations, whenever I recall that evening today, I find I do so with a large sense of triumph.

• How far is Stevens’ dignity a form of emotional restraint?
• What type of language does Stevens use to reveal his ‘special quality’ as a butler?
• Do we share his ‘sense of triumph’ ?

Exercise Two.( indebted to Richard Skinner’s Writing a Novel).

• Write about an old friend, relative or colleague for about 5-10 minutes. Do not censor. This is for your eyes only.
• Now, write about what you did yesterday for 5-10minutes. Again, no censorship. This is for your eyes only again.
• Finally, take something from your first writing and connect it with something from your second entry. Make the connection into something new. Mix it up! This synthesised piece is for sharing. ( 10 minutes).

Janet Lewison 2019.