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| Bad-Ass Dude - Iguana - BUT YOU KNOW - He can't read. |
Writing fiction requires writers to explore parts of
what Charles Baxter in The Art of Subtext,
has called, "the problem of the
unknowable," especially as we think about characters. Baxter ponders
whether "it makes any sense to
reason from what we do know to what we don't know?"
I thought about this recently in the context of story
revisions that involve a not very Bad-Ass
Dude (BAD) character in one of my stories after a writer friend read one of
my almost done (I thought) stories
and said something to the effect, "Jan, you need more Bad-Ass Dudes (BADs)
in your fiction. Even the bad people are too sympathetically drawn. It's almost
like you want to understand what makes them behave badly and forgive
them." All of which has led me to think a bit about what I know and don't
know about Bad-Ass Dudes (BADs) and the truth is, I really don't know much. So,
what is a BAD and what does one look like?
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| Maybe BAD - Maybe NOT |
In fact, I am not sure what characteristics a BAD
would have. I would imagine a range of possibility. I have been lucky that I
haven't lived a star-crossed life littered with BADs. Even my flawed first (training-wheels)
husband at his worst, was more of a SAD than a BAD. I see and recognize people
who are flawed and who carry a burden of unresolved emotional and physical
pain. I see people who seem driven by ignorance, greed, shame, hatred and fear, yes - especially fear.
Most of the truly terrible, and what appears to be evil
in the world, I see from a distance in the media coverage of events. But we survive
by developing a filtering system to limit the toxic levels of continuous exposure
to the unthinkable and unknowable that bombard our senses and sensitivity 24-7.
And if we are going to survive in our world, we have to tune some of it out.
The media seems too skewed for me to see the complex layers of what causes people
to be unkind, mean, cruel, and careless. But I am left to consider the question
of cause and effect, on a more personal level, because the BADs seem to be
demonstrating the visible, writhing consequences of pain and ignorance more than
anything else.
My early years of academic work in cognitive
psychology, and my years teaching, provide the prism through which I view the
world, and while I recognize that there are psychopaths and sociopaths roaming
the earth, I don't feel skilled at capturing them on the page. I am not sure
that I even would want to capture them on the page. It doesn't seem true to the
kind of fiction I write, and for me this seems to be the stuff of bad,
reoccurring dreams. So I am left with the problem of exploring the unknowable
in my fictional BADs.
And yet, while I admire work by skilled and successful
writers such as: Patricia Highsmith,
Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Lorrie Moore, John Cheever and many others, who
demonstrate the subtle ways to present carefully drawn Bad-Ass Dudes, I realize
that I do need to know more as I attempt to fully develop my fictional
characters.
NOTE: MONDAY LAUNCH - August 4, 2014 of my newly redesigned website. Thanks to Angela Render for her brilliant assistance. Training Lessons are planned over the next couple of weeks as I learn how to "drive" this new site.
Also - all next week - I'll be California Dreaming - with family time scheduled.
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| Not So BAD - Jan - in Scotland - Once Again |
About Jan Bowman
Winner of the 2011 Roanoke Review Fiction Award, Jan's stories have been nominated
for Pushcart Prizes, Best American Short
Stories, and a Pen/O’Henry award. Glimmer Train named a recent
story as Honorable Mention in the November 2012 Short Story Awards for New
Writers.
A recent story was a
finalist for the 2013 Broad
River Review RASH Award for Fiction,
another story was a 2013 finalist in the Phoebe Fiction Contest; another was a 2012 finalist in
the “So
To Speak” Fiction Contest. Jan’s fiction has appeared in numerous publications including, Roanoke Review,
Big Muddy, The Broadkill Review, Third Wednesday, Minimus, Buffalo Spree (97),
Folio, The Potomac Review, Musings, Potato Eyes and others. She is working on
two collections of short stories while shopping for a publisher for a completed
story collection, Mermaids & Other
Stories. She has nonfiction publications in Atticus Review, Trajectory and Pen-in-Hand. She writes a weekly blog of “Reflections” on the writing life and posts
regular interviews with writers and publishers.
Learn more at: www.janbowmanwriter.com
Facebook: janbowman.77@facebook.com
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