Learning Characters and Scenes from Jonathan Lethem
By Sue Andrews, Inland Empire Branch
The wonderful morning speaker at our retreat last September, Mr. Jonathan Lethem, took us on a journey weaving his life’s story into his novelist’s history. While living on the East Coast in New York City, he wrote his first novel, Gun, With Occasional Music. Although he had never lived on the West Coast, this story took place there. After the success of that novel, he hitchhiked to San Francisco to learn more about the city. The experiences he had during that time partially inspired him to write his second novel called Amnesia Moon.
Those would not be the last times he took cross-country trips. The following year, he moved back to Brooklyn to write more authentically about the place where he had grown up. During this period of writing, he started using the template of a hard-broiled detective. He felt he could write more authentically while living in the same place of which he wrote. He described his main character as having many traits. The detective would be ambivalent to the police, oblivious to others, having a dry wit, and a sense of humor, a beautiful woman would always be involved, he would use lots of sarcasm and the detective’s love life would usually be disappointing.
Besides strong character development, Mr. Lethem stressed the importance of creating scenes with specific locales in your novels. It may help if your lived there, or had some firsthand experience, but it is also possible to do it without having been there or just a few days citing another example from one of his novels. A writer can use Google Earth, or any other research digital or otherwise to set the scene. However, he advised to use caution and make sure you know what you are talking about or you might be called out on it.
Scenes are so important, Mr. Lethem quoted a famous director as saying that when he gets a script, he looks for the number of outstanding scenes. Three can make a successful movie, but five will be sure to be a hit. That director said he works with the best scenes first and strings them together with the rest of the story to make his films.
We excerpted the above
from the President’s Message in the November 2019
newsletter of the Inland Empire Branch,
Fresh Ink.