Supporting Characters, Puzzles, and Brown Rice

 I despise Sudoku. Really. The sight of one of those number puzzles makes my stomach turn, my head hurt, my eyes go bleary…

I love crossword puzzles.  I have a fantasy that someday I'll spend an entire Sunday morning with a cup of coffee (several cups, actually) and the Times crossword, preferably in a tiki hut overlooking a never-ending white sand beach and azure blue water.

Numbers irritate me, but words I love. 

When I started writing plays, I loved the puzzle of figuring out how to convey every detail through dialogue and a sprinkling of non-verbal action: exposition, plot, character description… everything. Nothing can happen without an actor saying or doing something on stage.

The puzzle is figuring out how to let the audience know the deep dark reason behind the main character’s irrational loathing of brown rice without a narrator or without her saying, “I hate you, brown rice! I have always hated you. I hated you when my mother tried to substitute you for the delicious, delicate, easy-to-chew white rice that I loved so much. Mother thinks you’re sooooo much better when really you’re worse.”

Writing a novel in first person is a little bit like writing a play. Because the reader can’t go anywhere the main character isn’t, the actions and words of the main character must do all of the story-telling. Her actions and words have to be subtle clues that cause the audience to quietly say under their breath, “Aha!”

As heroic as she may be, the main character can’t do it all on her own. Supporting characters are also important pieces of the puzzle. They’re like the pieces of the border already in place, waiting for that gratifying, satisfying interlock with that one piece of sky that has the missing corner of the cloud.

Sure, supporting characters have their own unique individual personalities, but really they exist to shed light on the thoughts, the desires, hope, and fears of the main character. When I write, the main character’s closest friends are really extensions of herself - her conscience and her naked desire. They are the angel and the devil on her shoulder.

The angel says, “You really should try the brown rice. It’s higher in fiber and much better for you.”

The devil says, “Fuck all the rice. Have a glass of wine.”

The main character is left to decide between the two while the reader silently cheers her on, hoping she’ll choose the brown rice or maybe the wine.

It doesn’t matter really. The rice is a metaphor anyway.

Visit me on Twitter (@CeceliaHalbert) 

A Minor Character with a Major Impact

Tuesday night is going to be very interesting. Tuesday night (4/23) I make my first live appearance as Cecelia. You know that’s not my real name, right? I’ll be reading a passage about wine (shocker, I know) from Up the Hill at an event called Drink.Think, at 7 p.m. (bar’s open at 6) at Tavernita (151 W. Erie). You can come see me if you’re in Chicago and you’re curious about what a pretend person might look like.

I’ve written before about my reasons for choosing a pseudonym, so I won’t go into that now, but writing under a pseudonym and signing books as someone else is a whole ‘nother ball of wax, to mix metaphors. It’s been difficult, releasing a book and not being able to tell anyone I know in my real life. I can’t share the happy news of a good review with my colleagues. Marketing is difficult without the frontline of friends and neighbors who’ll buy the first round and spread the word.

But there I’ll be on Tuesday, sitting on a barstool (That's not me in the picture, incidentally. It's Kristen Wiig.) in front of a microphone reading to those in attendance about “the writer” - the un-named character based on a real-life writer and an occasional friend of mine. Before “the writer” I drank a little wine but knew next to nothing about it. Knowing “the writer” initiated me into a world in which I still feel like an outsider pretending to know my way around. He pops in and out of my life at oddly pivotal moments just to set me ever so off-balance. He reminds me that if life is short, romance is shorter. Love is fleeting. Wine is forever.

He’s a minor character - “the writer” - so minor that he never gets a name. However, he’s the catalyst, the spring-board, the raison-d’être for my namesake’s adventure into uncharted territory. That’s why a minor character is important. He takes the protagonist somewhere new; he takes her in a different direction. He causes conflict indirectly. He’s interesting and intriguing, but not around enough to be directly responsible for anything.  He makes her think important thoughts.

Wanna know what I’m thinking? Come see me on Tuesday.

What Is it About that Girl?

I can’t imagine that I could ever write a story wherein the main character is male. Some women are able to accomplish that with apparent ease, but I don’t think I could. I’m such a girl. I sort of know how men think - sometimes - but in order to create a main character, I have to channel her in a way. I become her when I’m writing. I think like she does. She talks like me.  I don’t think I could channel a man. I am so much my main character in Up the Hill that she’s named after me - or I after her.

What makes a great main character? For me, a compelling main character has obvious flaws, she makes mistakes, and she’s able to draw the reader’s sympathy. She’s a dreamer in search of happiness, which is a universally appealing quality. She faces conflict and learns and grows as a result.

A great main character is different at the end of the story than she was at the beginning, but the core of her personality remains the same. Whatever it is about her that drew me in initially is still there on the last page, but she’s wiser, stronger, more understanding, though she may never quite be satisfied.

Scarlett O’Hara, Holly Golightly, Elizabeth Bennett, Sister Carrie Meeber, Bridget Jones…  these are my favorites. Complex women who want everything life has to offer. There’s something about each of them that I see in myself. I like men as much as Scarlet. Like Holly, I pretend to be something I’m not. I'm intelligent like Elizabeth. Like Carrie, I’m never satisfied with what I have, and well… Bridget…  

Oh, Bridget. We do have a lot in common.

Visit me on Twitter (@CeceliaHalbert) 

I Learned What Sexy is from Elvis

(Disclaimer: I grew up not liking Elvis at all. When I was 13, the only Elvis I knew was Jumpsuit Vegas Caricature-of-himself Elvis.)

So I’m sitting at the table writing and my thirteen year old daughter is sitting in the chair next to me listening to Ingrid Michaelson on her Kindle. Ingrid’s singing “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You,” which my daughter thinks is a fabulous new song.

“That’s an Elvis song,” I say.

“What?”

“Elvis sang that a hundred years ago.” I bring up YouTube on my computer and show her Elvis singing that song. She swoons at the sight of 1968 Elvis.

“He should’ve been born much later,” she says. “He’s smokin’ hot.”

I look up the “unplugged Elvis” video, where he’s sitting around with some of the guys from his band, talking to the small audience and singing some of his early songs and playing guitar. My daughter scoots her chair over next to me and we watch the whole thirty-three minutes. She loads the Elvis version of “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You” on her Kindle because she likes it better than Ingrid’s cover.

I’m watching 1968 Elvis and I know exactly what is so ‘smokin’ hot’ about him. He clearly enjoys what he’s doing. His wry smile breaks into uninhibited laughter because of the sheer pleasure he takes in singing with these friends of his as if they’re all sitting on his front porch. Once in a while the music moves him and he can’t stay sitting down even though standing up might cause his un-strapped guitar to fall off his lap. The music stops for a second. He savors it - and then the song continues. It’s infectious, his joy.  His eyes sparkle with that joy. Oh, my lord - those eyes. My heart palpitates.

Oh, and by the way - that guitar. I had no idea Elvis could play guitar like that. Jumpsuit Elvis used a guitar as little more than a prop. 1968 Elvis could play that guitar. If I’d been a teenager in 1968 I would’ve been screaming and fainting at his concerts. I have no doubt. Elvis was a good looking man, and beyond that he had a charisma that doesn’t even come around once in a generation - but the quality that’s so incredibly sexy about him is his obvious and uninhibited joy in making music.

Sexy is uninhibited joy. Sexy is smart. Sexy is not only being good at what you do, but clearly loving what you do.

It doesn't have to be Elvis. That kind of sexy gets me every time.

Visit me on Twitter (@CeceliaHalbert)

Keeping Secrets... or Not

This is how my life works: I cruise along being a teacher, a mom, a friend...

My life seems pretty normal most of the time. I go out sometimes after work with co-workers and carry on comfortably chatting about colleagues and kids and crafts and I keep pace with the casual conversation.

Then I say something stupid. Without realizing it, something slips out of my mouth like “When I was in New York on a photo shoot….”

It’s suddenly quiet. Eyes are on me.

“A what? Photo shoot?”

Then I realize most people don’t start sentences with “When I was in New York on a photo shoot,” and I wish I hadn’t said that because it really wasn’t anything and I’m no better - no more special - than anyone at the table. It could have happened to any of them.

“What were you doing on a photo shoot?”

“Print work,” I say, and then I try to change the topic. “So, how’re the twins? Bet they’re crawling by now, huh? Getting any sleep?”

It doesn’t work.

“Like modeling?”

“Sort of.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. It’s not that big a deal,” I say, hoping someone else is bored with this and will start talking about something else.

“Did you do that a lot?”

“No. Not a lot. It’s really no big deal.”

“Right,” someone says. “It’s not like you were on TV or something.

I bite my tongue.

“Yes she was,” my friend says. “She was on the Today Show.”

I want to crawl under the table.

“Why?” they ask, wanting to know how this seemingly insignificant Chicago suburbanite garnered her fifteen minutes of fame. Fifteen minutes she really didn’t deserve.

“I was fat. Then I wasn’t.”

“YOU were fat?”

“Yes. I lost a hundred pounds. I’m glad I did, but I’m not really proud of being in magazines or on television. I didn’t get that attention because of any of my intellectual accomplishments. I got it because I got really fat and then lost weight and stories like that sell.”

It’s quiet again. I know what they’re thinking. “Bitch. You get trips to New York and you’re on the cover of a magazine and you got to meet Matt Lauer and you’re complaining about it. Shut up.”

“Did you meet Matt Lauer?”

“Yes. And Ann Curry. And Hoda before she was destroyed by Kathie Lee,” I say. “They’re all incredibly nice.”

“How hot is Matt in real life?”

“Very hot. I touched him.”

They sigh dreamily. They don’t hate me anymore. They’re living vicariously through me. We order a pizza and debate the number of calories we’re about to consume and we’re all back on the same page.

And maybe if I don’t drink too much I won’t let something else slip. Like the Oscar thing.

That might be disastrous. I have a reputation to maintain. I’m not very good at keeping secrets. That’s why I’m a writer.

Visit me on Twitter (@CeceliaHalbert)