Ray

Fictional characters are often said to be based on real people. However, in my experience of writing fiction, a character’s initial resemblance to some real person soon blurs.

I think of a secondary character, Ray, in my novel Caroline. He’s a college student whose politics are conservative and who works part-time as a reader for the blind narrator, a liberal-leaning lawyer named Nick. In retrospect, I recognize that the inspiration behind Ray must have been a man I’d hired long before for a job that didn’t involve reading to me.

I was surprised when my former colleague stole into the novel. I’d arrived at a scene that needed someone to read aloud trial transcripts and law books to Nick and to read back his legal briefs during the revision process. A fiction writer relies on conflict to move the plot along and maintain reader engagement. No wonder, then, that my imagination came up with an assistant who likes to argue.

The real person behind Ray loved to pick political fights with me. He was well informed, had strong feelings and was fearless. I respected him for holding his own with a man who had the authority to fire him.

Here’s a short excerpt from Caroline that concludes a reading session. Nick is the first-person narrator:

He [Ray] posed a question he liked to put to me from time to time. “By the way, how many cases have you won so far?”

“Considering the odds against our clients, you should be impressed we get any victories at all.”

He snickered. “The odds being that society really doesn’t like murderers, thieves and rapists.”

“People also don’t like it when innocent people get convicted or the Constitution you love so much is violated.”

“Have it your way, Nick. Time for me to head for class.”

I put on an enraptured expression. “My favorite moment of the day.”

“See, Nick, we have something in common.” At the door, he paused to add, “See you tomorrow.”

I didn’t consciously begin with such a contentious, yet warm, relationship in mind, but as the interaction between Nick and Ray flowed from my imagination to the keyboard, a banter developed that called to mind the discussions I had with that former colleague. Through their humorously acerbic debates, the novel explores the philosophical and emotional conundrums in the life of a criminal defense lawyer.

A character somehow turns up on my computer’s monitor, and then proceeds to take me wherever they choose. Up to a point. Sometimes the plot requires pushing a character in a new direction. Even then, however, characters insist on doing so in their own way. On learning that Ray has broken up with his girlfriend, Nick invites Ray to a party at his apartment as a gesture of support. This scene is pure fiction. I’m still not sure how Ray wangled the invitation, but as the novel’s author, I’m glad he did. His character evolves as a result of that scene, where he plays the adult at an occasion that goes steadily south.

Fiction is never autobiography. In autobiography, actual events dictate, or ought to dictate, how the story unfolds, and actual dates determine the element of time. In a novel, the story and characters dictate to the author. If the novel calls for dates, they’re arranged around the story, not vice-versa. Even if a particular character’s story tracked a real-life person’s, it wouldn’t be authentic biography. There’d be distortions, coincidences, exaggerations, manufactured romantic episodes, non-documentable sinister moments, and a host of devices that biographers might only wish they could incorporate.

As standard disclaimers say, any resemblance is coincidental. I might go further: The more the resemblance to a real person, the more misleading.

Even so, although a character in a novel is loosed from factual moorings, I believe a novel’s impressionistic storytelling can get at the truth of human experience more than factual reporting ever could. Fiction gets into the nooks and crannies of human experience.

Here’s the kicker. I wrote the first draft of my childhood memoir some decades ago, and now some of my childhood memories are less of actual experience than the scenes I long ago wrote about them. In a similar vein, I worry that my fictional Ray character is more present to me than his inspiration, a man with whom I’ve had no contact in twenty or more years.

But I shouldn’t undersell my memory. My friend, if you ever read this post, I’d love to be back in touch. We can debate politics all over again. Unless, that is, you’ve had the good sense to come around to my point of view! In that case, we’d have even more reason to celebrate.