All language subtitles for MasterClass Walter Mosley Teaches Fiction and Storytelling - 03. Developing Fictional Characters

[MUSIC PLAYING]

You have to understand--
in-- in-- in most arts and most

things that people get taught,
they don't know anything about

it before they do it.

If you go into an algebra
class, well, you probably

don't know anything
about algebra.

If you're being taught
how to do a sculpture,

well, you probably
don't know anything

about working with marble
and a hammer and a chisel.

But when we start to
talk about writing,

when we start to talk about
storytelling, everybody--

or almost everybody--

knows writing,
knows storytelling.

Not only that, they probably
do writing and storytelling

every day.

So what I want to
do is pull out some

of the elements of what
you already do every day,

and make it into a more,
kind of, structured,

and to some degree
codified, system.

So I'm going to talk to you
about plot versus story,

character versus
character development,

the music of language,
the importance of poetry.

All of these things
I'll talk about.

They are elements of fiction,
but you have to know how--

how they work in order
to use them technically

in writing a novel.

For the purposes of showing you
how I started writing novels,

and how I do write
them, we're going

to use "Devil in a Blue Dress."

"Devil in a Blue Dress" is the
first book I ever published.

And so therefore, it has a
kinship to what you're doing.

Many of you, this is going
to be your first book,

and so you'll see what
I went through doing

what you're doing now.

The most important thing you're
ever going to do in your novel

is that after every sentence,
every paragraph, every page,

and every chapter,
your reader's going

to wonder what happens next.

One of the easiest ways
to get them to do that

is to hook them on the--
the problem or the situation

that the main character
or characters are in.

Once you understand that
these people are going to have

trouble, or these people
might find treasure,

or these people may finally
escape from a prison,

then you're-- you're deeply
involved in who they are,

and what they are, and
what they are trying to do.

Once you're-- or, they're there,
you want to turn the page,

because the novel is not written
if the reader doesn't want

to turn the page.

People read novels
for two reasons.

They read it for entertainment
on a light level,

and they read it to further
understand human character,

human nature on another.

In order to answer the
second, deeper issue,

the character has
to learn something.

The character has to change.

Character doesn't
have to become better.

The character doesn't
have to become good.

It could be the opposite.

He could start off
good and become bad.

He could start off hopeful
and end up a pessimist.

But he has to be
impacted by this world

that we're reading about, and
therefore, we, the reader,

can more closely identify
with that character,

and hopefully understand
a little something

about ourselves.

"Devil in a Blue Dress"
is a novel about a guy

named "Easy" Rawlins--

Ezekiel Porterhouse Rawlins.

Denzel Washington,
Don Cheadle, and--

and Jennifer Beals
decide to make a movie.

He was born in the
deep South, lived

most of his life in Houston,
Texas in the '20s and '30s.

When the '40s comes, he goes
off to war in World War II.

He's a-- he's a
combatant in that war.

He's a soldier who fights.

He has experiences
that he never had

as a Black man in
the United States.

And so when he comes
back to the South,

it's just unacceptable
to him the way people

expect him to live, the way
people expect him to act,

so he ends up moving
to Los Angeles.

He gets a job working
in an air parts factory.

But again, he has
these white bosses

who want him to act
as they-- as he used

to have to act down in Texas.

He gets fired.

He has a house, but he
can't pay his mortgage.

He's a little
worried about what's

going to happen with his life,
and his friend, a bartender,

Joppy, introduces him to kind
of a dangerous white guy,

and the white guy
says, I need you

to look for a white
woman who hangs out

down in the Black community,
because her fiance wants

her to come home.

Easy says, OK, I'll do this.

The bartender says,
don't even find her.

Just look, and he's
going to pay you.

You can pay your mortgage.

But Easy-- he likes to do
the job he's asked to do.

He goes out.

He's looking for this woman.

And in doing that, he gets
into all kinds of trouble--

all kinds of trouble.

Black man, white
woman-- that starts off

all kinds of trouble.

And so he works his way
through the novel and figures

out who he is and who
he's going to become

by doing this job for this
dangerous white man who's

named Dewitt Albright.

Easy's predicament
is-- is multi-tiered.

1, he needs to pay his rent.

2, he can no longer live as
a servant to the white man.

And third, he's gotten involved
with a guy who's pretty shady,

and he's a Black man in 1948
looking for a white woman.

That's nothing but trouble.

The best way to develop a
complex, engaging character

is to not worry about developing
a complex, engaging character,

because that's a
big question, right?

You want to write about somebody
who you feel you understand,

or that you can
understand, and you

want to learn about that
person as you write about them.

And that layers and
complicates the character,

but not from the beginning.

It's not like you sit
down and say, OK, first I

have to figure out how I'm going
to make a complex character.

Well, how tall is he?

How angry is he?

What was his mother's name?

You don't want to go through
all that stuff-- at least,

I don't want to go
through all that stuff.

All I need to know is
that I have a character,

I know what the
situation he's in

and how he starts
to respond to it.

And how people respond to him
begins to tell me who he is,

and how he might change.

It's not that you know
everything about that character

to begin with--

and I know some people
want to do that.

They say, I know everything
about my character

before I start writing.

Well, to me, that's not fiction.

That's something kind of hybrid
between fiction and nonfiction.

I honestly believe
that just writing

in the voice of a character,
or from the shoulder

of a character, is going to
show us who he or she is,

and it's going to help us
develop that character.

If you make a commitment
to too many elements

of the person's character, there
are usually characteristics,

or even "caricature-istics,"
where, you know, they chew gum.

They talk in a
certain kind of way.

They use a certain
kind of language.

They-- or even specific words.

You get stuck with
that character.

That character can't move
if they're exactly in place

in the mind of the reader.

One of the best ways, as I
said, to develop a character

is to put that character in
relationship to another person.

So as they talk, as--
as-- as they fight,

as they work together, we find
out more about who they are

and what they are.

And if we find out
something about,

let's say, our character
who's getting shot

at early, which makes you
think he will betray anybody

that he's dealing with--

if, by the end, he refuses
to betray the friend

that he ran off with,
then we understand

he's learned something.

He says, I should
kill you, but I can't.

And that-- that-- you
know, it's a simple--

that's a simple transition.

However, that's the
way we think about it.

And it's, I think, best
to think in simple terms

in the beginning
of your writing.

In order to give you
an idea about how

you can start to write about
a character who you may not

know everything about
in the beginning,

I'm going to read to you
the first paragraph that I

wrote in my first published
novel, "Devil in a Blue Dress."

"I was surprised to see a white
man walk into Joppy's bar.

It's not just that he was white,
but he wore an off-white linen

suit, and shirt with a Panama
straw hat, and bone shoes

over flashing white silk socks.

His skin was smooth and pale,
with just a few freckles.

One lick of
strawberry blonde hair

escaped the band of that hat.

He stopped in the
doorway, filling it

with his large frame,
and surveyed the room

with pale eyes--

not a color I had ever
seen in a man's eyes.

When he looked at me, I
felt a thrill of fear,

but that went away
quickly, because I was

used to white people by 1948.

I had spent five years
with white men and women

from Africa, to
Italy, through Paris,

and into the fatherland itself.

I ate with them and
supped with them,

and I killed enough
blue-eyed young men

to know that they were just
as afraid to die as I was."

When I wrote that
paragraph, I knew

that I understood everything
about Easy Rawlins,

from the fact that he
was surprised to be--

to see a white man
walk in that bar,

to how he could pay attention
to every element of that guy's

existence, and how every
element of that guy's existence

was white, and somewhat feral.

And then I learned that he
wasn't afraid of this man,

because he'd been fighting and
killing these men for years.

And because it's 1948,
I know that it-- he

was in World War II.

So I'm finding a Black man who
is realizing his liberation,

and that tells me
I know who he is.

I know where he is right now.

And the only question is
where he's going to get to.

And that's the novel.

I don't have to know where
he's going to get to,

I just got to figure out
where he's going to get to.

And when I started
writing this book,

I had no idea, in the beginning,
that it was a mystery.

So him becoming a private
detective at the end of it--

I had no idea about that.