Personal structure art
Character
“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters”
― Albert Einstein
Character creation in both us and our fictional characters is a form of personal structure art. My definition of personal structure art is that one has a personal investment to their art and the structure of who they are. Complicated at first I know. But I assure you after this post it will make sense. Upon using both myself and my characters I’ll explain it.
First I define character as a manner that one presents themselves. We create characters from what we know and have seen in life which defines a part of who we are. Thus every human being is a character.
The bases of our characters are done by our Revelations and intellectual observations which means our personal structure is the foundation of any story, poem, or lyric.
With further ado let me introduce you to the very first star of my fully finished main character of my novel. You may or may not understand why she became what she did. All I can say is it started with a short story epiphany piece with the bases of the epiphany having to do with a stop light. Life begins, slows, and stops. I think that was the general bases of the epiphany. Anyways, Alana is an odd character because I am an odd human being. ( I think most my characters are like that.)
My foundation for her has to do with the ultimate desire to break free of guilt and find love that leaves you breathless. Which is a desire that I once shared with her. When I wrote the short story version I was lost . Lost in my ways, and building a steady path of things to feel guilty about.
We are the lost here,
Crumbling few,
Running our feet dry,
along searing black cement.
Deploring our quench,
For the mundane,
Like fish.
I write,
Sitting here ,
In a creaky old bed,
Wondering what kind of nightmares haunt you,
Like they haunt me.
- Scribbles of a lost girl — Alana
Thus begins our insight of my jaw dropping first novel where we get an eye-view of the main character after all the events have transpired. Why is she writing this? What happened to her?
I believe that like her I have many nightmares that haunt me. Some keep me up at night because I can’t forget about them. Such as my current boyfriend driving his car into a lake ( which hasn’t happened yet). But I do have nightmares of my father or of anyone that has hurt which can make me shiver at night. ( I kinda nabed a minor psychology to better understand these sleep issues.)
I share in her Grief one way or another. We are all prone to the desire to fit in which is often the mundane way of life. Everyone fears taking the path less traveled or the hard work to get there. But no one has failed in her own decision making like Alana.
Let me put it simply if your main character is a reflection of you than yes Alana shares in my deprived ability to make good decisions. It’s like every step forward is twice removed backwards. ( But I finally think I made the right one for the right guy. Hearts for days to him.)
However, Alana is not so lucky. But that’s not important here. Personal structure needs to happen gradual within us and our characters. We have to develop a system in order for the story to work just as we have to form a system in order for us to be able to wake up everyday. I call it the human code.
“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
The Human Code
A set of rules or codes of conduct that governs human behavior in matters of right or wrong. Normative Definition of Morality. An ideal code of conduct that would be observed by all rational people, under specified conditions. Definition synonymous with Ethics.
Upon our life humans have developed an unspeakable code. One that both civilized and uncivilized cultures are devoted to. This code revolved around the way and reasons people get up in the morning or afternoon. A human code is an unsaid reason why we live, and how we live. Some just know if they get up early they can get everything done earlier. Others sleep in and stay up late because they like the nightlife. But in the end, both are a code. Unspoken. Unwritten. We are slaves to time. Time is a slave to no one.
The human code addresses this. In one way we acknowledge the fact that people wither away. In the other, we acknowledge that there is very little time to get all the things done we need to in one day. So, due to this acknowledgement humans began to establish a code of importance on our life. The code is the understanding that time will move, and we can either sit still or rise with it. Its why farmers don’t complain about waking up at dawn, and why grave shift workers don’t tend to crave sunlight. We adjust our codes based on our conditions.
Due to our adjustments we can create a daily routine. A code such as this is what every story revolves around with a few tactile pushes towards a dramatic climax. But initially any story written is taking a human code and adding in a little flair to the story.
A nightmare for me is like a punch to the ribs making a shiver in a warm room as I try to shed off the memory before rolling over and trying to shut my eyes. Except I can’t. The image is stained behind the iris like a scar. My nightmares are drawn in permanent marker.
It wasn’t supposed to be a tumble down a hill like Jack and Jill fumbling along with momentum. Till you’re too dizzy, and can’t uncurl your body due to agonizing pain. But you have to move, and it’s like walking in quicksand. Each step digs you deeper into the ground. Until you suffocate from lack of air.
Trees swaying with their long branches teasing a dazzling sapphire above and casting shadows along the ground.Creatures flurrying about to make a lively scene if you were a nocturnal owl. A shovel bent against a thick brown oak tree being a reminder of the failure that I am. My hands feverishly wiping away crystalline drops as sharp as ice. But the stench of wet sludge, slippery leaves, critters, and scurrying worms had me clenching my nostrils.
Before my eyes Aaron’s knuckles clenched around a rusted ratchet. His twinkling emerald eyes flickering in the frosted light.Trickles of sweat doused his face as he gritted his teeth like a snarling cat.
Daniel’s a good kid. A great friend. A person I invested everything I couldn’t give Aaron into. He’s a child who got spoiled for simple achievements, treated like a king, and could pick up girls like Danny Zuko from Grease.
Slipping from Aaron’s hands the echo of the ratchet rang out as it hit a rock. He hesitated before shoveling a deep hole as the sky turned a multitude of colors, and the sun burned our eyes as dawn approached.
Three can keep a secret as long as one of them is dead.
This is the starting part of my novel but within these little details are inches of what people look at when in a dark forest. How its silent and haunts. But the human code here is in the fact that they are doing something and time is edging ever closer to their being caught if they don’t leave.
Anyways, this code is vital when it comes to putting anything on paper that comes off realistically. In fact, if we can’t realistically create a world of our own that people can engorge themselves in than we end up torn apart with our work falling bland, and our aspirations hitting the bottom of a barrel. If you ask me mastering the ability to make daily activity interesting is writing is one step to becoming a top artist. If you can make a daily activity or any activity vibrant than the reader will be sucked into the story.
Just the same we can apply this talent to our own lives. We go about our daily routine I.E checking our phones, kissing our loved ones, watching television, working, getting an education, working out, writing or doing an activity, and so forth that we forget how to make each activity go by with love and dedication. If you aren’t fully aware that our motivation is dictated by our interests which again relates to our code. We need to be motivated, and interested in order for time to lose its meaning. Which is why when people read they need to be sucked into boring activities by better writing. Just as we need to be sucked into boring activities by being motivated.
Whether you’re sad, you’re a mess, or you’ve hit rock bottom, you still have TO PLAY! That’s how people like us survive”
― Kaori Miyazono
Emotion
What triggers everyone in life? Emotion and meaning. We read for emotion and we do what we do for meaning. No one desires to live a meaningless life. Thus, when we start writing a story we need to understand the underlining meaning in our character’s life. If our character lacks meaning our story lacks personal structure all around. Just as if we lack meaning then we lack a purpose.
Our characters are the playground of emotional play. They can react and interact with people based on their own personality. But we as a writer want to be able to emit those emotions on paper so that the reader can feel them too. Which means our characters need to be believable.
“Remember the time we burned the bible?”
“Lit it up after dousing Gasoline on it.”
“If only the Nazis did the same to Hitler’s book. Our history would be so much different.”
“Yea. I bet some new jerk would of tried the same thing.”
“I would hope not.” Rachel’s feet slid from under her and grabbing my thin clothing as an escape to steady herself. Drunk Rachel.
It was a Saturday night back when the four of us were thirteen when an idea occurred. We could burn the bible. Ironically, that same night my feelings for Daniel got shot down like cupid’s arrow made an error and missed its mark. It missed me and struck Rachel right on the chest. My courage shattered before my eyes.
Feeling are a vibrant and confusing part of life. Even we are confused and lost with our own emotions and feelings. Thus we turn to people we trust to determine how we should act and what we should do with our life. Always desiring to be apart of the sheep than to be a lion. Lions eat sheep. I’d much rather be a lion.
A textbook definition of emotion a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.
In an age riddled by lust and lost we are frightened to write for the raw availability of our own words. We begin to work on our characters to infuse them with feelings that we need to figure out as well. Its our characters that make us stronger and our strength by letting them grow. We dive into the questions no one wants to answer by divulging into the intricacies of emotions.
Displaying emotion on a blank page or even trying to evoke a certain feeling on a page can be painful. One tick of word used in the wrong order..and woops there goes our entire atmosphere. Ruined in a blink of an eye. One mistake I make is turning to a thesaurus trying to select a word to use that will fit a particular moment. But every word selected brought down the atmosphere of what I intended. In this decision making I picked a word that came to mind on its own. Averagely our own mind can work better than a thesarus if tended to properly.
Plot
So the plot thickens and the reader keeps turning the page to figure out what disaster is going to happen next. In the end, each plot develops with the idea that the character is meeting an actualization point. Which is a little like how our life progresses as we try to discover who we are. In our stories, the character must have a problem that needs to be solved and this problem has to be extraneous meaning its an issue that can’t just be solved on a whim.
Plot is both a setting and defined by a character. Actions create seconds of tensions and for a person any action has a reaction. Some reactions good, and other reactions are not. Thus, when we write plot we have to make sure our characters are able to react on a whim to a bad or good decision. Just as we do. There is not one character who has a plot that is not developed based off the human psyche and the power of humanity.
Think of plot as our character’s basic road map. Sort of like a basic need characters have to desire something with the ability to head in that direction. Just as we create our own road map with the intention to find a destination our characters amass the same right.
There is a story about that my folks tell about the coyote and fire. How he taught man to rub two sticks to create fire upon which men were able to keep warm all for the ability to help a human woman. Me on the other hand found the story a lot like a dripping sack of poison. But as I wept in my sleep to a man with an arrow in his heart, and a burning blue flame in his hands. I knew- fire at whatever cost we have gotten it — made us pay the price that many others would not.
I awoke with a startle with my little twitter bird singing in panic. Danger. My eyes fluttering open caught in the distance a pair of eyes glaring back at me. A pair of non-human eyes glowing the color of leaf green.
“Go-s-du. (Ashes)” A voice like the scraping of a knife echoed. It came from the glowing eyes that in the midnight silver belonged to a small squirrel. Lost and alone my twitter bird kept her distance. Fluttering near my ear in fear. “Si-s-qui-li-s-da.( Blackbird.)”
Talking squirrels is now a thing. I heaved a sigh. Darkness greeting me as I twisted to try to leave the area. If there was one thing I’m learning its that talking animals has begun to creep me out more than the Un-Ne-Ga horror movies.
- Wa-Le-Lu
Wa-Le-Lu is one my gifted projects telling a tale about Native Americans in a fictitious event. They must decide if they want to build a casino or a traditional herbal hospital for all. The starting of this story revolves around a girl who grows up having to take part in a festival for soul searching where she must go out into the woods to find he spirit animal. While she is doing this her mother is still battling for the rights to create a normal hospital.
In essence, this story has both a sub-plot and a plot that swirl around each other like the solar system. Both work together and both tend to need one another to help develop the personal structure art of a character as a bland character development can mean a lacking story.
A textbook definition of plot is “ the main events of a play, novel, movie, or similar work, devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence.”
In other words, Life is a sequence of events that take hold of you and grip your decisions around the neck. Which means when we write with plot built around our character’s decisions we leave open a readers speculation to why certain choices are made.
The essence of these three phases helps to create an outstanding personal structure art that can create a distinctive world in our own writing. I consider these pieces to be the foundation of story telling. Just as there is a foundation to a home, or a relationship our artwork is built on a foundation as well.
If you pluck the right strings on a guitar then you end up playing a beautiful melody. But if you have no idea how to pluck strings to create that melody then we end up with theoretical an explosive sound of gut wrenching noise.
Stories work in the same way. We need a personal structure art with them to make the words sing like a twitter bird on the page. This from me to you is my new age definition of art as well. The personal structure art.
