People, Not Characters

Ernest Hemingway once wrote: "When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people, not characters. A character is a caricature."
In my novels I've tried to create living people, which means they are a mixture of good and bad, of noble and despicable qualities. They have many flaws, but they're also capable of kindness and grace. Like real people.
I've gotten some feedback from readers through emails and reviews on Amazon, but last night I had a chance to speak to some readers face to face, and I got some valuable insights about my characters.
For the first time ever, I went to a book club where the members were discussing one of my books, "Rose Of Skibbereen". I was nervous about going, but the members put me at ease right away, and it ended up being a truly enjoyable experience.
It was a special evening for a fiction writer, to sit there and discuss my characters as if they were real people. The members asked me questions about why Rose did something, or what was Peter thinking when he made yet another foolish decision, and as I gave them my answers it occurred to me that it was like explaining why someone in my family did something.
And that was the best part, because I realized the characters had come alive for these readers. They were not caricatures or cardboard figures, they were living people, warts and all. People whose lives you can get caught up in, which is why we read stories in the first place.
I couldn't be happier about the book club meeting last night. It was a special experience for an author, and I'd love to do it again. So, readers, if you have a book club and you'd like to invite me, contact me at mcdonnellwrite@gmail.com, and we can discuss the logistics. If it's possible for me to come, I'll be there.
I love discussing my people.

Hemingway And The Iceberg Theory

Ernest Hemingway was a powerful influence on me as a young writer. I still believe in his "iceberg theory", which he described as: 

"If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.  The dignity of movement of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water."  

This is why Hemingway made his stories so short. They are like icebergs, with a lot going on underneath the surface. He revised his stories rigorously, making them tighter and yet more suggestive with each revision. He packed a lot of meaning into a small amount of words. Read "A Very Short Story" by Ernest Hemingway, and you'll see what I mean.

I have always felt that Hemingway was a better short story writer than novelist. His short fiction is so strong, but it seemed like the longer form of the novel was hard for him. There's a quote from "A Moveable Feast", his great book about being a young writer in Paris, where he says he had worked so hard on learning how to write taut, condensed stories that writing a novel seemed like an impossible task. He couldn't imagine himself writing something that long.

Whatever you think about his novels, he is one of the great short story writers in English. You can learn a lot about writing from reading his short story collections.

And following his iceberg theory.