Happy Merry Xmas Scrooge-Time
Words are amazing things. Words have the potential to inspire or dash hopes. They illuminate ideas and bring dead worlds to life. Stephen King called writing a type of telepathy, because the words he writes one day go directly into a reader’s brain some time later. And of course language, in the form of words, is the only reason this means anything to you know. Without language, blah blah kazam googley randallhoffman.
But you’re a writer. You’re already on side with language. You know words make the world go around. What I want to illuminate this Christmastime is how the power of words actually comes from the reader, not us writers, and how we can use that to make our characters real.
Like “Christmas.”
What does Christmas mean to you? What ideas does that word automatically inspire in your mind? Warm houses and spiced wine? Evergreens and snow? Bills and stress? Happy Christmas, or perhaps not. People pay a lot of attention to Christmastime regardless of whether they celebrate Christmas. If something happens near the end of the year–good or bad–it’s hard to go through the season again without it being flavoured by that experience.
Merry Camel
Last year I agreed to write a Romance novella with the theme “Christmas.” It was a fascinating exercise to evaluate exactly what I wanted to illuminate about my type of Christmas to put in a Romance. There’s the usual: fires in a fireplace, cozy living rooms, egg nog. And then the unusual, but personal to me: baked salmon, the mandatory drive up to the bench, and writing short stories after drinking too much rum.
You, as a writer, won’t be able to help the personal associations readers bring to your story. But it will help if you recognize that each reader will have their own version of Christmas–or whatever it is you’re trying to bring to life. So if you give your characters their own perspectives, and their own interpretation of things beyond stereotypes and assumptions, they’ll seem more realistic. That much more honest. And your readers will believe it’s the truth, because they already know if someone says Christmas reminds them of ten-pin bowling and TV dinners it’s just personal enough to be true.
Merry Yuletide Season of Infinite Perspectives to you.
