By Andrew E. Kaufman, author of psychological thrillers
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| Photo courtesy: Nikopoley |
It's a loaded question, yes?
As a small Andrew, I was what one might call a Why Kid—you
know the type, right? Every answer to every question was followed with a Why?
This would go on heedlessly (and perhaps annoyingly) for quite some
time, until the person being questioned—usually an adult, often a teacher, and sometimes
another kid—would get frustrated and yell, Shut
the hell up!
Then I would be annoyed.
If we were tracking trends (also something I do rather
obsessively), we might surmise this is why I ended up making a career out of answering
the eternal question: Why?
And really, isn’t that what being a writer is all about?
When people ask how I come up with my ideas, how I create my
characters, or how I plot my stories. Guess what I say?
Why?
Why, of course I do. In this case, however, it’s not actually a question (a relief, I’m sure), but more, it’s a truth, because every story I write begins this way.
In my first book, While
the Savage Sleeps, it was: Why are two people, who have absolutely nothing
in common and live in two different cities having seemingly similar creepy experiences
that seemingly have nothing to do with each other? Well, there were perhaps quite a few bodies
dropping like flies everywhere and in rather hideous manners, but that was
mainly the mood music.
In the Lion, the Lamb,
the Hunted, it was: Why did Patrick find evidence of a murder among his
hideously abusive, and incidentally, dead, mother’s belongings?
And in Darkness &
Shadows, I asked: Why did the love of Patrick’s life die twice? Well, maybe
that one’s more of a how, but you get
the idea.
The point to all this? There are a few (What, did you expect
the Why Child to only have one?)
First, I think authors write books for the same reason that people
like to read them. We’re insatiably curious (read: insatiably nosey). It’s not
just enough to know that an eighty-six year-old grandmother was planting bodies
in her tulip garden. We want to know why the hell she was doing it.
Second, whether we realize it or not, we’re all students of
the human mind. We like to know how people’s brains work, or, for those of us who
write our slightly off-color stories (read: bent), what makes them not work so
much.
And last, never tell a writer to shut the hell up. Don’t do it.
We get very annoyed.
Then we kill you off in our books.
You nailed it. I look at everything—the car parked beside the road, someone wearing winter clothes in July, a signed turned upside-down—and wonder why. Then I come up with a hypothesis.
ReplyDeleteOnce when my kids were young, we were in the car, and I saw an older woman driving a Charger (a 70s muscle car) and thought, out loud, that's odd. Then I speculated that it was her son's car and that he was in jail, but she was driving it, at least every once in a while, to keep the engine tuned up. My son, sitting next to me, looked astonished and asked, "How do you come up with all that just by seeing a woman in a car?"
The better question is: Why do I come up with all that? Because I have to. Things have to make sense to me too. At least in my own version of reality. :)
I hear you, LJ. Curiosity is a gift. It just takes time to figure out how to properly channel it. We're fortunate in that respect.
ReplyDeleteI make up stories about people I see around me, and the stories invariably start with or lead to asking the question, "Why?"
ReplyDeleteThe other day I was in a hotel restaurant and a group of women were sitting at a table, each with a sky-blue canvass bag. Obviously a convention or group of some sort. Turns out they were a women's church group. I looked at one who was sitting slightly separate from the others even though she was clearly part of the group and wondered why she didn't seem as engaged in the conversation. I decided it was because she was having an affair. Then I asked myself why. That's when I began to spin a tiny story about this poor woman.
Right now I'm sitting at a departure gate at a quiet (compared to DIA) airport and checking out the other air travelers, just beginning to ask the same question that will amuse me while I wait to board. Why does he keep looking around. Why is her leg jumping like a goosed cat? What are they hiding?
Peg, airports are one of my favorite places to watch people and ask why. They've always held my fascination, maybe because they seem to hold every walk of life. Maybe because they attract people for so many different reasons.
DeleteSo true, Drew, so true. We're curious beings who are forever looking for answers--and if we are unable to find them, we create our own.
ReplyDeleteSo true, Linda. Creating our own answers is the fun part, don't you think?
DeleteVery true, Andrew. I've been a curious person my entire life and yes annoyingly so as a child. I guess I infused that into one of my character for my latest book as she has the nickname, "Wonder" Woman. :-)
ReplyDeleteWhys and What Ifs are our fuel. I was intrigued by a lounge piano player who sat at a grand piano in the middle of an airport concourse next to their bar. Why? I haven't written that story yet, but I know something like that will come up in a future book. But I never stop with the "Big" Why that gets the story moving. Every action performed by a character, every choice they make has to have the "why?" answered.
ReplyDelete"And last, never tell a writer to shut the hell up. Don’t do it.
ReplyDeleteWe get very annoyed.
Then we kill you off in our books"
So true! I think Act 3 of a book is the answer to the question that's always posed in Act 1.
By the way, this is my work mug
http://www.nottheusual.co.uk/little-miss-mug-little-miss-chatterbox/?gclid=CJndmfu7xr0CFeWw2wodYL4AJQ
The list of colleagues who may end up as potential victims in future books currently numbers 5 ;)