Unreal Enemies

 I’ve just finished reading and critiquing a handful of memoir entries for the PNWA’s annual writing contest. Some of them were quite good and some needed more work, but I did find myself, in every instance, reminding the writers to let each character’s actions speak for themselves. Those characters, by the way, are the ones narrator, who also happens to be the author, encounters, argues with, marries or divorces, is raised by, or hurt by. Roughly, that is, everyone else on earth. Particularly when those people do things the author wished they hadn’t, there is a great temptation to tell the reader exactly what a jerk that person is, or how toxic and insensitive they are.

After all, if you’re the writer, then you were there when all this bad behavior went down. The reader wasn’t. If they had been, then surely they’d feel exactly as you had. The problem, of course, is that though we might be the only one who wrote about it, we aren’t always the only ones present. And isn’t it annoying when someone who was there doesn’t see what a complete idiot that other guy was, who maybe even agrees with him? People. They’ll believe absolutely anything.

It occurs to me sometimes as I walk past strangers on their way here and there, that we might be in the same neighborhood and on the same street, but we are often in very different worlds. What someone thinks of that fallen tree, or that car racing by, or that barking dog determines if they are in friendly or unfriendly terrain. I could be standing peacefully beside someone who is, in their own way, in the middle of a war. It may not be my war, I might not see the enemy approaching, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less real for the one who’s in it.

I have seen plenty of enemies and threats where they weren’t. In retrospect, none of it was real. Everything worked out, and no one actually meant me any harm. But that’s not what I thought at the time. Strangely, I can’t write truthfully if I still believe in the enemy. As a storyteller, it’s my job to accept my fear and anger weren’t real, but then render them as real just the same, hypnotizing the reader temporarily, so that they might awaken when I did.

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Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
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