Sunday, October 6, 2013

Biography: Complicated Writing Founded on Simplicity

As a scholar and a writer I find that writing about life, whether in scholarly or fictional terms, is all about understanding how to interpret people's simplicity, which is often overlooked when we obsess over their "complications" and focus on finding ways to explain nuances in their lives. For centuries we've tried to established theories, methodologies and even ideological frameworks to try to explain why people act the way they do. We have often sought to identify the powerful forces that whirl around them and then attempt to "explain" how these affect their daily actions. For the most part we have done a credible job in explaining things to a particular generation but given each generation's idyosincracies the explanations usually changes even if only by small increments.

As I tackle my second biography I'm reminded that each individual's life is both unique to them and generally similar to those around them. But I also realize that ideology, theory and some forms of methodology often complicate the story-telliing and even more so the analysis. This is obvious since people normally don't live their lives in a scripted way no matter their ideology, personal beliefs or religious dogma. Their lives are more complex simply because life is both simple and complicated and much of our actions are nuance only because we find no easy answers for the daily challenges that call for multiple responses.

Because our characters interact with other individuals their lives are complicated not only by the reactions of those individuals but also their reaction to those reactions.While the people who make it to the biographical stage are usually more dominant and assertive and seem to get what they want more often than the usual person in the crowd, they often do so not because they get their "way" but because they find a "way" to get what they want.

What I find so interesting about how these people live their lives is that they are both particularly sensitive to things around them and often insulated from them. They seem to have the ability to store things in their souls, to prioritize based on internal values rather than ideology or dogma, and more importantly, they seem inmune to or at least tolerant of pressures that others cave in to. They also find their "calling" or arrive at that critical moment of change in their lives at unexpected times.

We sometimes assume, that character development is easier in fiction because the author decides the time and place, and the personal traits. Yet, any good fiction writer will tell you that sometimes characters take a life of their own, push back against our wishes, and eventually find ways to force a compromise that is not always fully to our liking. I remember a minor character intruding and taking over large parts of a novel I wrote.

Writing a biography like writing a novel is fraud with messy side stories, unforseen intricasies, unresolvable questions, and personal flaws that entangle the plot and at the same time provide the much needed nuance to make the life we depict interesting and instructive. Sometimes this really complicates the message we thought we wanted to promote when we started writing, and if we are honest with ourselves--and hopefully our readers--we end with another "story" or biographical narrative.

Embracing complication is important but so is understanding that simplicity runs through every snarled lifestory. In fact, simplicity is the core of every story no matter how complex it may seem. We all have fundamental concepts of life and while we engage in twists and turns, and are tossed to & fro by the waves of daily living, we tend to default to those core ideals. All of us have values and they usually are the ones that simplify our desires even if they might complicate our lives when we execute them. This makes it imperative that we find the "simplicity" of someone's life and create a core understanding before we start adding the complexities that come with a lived experience.

The simplicity together with the complexities is what creates the nuance because nuance is neither "and/or" but the "maybe," the one thing that is not clear, which is not explainable altogether by looking at the past, the relationships or even the aspirations. People sometimes act against their own selves  and sometimes they show flashes of charity or malevolency that seem out of character. At other times, they show an adventurous spirit or a cautious heart that is uncharacteristic of those traits we have assigned to them.

What are we to do with this? Some scholars discard these traits so as to keep their "narrative" clean. Others make too much of them and create disjointed portrayals, and of course, some build whole new narratives from them. Nuance, however, is not really the dominant trait of anyone, it is simply the little thing that makes them unique within the whole. Someone can still be "representative" and we can still "learn" things about a larger group by studying these people, but they serve to remind us that no matter the similarities and the representative nature of some people, they are still human beings and have particular wants and dislikes, some which make them different from or similar to others. These pecularities are important to note because they provide cautionary signs that we should constantly juggle the collective as well as the individual idyosincracies of a person's life in writing biography or in writing fictional characters. Yet, we need to remember that at the core most people have simple aspirations that often get encumbered by the experiences of everyday life. 

Understanding these will allow us to make sense of all the layers of complication that people acquire in a lifetime, and to better understand the person. It will also reveal in which way they are representatve of and peculiar to what surrounds them.