Apocalypse Blonde

Mainlining

One dream of any writer of fiction, beyond the sheer magic of words, the music, and the thrill of taking the reader somewhere only you can see, is to create character. And when I say fiction I’m including showbiz: movies, television, theatre. Anywhere characters are created.

To create a character that seems to have a life of their own, a synthetic personality, is one of the most rewarding and weirdest experiences you can have as a writer. You sit there, looking at the words you wrote, not quite remembering having written them, muttering, “Where did that come from?”

The words came from the basement of your mind. Or the attic. Maybe the closet. They just . . . popped out. Sometimes you can kind of feel them, the words, flying around up there, assembling themselves. Words have weight. And color. They all have a magnetic polarity - or maybe it’s an electric field - and this causes them to want to connect with other words in certain ways. It’s as if they have a mind of their own and you’re just a conduit. A channel. They are using you, these words.

And you want to be used.

In the beginning, a character you create is a kind of amalgam, the components picked from the vast inventory of every personality you have ever encountered and which consciously or not you archived for this very moment. So you write it down. The way they look. Mannerisms. Back history. Most importantly, their speech. So you write it down. And it . . . lies there. Bereft of life. Static. Cold.

Dead, are your words. The mystical electricity short-circuited.

But you don’t give up. What good would that do? You think about the imaginary people. Days, weeks, months go by while you do this part. Usually this daydreaming is not while actually working sitting at the machine or holding the pen, interestingly, but in the between times. Driving to your day job, taking a shower, cleaning the garage. You live with your characters in your head. Some of them become your friends. Some of them hate your guts. You get the sense some of them are just putting up with you, you know, because like where else are they gonna go?

You imagine them in all sorts of situations. Situations which may have absolutely nothing to do with the story you are writing. They’re always there. You find yourself talking back to them. You find yourself laughing at something one of them says while you are picking out onions at Von’s and rush to the stationery section and tear a page from one of those teeny Mead spiral notepads to write it down (and gosh thanks for the use of the pen, too)before it fades away. (It was a remark about farts. Now you know.)

I’m not saying the employees now look at you funny. I’m not saying that. Besides, there are lots of other supermarkets out there.

Then there comes a moment. You have been thinking about the story and your characters. You may or may not have started writing the actual words. Starting to write too soon could be a miscalculation. So could waiting too long.

(Writing is a craft, like cabinetmaking, but it’s also a performance, like getting up before an audience and playing the piano or swinging at a curve ball. A story is something you write once and once only. Redo it, and you’ll have something rather different. Like the fingerprint of your other thumb.)

Sometimes the character will let you know. Recently, alone in the house, I was walking from the living room to the bathroom and I heard someone sneeze behind me. There was no one there. I had a very strong mental image of one of my soon-to-be main characters wiping her nose. Then she looked at me and started tapping one of her feet.

Ready when you are.

I actually heard it. (It’s probably good that I work at home. Safer.)

There’s no term for when this happens, when a character takes on independent life in your head. At least, I’ve never heard a name for it. So I’m making one up: mainlining.

If at the end of a long book you have one or at most two characters exhibiting the mainline quality, that’s exceptionally good. Usually, no matter how great the writing, the people being written about never really leap out of the page. You finish the book, put it down, and the characters just fade into the background. I think that characters maybe get lost in great writing. If the writing is pedestrian, though, they have a better chance of popping out. Not that pedestrian writing is necessary. I think about Suttree all the time and Cormac McCarthy ain’t pedestrian.

A character like this will surprise you, the writer, with dialogue and actions you didn’t know were possible. And they can capture the imagination of the reader. They sometimes acquire a life of their own.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Scrooge. Dorothy, Toto, et al. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, et al. Superman. Tarzan.

(Yes, the gang at Star Trek are on the same level as Holmes, Watson, and the others. Everybody in the world knows who Scotty is. Scotty is real.)

Oh, and I know you’ve seen The Wizard of Oz about a billion times but have you ever read the books? Return to Oz? Ozma of Oz?
You’re not gonna believe it.

Sam, Frodo, Gollum. Gandalf. Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Clarise and the Doctor. Jeeves and Bertie. George and Lennie.

No one saw her coming.

The whole goal of acting is to do this mainline thing right from the start. Convince the audience that they are a real person whom we get to watch do interesting things. You’re actually seeing their lives being lived.

And what lives they are.

24 is one of those series that’s full of great characters like this. They may not reach the iconic heights of the above examples - although Jack Bauer is getting close - but believe me, they pop: Bauer. President Logan. Agent Pierce. Bill Buchanan. Henderson[best villian since the CSM on The X-Files]. Miles. And Chloe.

There are symbolic languages pertaining to character. When you have a cast as large and active as 24’s, the writers can indulge in a bit of subtextual fun. Think chess.

On this show, who’s the queen? Martha Logan? Oh, I don’t know about that. King? Hmm. Well, there’s certainly no shortage of pawns (poor Evelyn). Rook: Bill Buchanan. Bishop: Mike Novick. What’s Audrey? A rook, maybe. I would submit for the queen - the most powerful piece, capable of slashing across the board in one move for a checkmate: Agent Pierce. Yeah, that’s right, Pierce. It’s not about gender. It’s power. That’s all for the White side. For the Black Queen: Henderson. (Martha Logan is the other bishop for the White side, protecting Pierce.)

Not Jack Bauer!? But, but, the most powerful piece! Come on!

Continuing to think symbolically, there is one other very special piece: the knight. In chess, it has one unique power. It can leave the board. It can jump over other pieces. Only the knight can do this. It can disappear from one place and reappear in another, like magic. The element of surprise.

Jack Bauer and Chloe O’Brian are the knights of 24.

No, I’m not reading too much into a TV show.

Chloe is an unusual character for a TV series. I mean, she’s deliberately not a supermodel. She is very carefully not ultraperfect looking. With a very prickly personality. In real life, Mary Lynn Rajskub is a very intelligent and beautiful actress (barely recognizable as Chloe) who I’m sure is extremely aware of all this. Rajskub is that girl you knew in high school who was probably sort of quiet- at first- cuz she’s worried you might not like her but then super funny and she just talks rilly rilly fast and ends up being almost the most popular girl in school but not a dopey soche or anything. Everybody remembers her.

And soche is a word no one knows how to spell.

Chloe is getting into Scotty territory. If this were about fifteen years ago in TV land, she’d already be there, but the audience is so fragmented now, the demographics are so precisely mapped out, it’s hard to come up with a big hit. A ‘cult’ following is what they always call it. Well, that was Star Trek in the 60’s. And 24 in the oughts.

One big difference from Trek, of course: You never worried that Spock or McCoy were going to die on the show. They’re the stars. You know they’re coming back. 24 upends this little melodramatic tradition. Any character is at risk of getting whacked, even Jack Bauer. Keifer Sutherland has stated in interviews [trying to find the link] that at some point it will be almost necessary for his character to check out. And this season, several long running folks have ended up dead. These are the mechanisms of drama.

If you’re like me and have been essentially raised watching regular episodic TV, this is amazingly unnerving. The show just isn’t safe. Everyone is at risk. Some people are put off by this. They literally can’t watch it. They run from the room when the ticking starts. I’ve actually seen this. They hide in the bedroom until it’s all over.

And then they ask me, “Is Agent Pierce all right?”

“Don’t know yet. No sign of him. Just his . . .battered cell phone.”

“Oh, my God. That stupid show! I hate it!”

You think they’ll ever kill Chloe? Kinda doubt it. The only real danger is her character becoming schtick, and therefore boring. That’s life threatening.

Chloe O’Brian is now real. Rilly real. She’s gone mainline, God help us. The writers of the show are chortling with glee, trust me. They’re having a blast.

No one saw her coming.

Jim wrote this as darkness swept over the earth

Filed under: Mary Lynn Rajskub
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