A retail window causes us to slow down. Maybe it’s the dated style of the make-up, the thin, arched brows. The position of the palms against the chin. The reflection on the glass. We might see our main character in the mannequin, or a new minor one. We go. Come back out and stare again at the whole arrangement. The placement of the objects is deliberate. Everything belongs. Relationships are implied. We see the vision of a life. A story behind this person, and we want to enter that story.

There’s backstory, embodied in each of the objects around the woman and a sense of a future reflected on the glass. So we have past and future and present.

This is what we want our work to do. We want many things held in relationship to each other. We want them to all feel necessary. We want them to all bear some relationship to our main character. And we want them to be layered.

The window designer didn’t attach notes to each object to explain their relation to the woman with the gloved hands. Likewise we don’t have to be explicit about the backstory of our characters. But we have to know the backstory so it bleeds into the way the character thinks, speaks, gestures, acts.

Memoir, flash, sci-fi, self-help, our text can’t just randomly pile up a bunch of information. We need to select the details and arrange them so they bear a relationship to each other. In this way we weave our backstory, we shape a vision of a life. That is the first step.

Then we need to take this collection of objects and relationships, and aim this toward a vision of a life that we alone imagine.  We can only write a story that bears the mark of our own, distinct individual existence if we open the work to a vision that is larger than the details. A vision that we hold dear. We need the details to imply a vastness. And we each envision such a vastness in our own way.

So we come to terms with the largest question we’re addressing. We collect details, like this pair of gloves, this arched brow, We arrange them on the page, the line, between chapters to convey a life lived. A vision of a life lived. And so  that we don’t just make stuff, we aim that vision toward the larger thing, toward justice, hope, revenge, grief, peace, love. We take the gloves, the arched brow, the matte lipstick, all the backstory and aim it by deliberate arrangement, and by honoring our own sensibilities, we bear witness to the vastness we encounter in all great art.

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Exercises:

1. For ten minutes, write everything you know about this mannequin from what’s displayed. Her life history, her relationships, her aspirations, fantasies, regrets, her to-do list, the color of her bathrobe, her favorite dessert. Just write. On another day, see if you can give any of this material to a character in your current project.
2. Consider the first time one of your characters enters a room. Give as much of the character’s background as you can by how he/she looks, gestures, stands, walks, waits. By the objects. No speaking.  No dialogue.  Silent, like this mannequin.

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©Mary Rakow, 2023. Please do not reproduce without written permission from the author.