Mannequin and Backstory

Sometimes a certain retail window causes us to slow down, to hesitate, to stop. Maybe even to go inside. It might be the dated style of the application of make-up on this mannequin. The dull red lipstick, the thin, arched brows. Maybe it is the position of the palms against the chin. That combined with the reflections on the glass. When we are in our writing zone, we might see in the mannequin our main character. But we also see the objects.

We realize this retail window display will teach us about backstory. We see the layers, the make-up, the gloved hands, the traffic.

The objects have been gathered and placed in this window.  It’s beautiful because the placement is interesting. We feel there is a story behind this mannequin, this person, this character and we want to know what it is. Everything belongs. We know this inductively. The relationships are implied. A retail window, like all advertising, always offers a vision of a kind of life and relationships in that life.

This display, like our novel, memoir, story or poem, is a made thing. It is composed of many objects and the spaces between the objects, just like all of our scenes, references, sentences and words.

With the reflection on the glass, we also see the structures across the street and what this woman would see if she opened her eyes. This makes the photograph of the window all the more interesting. And we see the vehicles on the busy street which come from a time closer to our present, unlike the mannequin whose make-up style suggests an earlier era. This layer brings in another period of time. Perhaps, in the case of the cars, a future our mannequin is imagining. Perhaps in the case of the buildings across the street, a past.

This is what we want our work to do. To be like this photo of this retail window display. 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 the main character of our text. And we want them to be layered. This layering can be in the objects themselves, and in the time periods that are also layered here, in this window and captured in this photograph.

We can write a single sentence about a female character. We can write five. But we can only write a book length work or a poem of a certain scope and ambition, if we compose what feels like a vastness. And to do this, we don’t just line up a bunch of stuff. We place things carefully, next to each other on the page, in the line, between chapters. We layer to bring together, into one thing, a vastness that all great art requires.

Let’s begin…

First, a general premise: There’s a reason why poets and writers, composers, designers, architects and mathematicians wander a lot. When we are “in the zone” of our creative work, everything we see becomes a teacher. Around the city, in the country, at the beach, in the mountains. We stop thinking directly about our project, yet we find it in a cluster of paper cocktail umbrellas, a jazz trio on the sidewalk, a mannequin in a retail window. We find our teachers everywhere!

For this reason, I believe it is a fallacy that writers are primarily inspired by literature or primarily instructed by a writing teacher, group, editor or mentor. These all can play a part. But the primary resource every writer needs is already inside the writer. This treasure is the unique perception of the world that each person has, and an individual way of organizing those perceptions.

When we pay attention to how we actually perceive the world, our teachers are everywhere.

This is true in all the arts. A fashion designer launches his new winter line centered on the use of fake fur because one night at home alone, he watched over and over again, for reasons he didn’t understand at the time, a documentary on eskimo culture. And a German composer writes a new symphony inspired by the castles he saw when he visitedThe symphony is art and is performed now, two hundred years later. Likewise, Le Corbusier was inspired by ocean liners. The list is endless.

We learn from literature and writing teachers, editors, workshops, conferences, all these things. But we can learn from everything if we look through the lens of our writing self.

What can this retail display teach us?

Exercises:

#1. (you may consult the complete image on “photo credits” page)

Write the backstory of this mannequin, as if she were your main character. Just make inferences from the photograph.

-Why are her eyes closed? Why are her gloves this color?

Give her a name. Why is she wearing gloves? Did she buy them herself? Where was she when she bought them?

– What are the sounds here? Is she listening to them or trying to ignore them and escape to another time and place? And if so, where?

-Next, layer what you just wrote with what is in the reflection. Perhaps let what is reflected be a scene she sees in the future. Cars have been invented. Trucks and vans are noisy on the street where she lives in an apartment on the fifth floor. What is she remembering?

#2.

Set a timer. In ten minutes, pretend this mannequin is a character in your work. Give everything in this photograph to your story, your character. Write everything you know from what is displayed. Her life history, her aspirations, her fantasies, her regrets, her to-do list for today, her profession, her neighbors, the color of her bathrobe, her favorite dessert. Just write. Don’t overthink this. Look at the image and write.

-What objects belong to her? What ones belong to another character?

-Take what you like from this exercise and see if you can give any of the material to characters in your current project.

#3.

In the display, the designer did not attach notes to each object to explain their relation to the woman with the gloved hands. It is just implied. Likewise we don’t have to be explicit about the backstory of our characters. But we have to know the backstory so that it bleeds into the way the character thinks, speaks, gestures, acts.

-With your main character, write two lists–first, the elements of your character’s past that you plan to make explicit in your story. In the second, all the things you can think of that you will not make explicit.

-How much of the first list have you already included in your text?

-How much of the second list have you included by implication?

-Keep the list of things you will not make explicit handy. Refer to it often. Let these facts inform how your character moves, speaks, gestures, etc. What comes from this list, that is, what is implied, is often much more interesting than what is explicit.

#4.

Consider the first time one of your characters enters your  story. Without telling the reader any of that character’s background, as an experiment, write this scene:

-The character enters a room. Give as much of the character’s background as you can simply by how the character looks, dresses, gestures, stands, walks, waits.

#5.

Walk in your city, your suburb, your rural area. Find a store. Take a picture of a window you like. If there’s no window, take a picture of a display inside. Or copy one you find in a book. Print it out in color and keep it near your writing place.

-Let all the objects in your photograph belong to one of your characters, even if this feels far-fetched at first. Say, you took a picture of a camping supply store display and not one single character in your story would ever go camping. That’s okay. You can make it a daydream or a fantasy that your character has. Just write anyway. Write ten pages. See what happens. Take what you like, a sentence, a paragraph, a word, the whole thing, and work it back into your story.

#6.

Keep your photograph in mind when writing your own work. Recall how the mind of every reader will easily accommodate multiple moments in time. Past, present, future. We think this way all day long. This is what it means to be human. So don’t be afraid to do this on the page. Don’t be afraid of layering, of complexity, or of implication. These are wonderful gifts we have as writers. Use them. Build something appropriate to our nature. Then celebrate!

©Mary Rakow, 2019. Please do not reproduce without written permission from the author.