Writing Right with Dmitri: Information and Misinformation

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Writing Right with Dmitri: Information and Misinformation

Editor at work.
'I've heard it both ways.'

Shawn Spencer, Psych

One of the questions a writer has to ask about a character, real or fictional, is, 'What do they know?' We all recognise the frustration of reading a detective story where the sleuth simply knows everything, all the time. We get irritated at the fella, and want to throw things. As my department head once said to me at an institution of higher learning, 'How do you know that? WHY do you know that?' I shrugged. I have a junk drawer for a memory.

Arthur Conan Doyle was aware of this tendency. Yes, even way back in the 19th Century. Doyle needed Sherlock Holmes to have a phenomenally wide knowledge. He also didn't want to be hampered in his use of forensic information, being a medical man and a scientist himself. So the first time Watson meets Holmes, it's at a hospital. Holmes has been learning. However, all-knowing detectives are a pain, so Holmes has carefully demarcated areas of ignorance. For example, he doesn't know the earth goes around the sun. He doesn't care. That won't help him catch the perp. Good enough. Also, it gives Watson something to do, explaining it to him.

In the brilliant US comedy series Psych   – and if you haven't seen it, what are you waiting for? – Shawn Spencer is an amazing detective. He has an eidetic memory. His leaps of logic are astounding. He's intuitive, and good at gathering information, and a great interrogator. Sounds dull, right? Er, listen to him talk. Shawn's incapable of mastering the precise meanings of words. But he tries, hard – at the most inappropriate times, such as when faced by an angry, armed suspect. The result? We can't hate this detective for being clever. We love him for what he does to the language.

Shawn's also a master at manipulating other people. In spite of his generally ne'er-do-well status, the faux psychic detective is well-liked everywhere he goes. He gets all the hot dates. He's likely to end up on the front page of the Santa Barbara newspaper. So why don't we find this irritating? It's the way in which his cleverness is intermingled with his ineptitude. Take the time Shawn infiltrated the local planetarium in order to investigate the murder of an astronomer. Now, Shawn obviously knows nothing about astronomy. And some unsuspecting supervisor allows him to run the four-minute planetarium show. We are ready for disaster.

Shawn's planetarium show (sorry, no video available) is a wonder of misinformation. First, he tells the awestruck audience that there are more than four hundred stars in the night sky. Also, that the universe is so mind-bogglingly big, it's even larger than the Indian Ocean. Then he discovers the constellation pointer, and starts naming them: 'man with, er, thing in his hand', 'monkey with rash'…you get the idea. After this display of erudition, he puts the Zeiss projector on the spin cycle, and leaves the viewers in there for 45 minutes. There is a brief video of that.

My point is that you love this character not only for what he knows, but for what he doesn't know, and you applaud his ways of working around (and with) his natural ignorance. When we write about people, we need to remember: they aren't us. We may have made them up, but they're still not us. And they don't always know what we know. What they don't know is often just as interesting as what they do.

What they don't know can hurt, too. Ian McEwan's Atonement, a very serious novel, concerns a young English girl who grows up to become a writer. At age eleven, she knows a great deal about literature, language, grammar, and drama. Unfortunately, she knew nothing about human sexuality. Her misreading of the behaviour of the young adults in her home leads to tragic consequences for all involved. Her ignorance, and not her knowledge, is the basis of the story.

How do you figure out what your characters should or should not have in their personal databases? As Shawn often says to Gus, 'You can't just make up words.' You should let the characters tell you what they know, what they don't know, what they need to know, and how they go about finding out – or don't. Your writing will be richer for it.

And you will be rewarded with moments of pure fun, insight, or illumination. At least, if you pay attention.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

15.09.14 Front Page

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