My Characters’ Obsessions

I’m noticing is that as I work on my 9th novel–I’ve written 8–all unpublished–my published work is a collection of short stories, “Keeper of Secrets…Translations of an Incident“—that I’m identifying and honing in on my major character’s obsession.

This is a new discovery for me. I realize in revising and editing my recent, and 8th novel, The House that I did this—wrote the story with full knowledge and out of the p.o.v. of the character’s obsession. In The House is obsessed with the question of what the women with whom her husband had extramarital affairs possessed that she did not. Now while the novel is not a treatise on her constantly thinking about this—this question and related ones continually swirl in her mind as she goes about seeing to her husband—that she was about to divorce when learning that he had a terminal illness.

Regarding character development, giving consideration to the obsessions your major character holds and that bind her/him is a venture worth taking and that if pursued yields much in the way of understanding what makes your major character tick. It also brings texture and color to her/his personality and even their physical features. In short awareness of a character’s obsessions render them human.

We all have them—fears, pet peeves, things that tick us off, rub one the wrong way. It’s what we don’t like about life, but in that we are alive, cannot escape.

Now having taken The House through several revisions and presently writing the rough draft to this 9th novel, I realized that clarifying my protagonist’s obsession–her or his yearning–what it is that won’t let them go–keeps them bound–and that they too have difficulty relinquishing–holds not only the meat of my story. It also holds revelations about my protagonist’s character.

Identifying and working with my protagonist’s obsession provides me with several windows in which to view the various dimensions of my protagonist. It is also the lens through which my major character views the world, and her/himself. Lastly my major character’s obsession is the funnel shaping her/his actions that determine plot.

In the sense the plot flows out of character, the writer, in identifying and writing a story from the understanding of the protagonist’s obsession–the beast within, so to speak— opens wide the door through which to delve into a character’s identity as shaped by her/his desires and wants—what their heart feels and causes them to do and respond the story’ dilemmas as they do. A character’s obsession is at the very core who they are—their identity—not unlike Captain Ahab’s obsession with the whale (Moby Dick) drove the plot in the novel itself (Moby Dick). Knowing them allows you to hold both the perspective of Ishmael on Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, and the internal one every writer must have to bring her/his characters to fullness.