like to work for you,” implying: “I’m going to work for you.” No young man, a Naturalist would object, could be that poised and self-assured. My answer is: That depends on what kind of young man one is talking about and what premises he has set himself.
When I say that no serious young man would act like Arrowsmith, am I going by the statistical method? No; I am going by logic. It is in the nature of a serious young mind not to be casual about its concerns.
But if I were to follow the Naturalistic method of studying real people, I would submit as an example Leonard Peikoff, whom I met when he was seventeen and who was very much afraid of meeting me—afraid in the sense of “awed.” He had a long list of philosophical questions he wanted me to answer, but when he came to my house, he asked his companions if they would please go in and let him stay in the car. (I learned this only years later.) When he did come in, he was obviously ill at ease, in the sense not of foolishness, but of tension. So I asked him: “How did you like the drive?”—trying to do a little small talk to help him relax. And it was he, at seventeen, who said: “Well, let’s get down to business.”
That is what I would present if I were a Naturalist—only then it would be Romanticism.
Like everything else in writing, a characterization cannot be created by conscious calculation.
Take the Roark-Keating scene. Suppose you made a list of Roark’s virtues—independent, rational, just, honest—and decided to consult that list each time you came to a line of dialogue. You would not be able to make Roark utter a single line. Nothing would occur to you; and even if something did, you would have to spend a month figuring out: “If Roark says, ‘Why not?’ does that conform to the list? Or if he says, ‘Oh well, I didn’t mind it,’ does that conform?”
In other words, you cannot figure out consciously the kind of implications I explained when I compared the two Roark-Keating scenes—and I mentioned only the crucial points of difference between the scenes. I could spend two full lectures explaining the implications of and motivations behind the lines in those two scenes alone. It is as complex as that.
You cannot create a character from philosophical abstractions alone; you cannot approach characterization merely by telling yourself: “My hero will be independent, just, rational.” The process is indirect—you must know how to use your subconscious. You must know how consciously to prepare it so that it will make the right selections for you.
Your characterizations will never be better than your power of observation. A human mind does not first conceive of floating abstractions and then, by means of them, recognize the concretes; in order properly to grasp an abstraction, you must derive it from concretes. To prepare your subconscious for writing proper characterization, therefore, you must be a good observer and introspector.
You constantly react to people—you approve or disapprove, like or dislike, are encouraged or uneasy. You estimate emotionally everyone you meet. Learn to introspect in the sense of accounting for what in a person causes your reaction. Do not go through life saying: “I don’t like X. Why? How do I know? I just don’t like him.” That will never make you a writer. Instead, if you feel a strong dislike for someone, then, as your artistic assignment, identify what you dislike, and by what means you observed it.
For instance, a man is rude to you, and you do not like it. What in particular is rude? Is it the implication of what the man says? Is it his voice or manner? Why do you dislike it? File this in your subconscious. Another time, you meet a man who is charming. Do not merely say: “I don’t know why, but I like this man. He’s wonderful.” Identify: What is charming about him? How does he convey it? How did you observe it? File this away. By being a constant, conscious valuer of people, you gather the material from which you will draw your future characterizations.
If you have learned a great many abstractions that you have not yet connected to concretes, do the reverse. For instance, if you decide that you favor independence, observe which words or gestures or manners of people convey independence to you. And, conversely, observe what conveys dependence. What conveys honesty? What conveys dishonesty?