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The Origins of Dawn Carlisle
I'd like to tell you that Dawn came fully clad out of the cleft
head of Zeus...but that would be avoiding truth in favor of
myth. To give you a fair answer, the character of Dawn contains
a part of every woman I've ever known - from my own mother, to
my former wife, down to the wildest tigress I ever dated. And
it doesn't stop there.
Quite a confession...but not very satisfying. No mere floozy is
Dawn Carlisle, this wild woman wanderer, who suicidally jumps
out of Abner's truck at the Palm Coast I-95 exit in Florida,
then turns into a principled young woman capable of nursing an
injured bull terrier back to health. She then, in good time,
falls for her rescuer, Abner Weaver, the truck driver who has
interrupted her march to oblivion down the American road…all of
it, quite a stretch. How can this woman have so many sides?
Where, but in America, does a woman have the right to cast
herself adrift with no one concerned enough to come to her aid?
Someone might help (as Abner Weaver most certainly does), but
it would take an unusually kind person - sensitive to the pain
in another - to step outside the callousness we generally
display toward anyone wandering the berm. Head down, bindle
under an arm, deep in anguished thought, a female vagabond
exhibiting not the slightest desire of needing a lift… Health
and legal ramifications aside - would you stop to pick up such
a woman?
What if…you DID stop, accepting whatever it was that was coming
to you for committing such a foolhardy act? Suppose you had no
ulterior sexual or monetary motive in attempting to aid such a
person? What Christian credits might be chalked to your slate?
But…you never intended to stop, did you? Not in a million
years…
That's the beauty of the novel. We can indulge ourselves...let
it all hang out! The truth is, I have a lot of pent-up emotions
regarding the women I’ve formed close bonds with over the
course of my life…I’ve drawn freely on some of those feelings
to shape Dawn. Fifteen years of married life packed plenty (the
good and the bad) in my emotive memory bank. Then the nastiness
of a divorce…the painful transition to a solitary life.
Does a man then insulate himself from the complexities of the
female mind? I guess that’s done easily enough…writing, as I
do, in isolation. But living like a hermit, how do I feel the
emotions I'm no longer privy to? How, as a writer, do I
reconstruct situations I no longer experience? Numerous women
novelists have accurately cranked out the thoughts and emotions
of male characters...why not the reverse? After all, I do have
a rich backlog of experience to draw from. My years before
marriage weren't particularly cloistered.
Let me sidestep to another theory: that men and women are
neither all masculine, nor all feminine; instead, a mixture,
genetically, of inherited traits - some feminine, some
masculine. You might describe the physical features and dress
of a gorgeous female creature, yet gift her with the cold,
calculating mind of an international banker, softened again
with a mother's love for her child, bringing the reader a
fascinating and convincing character. (This is partly what
appeared when I first set Dawn Carlisle on the page.)
But you can't just woodenly toss a bunch of character traits
into a big mixing bowl, stir them around and expect something
believable to pop out. You must feel a genuine excitement in
the character you've chosen to set down - sensing in them a
budding star quality. (A few main characters will be allowed to
steal the show; but you will need to suppress your secondary
characters so they do not. Even so, those minor characters may
toss off tiny sparks of stardom.)
I really believe that, within yourself, you've got to feel the
same gut emotions each character is experiencing. If you don't,
neither your description of their actions, their personae, or
the words they utter will convey that indefinable "IT" quality
- that stellar quality - which must emerge, or like empty sacks
your characters will collapse.
Every writer has to kill his own snakes, getting "IT" onto the
page. If you find my characters interesting, that may come from
the magical education I received in the mid-1950s, when I
studied "method" and character acting in New York with the
great Stella Adler. When the people you are writing about are
so deeply imbued in your psyche you can virtually touch and
feel them as you write their scenes, that's a gift no one can
ever take from you. (It's bound to produce riveting work.) It
may take years of banging away at the keyboard, but one day you
will be startled - you'll know when you see "IT" on the page.
You'll sit back, scratching your head, "Did I just write
that?…"
To get into the desperate, scrambled brain that is Dawn
Carlisle's when she jumps out of Abner's truck, conceivably to
her death, I started with the recordings of Janis Joplin; film
clips from Bette Midler's portrayal in "The Rose;" then read a
few biographies of Janis. (This was occasioned by a writing
instructor at the Cape Cod Writers' Conference. She had given
our class a reading assignment; a story so oddly violent that I
refused to believe the young woman protagonist capable of such
jumbled thinking.) By the time I'd finished my study of Janis
Joplin, I was a believer. I felt my own nervous system
twitching, jangling, rebelling …forget the drugs. I was
THERE…with Janis!
But Dawn's male side - that's the poker wizard. Cool,
calculating, and exacting. The careful student of Doyle
Brunson's Super System, her gifted mathematical mind plotting
the way to clean out every poker player in Steelton and
Reading, PA…revenge for the fortune her alcoholic father had
lost at the game. (This is back-story, off the page.)
And let's not forget that Dawn is the mother of a five-year old
daughter, Lisa. You’d better know, from your observation of
life on this planet, that the female of the species - animal or
human - is not to be separated from her offspring. A good
mother will do anything to protect and nurture her child.
Anything imaginable…no holds barred!
Somewhere I read that women are gatherers and men the hunters
who "risk death to bring back meat." Women bring back the
immediately useful stuff, like "honey, fruit, water…and the
hunters." Women mostly live longer than men; programmed by
nature to do so. They are (generally) more conservative in
their actions. A woman's wiles can translate to the cadgey; to
downright unscrupulous behavior when it's necessary for
survival or the protection of a child. Once sobered up by
Abner's ministrations and the care she administers to an
injured dog, Dawn begins to redirect her energies toward
regaining possession of her daughter.
Dawn Carlisle originates from good stock, part of it Sioux
Indian. So we must know something about what it is and was like
to be an Oglala Sioux, transported east to attend the Carlisle
Indian School in the late 1800s. That was her great grandfather
- the Sioux character very much a part of Dawn's every
decision, as is the white, Irish industrial heritage on her
mother’s side.
She loves Abner with a barely concealed Sioux fierceness, and
here we are back to my longing for a character who is not
afraid to shower love on someone worth loving. When Dawn knows
love, she shows love. I gave Dawn objectives at every turn.
Within each scene she has an objective.
Whether Dawn gains that objective or is frustrated in her
efforts to achieve it, we watch how she acts and reacts. As
writers, we judge her behavior. Should it ring false to the
persona discovered in Dawn, should it deface that "IT" star
quality she has exhibited before, we'll do that scene over -
NOT her character. Dawn's traits, speech and actions are now
ingrained - her character walking, thinking, talking in one
distinctive way. Instinctively, we know that way when we see
it. And we will cast out the crap, whenever and wherever we see
it, as not representing the true and honest origins of Dawn
Carlisle.
by Richard Ide - 8th August 2008
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Richard Ide is a writer of realistic, action-adventure and
romantic-suspense fiction. On May 26th, 2008, Button Top Books
released 3 ACES, his first published work. Now available on
http://Amazon.com or by special order (ISBN: 978-0-615-15821-1)
in bookstores. For more information on Richard and 3 Aces,
visit: http://www.3acesthenovel.com
.
Article Source:
http://www.creativewriter.me.uk
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