Fiction writers notoriously complain about being distracted and frustrated by the amount of time they spend at their ‘day jobs.’ Many will not even read the work of other authors as this too can be distracting. Some will not travel or even leave their houses. So many things can be distracting and for me, every distraction is frustrating. Therefore, I’ve decided I might try to at least partially tune out the current election campaign while I finish my manuscript. Why?
Political candidates are too much like fictional characters that are in dire need of edits and rewrites. For example, Trump and Sanders have commanded stage attention, but neither work as a well developed characters. As a consequence, I imagine all kinds of stories that would help fill them out – help me care in the slightest about them beyond the polls or my ‘image’ of what will happen if either is elected.
Here are some examples of how I’d rewrite the politicians. I could write a scene where Trump as a younger man is bullied. Psychologists often say that children who are bullied become bullies. I might then feel some sympathy for him if he were at one time on the receiving end. And Bernie? Could I write a scene where obsession becomes the downfall? Arthur Miller certainly could. And Hillary? The woman who stood by her man to her own detriment? Maybe, but that would be so cliché. What about the woman whose pathological need for power becomes a detriment to her family? Again, cliché. Well, what about the woman who masks her true self so often that it becomes impossible for her to take off the mask and she loses everything that had once been real. Hard to know. Rubio, a story about a man with Asperger’s syndrome who wants the public to see how smart he is. Or Christie, a tough guy who was smart enough to get out of Jersey gangs but is held too closely to his past. And Cruz, well it may be a failure on my part, but I simply can’t imagine anything.
I can dream up all kinds of stories about the why and the how of the relationships each candidate may have with families, friends, and each other. But none of the stories fit what I would develop for a character who would one day be president. And this frustrates me and becomes a huge distraction.
So, for now, I will try to tune out the 2016 Presidential Campaign and put my thinking into a different time with characters that are multi-dimensional and interesting.
Advice: Fiction writers don’t let the campaign become yet another distraction. The candidates need to many edits.