Fiction: The Art Form of Human Yearning

Today's post is an excerpt from an interview with Robert Olen Butler. He speaks with clear insight about characters and the art of fiction as a whole:Fiction ultimately is the art form of human yearning, and that is essential to the work of fictional narrative art. A character who yearns is not the same as a character who simply has problems. A lot of characters have problems, but the problems have not yet resolved themselves into the dynamics of yearning for this writer and this character. That yearning is at the heart of all temporal art forms.All works of art, I believe, are organically whole down to the tiniest metaphor; everything must resonate into everything else. At the heart of that is that the character yearns for self or for connection. The yearning dictates every other choice. They also are the things that generate what we call plot, because it is the efforts to fulfill a yearning that are thwarted or blocked or challenged that then provide the elements of plot.The reason the yearning is so rare—and it is very rare, indeed—in the work of inexperienced writers, is that they often have trouble manifesting this yearning in a natural way in their stories. A story is not ready to be written until you have an intuition about the yearning of the character in your unconscious. I think it’s a way of averting the eyes: If the passive central character is simply beset by problems, just moving through a world of incident that’s really not been shaped by any kind of dynamic from within the character, it’s a safe world. It’s a calm and detached world.From Close-up: On Characterization. The editors of Glimmer Train Stories and Writers Ask. Please visit robertolenbutler.com.***I had not lived in the apartment building for long before I came to know Jerome. Rather, I should say, before I came to know of Jerome. He lived in a suite on the second floor but stayed shut in away from the world. He had inherited a great deal of wealth, and lived on a weekly basket of food that arrived at his doorway. He was young. I could not understand why he was determined to see no one.The apartment was beautiful, but old, like many things in Montmarte, Paris. My next door neighbor was a stunning girl who hoped to be an actress. I saw her cavorting with more than one man, and knew she must still be looking for love. I said this out loud to my elderly downstairs neighbor, who had invited me into his home for a cup of tea."She used to love Jerome."I forgot about my tea and it stayed lifted halfway to my mouth."What happened?""She fell out of love with Jerome. It happens everyday.""Is that why Jerome never leaves his apartment?""I do not know."That afternoon, as I walked across the narrow street toward my home, I saw the girl that Jerome loved, walking arm in arm with a man who looked like a rock singer. From the second floor window, Jerome watched, a terrible sadness in his eyes. To him it must have seemed that though only the windowpane lay between them, the distance from his heart to hers would never be closed. She did not look up, and when she disappeared inside, the blinds closed, and Jerome went back to waiting for her.***Getting Started: 5Character: 5Point of View and Tone: 4Plot and Narrative: 4Dialogue and Voice: 4Descriptive Language and Setting: 4Revision: 4Overall: 4*Level 4*