On Monday, May 14, Week of Writing 2007 presented the Q&A panel “Character and Fiction Writing” in the Mandell Lobby. Upwards of 60 students listened attentively to guest speakers Paula Marantz Cohen, author of many novels including Jane Austen in Scarsdale, or Love, Death, and the SATs; Linda Ching Sledge, author of three books, two of which are award-winning novels; and Nomi Eve, author of The Family Orchard and a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Moderating was Scott Stein, author of two novels, including his most recent, Mean Martin Manning.

Stein opened the panel by asking each writer how they went about creating characters.

“I usually get a character through dialogue,” said Cohen. “I find if I have the character speak, I can generally figure out the rest of him.”

Eve shared her opinion that each character is an actor on a stage. “There’s nothing more courageous than a fiction writer who leaps onto the blank page,” she said.

Sledge agreed; she finds her characters “right from an image and action. … You have to think of characters as 3-D, as spinning and colliding with other characters. That’s what makes them come alive.”

The issue of writing back stories was discussed. Stein offered that some writers write the history of each of their characters, oftentimes very in-depth histories, and know every detail about their characters; some writers do not.

“An error I made was to try to copy real life,” Cohen said. “To try to copy will bring you up against the block of that person’s inner life.”

Eve went even further, saying she doesn’t write back stories, and if she finds herself doing so, “it’s a sign that I’m headed in the wrong direction. My character needs to do things.”

“And my characters need to say things,” added Cohen emphatically. “Quirks, mannerisms, little quips are who a character is.”

Stein then introduced the question of which point of view the panelists preferred telling stories from. He commented that most writers seem to write in first person by default, but that habit sometimes limits the writer’s ability to tell the story.

Sledge stated that she preferred writing in the third person. “There’s more freedom by writing in the third person,” she said. “Imagination takes you to places the ‘I’ couldn’t take you.”

However, there are advantages of using a first-person narrative. “First person can be really valuable to access your own mind,” Eve said. “No one should feel constrained by the persons [or point of view], but use them as tools.”

But Cohen passionately, yet humorously, disagreed. “To me,” she said, “first person is death. It makes me feel like I’m writing about myself, and, for me, fiction writing is about escaping my own mind.”

“Has a character you’ve created ever shocked you?” Scott Stein asked the panelists.

“If they don’t,” Eve said, “I’m in trouble.”

Sledge concurred, adding, “The novelist’s challenge is to make your characters come alive.”

Stein posed one of the most debated questions in the field of writing:  “Can writing be taught? Or is it a talent you are born with?”

“The ability that everyone has, that they don’t know they have, is the ability to create,” Cohen insisted.

The general sense of the panel was that perhaps writing is not merely a choice that writers make; it is something they feel they have to do. The discussion amongst the panelists turned from the ability to write, to the need to write. All three panelists admitted finding a certain amount of therapy in writing.

Sledge admitted, “So much of my family’s dysfunction is in the people I write about that I don’t have to expose myself.”

This sentiment was echoed by the rest of the table.

“You have to be a little mentally ill to become a writer,” Cohen affirmed.