Writing Characters Who Are Smarter Than We Are

By Steven Pressfield | Published: September 8, 2010

There’s a great moment in the movie Tootsie, when Dustin Hoffman—in costume as “Dorothy Michaels” but speaking as himself, “Michael Dorsey”—says, out of respect for Dorothy, “I wish I was prettier.” In other words, the character he was portraying was better than he was. That’s an amazing thing if you think about it.

Dustin Hoffman as "Tootsie": He wanted to be prettier

Working above our game

As writers, can we write characters who are beyond us emotionally and intellectually? Can we work above and past our own personal limits?  I’ve heard the opposite. I don’t believe it. How does Thomas Harris (who I’m sure is a very nice guy) conjure Hannibal Lecter? How did Arthur Golden pull off so brilliantly Memoirs of a Geisha? How did Dickens get inside the skin of any of his characters—or Shakespeare or Tolstoy or Sophocles?

The answer is that we as writers (and painters and filmmakers and every other kind of artist) work from a part of our beings that is far deeper and wiser than our mundane everyday selves.

There’s no great mystery to this. As kids we could pretend anything, couldn’t we? Be Flash Gordon, be Catwoman; we could walk like an Egyptian or mock our assistant principal’s accent; we could mimic flawlessly the way Sister Mary Catherine screwed up her nose when she whacked us over the knuckles with her yardstick.

Being brave in our work

When we are told to be brave in our work, what that means is “trust the source.” When I was working on The Legend of Bagger Vance, it became clear to me very early that my narrator—in whose voice I was speaking—was a much deeper character than I am. Was I daunted? Hell, yes. But it also became clear very fast that this character (a Southern physician in his seventies) was speaking in a true and authentic voice. How does this happen? I don’t know. It just does.
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Posted in Writing Wednesdays
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