Characters on Characters

Characters on Characters: I listened to Walter Mosley, Edwidge Danticat, and Dennis Lehane discuss their characters with Harold Augenbraum of the National Book Foundation. Highlights: Lehane said the best opening line is one such as “Joe realized he was out of milk,” because your readers will keep following Joe until he gets that milk. Mosley said he never does research, because a fiction writer is “in the business of telling lies,” and Danticat said that she has to leave a place before she can write about it, otherwise the reality gets in the way of the place she’s creating. All of them objected to the idea of their characters as “dark,” saying that exploring what people do in difficult situations, and the complexity of human nature, is what they are really interested in.