Writing by Numbers 4

by Adrian Glamorgan

From time to space: four gives us geography, the cardinal points of north, south, east and west.   We can conjure maps such as endpaper books of CS Lewis, Tolkein, or AA Milne, a relived childhood or imagined universe. Our task in Australia may be no different. Patrick White received the Nobel Prize for Literature "for an epic and psychological narrative art, which has introduced a new continent into literature." How does the Mediterranean climate of Fremantle infuse Craig Silvey's Rhubarb, the harshness of Group Settlement Nunderup impact on the characters of Joan London's Gilgamesh ? Shadows of welfare files and wheatbelt sun beat in Kim Scott's Benang. AB Facey finds fortune of sorts in the arid north-west landscape; migrant Nino Culotta (John O'Grady)is confused by the 1950s urban Australian dream. Landscape is embedded, not a mere backdrop.

Geography often suggests journey: promised lands, and the forty years before.   There is the archetypal odyssey, the road movie, the seeking of destination, where characters are exposed and transformed. Landform also implies weather:   mirroring action and emotion in what Ruskin called the 'pathetic fallacy.' Failed romances end in downpours, Heathcliff calls plaintively across the moors, and Lassetter, left desert-blind; Steinbeck's Okies lose their topsoil and the Californian oranges tell us about plenty. We can work with or invert the pathetic fallacy, but it's there, waiting for us.

Four also gives us a geography of temperament, to distinguish our characters and how they interact. Ancient Greek physician Galen first described the four temperaments, but try AA Milne: earthy melancholic (Eyeore, with long ears), watery phlegmatic (rotund Winnie the Pooh), airy sanguine (ricocheting Piglet), and fiery choleric (stocky Tigger, on a good day) create an interactive dynamic in the character landscape. Just as a painting might need a small amount of red to help the other colours stand out, so too you story might need a moment of choleric outburst to make the melancholia all the more stark and believable; a sanguine joke can set up the horror that comes to be thus more dramatic. But make too formulaic a character temperament and you've collapsed a four-way typology into a two-dimensional stereotype, so as ever, beware, and use any scheme more as a diagnostic tool rather than a formula for working from the ground up.  

In sprucing up our text magine there are at least four differentiable types of readers, nourished in different ways. A moment of self-pity and tragedy cheers up the melancholics; talk of lashings of ginger beer reinvigorate the flagging phlegmatic; party chatter reassures the sanguine reader; and a bit of action drama helps the choleric feel all the talk has been worthwhile.

The writer might also consider four different demands on the writer's life.   Physically, we need a space to work, even if just in the corner of the kitchen or on the bus. We need the tools of trade: a laptop and printer would be nice, or calligraphy pen with enough ink to go the distance. Secondly, our life processes call us to eat sensibly and sleep sufficiently, to breathe and nourish and maintain ourselves towards sustainable writerhood, to keep our eyes and backs and shoulders in ongoing health. Breathe in and out, and keep the heart warm.

Ah, yes, at heart level, emotionally we need support, but do not confuse this with another's ability to critique our writing, an entirely different requirement, and one only to be rarely entrusted with family and friends. (There are happy exceptions).

No, in our feeling realm, we have our ups and downs, our trials and tribs. As ever, there are times to reach out and help, but not as a means to regularly divert from our own work, and we do well to steer clear of the crazymakers in others that drag us away from our rhythm of daily writing and intrude on our quiet repose.   Keep the inner and outer worlds in balance. A writer has needs, no question, including a hope for moments of recognition, and we would do well to be generous in offering such attention to others, anyone else engaged in the difficult task of being creative, or just making the day happen. Emotional life call for self-management, and nothing, not even being a tortured writer, justifies bad behaviour.  

Finally, we need to attend to the responsibility of being an author. It requires an authorial voice, an 'I am' that speaks from the insights and vulnerabilities and courage of being alive. It means not succumbing to the temptations and flatteries of our emotional life, but calls us to explore our own vocation, our writer's journey, the odyssey of life we are on, a search for our own truth however we come to own it. The author is best guided not by noisy outer fame, but from quiet inner calling.

Try this:

Take one of your characters. Imagine them interacting differently in four Australian cities: Darwin (north), Hobart (south), Sydney (east) and Kalgoorlie (west). What is revealed in your character by this change of locale?

The Buddha described four noble truths: can these be used as a through-line (trajectory) for a longer piece?

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