No Body, But Not Nobody
Believable fictional characters. The way they look, smell, sound. The way they chew their food or scratch their nether bits. Characters can be nitwits or heroes. They can do outlandish things, take crazy risks, dream the impossible dream and nab the golden ticket, but however they look, smell, sound, or chew their food, readers must believe in them. Otherwise writers are lost.
So what happens when a character is not a person? Not an animal? Not even a plant?
Towne, the non-corporeal, quasi-narrator of my novel Dawg Towne is the only character without a face or four limbs I’ve ever written. To me the place of Towne is as real as the characters with arms and legs, or fur and whiskers sharing page space with Towne in Dawg Towne. While it has no body, no sex or gender, Towne does have a very strong point of view. Brimming with personality and strong opinions, Towne can’t gesticulate to emphasis a point, cry when bereft, or laugh out loud when feeling joy. Instead, Towne communicates through rainstorms, heat waves, and the occasional natural disaster.
Many books feature spirits, or purely telepathic alien life forms. I’ve read my fair share of books with body-less beings, floating in and out of the action, wafting around flesh and bone people and having their psychic say so. But Towne is different. Towne isn’t a being, or even a thing. Towne is a place.
I’m sure there are important books — environmentally-oriented books or classic novels that do a really good job at giving voice to natural phenomena. But I purposely stayed in an ignorant bubble while generating the ideas and eventually words that became the character of Towne. I could feel Towne, but I couldn’t see it. And I definitely hadn’t read it. I imagined Towne speaking to me in a deep, internalized voice, a low other-worldly thrum, like a friend made of fog. It covered me and I inhaled Towne’s mist and the words came out.
Towne had great breath before the humans moved in with their petrochemical and synthetic smells. As Towne ‘says’; “You wouldn’t know me now if you knew me then.” I suppose Towne could’ve shouted apocalyptical warnings, but Dawg Towne isn’t that kind of novel. Besides, it is doubtful if anyone would’ve heard Towne even if it yelled bloody hell.
I imbued Towne with a gravitas that transcends the flaws and vulnerabilities of the humans living in its midst. Towne watches humans make an endless mess and hypothetically shakes its head. Towne is the air these misguided creatures breathe, the ground they tread, the seasons they endure. Towne is their birth and decay, their extinction and renewal. Still, in spite of everything Towne loves people, whom it refers to as “the wrong-headed do-gooders who wreak havoc.”
Was it risky, stupid, and potentially pretentious to give a voice to this entity? Perhaps. But I threw myself into it and I’m happy I did. Now that Dawg Towne is out in the world, and Towne exists within its covers, I hope my unusual fictional friend feels known by everyone who reads the book. I love my bodyless, gender-less all-knowing character who “root(s) for these unique if tiny specks who make it their mission to save the planet, save others, save the creatures, save themselves.” If writing is a form of saving others while saving oneself, and I believe it is, I think Towne would approve, and maybe love me in return.
