“Darkly Dreaming Dexter”

A good friend loaned me DVDs of the three seasons of Dexter when I was recovering from surgery.  I’d heard of the show, read reviews of the books in PW, and once I began watching the DVDs, could not understand why I hadn’t watched them earlier or read all the books.  For people with delicate stomachs and sensibilities, Dexter Morgan and his wry, dark view of the world, could be rather offensive.  Humor fills the show, black or satirical or otherwise just funny, steeped in the setting of Miami, and strongly focused on the police characters as Dexter’s “family.”  After all, his sister, Deborah, is one of the cops….

I was so hooked on this anti-hero character (I love anti-heroes like Tom Ripley and my own Evan Quinn) that I decided to read all the books while I (and my good friend) wait for season 4′s release on DVD.  The first one is Darkly Dreaming Dexter.  I wanted to know how closely the cable TV show followed the book.  I wanted to know how Jeff Lindsay had written the character of Dexter Morgan so that he was likeable.  He is likeable in the show, easy to relate to because of his flaws, not least of which is his need to kill.  The show makes it clear that, like Hannibal Lecter, Dexter has a “code” regarding whom he’d kill and how.  He’s established a ritual in the show for fulfilling his need.  As a serial killer, he’s kind of boring, actually.  Nothing that unusual about the ritual (it’s all very logical for his purpose and code) and he leaves nothing, I mean nothing, behind for anyone to find.  The cops don’t know that they have a serial killer in their midst, working as a blood spatter specialist in their forensic lab.

The first novel grabbed me by the throat on page 1 and did not let me go, even after I finished it.  The cable TV show had followed the book closely but had also embellished and added quite a lot that did not detract from the story but enriched it.  Jeff Lindsay and his Dexter left me hungry for more.  How did he do that?  As a writer, I wanted to know.  How did he do that?

Point of view.  Lindsay did a potentially limiting, brave and extraordinary thing: he gave the story to Dexter Morgan to tell, i.e. he used first person point of view, the first person being Dexter Morgan.  The reader sees everything through his eyes, reads his thoughts, knows what he knows about what’s going on in the story.  We are in Dexter’s mind.  He tends to be rather hard on himself, too.  Especially when it comes to emotional expression.  Over and over, Dexter thinks about how he doesn’t feel anything, or what he feels is inappropriate.  He’s an intelligent dude and observant.  He understands that certain behaviors go with expressing certain emotions.  He is loyal to his adoptive family and to his job.  He’s also aware of what he calls his “Dark Passenger,” the impulse, and the intelligence that goes with it, to kill.  In this first novel, Dexter becomes fascinated by a serial killer in Miami that drains his victims of blood and cuts up their bodies, wraps the pieces and leaves them at unusual places.  Dexter decides that he admires the killer’s technique and soon learns that the killer admires his.

I call Lindsay’s decision to write in first person POV brave because it could have not worked for a character like Dexter.  Who wants to get inside the head of a serial killer?  Yuck.  But he approaches the character as being a human being first, albeit a deeply flawed and traumatized one, intelligent, wanting to belong and be loved, and not able to remember the trauma that marked him for life.  His craving to satisfy his Dark Passenger is not so different from a craving for drugs, alcohol, tobacco or sex.  He’s been fortunate in his adoptive family: his sister Deborah loves him unconditionally and accepts is quirks without question (but some teasing), and his father, Harry Morgan, a cop, recognized early how the trauma had affected Dexter and taught him how to channel and control his Dark Passenger.  Harry gave him his “code.”  He follows it religiously.  Lindsay managed to make Dexter likeable through his voice, his attitude toward people and the world, and through Dexter’s unique sense of humor.  It’s fun to spend time with him, and not so frustrating that he doesn’t have an omniscient view of what’s going on in the story.

First person POV is limiting .  The reader only knows what that character knows, sees, hears, experiences.  It can be very effective for creating suspense.  Jeff Lindsay has used it to create a connection between the reader and Dexter.  Bravo to you, Jeff Lindsay!  I’ve already bought the second novel in the Dexter series…..

Creative Process

My scientist friend forwarded to me a questionnaire from Minnesota Public Radio a couple weeks ago.  My usual response to questionnaires is deletion, but this one was for a project about creativity and the creative process in all aspects of life, not only in the creative arts.  That really piqued my interest, so I filled it out, sent it in.  The first effect I noticed was more e-mails from MPR Public Insight Network asking for my response/reaction to current news topics.  Interesting.  They are building a network of sources from the general population, not only from experts in specific fields.  Then yesterday I received a phone call from a pleasant-voiced MPR intern who wanted to ask me more questions about my creative process for my writing.  He was also interested in how my creative process translated to other aspects of my life, i.e. my job search.  I like this! 

Human beings are highly creative, sentient creatures.  The human mind wants to play (think and create) all the time, except when asleep, and then its play continues in a different way that helps to re-energize it and our bodies.  For people who hate to be bored (me), boredom is worse than physical torture (well, not really, but almost).  So what does the mind do?  Daydreams.  Fantasizes.  Dissociates and/or hallucinates.  Or finds something more productive to do.  The mind does creativity.  What we call imagination is the energy force behind the mind that fuels the mind’s play.  The mind loves to create things — ideas, dreams, words, jokes, pictures, stories, languages, music, every gadget and invention ever made (including those that ended up in the trash).  It eats problems for lunch.  I don’t think humans appreciate their minds nearly as much as they could. 

Is there a process to this creativity?  Sure.  But it can differ from person to person, situation to situation.  The creativity required to send a person to the moon is a bit different than writing a story about a man living on the moon.  They have one thing in common: imagination.  I suspect that my scientist friend is just as creative as I am, but she needs to apply it to different things than I do and in different ways.  But this is certain: the creative process inhabits everthing humans do (except maybe anything that results in carpal tunnel syndrome).

My creative process is something I try not to think about too much.  It is what it is.  What I do think about is how to support it, help it, feed it.  And I listen very closely to what’s going on in my mind (which introverts, like me, are extremely good at doing and extroverts tend not to understand at all).  One of the things I do to help my process is to give it time.  Play takes time: quiet time, peaceful time, time to think, daydream, let the mind wander.  I keep pen and paper close so I can write notes as the ideas begin to flow. 

My imagination likes to work out to music.  I’ve discovered that my morning workouts, before I begin work at my desk, are a perfect opportunity to invite my imagination to solve writing problems for me.  I listen to classical music that I know intimately and love while I work out.  The music sets the tone, opens the doors and windows, and gets things moving.  I imagine that I’m talking with a person or group of people in the future, after I’ve solved the problem I’m working on.  They ask me how I identified the problem, why it was a problem, and then how I solved it.  This process has successfully resolved every writing problem that I’ve put through it.  I have complete confidence in my imagination. 

What’s your creative process?  How do you support and feed it?  Next time you have a problem that needs solving (start small if you’re not already used to working with your imagination), try imagining that you’re talking with someone in the future, after you’ve solved the problem, and they’re asking you about the problem and how you solved it.  Adapt this support for imagination to suit your own mind’s way of playing….

Influences, Part 2

In Part 1, I wrote about early influences on my writing, primarily books.  Novels have been a major influence on my writing for my entire life, but they are intertwined with other influences, some related, some not.  Writers never work in a vacuum.  We are surrounded by influences every day.  It could be something in the news, an experience we have in our daily lives, or that someone close to us has had that influences our thinking, the way we perceive the world.  I remember that I began writing a journal after I read The Diary of Anne Frank when I was ten or eleven.  I still write a journal, usually making daily entries.  Anne Frank was for me a totally compelling character; a real person, yes, but also a character in her own life’s drama.  What connects all the different influences on my writing — novels, nonfiction, movies, the world — is people, specifically characters. 

Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird and Atticus, T. H. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia, Nikki in Mary Stewart’s The Moon-spinners — these characters fascinated me as a young writer.  Then I encountered Shakespeare and he turned my world upside down.  Writing is hard enough, but why make it harder on yourself by writing in verse?  But oh, his characters!  Wow.  And my favorite as soon as I read him was, and remains, MacBeth.  He is both the hero and the villain of the play, not only revealing the problems with hubris but also ambition and the lust for power.  And I wondered, what made him that way?  Why? 

Characters who are both heroes and villains.  At the time, I didn’t realize it, but these characters and what motivates them are my primary fascination.  I love them.  Tom Ripley in Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels, Alex in A Clockwork Orange, Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, Nabakov’s Humbert Humbert (whom I detested, really), Hannibal Lecter, Michael Corleone, and most recently I’ve discovered the Dexter novels and TV series.  These characters and others like them have influenced the characters I create so far in my fiction.  They are anti-heroes, protagonists that are both heroic and villainous.  Not tragic at all, probably because they have created their own moral worlds, and they operate rationally within that world and adhere to its rules.  They may have regrets or remorse, but it doesn’t last long and doesn’t affect their behavior and choices.  My favorites are Tom Ripley, Hannibal Lecter and Dexter Morgan, two sociopaths and a psychopath.  Their relationship with power and powerlessness interests me the most and has influenced especially the Perceval novels. 

Evan Quinn, the protagonist of Perceval and subsequent novels in the series, is an anti-hero in the tradition of Tom Ripley more than any of the other anti-heroes I’ve encountered.  He is more conscious of right and wrong, wants to do the right thing, but his need for power trumps everything.  This character profile is common among people in the real world, both men and women.  They live next door, work in the office down the hall.  I hope that readers will recognize that and relate in their own ways with Evan.  Most of all for me, he’s fun to spend time with, to write, and to share with the world, and I am his creator….

A Conductor Website and Blog

A friend recently mentioned that Leonard Slatkin, current Music Director of the Detroit Symphony and former Artistic Director of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Viennese Sommerfest, has a website and blog.  Thanks to Inside the Classics, I found it quickly.  The blog “Notes,” gives a glimpse of what a well-known conductor’s life is like professionally.  The good and the bad. 

Enjoy!