Argumentative Writers -- Susan Price

 My Dad used to say to me that if I was in a room on my own, I would argue with my finger-ends.

He said, "If somebody says 'Up,' you say, 'Down. If somebody says 'Straight', you say, 'Crooked'. You can't help yourself."

 Later, my partner would get quite exasperated at finding himself suddenly having to defend an opinion he'd assumed I shared-- and which I often did. But no matter. He'd rashly put the opinion into words -- 'Singer Sargent was a great artist' -- 'The M6 is a busy motorway' -- 'The Sun comes up in the morning.'

I would immediately contest it.

"Why have you always got to argue about everything?"

I have to admit that I have often listened to people making a point that I absolutely agree with-- or did, up until then-- while in the back of my head, forming an argument against it.

I then often argue myself round to my original viewpoint, although not always.

But I think I know when and why this began.

When I was about 14, I decided I was going to be a writer. No ifs or buts. That's what I was going to do, if I had to spend the rest of my life working on it.

I started training myself towards that end. I not only wrote a lot, I started re-reading what I'd written much more critcally than before, and then re-writing. Any serious writer quickly learns that what we do is 'rewriting', not 'writing.'

I started listening not just to what people said, but how they said it-- and bearing in mind that choice of words indicates a lot about character, but also about class and education and the way a person wants to be seen. It indicates fashion and a period of time, too. A recent Guardian article told me that the young people are all using the word 'delulu' -- a word I rather like. In the future, use of that word will instantly date them -- as saying 'Ra-ther! or 'Spiffing!' does now.

One of the issues I started grappling with was that I was going to have to write from the POV of characters who were quite unlike me. For instance, one of my earliest published books was Twopence a Tub, which was about a 19th Century miners' strike. One of the characters is the mine manager. Compared to the miners, he's  wealthy and educated. He does not share their views about the unfairness of their working conditions, and the low level of their wages.

I tried to think myself into his POV, which was one that had been held for centuries: The miners had been put in their lowly position by God,who had also set the 'Coal Masters' above them. The miners, unskilled labourers, should be grateful that their betters provided them with work and homes. If their wages were raised, the 'Coal Masters' would lose so much money, they would be beggared! Then the mines would close and the miners would be sorry then, when they lost their jobs and homes. (The homes that were without sanitation or cooking facilities.)

I had to somehow argue myself into the manager's POV for the time I was 'playing' the manager. Writing overlaps with acting quite a lot.

I've written a lot of books, with a lot of characters. Writers find themselves playing a lot of different people: male, female, old, young-- sometimes not even human. You have to take into account the society that formed them, the attitudes they've accepted and conformed to, or that they've rebelled against. 

So you might find yourself inhabiting the head of someone who completely believes in

Hermes/Mercury

God-- and it might be the God Mercury, the busiest of all Olympian gods, Who was, in between guarding travellers, messengers, and guiding souls to the Underworld, was the Patron God of 'All those who earn their living by words.'

Or you might be in the head of someone who has been enriched by the Slave Trade and can't (or will not) understand why they shouldn't go on doing so -- or in the head of a Northern English mill-owner who's bought a job-lot of children from the local workhouse, put them to work in his mill, and locks them up at night so they can't run away. And why not? He feeds them. They're doing something useful instead of running the streets.

You might be in the head of someone who completely believes in witchcraft and that the spell they're gathering ingredients for will work, because the last one did.

There isn't an attitude or a point of view that you can't argue the opposite for-- or, at least, take up several slightly different stand-points. For instance, that Mercury doesn't exist, He's a nonsense tale-- but the Goddess Isis absolutely does. And so does Brighid-- how dare you doubt it?

I'm sure it's the writing trade that gave me this argumentative tendency.

But am I right? Do you other writers find yourselves constantly arguing the opposite of any opinion you hear?

Or was my Dad right? Is it just me? -- And look out, finger-ends.

 

Susan Price's website is here.

Susan Price's Amazon page is here.