Hope

Posted on 01 December 2009

Allow me to open with a paraphrasing of a Greek myth:

And when Pandora opened the box, all of the evils of the world were let loose.  Plague, famine, pestilence, war, hatred, jealousy, and anger.  All that was left in the box was a single, small glimmer of light.  Slowly, she reached into the box, wondering what small light could have survived in the box with so much darkness, and she found Hope.

Sentience is sometimes defined (in part) as having the ability to contemplate one’s own death.  Morbid, and perhaps not exclusive to humans (or “sentient life”) but it’s a good place to start on why hope is so intrinsically human.  Everyone feels it in one form or another.  The good religious person hopes for an afterlife, and the good atheist hopes that there is a rational, “scientific” reason for everything.  The good hero hopes to win and so does the good villain.  A boy might hope that he didn’t come off as too pushy, and a girl might hope she hasn’t made a mistake by starting a relationship with a bang.  We hope that our lovers don’t hurt us, and we hope that our enemies never have the chance.

So, to tie into writing for a bit, a character building trick is to understand what your character hopes for.  What does he or she have faith in or hold out for despite having no “good” reason?  What is that light that can hold out against the bleak despair of a universe that has perhaps been most aptly described in its carelessness by H. P. Lovecraft?  And no, I’m talking about fish-men, but about how it will grind us in its gears without a second notice, or a first for that matter.  If you can understand these things, you are going a long ways bringing your characters into the third dimension.

OK, back to philosophizing.  Want to know how to get into a character’s head?  Get into your own.  What do you hope for, and why?  I mean, really, why?  Why do so many people hope for an afterlife, any afterlife at all?  Not all of the major religious afterlives offer reunion with lost love ones or blissful continuation of your mind (or soul, as you may prefer).  Why do some people hope to be reborn instead?  Or to be absorbed into an eternal tranquility where they can live on without actually having to?  How can an atheist contemplate death (and mark my words, they do) without falling into utter bleakness?

Personally, hope for me is a self-made thing.  I carry hope in myself to be a good father, a caring lover, and successful writer.  Hey!  I can’t be completely mushy and sublime, can I?  But yes, I don’t hope for some “lucky” break where an editor is taken by an odd mood and grabs my stuff up.  Well, alright, yes I do, but I want that mood to one of “I want to publish the next good thing I see.”  And I want that good thing to be my manuscript, and the only thing that can make it good before the editor sees it is me.  Well, me and my small cadre of test-readers.  (LOVE YOU GUYS!)  Do I have any logical reason to think I’m gifted specially to do these things I hope of myself?  Not really.  I just know that if I hope, it will actually help me to make it happen.  And that, I think, is all the hope one could ask for and ever need.