In Praise of Eccentricity
by Philip Martin
Director, Great Lakes Literary, LLC
The core of the writer's challenge is to tell a fresh story. As William M. Thackeray (Victorian novelist, author of Vanity Fair), summed it up: “The two most engaging powers of a good author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.”
But how? How do you put a fresh spin on old and common themes?
One secret: eccentricity!
I’d suggest that something odd needs to appear early in the pages of a writer’s manuscript to catch the attention of an agent or editor. Those savvy shoppers for literary works are not looking for familiarity, but for freshness. Consider that “value” can be defined as “the availability of comparable alternatives.” A commonplace story has less value, because there is likely a stack of similar works available to any editor (piled high in unwanted profusion in some room down the hall).
Odd or quirky is, by nature, interesting. It deviates from the ordinary or expected. It is in some manner unpredictable, strange, peculiar, curious. (The word odd comes from the Middle English word odde, from Old Norse oddi: a point of land. In other words, it is something that sticks out like a sore thumb.)
Sticking out might be a good thing in a literary work. Which story would you rather hear: “Something quite common happened to me today” . . . or one that starts “Something odd happened today”?
Especially in developing their main characters, too many beginning writers avoid eccentricity in favor of protagonists that are too centric: likable, fairly competent, complete, satisfactory in most ways. These familiar, decent characters don’t rock the fictional boat. The only challenges to these good fellows or nice gals come from the outside world, not from their own flaws. The beginning writer tends to create a likable character, and then works like the dickens (an inappropriate pun, as Dickens was known for quirky and oddly-named characters, like Scrooge) to throw a plethora of convoluted plot points at them. In short, these unpublished novels are plot, plot, and more plot, happening to fairly predictable characters.
Perhaps inexperienced authors make the mistake of growing to like their protagonists too much; they don’t want their hero or heroine to be too challenging or difficult. But the ones we enjoy the most are often the most unpredictable, from The Cat in the Hat to Pippi Longstocking.
Some of the best characters are deeply flawed. Think of Sherlock Holmes, one of the most enduring, but not always endearing. Indeed, he was often quite rude and condescending, even to his best friend Dr. Watson. The quirky Holmes was prone to flights of depression, drug consumption, and passionate violin playing (a clear mark of someone with a screw loose), not to mention his completely unfulfilled relationship with women. In short, Holmes was a most eccentric character . . . and therefore, unique and memorable.
Or take the protagonist of the Calvin Trillin novel, Murray Tepper, in Tepper Isn’t Going Out (2003), described by Amazon.com as:
a humorous tale of the urban quest for an open parking space. When a mailing-list broker, Murray Tepper, decides to spend his days plugging meters so he can sit in his car reading newspapers and waive off suitors hopeful of gaining his spot, little does he know that his odd behavior (even by New York standards) will set off a media buzz, provide him with cult-hero status, and incur reproach from the paranoid, dour Mayor Frank Ducavelli, who focuses on curtailing Tepper's “abuse” of the parking meter system.
Odd . . . even by New York standards! Indeed, even the most ordinary thing, in this case parking, can become eccentrically delightful if carried to Seinfeldian obsession.
After all, what is eccentricity? Perhaps it is true confidence in oneself. As a story in the Oxford Student by Sophie McBain, titled “The Importance of Being Eccentric” noted: “We may wonder, is true eccentricity dead?” She cited the rich heritage of brilliant eccentrics at Oxford, such as Oscar Wilde and Harold Acton:
“Oscar Wilde reportedly walked around town with a lobster on a leash and decorated his room with peacock feathers, sunflowers and blue china, [while] Harold Acton painted all of his Christ Church rooms bright yellow and invented ‘Oxford Bags,’ the 1920s’ baggy trousers.”
She went on to note: “[John Stuart] Mill wrote in On Liberty that ‘The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour and moral courage it contained.’ [Mill] went on to say that ‘that so few people now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time’, which, given that this was written in 1859, seems to spell disaster for society today.”
An unwillingness to embrace eccentricity spells disaster for writers, too. It won’t work to build characters from stock elements. As Mill wrote: “Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it. . . .”
Through eccentricity, characters become both more human and more interesting. Consider the description of Captain Hook in Peter Pan, a quintessentially quirky villain.
In the midst of them [the pirates], the blackest and largest in that dark setting, reclined James Hook. . . . He lay at his ease in a rough chariot drawn and propelled by his men, and instead of a right hand he had the iron hook. . . . In person he was cadaverous and blackavized, and his hair was dressed in long curls, which at a little distance looked like black candles, and gave a singularly threatening expression to his handsome countenance. His eyes were of the blue of the forget-me-not, and of a profound melancholy, save when he was plunging his hook into you, at which time two red spots appeared in them and lit them up horribly. . . .
A man of indomitable courage, it was said that the only thing he shied at was the sight of his own blood, which was thick and of an unusual colour.
In dress he somewhat aped the attire associated with the name of Charles II, having heard it said in some earlier period of his career that he bore a strange resemblance to the ill-fated Stuarts; and in his mouth he had a holder of his own contrivance which enabled him to smoke two cigars at once.
But undoubtedly the grimmest part of him was his iron claw.
Two cigars at once? Red spots in his eyes? Blood of an unusual color? A wardrobe like Charles II? And that iron claw . . . and the delight with which he wields it. The odd details create a certain humanity, albeit a scary one, to fuel our interest in the story.
Clearly, villains are easiest to portray as eccentric, since they go naturally against the flow. It is a higher bar to create a likable but challenging hero who is eccentric. Whether it is one with great weaknesses, like Falstaff, or one with a desire for impossible perfection (only to tumble from grace) like Lancelot, or a mixture like Sherlock Holmes . . . whether it is an ambivalent slacker like Holden Caulfield, or a true oddball like Yossarian in Catch-22 . . . eccentricity will capture the imagination.
Find the character that is a bit odd (or a lot so), and you've got a core element of a story that can make the reader sit up and pay attention. By offering something fresh and exotic, you create real value, something we can’t get at the corner convenience store of the imagination. Remember the rule: eccentricity is your friend.
Copyright 2008 by Philip Martin, director of Great Lakes Literary, LLC, and series editor of The New Writer’s Handbook, an annual anthology. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint, contact the author at www.GreatLakesLit.com. Any brief quoted passages from published works are used for the purpose of literary criticism.
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