nautical kitsch
Notes on nautical kitsch
The Mentalist; 957 words; vignette/character study
* Let's not go into how disappointed this show makes me - often. But the first couple of episodes were great, and the characters were intriguing from the start. The show, like this fic, is about detailed observation and deductions derived therefrom (I just wanted to use 'therefrom' - heh). So I had to include observable detail here, while still trying to stick to my old maxim of 'less is more'.
* The dialogue contains a lot of 'what's unsaid' - I've taken off from the dialogue that went on during the episode, before this vignette scene took place, so there's a lot of referencing of things already said. But there wasn't any need to rehash what went on in the episode - presumably if you're reading Mentalist fic you've seen the ep in question. So I just jumped off directly from there. There's also the aspect of 'what neither of the characters is saying to each other' - what Lisbon is thinking she would never say to Jane's face. And he's never going to come out and straightforwardly ask 'well, what do you think of me?'. The characters are constrained by their personalities - they are both quite introspective characters. So the dialogue dances around a bit (I guess the dialogue fulfils the 'less is more' criteria, then) until the moment that Lisbon reveals some of what she thinks she’s deduced about him.
* In a sense this fic is about that theme - the fact that both Lisbon and Jane have deduced quite a lot of personal stuff about each other, but that they would never say it out loud. This fic covers a scene where I imagined they would actually say something, even though it breaks their weird kind of ‘personal space’ code. He’s okay about revealing what he knows about her - the Marlboros, the beer - because his style is to tease a little about that stuff. She is more wary about revealing what she knows about him, because it’s very personal, and maybe it scares her a little.
* At first, this fic feels like it's Jane's POV - we get his observation about the bathroom at the start, and his view of the scene-setting, with the dishes, the fish, and Lisbon. But by the time we get to the second exchange of dialogue, we're aware that we are observing Jane. Lisbon's perspective is the one we're sharing, and the awareness is in the minutiae of Jane's movements (his body position, his smile, his expression), and in the filtered view of these details that reveals an outsider's opinion (Jane's 'nice blank amused look that he seems to have patented'). While it might be possible to read this as Jane displaying a kind of darkly ironic self-awareness, it would be a stretch. The POV is confirmed by the time we get to 'She knows he's right, but she's still shaking her head' - that mention of a thought process clinches it. This fic is about Lisbon, and the conclusions she draws about Jane from what she observes during a brief one-to-one exchange.
* re: POV - I think I probably made the classic mistake of not knowing, initially, who I wanted to inhabit, who’s POV to use. Luckily, in this case, it doesn’t read too hinky - the start kind of flows into the narrative, and being a bit vague about POV is almost a (crime) genre standard anyway. So I got away with it - this time. Otherwise I would have had some rewriting to do.
* I read an essay by Norman Mailer (of all people) who wrote about the way action reveals character. The only line I remember was the one that said "A character isn't revealed by what he says or thinks - a character is revealed by what he does". I tried to apply this rule as much as possible in this fic, as it seemed to cry out for this kind of technique. Jane does very little in this story - he smiles (seven times, so we pick that as excessive), he stares at Lisbon, he looks around the room, he pauses. And by the end of the fic, you kind of get why this is important (I hope). Lisbon, who is also an observer of people, realises that Jane's lack of movement/action actually tells a story all by itself. It tells the story of a hyper-controlled person. And she makes the obvious deduction from that - people who are hyper-controlled get that way for a reason. People who are obsessive and unconscious observers of others get that way for a reason (see Ria Torres, in Lie to Me). They have a long history, and it's usually a fucked up history. Jane is fucked up.
* Patrick Jane is in the same mold as another highly intelligent reader of people, Cal Lightman from Lie to Me. Jane generally ignores the things people say, to focus on what their bodies/faces/self-constructed environments reveal about them. In this fic, he encourages Lisbon to do the same - first, he goads her into acknowledging that observation is a necessary talent, and then he encourages her to exercise that talent on an unwitting subject (the guy across the room), and then he leads towards his goal. For whatever reason, he is directing her towards a deconstruction of himself, by using leading dialogue ('Well, what does it mean that I'm wearing them?'). Lisbon is really uncomfortable about it (all her movements are uncomfortable - fiddling with her drink, looking away, not meeting his eyes, keeping herself still), and she doesn't really know why he wants her to understand him. Her final awareness is of his smile - the way he grins at everybody around the room - and how much that innocuous expression conceals.
* I wanted the reader to feel as unsettled by the exchange as Lisbon was, at the end. So the POV became hers, and the reader is encouraged to identify with her, and if you're (very likely) a female reader, you'll get all the references to Jane's attractiveness - 'the glamour shot' - and how Lisbon's awareness of that makes her very much akin to a viewer of the show itself. So by the end I hope the reader is right up there with Lisbon - feeling a bit freaked out by how Jane is, clearly, kind of weird and screwed up. I wanted this sense of push me-pull me - so, you know (like Lisbon) that Jane is fucked up, but there's the frisson of UST to keep you intensely curious about him.
* I thought pretty early on that Jane had some sort of history as a carnie, before this was made explicit in the show. 'Mentalism' is a kind of carnival trick, right there. Also, Jane's character is secretive, with a controlled facade, and a lack of respect for or interest in authority figures, so I guessed that he had some kind of criminal/underground history. Also, the only way to practice and exploit a talent such as his is to be involved in some kind of sleight-of-hand/con-man profession. Carnival work was the obvious choice.
* On being a weird person writer: When I’m trying to frame a narrative, I do my best to make unexpected choices (usually). I can’t really explain this properly...I try to keep the character in character (through action and dialogue), but I try not to let the narrative fall into familiar patterns. Okay, sometimes I’m constrained by the genre (if I’m writing a romance fic, there’s gotta be some romance in there, right?), but that doesn’t mean I have to write a conventional A+B+C=D formulaic plot. The only way I know how to do this is :
a) to make the opposite choice to the one I know would naturally follow-on in a formula plot. Example - in a horror fic, instead of having the babysitter answer the serial killer’s phone call, I might get her to unplug the phone, Tweet all her friends, and go get her nunchakas.
OR b) to really genuinely try to inhabit the character I’m writing, and try to get a feel for what they would instinctively choose to do (that sounds incredibly hokey, sorry, but that’s what I do).
* On being a weird person writer (Part 2): This is relevant for this fic (which is a vignette, and has no major plot) because I really tried hard to get into Lisbon’s skin, so I could make good dialogue choices. Like I said, I tried to put myself in Jane’s shoes, but they didn’t fit. I felt much closer to Lisbon’s character, which makes sense - she’s a woman, she’s watching Jane as a viewer, she’s forming deductive opinions about him.
* (Part the Third): Working characters like that feels okay to me, although a non-writer might think you’re a bit loony if they see you mouthing the words or trying on the expressions of the character you’re writing (which is why I prefer to write in private). Apparently, though, it’s not insanity - Charles Dickens used to do it too. I’m sure lots of writers do it (they just don’t talk about it!). Sometimes a character takes you on, whether you like it or not. BSG? - I love Kara Thrace, but it was uptight Lee Adama’s voice that really spoke to me. SPN? - I think Jared Padalecki is okay, n’all, (maybe kinda weak as an actor - shhh!), but when I sat down to write fic, I damn well got Sam.
* And some characters speak only briefly. I only got this one fic out of Lisbon, but I like it well enough.
That’s it.