In storytelling, as in psychoanalysis, characters breathe, grow, regress, surprise us, and resist the meanings we impose on them.

The first version of any story is rarely the true one. It’s the narrative that makes sense, that flatters us, that resists complexity. The writer Anne Lamott describes the process of working through defenses, distortions, and self-deceptions as “excavation.” If we keep writing, keep digging, the polished, palatable surface gives way to something rawer: the detail that complicates, the character who is complicit or unruly, the truth about our characters, or ourselves, that we didn’t want to write.

Fiction writers have some distance from their characters built in; memoirists must manufacture it, transforming themselves into a character on the page. In either form, we are in a relationship with our characters—whether a cultural legend, a parent no longer here, a place, or a part of ourselves. That character is neither flat nor easily defined.

This weekend, we’ll focus on bringing our characters to life, fine-tuning and unearthing the details that, however uncertain or incomplete, are most alive on the page. With verve and generosity, we’ll imagine our characters — and ourselves — more fully.

Weekend Coordinator: Catherine Baker-Pitts, PhD