The Author as a Character

My creative writing instructor mentioned, somewhat in passing, that having a main character (or maybe even any character) who is an author makes for a boring story. I'm not sure that's true, but it started me thinking about books I've read where an author does make an appearance as a character.

Off the top of my head, here are a few books I've enjoyed with the authors as characters:

The Dark Half by Stephen King - tormented writer spawns alter-ego
The Dark Tower VII by King - he actually appears as a secondary character himself
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien - a writer of the same name relays tales of the Vietnam War, but it's unclear if O'Brien intends for the character to be himself

Do frame narratives count? Something like Conrad's Heart of Darkness comes to mind since Marlow begins the frame narrative and we follow him into the Congo. In this case he's the "author" of an oral tale. And taking this tack to the extreme edge of "characterness," what about Walton in Frankenstein? (Yeah, I know, who? He writes the letters home to his sister, relaying Dr. Frankenstein's story, and doesn't show up again until the very end if I'm remembering correctly. Tiniest frame of a frame narrative... ever.)

Anyway, what do you think? Does it make for an interesting story? Is it a trap for incapable writers? Can you think of other examples? What about that old adage, "Write what you know?"

Anna Maclean wrote a mystery series where the sleuth is Louisa May Alcott, Stephanie Baron wrote one as well, but the sleuth is Jane Austen. I know there are books out there with Edgar Allen Poe as a character, the only one that comes to mind is Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard. hmm. Peter Heck wrote a mystery series where the slueth is either Mark Twain or Tom Sawyer, I haven't read them so I am not sure which. Do you think those kind count?

I tried to fix my touchstones in an edit, but still some aren't working... How can Austen or Poe NOT be touchstones??

Isaac Asimov wrote a mystery story about a murder at the American Bookseller Association convention, where he was a minor character. It is called Murder at the ABA and was somewhat amusing - for the Asimov fan, as he was poking fun at his own large "self-appreciative" ego, etc.

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

Dorothy Sayers added an author as a love interest to her detective mix in her Lord Peter Wimsey novels. It only made them better.

#2 Well if it's Mark Twain I would count it, definitely. Sounds interesting and the moustache certainly fits the role ;)

I also just realized that I forgot two of the most well-known King books with authors as characters, Misery and The Shining! Hmmm Stephen King likes to write about authors.

I wouldn't say it's boring for a novel to have an author main character. It's a little unoriginal. "Write about what you know" they tell him (her, them), so they write about being an author. A good author can do it well. A bad author will do it horribly, but they would write about other things badly, too, right?

Not sure if this is what you mean, but one of my favourite short stories is After Midnight by Mercedes Lackey (I found it in DAW 30th Anniversary Fantasy Anthology), its about the characters from her books confronting her about how they were treated in the stories - very funny & very well written IMHO :)

7> True enough. I'm thinking of asking my instructor to clarify her statement as it really was just a remark in passing at the time. At the very least, I'd have some more examples if she remains insistent.

8> That's great! I'm definitely going to have to read it. I've often heard that characters can take on a life of their own for the author. The blurry line vis-a-vis real life-author and fiction-character may be a pretty common theme in contemporary fiction.

Edit: well not over the broad spectrum of contemporary fiction, but in cases where the text features an author as a character, I think

Also, for some reason, I can't stop thinking about the possibility of a Socratic dialogue staged ala Lackey's story.

Bah, off to bed with me!

I've often heard that characters can take on a life of their own for the author.

They do and they're pesky when they do. At least, I should say, I've never encountered an author who didn't say their characters happily go off on their own merry way, but since most of the ones I know are unpublished you can make of that what you will. ^-~
I've tried summing it up many times before; I'm stuck with a dialogue like this:

Author: You're at a crossroads in a dark cave. You cannot go back, only left or right. Go right.

Character: I have a phobia of going right, I'm going left, so there.

Author: You can't go l-- Oh, fine. Go left.

Characer: Argh! What am I supposed to do about this dragons?!

Author: I told you to go right, didn't I? But did you listen? Nooo. Serves you right. I'll be over here with cooperative characters while you sort out how to deal with the dragon, hm? Holler when you're done.

Slightly more on topic: There's also The Vampyre by Tom Holland, which has Byron as narrator and Lord Byron's Novel which, as you can guess, has writer characters in there too.

Unless it's changed, Graham Greene's The Third Man has a writer as protagonist. Personally, I think that was the first time I've seen writers used as protagonist outside of snippets of Jessica Fletcher on tv, but I could be wrong.

As Will said, a good writer will turn the premise into a good story, but a bad one will make it fall flat. I don't think that's so much to do with the character's profession as well as with the writer's skill (at that point in time) and the story itself.

I've a short story (admittedly it's not very good, in my opinion) with a writer as main character. I'd be surprised if someone called it boring. Zany, likely. Stupid, possibly. But boring? How does your instructor feel about artists as main characters then? Why aren't they boring? (I mean, from the original way you phrased it, it does sound rather like she's a problem with the character's profession, not the rest of the story.)

Also, you should try writing yourself a dialogue with your characters. It's insane, but so, so much fun.

"that having a main character (or maybe even any character) who is an author makes for a boring story"

Do you mean a character who is an author (ie like Thomas Covenant), which is how it reads,
or as an author appearing in the text as a character? which is what you seem to mean.

Clive Cussler appears in many of his works as a bit part. It's intensely annoying. As a reader you know tha author could have put anyone in, but instead is gratifying his (I've not come across any women who do this) own ego trip. Which a) thows you out of the necessary suspended disbelief, and b) just isn't required - I'm already reading your words, you don't need to be present too.

Characters who are authors as fine, Thomas' writing seldom has any input, and you don't get to read anything he wrote, but it is discussed.

Guess your instructor doesn't think much of J M Coetzee despite his many awards (including the Nobel Prize)? His character, author Elizabeth Costello, appears in more than one of his books. In the one I read, Slow Man, she is a passive character who shows up in the protagonist’s life and mostly just observes. She was rather annoying to both the protagonist and me, but I wouldn't say the story was boring, or at least not because of her. It's rather slow paced, an internal psychological plot.

I didn't fall in love with Inkheart when I read it but my favorite character was the author (I can't remember his name off hand). I guess it would depend on how you use the "author" character. I rather like the idea.

>10 sparrowbunny: I can identify with that. I think a lot of writers feel that way about their characters. Your dialog reminds me of the scene in George of the Jungle where the bad guy gets into an argument with the narrator LOL!

Christopher Pike wrote Master of Murder and a sequel story about a writer. Thats one of my favorites of his.

Stephen King's Nightmares and Dreamscapes (TV adaptation) includes a story about a writer who switches places with his character.

I'm sure know of another one but can't think of it right now.

#13 I currently have a character who threatens to steal my laptop if I drift off while she's talking. Don't ask me how she wants to accomplish that, but there you go.

I may have to track down George in the Jungle now just for that dialogue. I really enjoy stuff like that. I've pondered writing out the situation I just mentioned in a bit more detail because it's such fun to do. Gives me a chance to go all out with ignoring style conventions where needed too since they're chiefly for my own amusement. I have a story/dialogue which uses a lot of all-caps as a result of that. Fun times, fun times.

And thanks for giving me (*cough* read my character*) the drive to chase after me to work on her story again. I guess it's back to the trenches for me. ^-~

>15 sparrowbunny: It's a cute, kind of brainless movie. I just watched it with my son again the other night. You can't beat Brenden Fraiser in a loin cloth :-)

I was just reading an interview with Colson Whitehead and he mentioned that the protagonists of all three of his novels are writers of some type. He's got a new book coming out in April. (squee!)

11> "Do you mean a character who is an author (ie like Thomas Covenant), which is how it reads,
or as an author appearing in the text as a character? which is what you seem to mean."

Both, actually. I suppose there might be a bit of a line between the two. I would say that a character who is AN author is more desirable. A character who is THE author should be a character first and THE author second, if that makes any sense. Messing with suspension of disbelief just isn't cool.

Edit: Unless you are writing something with that effect in mind ;)

10> "How does your instructor feel about artists as main characters then"

Good question! I will have to ask. Actually, you reminded me of one of my favourite fun reads, Galatea in 2-D by Aaron Allston. It's a holdover from my teen years. The main character is an artist whose characters literally come alive off the canvas. It's great when he starts creating superheroes and fantastic sci-tech.

Edit again to close off that pesky italics tag

I think "author as character" is a tag I'm going to start adding to my library.
Off the top of my head:
Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers (author as protagonist)
Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart ("Professor Shteynfarb" makes very funny commentary)
The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter (author as secondary character)
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster (fairly brief appearance as author)
Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami (as Hiraku Makimura, minor character part)
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles (sort of)

What about all the Vonnegut books with Kilgore Trout in them?

Chaucer sticks himself in The Canterbury Tales, although author-Chaucer and character-Chaucer are interestingly different.

The main character is an artist whose characters literally come alive off the canvas. It's great when he starts creating superheroes and fantastic sci-tech.

Hee! That sounds like fun! I'll definitely be curious about your instructor's answer and explanation!

Heh rereading my sentence, I think I meant to say "whose subjects." Ahhh well, in his case, the subjects become characters... maybe my brain was thinking caricatures? Some of the subjects become characters that might be considered caricatures. Ahhh fun with words.

19> Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers... I haven't read it, but due to the coincidence of titles with Allston's novel, I looked up "Galatea". You learn something new every day! AND the Powers novel looks pretty interesting, too!

I still might be a little confused as to what the actual debate is, but here's my two cents for whatever they're worth in this economy.

I like books where the narrator is the author. Jane Eyre comes to mind- she is supposed to be the main character as well as the author (Reader, I married him.). That I think works well.

On the other hand, series that take a famous author and try and make them into a main character usually fall flat, IMHO. I'm thinking of a mystery series where the crime-solver is Jane Austen. It feels like they are trying so hard to get into her head that they end up overthinking everything, and it's just a mess.

As for random characters writing books within books- yeah; boring and confusing.

Again, these are my opinions only!!!!

Oh! Emma Bull's Territory features an author as character. Her writing isn't a very large part of the story, but even so. It's there.

24 > I suppose it's not so much a debate as a discussion sparked by a comment made in passing! I'll take two cents wherever I can get it.

If the author inserts a thinly veiled version of him- or herself so as to vicariously interact with favored television or fictional characters, then some of us refer to that character as a "Mary Sue". See *150 Years of Mary Sue" by Pat Pflieger http://www.merrycoz.org/papers/MARYSUE.HTM

27 - Oh, Mary Sue can be terribly annoying. Traci Harding is guilty of this one. Her main character for The Ancient Future is a young Australian woman who is fluent in Old Welsh, a title-winning martial artist, gorgeous, intelligent, magically powerful and so on. The story itself is quite good, but she's one of those characters that can do no wrong, or if she does seem to do something wrong, it turns out t obe for the better anyway. Given how much I don't like it, though, I still own the whole trilogy and have read it three times. Perhaps there are times for wish fulfillment characters. Sookie Stackhouse has a bit of Mary Sue about her, too, but I still read her adventures as well.

Will, someone else I know (in RL) also felt that way about Sookie Stackhouse.