"The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But in real and lasting writing the character is"
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Park is taking a scalpel to the most common kind of fictional laziness: the belief that if you just keep your characters talking and moving, meaning will eventually accrete. She grants, almost generously, that some genres can get away with this - plot-first fiction, melodrama, the brisk satisfactions of “what happens next.” That concession is the trapdoor. By calling it “legitimate,” she avoids snobbery while still drawing a bright line between competence and consequence.
The unfinished clause, “But in real and lasting writing the character is,” matters as much as whatever noun she’s about to land on. The sentence breaks where a manifesto should crystallize, forcing the reader to supply the missing principle: character is not a mouthpiece or a chess piece. Character is interior weather. Character is contradiction. Character is what speech and action fail to confess. Park’s subtext is that durable fiction is made in the negative space - the motives characters won’t name, the desires they misread, the private bargains struck beneath the dialogue.
Contextually, Park comes out of a tradition of unsentimental social realism, attentive to class, hardship, and the ordinary pressures that bend people into shape. In that kind of writing, “simply say and do” isn’t neutral; it’s evasive. It lets the author skip the moral and psychological accounting. Park is arguing for the hard labor of implication: the slow construction of a person so specific you can feel the cost of every choice. “Lasting” isn’t about elegance; it’s about depth that keeps paying interest after the plot is over.
The unfinished clause, “But in real and lasting writing the character is,” matters as much as whatever noun she’s about to land on. The sentence breaks where a manifesto should crystallize, forcing the reader to supply the missing principle: character is not a mouthpiece or a chess piece. Character is interior weather. Character is contradiction. Character is what speech and action fail to confess. Park’s subtext is that durable fiction is made in the negative space - the motives characters won’t name, the desires they misread, the private bargains struck beneath the dialogue.
Contextually, Park comes out of a tradition of unsentimental social realism, attentive to class, hardship, and the ordinary pressures that bend people into shape. In that kind of writing, “simply say and do” isn’t neutral; it’s evasive. It lets the author skip the moral and psychological accounting. Park is arguing for the hard labor of implication: the slow construction of a person so specific you can feel the cost of every choice. “Lasting” isn’t about elegance; it’s about depth that keeps paying interest after the plot is over.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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