Posted: November 7, 2024

Narcissus

Kepler's Fourth Law of Planetary Motion: The world doesn't revolve around you, you know.

To write well, you need to get into other people's heads -- to understand that your way of seeing the world isn't the only way there is. This empathy can become such a habit that you can forget that some people just can't do it. Either these narcissists imagine that everyone who thinks differently from them is plain wrong, or they don't even realize there are differences.

Narcissists, though, can make for good fiction. For one thing, they're a rich source of comic relief. Some of the best comic characters -- Pride and Prejudice's Mr. Collins, for instance, or P. G. Wodehouse's Spode -- are ridiculous because they are so lost in themselves, so locked into their own understanding of the world, that they can't hear or don't care how they sound to everyone else. Ruth came across a good example of this in her Ngaio Marsh reading, in this case, Death at the Bar. Colonel Brammington is the chief constable who called Alleyn in on a poisoning case. He's also a member of the gentry -- a class that seems ripe pickings for this kind of humor. Fox, Alleyn's sergeant, has just narrowly escaped becoming another poisoning victim:

"By heaven!" interrupted Colonel Brammington. "This pestilent poisoner o'er-tops it, does it not? The attempt, I imagine, was upon you both. Harper has told me the whole story. When will you make an arrest, Alleyn? May we send this fellow up the ladder to bed, and that no later than the Quarter Sessions? Let him wag upon a wooden nag. A pox on him! I trust you are recovered, Fox? Sherry, wasn't it? Amontillado, I understand. Double sacrilege, by the Lord!"

Brammington, God bless him, is blissfully unaware he sounds like an nineteenth-century fop or that most people would not consider the use of good sherry for a poisoning as criminal as the poisoning itself.

Narcissists also give you room to grow your characters. In fact, one of the milestones of growth for children (well, most children) is the moment they realize other people are as real as they are. Having a character go through that realization in the course of your story can give you a satisfying ending. Of course, to pull off this kind of growth, your narcissist needs to be sympathetic -- as opposed to the Spodes of the world. Which means you need to enter the head of someone who doesn't know how to enter other people's heads.

Some years ago, I worked on The Salamander Club, the story of a group of strangers who come together almost accidentally and become friends. (The book's authors, Mats and Karin Eriksson have given me permission to use them as an example.) As the characters' stories and relationships develop, they also explore the human condition, including people who are stuck in that early, self-involved state of development -- what the Salamanders called "The Narcissus Parasite."

We meet one of the core characters, RJ, as he suddenly breaks up with a woman he's been with for some time. Though on his way out of her life, he stops in her kitchen to make himself a sandwich. But we see the scene from his point of view, so we see him leaving a boring relationship that isn't going anywhere, and the woman's anger is more a matter of her love of drama. And he made the sandwich because he was hungry, dammit. We also see RJ's lifelong friendship with another of the core characters, Nilson. Though Nilson sometimes finds RJ annoying, RJ does have wit and exuberance for life, and they enjoy their time together.

As the book progresses, all of the characters grow in various ways -- changes of career, romance, the death of a beloved spouse. RJ, after some struggles, forms a lasting relationship with another core character, Ingrid. But readers don't truly realize just where RJ had been until the end of the book, when another character asks him what it felt like to be the Narcissus Parasite. And as RJ describes the inward-turning isolation, readers recognize him from those earlier scenes. His growth is satisfying because of how far he's come. And that final, satisfying twist wouldn't have been possible if RJ, despite being a narcissist, hadn't been a plausible, likable character from the beginning.

Finally, having someone locked into their own way of seeing the world can be a powerful source of dramatic tension.

I'm currently working on a thriller (again, used with the client's permission) in which a brilliant woman starts receiving vague, subtle, but subtly escalating threats -- cryptic letters, silent phone calls. Because of serious trauma in her past, she lives an almost hermetic life -- hardly ever leaving her office at work, never inviting anyone into her home, doing everything possible to cocoon herself in security and order.

But despite being brilliant, she cannot see or even imagine how other people feel, especially the ones who are trying to help her. As a result, she constantly pushes away the only people who may stand between her and the ominous threats, assuming any attempts to help are attacks. For instance, when a rather sweet, elderly beat cop who is aware of the letters checks up on her, she sees his pounding on her door as trying to break it down, hears his calling her name as bestial bellowing. The question that drives her story is whether she can break through her own locked-in view of the world enough to see the true motives of the people on her side before it's too late.

Narcissists, of course, don't realize they're narcissists. That lack of self-awareness can generate humor, or compassion, or even terror. But ironically, this inability to embrace anyone else can allow you to create characters readers can love.