Character Autopsy: Boy

This is the character autopsy, where I take a character that I adore and force them down onto the cold and metallic table and cut them open, exploring what about their character that resonates with me and how I can use it in my own writing. On the table today is the hero who fights to crush a dictatorship, despite being deaf and mute, the character called Boy.

When my wife and I sat down to watch the movie Boy Kills World I assumed we were watching a book adaptation, partly due to the title but also partly due to the vibe. It just felt like it was once a story that was written down and sold as a novel before it became of interest to someone in the film industry. I, however, was wrong, it was never a book. The question I reflected on then was why did I think that this movie, which I personally believe is worth watching, had the qualities of a novel. Then I realised why and began writing this very character autopsy, it was because of the character Boy. Boy is the protagonist who is both deaf and mute and there are several times throughout the story where we see the world from his perspective, both humorously and dramatically. This led to great scenes, one in particular where he couldn’t read the lips of another person and thought they were speaking gibberish.

Telling the story through a sole character is a common book trait, I have done it several times, including in Tawny & Cree where Tawny is the narrator, but this comes with its own challenges. How do you show everything that is happening when you are limited to one character’s view? You could try and force the narrator into every scene or have them overhear information without exposing themselves. It is something that I have to negotiate in most of my writing and there are times where I feel it is organic and natural and others where I have no choice but to throw my narrator into the scene and do my best to make it flow. The upside of having a sole character as the narrator is, much like Boy, you can play around with how the audience sees the world. With Boy, he gives himself a manly and heroic voice, giving the audience an insight into how he sees himself. With Tawny from Tawny & Cree, we see her thoughts and how she views others will change how she describes them. If she was angry at someone, for example, she would describe that person differently, instead of describing the person as “tall and smiling,” she would probably describe them as a “dumb giant with a stupid smile.” While challenging, it is fun to write from a certain character’s perspective, having to keep my writing in line with their own moral codes and personality. I always thought it would be fun to write a character that obviously did not see the world as it was, perhaps they thought people liked him when they actually didn’t, but that character does not yet have a story to call home. The charm of a character narrative is the different perspective, but for it to work the audience has to understand that the perspective that they are reading is not completely true, and that requires a quality of writing that I have yet to fully develop.