The Benefit of Making Your Characters Sick
In my life, I’ve been very ill twice, and it was no joke. It also changed me, forever.
A dear friend got sick on a trip and has lived with a resulting disability for years. It has changed everything about her approach to her life.
Some are born with fragile health, and they live in the “land of the sick” looking out onto the “land of the well.” Others have unwaveringly dependable bodies, emotions, and minds, and they can’t imagine anything else.
When I was facing my two life-threatening illnesses (I was fortunate to recover from both), I lived in the “land of the sick” for a year, very intensely, then for a number of years after that as I got used to a body changed by surgery and chemotherapy. I grew accustomed to my new residence, and the disability it contributed to my life going forward. I couldn’t assume anything, anymore. My new residence existed apart from the rest of the healthy world. I didn’t talk about my experiences after they receded into the past, but I was never able to forget them because of medication I now had to take every day and because of surgery that lost me a body part or two.
I didn’t put much attention on this, truthfully. My one job was to get well. And I did.
When a friend or family member faces illness or disability, I have more compassion now—that was a side benefit to going through it myself. I lost some of the arrogance that comes when you are strong and well all the time. Aging also does this—we move differently, we have to pay more attention to details we ignored before. We often get quite grateful for every additional day we live with mobility and relative comfort.
I got very ill again about a month before we began this winter camper-van trip. I got the latest strain of covid, which was fairly brutal. Being so ill reminded me of those two life-threatening times. I wondered if I would be well again—because when you’re very ill, normal health can feel impossible. But I got over it. And we packed and left.
During my bed-ridden days, I read. A favorite is Joan Didion’s famous essay, “In Bed,” about her life in the “land of the sick” due to chronic migraines that occurred several times each month. What intrigued me about Didion’s view of being so ill was how she came to recognize the gift of her migraines. Like a good friend, they gave her complete permission to shut out the world.
Maria Popova in The Marginalian shares a wonderful overview of Virginia Woolf’s essay on illness from her Selected Essays (1926) . “On Being Ill” is about how the body and mind get hijacked, but also how it primes us for quite profound realizations. We can respond to ourselves alone, and no one else.
To respond to no one else, that’s a brilliant gift indeed—and my realization came that this last bout with the nasty strain of covid brought me exactly that. Coming off a year of intensity and heavy lifting, promoting my second novel, I wanted to be more available than ever before—to readers, to interviews, to everyone. I felt it was appropriate, and I don’t regret being that open to the world, but to this introvert, it had quite an effect: I depleted all reserves. I developed and exercised a public-appearance muscle I don’t often use, and I knew my body—my entire system—was paying the price.
Healthy now, enjoying being away, I’m looking back on this topic to learn what I can about how writers view illness and disability, how they use it to create character conflict. Let’s dive into why making your character sick might be a great tool to include in your writer’s toolbox.
Photo by Jakub Pabis on Unsplash
Before our trip, I whittled down my huge TBR pile. One of the fun reads was Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. Gaming isn’t a topic in my wheelhouse, usually, but Zevin creates such fascinating characters and situations, I was enthralled.
I also noticed the injury and resulting disability she foisted on one of the main characters. So I read as a writer too, looking for why.
Sam is half of the partnership that creates outstanding video games. In his youth, Sam was in a terrible car accident which virtually destroyed his foot (an interesting body part to choose!). He undergoes multiple surgeries but the foot, in his description, remains a mass of bone chips barely held together by flesh. Eventually it declines to the point where Sam needs help. The foot gets in the way of his life, eventually forcing a coast-to-coast move for the whole designing team. This is not a life-threatening illness, an episode of trauma. This is an injury that stays in Sam’s life, rendering him always different. He lives in the “land of the sick,” apart from anyone else, even though he tries hard to ignore it.
As I studied possible reasons Zevin chose to create this injury, I noticed Sam becoming the likeness of one of his video creations, Ichigo, the first game’s main character. They both walk with a sideways movement, Sam because of his foot and Ichigo, because of the environment he’s battling, perhaps (that’s never completely explained). “Sideways” becomes a metaphor for Sam’s life. It hampers any smooth forward trajectory. It creates mighty conflict—even when it is ignored. It reflects a profound loss that Sam always carries.
Another book I loved and thought about a lot was The Stars and the Darkness Between Them by Junauda Petros. Two girls, an African-American and a Trinidadian, become close after the terrible cancer diagnosis of one of them. Cancer is a terrific trauma, especially in Mabel’s life—she’s athletic, hopeful about the future, smart and well-loved. The story reminded me a lot of John Green’s novel, The Fault in Our Stars, about two young people who meet in a cancer-support group. I loved how Petros showed Mabel’s departure from the “land of the well” and entry into the “land of the sick.” How she didn’t want her life to be over. How the diagnosis changed her. The ending was beautiful and unexpected.
I came away from my illness fully recovered but struck by how our bodies reflect the loss of this kind of hijacking by disease or injury. And how we writers might well consider it for increasing character vividness and conflict.
How bodies reflect loss
A huge goal in drafting story, whether real or imagined, is to find and enhance conflict. Story doesn’t happen without it. So whatever conflict is available, needs to be considered by the writer.
Poverty, discrimination, bad choices, mental and physical health challenges, difficult relationships, karma—use whatever you can bring forward. It will likely make a stronger connection between your reader and your character. It certainly did for me, with the novels above and the essays listed earlier.
Illness and injury changes the character’s closest environments: not just their bodies but their home life, job, and relationships. Illness also makes a character more “embodied,” more present to how they feel, move, think.
The skilled short-story author, Allison Wyss (Splendid Anatomies), talks about why she writes about bodies: The characters “live in, on, and far beyond the periphery, learning to love themselves as they claim and reclaim their bodies.” I was fortunate to be interviewed by Allison for the virtual launch of my second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, last October. She asked some great questions about how bodies reflect loss, in story.
Allison: One of your main characters, Red Nelson, is in persistent pain from her crash and that is always pushing at her and challenging her. How does that serve the narrative? How does that put the reader inside the book?
Mary: Red’s injury came about in the story just because it was not reasonable that she wouldn’t be in some kind of physical challenge after the plane crash that opens the novel. But in a larger sense, I wanted something to hang her up, make it impossible for her to just proceed with her escape from a criminal that’s following her, and get to her estranged sister’s, business as usual.
She also needed to be humbled, in a way, because pilots often feel invincible, or at least she does. A strong woman with a lot of passion who needed to be pounded into the ground a bit, perhaps? Also, literally grounded. She can’t fly, she can’t walk, and she can’t run away.
The author Caroline Leavitt once told me: you can’t have characters run away every time; you have to make them face each other and see what happens. A valuable insight for me to practice in this novel.
Allison: Your other narrator, Kate Fisher, is also dealing with something very real in her body. Her illness is of a kind that is very different than Red's injury, but it’s having a profound effect on her life, even though it’s much less tangible than an injured ankle. Kate’s trouble is not only in the symptoms, but in the not knowing what they mean.
How do you write about the unknown in the body? It can't be tangible in quite the same way as a visible injury and yet the story makes it tangible.
Mary: I started out giving Kate a more known illness: cancer. In early drafts, I forced her to go through treatment, but it felt too neat to have such a firm diagnosis and course to follow. I wanted something less tangible: the unknown produces more unease.
I got some criticism in reviews about that element of unknown, of her illness not being neatly wrapped up, but I believe the risk for Kate in not knowing what is happening is much more vital. Kate is a pilot too; she loves control and facts and reliable information—it’s her life as a Search & Rescue worker.
To increase the conflict for her, hardest would be not knowing. Not knowing what is causing her disability (she has unexplained blackouts). And having to live her life with that unresolved.
I worked with this trope in my first novel, Qualities of Light, as well, so I guess I’m a writer who is inclined to make their characters sick! In that first novel, a young boy is injured in a boating accident. At first, I had him die—but again, this was too wrapped up, too neat. Less of a story there. So I had him live but be in a coma. Again, not knowing if he will recover, created much more tension.
Buy A Woman's Guide to Search & Rescue
Embodying your characters
All of us have experienced loss. How does it manifest in our bodies? What do we carry with us, because of this? As I mentioned before, my older sister died unexpectedly at age 60. My family’s changes after my sister’s death were very noticeable to me. I got my second life-threatening illness not long after. Was this my body reflecting loss? I wondered.
Consider the people you write about: Are their bodies part of the emotional conversation? How do their bodies influence loss or grief, or rage or sorrow, in their storylines?
How do we writers bring the body forward in our work?
I’ve always placed my characters’ bodies squarely in their scenes. Possibly because I’m a very sensory writer, a visual map is necessary. Where is each person located onstage in the scene? What position are their bodies in? Once I have that somewhat established, I can go internal—asking what emotion each body is expressing.
I find it so helpful to communicate the meaning of a scene.
Allison Wyss says, “I love any book that acknowledges the bodies of the characters and also makes reading into an embodied experience for the reader.” In answering her questions, I thought about what “an embodied experience for the reader” meant. For me, it’s the sense of being in the character’s body, feeling what they are feeling, not on an intellectual level which can be quite deceiving—we present a certain way, we think of ourselves a certain way, but it’s not always the truth. But bodies don’t lie. They are more accurate representations of what’s really going on.
In your writing, count on this. If you embody your characters, if you make them fully present in their injury or illness or disability, they come forward in a new way for the reader. It’s a feeling I’ve always had in my own writing, but unconsciously until the interview with Allison.
How can you acknowledge a character’s body in every way, not just their spirit and mind and emotions, and put this body into real-time in the story?
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
Listen to this short but succinct interview between myself and Alessandra Torres of First Draft Friday, where we talk about the lines between character and writer.
Consider one of your characters-in-progress, someone you’d like to make more vivid. Is there an illness, disability, injury, lurking in their story? Or a loss that could be manifested more clearly in their body? How might you use some of the examples above to do this?