While reading The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky, I was pleasantly surprised at the opening to part four where Dostoevsky briefly pauses from the narrative to reflect on how authors can write interesting characters.

Since I’ve been studying the work of famous authors to create a resource on crafting memorable characters, I found this digression by Dostoevsky quite intriguing.

Dostoevsky sorts characters into three categories:

• The dramatic type
• The limited ordinary type
• The clever ordinary type

Let’s look at each of these categories and see how we can use them to strengthen the development of our own characters. The quotations come from the Peaver and Volokhonsky translation of the novel.

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Several days ago, I finished transforming a room in my home into a creative studio.

I’ve recently taken up watercolor painting, and it’s been a bit inconvenient to have to clear my painting supplies off the kitchen table when I wanted to eat lunch or dinner or off my desk if I wanted to work there with my laptop.

My new creative space has two desks: one for writing and one for art. It also has a couch, perfect for curling up to read a book.

Having a place devoted to my creative projects has been wonderful for my focus and writing productivity. I think one of the things that has made me love this new space is how much it reflects my personality. I decorated it carefully with objects that match my taste or evoke a specific memory.

For example, on the writing desk, there’s a decorative box once owned by my grandparents. On the walls, I hung posters of paintings of Arles by Vincent van Gogh (one of my favorite artists). My parents had purchased the posters at a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit in the ‘80s. When I look at the posters, I think not only of van Gogh but also of my parents.

Additionally, I hung a poster of the Hudson River that reminds me of the Hudson River Valley where I used to live. To anyone else, these objects and artwork would not have the same meaning.

I filled the room with vibrant colors to match the posters. If someone else had been decorating the room, they might have chosen a more muted palette. Perhaps they would have needed only one desk, not two.

Recently, I saw a photo of Ernest Hemingway’s writing studio in Key West. He lined the room with book cases and displayed his hunting trophies on the walls. He arranged a wooden chair and table for his typewriter as well as what looked like a lounge chair where he could write while reclining. His writing space certainly looked nothing like mine!

Years ago, I wrote an article about the creative spaces of different famous authors. Each one was unique to their personality and writing style.

As I surveyed my new creative space, I got to thinking about how the decorations in our homes tell us a lot about who we are.

In the book I’m working on about crafting memorable characters, I’ve recently finished a section where I explored how masterful authors describe a character’s dwelling place. The best authors use this dwelling place to give readers an understanding not just of the setting of the story, but also of the character’s personality, origins, ambitions, prized possessions, and more.

I looked at the furnishings I’d selected, and I thought, “If I were a character in a story, what would all these objects say about me?”

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In 1939, F. Scott Fitzgerald was suffering from ill health and struggling to make a living as a screenwriter in Hollywood. 

While his early novels This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned had skyrocketed him to fame during the splendid years of the Jazz Age, that fame was short-lived.

It’s hard to believe now, but The Great Gatsby published in 1925 was a commercial flop selling only 20,000 copies. 

His novel Tender is the Night, published in 1934, sold even fewer, a mere 12,000 copies.

Yet, despite these disappointments, Fitzgerald didn’t abandon his writing.

He had an idea for a new story that he believed could become the greatest novel he’d ever written and restore him to his place as one of America’s most renowned writers.

But there was one problem. His failing health meant he couldn’t work on it alone.

So that spring he contacted an employment agency to help him find a secretary.

And that’s how 22-year-old Frances Kroll, newly arrived in Los Angeles, came to get a behind the scenes peek at how Fitzgerald wrote a novel.

Many years later, Kroll wrote a memoir Against the Current: As I Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald. She shared her experience working with Fitzgerald during the last twenty months of his life on the book he hoped would be his magnum opus.

I discovered this memoir this past year and found it to be a fascinating glimpse into the mind of this famous writer.

By analyzing Kroll’s anecdotes about working with Fitzgerald, I was able to reconstruct his writing process. 

Best of all, this led me to uncover invaluable lessons that I believe can help any writer whether you’re just starting out or are looking to refine your craft.

So, did Fitzgerald succeed in finishing this book before he died? Did it end up eclipsing the storytelling of The Great Gatsby? 

Keep reading to find out and get a peek into Fitzgerald’s writing process. If you prefer watching to read, you can watch the video version of this blog post below.

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