Sometimes, just being is powerful.
I remember when I was in grade eleven, one of our graduating students, Randy Lawrence, won a play writing competition with a play entitled, “Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!” It’s a clever twist on the epigram, “Don’t just stand there, do something!” It’s not true that any action is better than inaction. As Lawrence suggests in this title, sometimes, it the best course of action to wait patiently.
In fiction, a passive character is a boring character. Critics tend to like “strong characters” and it is certainly true that a character prone to doing ‘something’ (when perhaps ‘standing’ is the better idea) will get himself into far more interesting adventures. I understand that.
There’s been the odd reviewer who finds Grace excessively passive. It’s certainly true that Grace receives action and is forced to react more than she instigates action. She is not the feisty heroine who’s out to put all wrongs right right from the very beginning. She is a quiet person who just wants a peaceful existence. Truth be told, she should be a boring person. She’d love to be a boring person, with boring experiences to recount. Unfortunately, there are those who won’t let her have her boring life. She is forced to deal with the destiny she has been given, just like the rest of us.
So she’s not actively pursuing her destiny. To be honest, this makes her like 95% of the people I know, 90% of the time. Occasionally things shake us up, but most of the time, we don’t set ourselves up for much excitement. We make good choices. We play it safe. We survive to live another day.
Like us, Grace isn’t an adventure seeker. She’s a victim of circumstance, though. Grace has to learn why things are always ‘happening to her’ before she can face it down. She spends some time grumbling about it. You know people like that, don’t you? The ones who whine that their life is so unfair. You can usually point to the flaw in their character or the specific choice that led them into their circumstance. That’s the lesson that Grace (and the reader) has to learn. We are the one common denominator in all our life experiences. We carry our hamartia. So whether we ‘deserve’ our fate or not, some essence of our being has often led to it. We are still an element of it. Like Grace, our passivity may be our power, but sooner or later, it must be resolved.
When I crafted Grace, I wanted the reader to identify with her. I wanted them to share in her confusion, and imagine themselves in her experiences. That’s the reason there is no physical description of Grace anywhere. When I ask readers how they visualize Grace, they invariably describe a version of themselves. Most of the students I know have outside forces controlling their lives. Parents, schools, and/or teams govern their time and responsibilities. They can relate to Grace receiving action, rather than causing it, and they’re the ones I wrote for.
Josh says it best, “Be.”
Shawn L. Bird 