Character Creation
In Conan Doyle's early rough plot outlines, Sherlock Holmes' sidekick was named was "Ormond Sacker" before Conan Doyle finally settled on "John Watson". Many of the great fictional detectives have their Watson: Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, for example, is accompanied by Captain Arthur Hastings; Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe had Archie Goodwin. J. R. R. Tolkien used the Hobbits in his works in a similar way, using characters such as Bilbo Baggins and Sam Gamgee to filter the intricate and mysterious aspects of his novels through to the audience.
In the words of William L. De Andrea,
- "Watson also serves the important function of catalyst for Holmes's mental processes. From the writer's point of view, Doyle knew the importance of having someone to whom the detective can make enigmatic remarks, a consciousness that's privy to facts in the case without being in on the conclusions drawn from them until the proper time. Any character who performs these functions in a mystery story has come to be known as a 'Watson'."
In 1929, English crime writer and critic Ronald Knox stated as one of his rules for fledgling writers of detective fiction that,
- "The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader."
Read more about this topic: Dr. Watson
Famous quotes containing the words character and/or creation:
“It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the art of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated. The whole of the mind must lie wide open if we are to get the sense that the writer is communicating his experience with perfect fullness.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)