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"Standing in his underwear in front of the faded pink duplex that he and Geraldine rented, Del came out of a blackout while taking a leak in the dead August grass."

You don't meet characters like that everyday, but short story writer Donald Ray Pollock will help you find them.  This former paper mill worker joined Ohio University's MFA program and started writing about the lives around him--creating the fictional world of the book, Knockemstiff.

Today, he explains how he creates his characters in my feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:
Your writing voice is startling and gripping. You mix profanity, violence and some dangerous ideas in your narrators. How did you channel these spirits? Any advice for aspiring writers looking to create more vivid, life-like characters like yours?  

Donald Ray Pollock:
As for the profanity and the violence and the ideas that my characters come up with, some of the inspiration came from my own life experiences and the rest came from watching Nancy Grace! To continue reading, click here...

 Just kidding about Nancy, but if you watch shows like hers you begin to realize that the stuff in my fiction is not nearly as crazy and fucked up as what many people do in real life.  

Violence has always been something I paid a lot of attention to, mainly because when I was a boy I wore glasses early on and was always thin and, well, I felt weak and was always worried about getting my ass kicked, either by my father or by somebody else. 

Then later, I had problems with alcohol and drugs and was around a lot of people who were a bit shaky, to say the least.  Understand that this wasn’t some romantic life, or James Frey tough guy-type life, but one that was miserable and depressing most of the time.  I guess that old craziness comes through sometimes on the page. 

The profanity in the dialogue probably comes from listening to my co-workers at the paper mill for thirty-two years.  It’s just the way some people talk, and that’s what you aim for on the page, right?