writing techniques
In #14 we said that a character
should develop as the story moves along. How much will depend on the length of the story. A novel gives us time to fully develop a character while a short story limits us to the main theme-line. And we said character ization is also genre-dependant.
But even in a time-compressed action story we can reveal a lot of character background and reflect it in the character's actions.
Let's take our old friend, Oself, and our two-hour ticking bomb from our discussion on
plotting, and add to it people trapped inside a elevator. Oself and three men are out in the hall and the building is in the middle of a desert. Hey, it's just an example. So it's up to the men to defuse the bomb or slink away like
cowards.
Oself's for slinking, but that triggers an oft-remembered flashback of a child-him hiding in a closet while his mother is beaten. That shame keeps him from being the first out the door. He'll hang in--for an
hour. A young mother crying in the eleva tor triggers another memory. He is leaving his wife because of a knockdown fight. But the young mother also brings back memo ries of his own children. So he hangs in some more.
So it goes. Oself's memories play off the reality of the bomb as the four men, sweating to defuse it, relay their stories to those inside the elevator and to each other, their hopes and fears and cowardly acts. Oself grabs deep inside for an unknown
courage and hangs in. Finally, all the sharing builds a commu nity bond so strong it overpowers any thoughts of Oself's indi vidual self-preservation. He is going up or down with these guys. And the last seconds ticking off lays bare his raw emo
tions, the fear that has haunted him since hiding in the closet and caused him to run from everything, even, now, his wife and children, and he realizes it has kept him from bonding with them despite his love. Then the bomb is defused. Suddenly it's
over. Oself is a hero bound with those in the struggle, and this has banished forever the ghost hiding in the closet. He is free at last to love himself, and those around him.
Okay, we have a lot of plot there, and of
course we're TELLING everything rather than SHOWING, but this is an example of how it's done. We don't plop a character's whole background out on the table. That would be boring, or it would be another story. We weave it in like colored thread as
important points come up. Something triggers a memory and we get a glimpse of our character's past. This in turn helps us to understand why he does what he does.
If you want a really good example--aside from the magnifi
cent, tremendous, fantastic BLOODY BONSAI, of course--read THE MUSIC ROOM by Dennis McFarland. It's six or eight years old now, but it is almost a text book on characterization, with some fine descriptions as well. I'd like to claim the idea as my own,
but a teacher of mine, Marcy Heidish, THE TORCHING, touted it to me. I learned a great deal from reading it and I highly recommend it to you as a study and a story.
Which brings up another point we touched upon way back
in BookMarc #2. If we want to write, we need to read. We need to see how different authors solve the various plotting and charac ter problems they've faced, and learn from them. We can't copy the material, but we can copy the problems and the
solutions.
Okay, I think we've determined that we have to reveal our characters to our readers, but before we can actually do it, we first have to reveal them to ourselves. We'll take a look at how to do that in BookMarc
#16.
Copyright Peter E. Abresch BookMarc February 13, 1998
I remember a professor pointing
out in a critique of one of my unpublished novels that only one character was well rounded. It was the antagonist. The bad guy. I've learned since that we get the antagonist correct because we dislike the guy so much. But the protagonist, our Oself
good guy, is only sketchily drawn because they are us, our other self. We can see Oself clearly, like in a mirror, and know Oself intimately. What we fail to do, folks, because of our familiarity, is to get it down on paper so the reader can see--no,
experience--Oself. We need our characters to be so real we feel the snot run from their nose, feel the pain in the chest as they coughs up phlegm. When our readers put down the story at the end, we want them to know more about our characters--what they
do and why they do it--than at the beginning. My professor failed to tell me how to do that. And I guess I was too dumb to ask.
So, how do we do that?
Some of my writer friends with
many published books, do it by continually reworking the story until they can see the char acters so well inside their heads, they can bring them to life on paper. I have a suspicion this serves a character-oriented mind better than plot-oriented. For
me it only works up to a point. And for a beginner I think this is a tough way to do it.
I know of other writers who base their characters on someone they know, either from real life or from the movies. This works so
long as you don't actually try to duplicate the character to the point where you might be held libel. But it can keep you focused as you go through the story.
What works for me is taking the time to write out the char
acter's background. This can be a tedious process for it's a bit like writing another story, and most people regard this as a waste of time when they could be at real-writing.
Remember what we said about plot? The best
way is what works for you. The same with characterization. This may sound like a copout, but it's why writing is such a lonely journey. There are no formulas. While we can point out some sign posts, no one can actually lead you along the
path.
BUT, having said that, if you don't seem to be getting anywhere with what you are doing now, try another way. I can't understand people who doggedly refuse to take the time to try something new. Well, yes I can,
because that's exactly what I did for so many years, and why it took so long to have my first novel published. Characterization is real writing. It is not an adjunct. It is not option. You must get it right or you will continue to waste your effort
on plot and rewriting.
How much we develop each character depends not only on the type of story, but the importance of the character. Detective novels and science fiction generally have less developed charac ters than a
literary novel. A taxi driver who appears one time without any lines is hardly a blip on the reader's mind, but if you bring him back again you might give him one trait, like a squint, so the reader will recognize him. A person we journey with from
page one to page four hundred is, if you'll forgive me, another story. Remember back in plot we talked about an epiphany? The protagonist having a sudden revelation--what love is, what his real values are, a deep felt faith experience, or even just who
killed whom? Well, if we want our readers share in that experience, to taste it, live it, feel it, we must build them into our character over the course of story. If we can do that, our readers will be glad they journeyed along, and look forward to
trekking out with us again.
So one of the main rules of characterization is that our characters should develop as the story develops, so that at the end we know them more intimately than at the beginning. We'll look at
hor we do that in BookMarc #15.
Copyright Peter E. Abresch BookMarc February 13, 1998
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