Effective character descriptions do more than provide a visual image of a character’s appearance. They can also take the reader into the mind of the person they have just met, provide the first hint of their destiny, or perhaps a dark shadow of their past.
In other words, describing characters is one of those essential elements of story-telling that you can spend a lifetime practicing and perfecting. And, like many other tools of the writing craft, what may seem at first blush to be a rote step in fact has many variations. That’s a good thing, not only to avoid repetition, but also because some alternatives help create a different atmosphere, or lend themselves to introducing a character in a different way, or can bring a smile to the reader along the way.
If you’ve spent a lifetime reading but not studying creative writing (which describes me), learning about writing techniques is a fascinating exercise in witnessing the scales fall from your eyes. After all, if you’ve been reading good books all your life, then you’ve also been absorbing all of the different ways in which great writers introduce you to their creations. But you may, like me, have been enjoying an author’s versatility without consciously studying exactly how they are going about it.
I’ve therefore lately been reading a steady stream of books on writing and editing. One I’ve just purchased is called Word Painting, by Rebecca McClanahan, and what introduced me to her was an excerpt from this book reproduced at the (regrettably pop-up ad and Flash infested) Writers Digest site called 11 Secrets of Writing Effective Character Description.
What you’ll find in her piece is a very fruitfully expanded concept of what character descriptions can be all about. There’s not much point in my summarizing here what you can read there, but here’s an example of one of her 11 techniques to catch your interest:
7. Characters reveal their inner lives—their preoccupations, values, lifestyles, likes and dislikes, fears and aspirations—by the objects that fill their hands, houses, offices, cars, suitcases, grocery carts, and dreams.
In the opening scenes of the film The Big Chill, we’re introduced to the main characters by watching them unpack the bags they’ve brought for a weekend trip to a mutual friend’s funeral. One character has packed enough pills to stock a drugstore; another has packed a calculator; still another, several packages of condoms. Before a word is spoken—even before we know anyone’s name—we catch glimpses of the characters’ lives through the objects that define them.
What items would your character pack for a weekend away? What would she use for luggage? A leather valise with a gold monogram on the handle? An old accordion case with decals from every theme park she’s visited? A duffel bag? Make a list of everything your character would pack: a “Save the Whales” T-shirt; a white cotton nursing bra, size 36D; a breast pump; a Mickey Mouse alarm clock; a photograph of her husband rocking a child to sleep; a can of Mace; three Hershey bars.
That’s what would be called “actionable advice” in business-speak, by which I mean it’s the kind of writing tip that’s easy and fun to put to work right away in whatever piece of fiction you might be writing right now. I know I plan to.
I think the what-would -they-pack exercise is a great idea. I get to know what my characters’ bedrooms look like – do they put their socks away? Are their bookshelves alphabetical? Do they have a bookshelf?
I also sketch many of my characters and annotate snippets of backstory that will never appear in any book. If I know my character inside out, I will know just how they’ll react, what they’ll say in different circumstances. Well, that’s the theory 🙂
And a good theory it is, too, although I confess I haven’t tried it myself (too lazy?) I’ve read of a variety of different writing exercises to help authors flesh out their characters before they begin deploying them in their fiction. They’ve ranged from the one you mention (writing a biography for each character) to the more offbeat, but equally valid, such as having the character answer questions like, “who is your favorite musician?”
One hazard that I’ve run into in getting to know my characters too well is that they keep derailing my most carefully laid plot plans. I start writing a scene involving a character, and then once I have them walking around in it I find that, well, of course, they’d do something entirely different from what I wanted them to do.
Characters – can’t live with them, can’t live without them…
Ah, the perils of derailment; know them well.
Having worked for the railroad industry in track maintenance, I too have a keen sense of the perils of derailment. And likewise, in character development. But then, if you can keep them from jumping the track, it’s wonderful to watch them take on lives of their own. The characters, that is. A train should never take on a life of its own.
Somebody also told me once to imagine what is in their bin.
Did you ever find any surprises?
@jkenna,
Thanks for the comment, and great metaphor! I hope most authors these days are keeping up with maintenance of their writing skills better than the owners of US railways are funding the upkeep of the major transamerican routes. It’s easy to find long stretches where virtually every spike has popped a couple of inches; the trains often have to crawl along for miles to avoid disaster.
I really like your blog and what you write about, by the way. Keep up the great work!
What might be surprising is that raised spikes are a minor defect. The weight of the train keeps the rails down on the ties. The main job of the spike is to hold track gage. If the tie is “spiked-killed” or rotten, especially on a curve, and the rails tip or spread, well then you have what section-gang foreman Matt Gerhity (a fictional character in my novel Cinders Over The Junction) calls “an undesirable situation.”
If you see trains crawling along on a main line, there is likely a “slow order” in effect due to track condition. When I was working as a track inspector for BNSF Railway (out of Bellingham, Washington–north of Seattle), I soon learned that the quickest way to get a defect fixed is to slap a 10 m.p.h. slow order on it. Works every time!
Thank you for your kind comments.
That’s quite interesting – thanks for the additional information. And I’ll have to check out that novel, too.