I COULD SHATTER INTO SHARDS

Greetings! I’m continuing the discussion on character description:

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Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999

Chapter 6: Bringing Characters to Life Through Description (Part 2)

Describing characters through their environments: You can use home, workplace, neighborhood, and other elements to reveal your character. “Often when I have trouble developing three-dimensional characters, it’s because I haven’t provided them with a suitable background against which to shine.” Another way to discover your character’s traits is to put her in an environment where she doesn’t fit, like putting a grandmother in a tattoo parlor, and see how she’ll respond.

In the movie The Big Chill, the characters reveal themselves by what they pack for a weekend trip. One has enough medication to stock a drugstore, another brings a calculator, a third several packages of condoms. What would your character pack?

In my WIP, the villain is a bit obsessive-compulsive. He arranges his spices alphabetically on the shelves.

* * *

Setting characters into motion: However well described a character might be, he isn’t alive until he moves. A character flicking ash onto a carpet paints a different picture of his personality than the character who vacuums it up.

One of my characters breaks a pencil when he’s angry.

* * *

Describing a character’s inner landscape: There are three techniques for showing a character’s inner life: through revealing his thoughts and dreams, through how he describes world around him, and through rendering the character’s inner cadence, syntax, and diction.

This last one about interior rhythms is a tough one for me to grasp. I think one example from my WIP is a character that constantly thinks “my fault,” almost like a mantra.

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The Hunger Games: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

The glue of mutual need that bonded us so tightly together for all those years is melting away. Dark patches, not light, show in the spaces between us. How can it be that today, in the face of 12’s horrible demise, we are too angry to even speak to each other?

I like the metaphor of glue.

* * *

My muscles are rigid with the tension of holding myself together. The pain over my heart returns, and from it I imagine tiny fissures spreading out into my body. Through my torso, down my arms and legs, over my face, leaving it crisscrossed with cracks. One good jolt of a bunker missile and I could shatter into strange, razor-sharp shards.

The character is feeling a bit brittle.

* * *

He doesn’t speak, just runs his fingers over the bruises on my neck with a touch as light as moth wings, plants a kiss between my eyes, and disappears.

Awww.

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That will do it for this week. We’re done with The Hunger Games Trilogy so I’ll have something new starting on Tuesday.

EYES THE COLOR OF SLUSH

What a short month, and it’s not February! Here is today’s post:

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Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999

Chapter 6: Bringing Characters to Life Through Description (Part 1)

“When Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim was asked about his creative process, he replied, ‘If you told me to write a love song tonight, I’d have a lot of trouble. But if you tell me to write a love song about a girl with a red dress who goes into a bar and is on her fifth martini and is falling off her chair, that’s a lot easier, and it makes me free to say anything I want.’”

If you try to write about an abstraction like grief or love, you must first pay attention to the details. Characters are the same way. Description anchors the character.

The first step is to christen your character. Names can give the reader a clue to the person’s personality, Sybil Rumple versus Sam Slade. Baby books, phone books, and obituaries can be good sources for names.

A nickname can also tell a lot about a character. By explaining its origin, you can add background info about the character without using a flashback.

T.S. Elliot named a character J. Alfred Prufrock. It fits the poem.

* * *

A physical description can become an “all-point bulletin” of attributes: brown hair, green eyes. Using specific details such as military buzz-cut or long ponytail can strengthen the description.

Too many details, however, can cancel each other out and overwhelm the reader. Instead, concentrate on one or two details. Rather than frontloading a story with physical descriptions, scatter the elements through the work.

Photographs can supply not only description but a clue to the character’s past.

Other senses besides visual can be used to introduce a character. Does he smell like cedar or breath mints? Is her laugh shrill?

Hmm. I need to work on that. More on character description on Thursday.

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The Hunger Games: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

She’s fifty or so, with gray hair that falls in an unbroken sheet to her shoulders. I’m somewhat fascinated by her hair, since it’s so uniform, so without a flaw, a wisp, even a split end. Her eyes are gray, but not like those of people from the Seam. They’re very pale, as if almost all the color has been sucked out of them. The color of slush that you wish would melt away.

I get the impression that this woman is inflexible and lacks warmth. The description tells us much more than gray hair and eyes would.

* * *

Her dark brown eyes are puffy with fatigue and she smells of metal and sweat. A bandage about her throat needed changing about three days ago. The strap of the automatic weapon slung across her back digs into her neck and she shifts her shoulder to reposition it.

Military woman who’s been on the front lines for too long?

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Let’s stop there and continue on Thursday.

SNAKES! WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE SNAKES?

Hello, fellow writers! Let’s continue our discussion of metaphor. Here are some definitions:

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Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999

Chapter 5: Figuratively Speaking: A “Perception of Resemblances” (Part 2)

Simile: A comparison of two things that uses a connective. “Your hair is like a dark river.”

Metaphor: A comparison without a connective. “Your hair is a dark river.”

Implied Metaphor: A comparison that alludes to the object it’s using for comparison and does not use the verb “to be.” “Your hair twists and meanders across the landscape of your shoulders.”

Hyperbole: An exaggerated metaphor or simile. “My boss is pond scum.”

Personification A figure of speech that speaks about an inanimate object, a force of nature or an abstract term as if it were a person. “The trees were serene.”

Animism: Similar to personification but does not imply human life. “The love that ended yesterday crawled out of the sea.”

Paradox: A seemingly contradictory statement. “She loved John too much to stay with him.”

Metonymy: A reference to something, not by its own name but by something closely related to it. “From birth to death” becomes “from cradle to grave.”

Synecdoche: A metonymy that allows part of something to stand for the whole of it. “Lend a hand.”

Analogy: A comparison between two relationships using A is to B as C is to D. “A book is an axe for the frozen sea within.”

Allegory: A story or description in which each element—each person, place, thing, and idea—is metaphorical. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is a classic example.

Conceit: A long, complex comparison between two things that are extremely unlike, such as comparing separated lovers to the legs of a compass.

Symbol: A concrete object that points to an abstraction. In Poe’s “The Raven,” the bird points to death. In Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, blood points to courage.

Ack! And I thought all I had to worry about were similes and metaphors.

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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

We star-crossed lovers from District 12, who suffered so much and enjoyed so little the rewards of our victory, do not seek the fans’ favor, grace them with our smiles, or catch their kisses. We are unforgiving.

And I love it. Getting to be myself at last.

By this point in the story, I agree with the character’s assessment.

* * *

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

The memories swirl as I try to sort out what is true and what is false. What series of events led me to be standing in the ruins of my city? This is hard because the effects of the concussion she gave me haven’t completely subsided and my thoughts still have a tendency to jumble together. Also, the drugs they use to control my pain and mood sometimes make me see things. I guess. I’m still not entirely convinced that I was hallucinating the night the floor of my hospital room transformed into a carpet of writhing snakes.

I half remember a old cure for insanity. Throw the person into a snake pit. No thanks.

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I’m done for this week. I’ll be back on Tuesday.