Dynamic Characters (4 page)

Use Other Senses to Indicate Personality

Although none of the above descriptions employ the other senses, this technique can be very effective. Describe your character in terms of a characteristic sound, smell, feel or perhaps even taste. Think of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Daisy Buchanan, whose ''voice was full of money.'' Of John Steinbeck's Tom Joad, day after day tasting dust. Of Sandra Cisneros's Lucy, ''who smells like corn.'' Does your character always feel warm to the touch, radiating body heat? Smell of cinnamon, or manure? Talk in a voice so shrill it sounds like fingernails scraping a blackboard? What can you imply about her inner self through such sensory details?

COMBINING TYPES OF DETAILS: BUBBA'S PLACE

Your descriptions, of course, don't have to be confined to only one of the above techniques. Look again at John Irving's description of Jenny Fields. It combines details of physical appearance, dress and mannerisms, plus Jenny's own opinion of all these. Mix and match.

However, one important caveat: Don't get carried away. Too many details are as bad as too few. Paragraph after paragraph of descriptive details, no matter how brilliantly evocative, will overwhelm your reader. He'll burn out from sensory overload—and all you'll have done so far is introduce the character!

So how many details are too many? As with nearly everything else in writing, there's no simple answer. It depends on the book's length, purpose, voice and overall tone. But as a rule of thumb, a half-dozen details are plenty. If you choose carefully, that's usually more than enough. (For more on leaving out details, see chapter seven.)

To see just how much the right details can contribute to your reader's picture of a character, consider the following three descriptions.

The action is exactly the same in all three, but the details of environment and diction make all the difference:

When I stormed into Bubba's trailer, the Carson-Akabar fight was playing on the TV. Bubba was nowhere to be seen, but that didn't stop me. Nothing could stop me. I tore past the beer cans and the Harley, racing through the trailer until I found him taking a crap in the bathroom. "You bastard! I've got something to give you!''

When I sauntered into Serge's,
Tosca
was playing on the stereo. Serge was nowhere to be seen, but that didn't stop me. Nothing could stop me. I strolled past the library and the dining room, making my way through the mansion until I found him repotting violets in the conservatory. "You sly dog, I have a message for you.''

When I crept into Daddy's, some old-timey music was playing on the radio. Daddy was nowhere to be seen, but that didn't stop me. Nothing could stop me. I sneaked past all the women's clothes on the living room floor and past the closed bedroom door, tiptoeing through the house until I found him in the garage. ''D-Daddy, listen,
please,
I've got to tell you something!''

It's all in the details. You can have Beauty or the beast—as long as you choose your specifics carefully.

SUMMARY: THE KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL DESCRIPTION

• Choose details that create strong visual images.

• Choose details that add up to an accurate, coherent impression of your character's personality.

• Use word choices that further reinforce this impression.

• Don't choose too many details. Quality is more effective than quantity.

• Use your effective details the first time we encounter your character, so we will want to keep on reading.

You have this person inhabiting your head, soon to be a person inhabiting your page. You can see him, hear him, feel him. As yet, he's nameless. To you he's already a very real, distinct entity, but to everyone else he will need a name. How do you choose one?

Some writers think of the name first, and the name suggests their character's personality. Some writers can't even begin to write until their character has the exactly right name; others change their minds four times during the writing of the first draft, as they make decisions about characters' actions and reactions. Some create elaborate family trees to the fourth generation; others seem to resent the necessity of naming and use the same names over and over in unrelated books. But all these writers—and you—have one thing in common: Characters have to be called
something.

And since they do, you may as well get more mileage out of names than simply a tag before ''said'' or ''walked to the store'' or ''killed the sniper with his Beretta 92F at an unbelievable seventy-five yards.'' You may as well make your names contribute to world building, characterization and plot development.

THE NAME YOU CHOOSE FOR A CHARACTER

Surnames, and sometimes first names as well, indicate ethnic background. A character called Reginald Fitzsimmons III comes from a different ancestry than one called Salah Mahjoub—and readers will have different expectations of him. You may choose to work with these expectations or deliberately flout them, but you should realize they're there. If Reginald is not descended from British aristocrats, you will have to account for his aristocratic name (maybe his dirt-poor, unwed, sixteen-year-old mother wanted to give him
something
fancy). And if Salah is not Muslim but a Presbyterian deacon, you will have to explain why. The rule of thumb is: The farther you move from the commonly accepted background suggested by ethnic names, the more explaining you must do.

On the other hand, since America is not the equal melting pot we might wish it were, not all ethnic names carry the same evocation of family background. European immigrants have now been here for so many generations that most readers will not automatically equip a character named Robert Olson with a religion, class, occupation, or accent. Instead, Robert Olson (or Sam Carter or Jack Romano) is a blank slate, and you will have to do all the work of drawing him well.

An additional point about ethnic names: This is a diverse world. Some stories have a ''closed'' setting, in which nearly all the names are logically Anglo-Saxon (John Cheever's Shady Hill), or Jewish (Chaim Potok's novels about the Hasidim), or Chinese (Amy Tan's
The Joy Luck Club).
Others use an ethnic mix that reflects a given reality. Ed McBain's earliest novels of the Eighty-Seventh Precinct featured a lot of Italian and Irish names, in keeping with the makeup of the New York City police force at that time. Think about who is likely to inhabit your fictional world, and reach for an appropriate ethnic mix.

Your character's name will also reflect her parents' personal choices, which in turn characterizes her family life. Parents who name their child Susan Mary are not implying the same worldview as those who pick Bernadette Chantelle. Did your character's parents want a name that will blend in? That will stand out? That will emphasize a heritage (perhaps a grandfather's first name)? That will disguise a heritage? Serious? Flowery? Trendy? The child named Rainbow Sweetgrass Smith by sixties' flower-child parents is being handed more than words to someday sign on her checks. So are the children named Malcolm X Smith and George Patton Smith. How a character reacts to such freighted names may even suggest plot developments. Does she like her name? Hate it? Spend the whole book trying to escape whatever it means to her?

What about using a name whose meaning either characterizes the person or reflects your theme? There are two dangers here: pretentiousness and obscurity. John Bunyan may have gotten away with naming his protagonist Christian to stand for the entire Western world, but contemporary audiences find this heavy-handed. On the other hand,
you
may know that
Elizabeth
means
oath of God
and that her name is a thematic comment, but don't expect your reader to know it.

Sometimes writers call their characters after people they know. This can be a useful device for helping yourself to visualize a character, to ''feel'' him as you're writing the first draft. But change the name before you submit the story anywhere, to avoid not only hurt feelings but possible legal problems. (More on this in chapter eight.)

Names can also plant a character in a given generation. Jennifer and Jessica have been popular names in the last twenty years; their mothers' generation ran more toward Sue and Karen. And their grandmothers included a lot of Dorothys and Bettys.

Don't give characters in the same story similar names (Jean and June); it can be confusing. The exception to this is when you want it to be confusing, such as when parents with a terminal case of cuteness have named their triplets Mike, Mac and Mick.

Finally, the name by which you refer to your character should be consistent. If his name is Fred Potter, use his full name the first time he's on stage. After that, refer to him in narration as either Fred or Potter. Don't worry about overusing a name; it's exempt from the usual rules about redundancy. The reader won't notice.

THE NAME A CHARACTER CHOOSES FOR HIMSELF

The ways your character modifies her birth name can also be used as a characterizing device. Bernadette Chantelle, for instance, may decide to call herself Bernie. She might do this because she thinks of herself as a no-frills person, or because she likes having a name that sounds male, or because it annoys her mother, or because her husband's name is also Bernie and she thinks the match is just darling. Each of these motivations suggests a very different person. Similarly, the thirty-year-old who does
not
change Rainbow Sweetgrass Smith to Rainie, but instead insists on the whole moniker, is very confident, very flamboyant or very into environmental politics. You decide.

An interesting example here is Marge Piercy's protagonist in her wonderful novel of radical politics,
Vida.
Born Davida Witherspoon, the character first shortens her name to Vida to fit in with other children. She then goes by Vida Asch, a symbolic choosing of her stepfather Sanford Asch over her father Tom Witherspoon; this choice fills her with both satisfaction and guilt. She marries twice, but does not take either of her husbands' surnames because she values her own independence. When she goes underground after a political bombing, she chooses the name Peregrine, after the falcon. When she's older, however, Vida finds this choice too romantic and regrets it. One of her pleasures is calling her sister Natalie by her real name, thus reaffirming Vida's right to have a family even though she's been in hiding, cut off from mainstream life, for over ten years. Piercy got a lot of plot and thematic mileage out of this changing roadway of names.

Ask yourself: What did my character choose to be called as a child? A teenager? At college? In the army? When he was part of a gang? In prison? After the divorce? In social situations? In professional ones? The man who insists that even his wife refer to him as ''the senator'' is characterizing himself loud and clear.

THE NAME OTHERS CHOOSE FOR A CHARACTER

The names others call your protagonist without his permission can also be used to create characterization, tension and plot developments. How will the child dubbed Stinky react? By running away? Laughing at his tormentors? Beating the shit out of anyone he can catch alone?

Names imposed on others say something about the relationship. The woman who calls her mother-in-law ''Sally'' is assuming a different relationship than the one who calls her ''Mom,'' or ''Mrs. Jones.'' Consider what your character is called by his parents, children, children's friends, personal friends, enemies, colleagues, neighbors, lovers, the press and the local cops. Then consider whether these names might change over the course of the relationship. The man who is ''Bobby'' to his mistress but ''Robert'' when the affair is over has swapped a breezy, playful name for a more formal one. On the other hand, the man who is called Robert during the affair and Bobby when it's over has just been demoted to a child.

Finally, as with names bestowed on a birth certificate, consider how your character feels about his or her nicknames. Is the businesswoman who usually goes by Elizabeth secretly delighted by the lover who dubs her Kitten? Does the high-school kid glory in being referred to as Slash? How far will he go to live up to that name?

Here's Vida Asch again, in a striking illustration of just how much names matter:

Joel grinned. ''I recognized you immediately. Vida Asch.'' He seemed to enjoy saying her name, while she experienced an automatic spurt of cold along her arteries. In contrast, he had been flattered when she called him by name— not frightened or at least startled as she had expected. That had not given her the commanding edge she had anticipated, but rather had eliminated some small advantage she had not been aware of.