Fun with Fiction

(Sort of like Fun with Dick and Jane. But without the movie rights.)

I've been thinking a lot lately about the fiction that I've wanted to write for a long time. There is a short story I've been aching to work on, and at least two different children's book ideas just simmering on a back burner. And the thing is, it's SOOOOO easy in one's spare time to do the things that are most urgent (laundry so the family isn't naked, for example) or write the things that are easiest (a goofy story about my elementary school days), rather than take on a new and complicated project.

So I was thinking that perhaps a little fiction support group might help alleviate the feeling of Biting Off More Than I Can Chew-ism.

Here's the premise: once a week (on Mondays after today's post), I'll put up a post with a few examples and some thoughts about one aspect of writing a story. Today, it's about writing strong character descriptions. Other days might be about opening sentences, or plot development, or whatever. On the following Monday, there will be a Mr. Linky up so that you can link to your efforts at that small writing task, and there will be a new prompt for a new thing to try.

I'm hoping that together, if we break this writing process down into little bits, we might find inspiration to just try it already.

Are you in? If so, read on.

Today, I'm thinking about character descriptions. As far as I can tell, there are two things a writer needs to build a great character: a great opening description to make a reader see the person as unique, and a strong sense of what motivates this person (which may or may not be revealed to the reader initially).

I only want to work on the first part today: what will a reader see of the character in the first glimpse?

The beautiful part about this is that you don't have to start by knowing anything about what this character will do, or what the story will be, or anything. You just have to start with someone who is interesting, and a little blurb for the reader that will make a reader think, "OHHHH! I want to know more about this person." Here are some examples.

1. This passage from the middle of Oscar Wilde's famous novella, The Picture of Dorian Gray, describes a very minor character in the story, but makes her perfectly vivid in a mere 83 words:

She laughed nervously, as she spoke, and watched him with her vague forget-me-not eyes. She was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was always in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy. Her name was Victoria, and she had a perfect mania for going to church.

It is the combination of not obviously connected details that works so well for Wilde here. Her dresses, her illusions, her "perfect mania for going to church" combine elements of her interior and exterior self to provide a reader not just a sense of how she looks but of how she moves through her life.

2. Here is the opening of a wonderful late-Victorian fairy tale by George MacDonald, called "The Day Boy and the Night Girl":

There was once a witch who desired to know everything. But the wiser a witch is, the harder she knocks her head against the wall when she comes to it. Her name was Watho, and she had a wolf in her mind. She cared for nothing in itself -- only for knowing it. She was not naturally cruel, but the wolf had made her cruel.

She was tall and graceful, with white skin, red hair, and black eyes, which had a red fire in them. She was straight and strong, but now and then would fall bent together, shudder, and sit for a moment with her head turned over her shoulder, as if the wolf had got out of her mind, and onto her back.

Here, we are presented with what could easily be a stock fairy tale character -- the wicked witch. While she is marked as such for us by her "white skin, red hair, and black eyes," everything else in this description makes her unique. We as readers know from the opening that she is ominous because she has the qualities we associate with wicked witches; at the same time, we are intrigued by the fact that she is (unlike all those other baddies) "not naturally cruel." The image of the wolf in her mind, in addition to being highly original, also helps us know to expect more from Watho than we get in Snow White, by giving us a sense of how driven she is by forces that are not always within her control.

3. And finally, I offer this conversation from Charles Dickens's David Copperfield. While the description of Traddles's hair is enough to give you an immediate picture in your mind, I love how it is followed by the bit of conversation and David's own musings about what Traddles's hair reveals about his good-nature.

Excellent fellow as I knew Traddles to be, and warmly attached to him as I was, I could not help wishing, on that delicate occasion, that he had never contracted the habit of brushing his hair so very upright. It gave him a surprised look—not to say a hearth-broomy kind of expression—which, my apprehensions whispered, might be fatal to us.

I took the liberty of mentioning it to Traddles, as we were walking to Putney; and saying that if he would smooth it down a little——

“My dear Copperfield,” said Traddles, lifting off his hat and rubbing his hair all kinds of ways, “nothing would give me greater pleasure. But it won’t.”

“Won’t be smoothed down?” said I.

“No,” said Traddles. “Nothing will induce it. If I was to carry a half-hundredweight upon it, all the way to Putney, it would be up again the moment the weight was taken off. You have no idea what obstinate hair mine is, Copperfield. I am quite a fretful porcupine.

I was a little disappointed, I must confess, but thoroughly charmed by his good-nature too. I told him how I esteemed his good-nature; and said that his hair must have taken all the obstinacy out of his character, for he had none.

“Oh!” returned Traddles, laughing, “I assure you, it’s quite an old story, my unfortunate hair. My uncle’s wife couldn’t bear it. She said it exasperated her. It stood very much in my way, too, when I first fell in love with Sophy. Very much!”

“Did she object to it?”

“she didn’t,” rejoined Traddles; “but her eldest sister—the one that’s the Beauty—quite made game of it, I understand. In fact, all the sisters laugh at it.”

“Agreeable!” said I.

“Yes,” returned Traddles with perfect innocence, “it’s a joke for us. They pretend that Sophy has a lock of it in her desk, and is obliged to shut it in a clasped book, to keep it down. We laugh about it.”

In all three cases, we get a visual image not merely because we are told what a character looks like but because we learn how those physical elements are indicative of something much larger about their personalities, their visions of themselves, and how they fit into the world.

So what do I take away from these three together? First, that there's no single "right" way to introduce a new character. Second, that the only "wrong" way to introduce a new character is to limit the description to physical detail alone. A reader wants to know not just (or even not mostly) what this character looks like. A reader wants to know who this person is.

It is possible to reveal character through actions, through conversations, through details of his/her interior life, through his/her attitudes towards personal external appearances, and through many other details. A great character description need not be long; it need merely be memorable. It can even riff on stock characters we've met before, toying with our expectations to help us place the person.

Between now and Monday, I'm going to try to write descriptions for one or two characters, and I hope you will too. On Monday, I'll come back here and show you what I've come up with, and I'll put a Mr. Linky on the post so that if you choose to post your descriptions on your blog in the meantime, you can link to my post. Or, if you don't want to make a post out of this, but you want to play along, you can paste yours in the comments section. Either way, we'll all get to read what each other is writing.

I'll also throw out the next prompt for writing another tiny piece of what may eventually become a story, and give you till the following Monday to work on that.

What do you think? Are you up for trying this with me? And if you don't want to write a short story, will you be interested to read what others are coming up with? Any suggestions? Please let me know if this is a good idea.