CHAPTER

Character
As Desire As Thought
As Image As Presented by the Author
As Voice As Confl.ict
As Action Stock and Flat Characters

I write because I want to have more than one life.

Anne Tyler

\'
What does this woman want? Write about what she misses, cov;ts, regrets,
dreams of, longs for, deeply .desires. What does she want "tor her daughter?
How much of this will she be willing to tell the daughter? What will she ad-
mit to no one? Will the daughter share her desires?

94
NADIA SITS ACROSS FROM JE AT DINNER. SHE IS PETITE,
dark-haired. She gestures delicately with her fork. She makes a political
point to the famous, bald man beside me, who is sweating and drink-
ing his fourth glass of wine. Nadia's voice is light, ,her phrases follow
each other steadily. The famous man takes another p'iece of pie. He wipes ·
his forehead with a knuckle, wipes the knuckle on his n'apkin, flaps the
napkin toward Nadia as he replies to her question with ., ~ little explosi<:m
of sound. I miss some of what he says because his mouth is full o'f pie.
I think: She's smarter than he is, but he doesn't realize it b~cause he's so im-
pressed with hi,s own fame; actually, underneath, he is terrified of being found
w
out, and he's going to eat and drink himself to death trying to fill the void of a:
. ' (f)
his own ego. w
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I hardly know these people! How did I come to such conclusions?! (f)
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Everything we know abo,ut other people w~ k~ow through our five senses. a:
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The outer expresses the inner. Words, actions, ancl things, which can be seen l-
and heard, express and reveal character and feeling that can be neither seen o
I I ' ' . a:
nor heard. Literature, of course, allow~ us a freedom that life does not, to be
I
both inside and outside cl; character, to know thoughts as we can only know
. ' ' I ' '
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them in ourselves, while at the same,,ti,n:ie. 'seeing th~ externals as we carr for
everyone except ourselve's. I·n· additio'n;"''Iiterature
' ' ' l '\,-1.\ ! !';
can ~ffer ~n authoritative
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voice to help us interpre,t a11.~,graw ,conclu_sions about the. characters.

In nonfiction, fiction, . p~~try, 'i nd drama, ther~ 'are essentially
1

., . '
five pos- '

sible methods of presenting'a charact~r to.the reader: . ,,

Directly, thro'ugh · •,/ , i ·. ·. ·
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1. image (or "appear~nce")

2. voice (or "speech")!
3. action
4. thought ,, t\ '

' ','
Or indirectly, through '.
5. "telling" or interpreting as an.·author··
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Each of these methods is discussed in this chapter. But I 'warit )to start with a
necessity of all character~ the phenomen~n of desire-because in order to en-
gage the attention and emotions of your reader, you will need (even before you
begin to write) to invent, in~it, ,or decide wh~t each of your characters wants.
1

Character as Desire
We yearn. We are the yearning creatures of this planet. ... Yearning is
always part of fictional character.
Robert Olen .Butler

The importance of desire in creating character can scarcely be over-

stated. Novelist Butler calls it yearning, to indicate its poignant and
 obsessive nature. Nor is such desire a .small thing. Aristotle dee! arect
that the nature of a man's desire determines the nature of his moral· .
·1 . 'l Ity
He who wants good is good; he who wants ev1 1s ev1 . (And it follo ·
pretty well that he who wants the trivial is trivial, she who wants peace
Ws

is peaceful, and so forth.)

Those of us who write are often excellent observers, and we can f 1
into the trap of creating fictional people who passively observe. Such pa:!
sive characters lie flat on the page. The characters who stand up and mak
us care are so in love that they are willing to risk their reputations an;
their souls (Anna Karenina, for example); or so committed to a cause that
they will devote their lives to it (Robin Hood, ai:nong many); or driven by
a passi_o n to know (like Faust) or to revenge (as m Hamlet), or to solve the
mystery, climb the mountain, uncover the past, find out who they real!
are. Of course, the desire need not be as grand as these examples, and i:
a: modern literature the questing, conflicted_nature of the desire is often and
w profoundly the point. But it is nevertheless so, that this quality of yearn-
f-
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<( ing or determination is what makes us catch our breath, hope for the best
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<( fear the worst, and in short identify with what is, after all, a series of littl~
I
0 squiggly lines on a page. "We know rationally," says William Logan, "that
f$'¥til Prospero and Miranda never existed, much less Ariel or Caliban; that the
real Caesar was not Shakespeare's Caesar; but we can be moved to tears by
Ophelia's death, or Cordelia's. The bundles of words behave as if they had
private psychologies."
You will have the makings of a_character when you can fill out this
sentence:

is a (adj.) -year-old (noun) who

(name)
wants _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __

It isn't so important to trace the motive back to some childhood experi-

ence or trauma as it is to explore the nature and reality of the character's
desire. What is her deepest need, longing, hope, apart from food and air?
What can't he live without? th
In thinking about your character's desire, it's a good idea to think bo
generally and specifically, or about the deep desire and the immediate desire.
In filli ng in the preceding sentence, you might think: Jeremy Glazer is a bel-
ligerent 17-year-old basketball player who wants respect. "Respect" in this cas~
an abstraction, represents what Jeremy deeply desires. As a writer you nee t
to ask what, in the particular situation he finds himself in, would represehn
• · luded int e
respect for Jeremy. Being placed on the starting team? Bemg me h t basketbaII
locker room banter? O r is it his father 's acknowledgment tl a (and wh"ch J
matters as much as his grades? W hat a character wants d eep Y
 can be .expressed . in an. abstraction)
. will always h ave a particular
. manifes-
tation in a particu
.
1ar s1tuat1on and can be exp d .
resse m a way that leads to
t
irnage an d ac 10n.

r '.

r
TAY THIS 4.1
choose a character
. you have thought and written aoo~~M~~
b tbc .
sentence with blanks shown earlier. Then quickly 1·ot down wh at ma kes your
character: · ·

• giggle
• wince
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• shout CJ
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• gag
• go quiet Cl)
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Imagine your charact~r in a,situation ¢at produces one of these emotions. er:
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What does he or s~S want Jn ~hat situation? What is the deep, abstract 0
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desire? What, iq this specific situation, does he or she want that would ful- er:
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fill, at least temporarily, tliat'desire? I
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Character as Image
The first thing is 'to see the people every minute .... You have got to
learn to paint with words.
Flannery O'Connor

Sometimes a beginning writer skips the externals in order to try to take us

directly to the abstract essence of a character. But if you let your reader get
to know your characters through the sense details, as in life, these images
will convey the essence in the way discussed in Chapter 1. How does this
character laugh, what is he wearing, how does she move, what gesture does
he make, what objects does he carry, what does she eat and drink, what is the
tone of her voice, his laugh, the. texture of his skin, the smell of her hair?

Swollen feet
tripping on vines in the heat,
palms thick and green-knuckled,
sweat drying on top of old sweat. 5
She flicks her tongue over upper lip
where the salt stings her cracked mouth.
"sus plumas el viento," Gloria Anzaldua

The first half dozen lines of this sharply realized miniature portrait convey
much more than the images themselves. We already know the basic elements
 of this woman's life, her gender and status, her suffering. We know how
erty feels and tastes, the toll on the body of long overwork. , Pov-

I
Especially in fiction and memoir, when a character is first introct ucect
it's important to let us experience that person th.rough the senses (includin '
sight), and it's often effective to emphasize a particular ph~sical characteristi!
that can later remind us of the character as a whole. Here 1s an example from
Ayelet Waldman's Daughter's Keeper:
As a little girl she had been beautiful, rosy-cheeked and blond-ringleted.
Today she wore baggy jeans and a ragged green sweatshirt that had been
washed so often that its zipper arced in waves from her neck to her waist.
Her best feature remained her hair, which hung, an unwashed mass of blond
brown, and red kinky curls, down to the middle of her back. She'd swept par;
of it off her face and clipped it back with a chipped tortoise-shell barrette.
Here a series of visible clues (baggy, ragged, unwashed, chipped) give us a
0:
w sense of the young woman's attitudes and lifestyle, while the vivid picture of
f-
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<( her hair ensures that the next time this character appears on the scene, the
0:
<( author need only mention the hair to evoke the character. But sometimes the
I
0 images that evoke character are not direct images of that character at all, but
of something in the surroundings.
I often wonder who will be the last person to see me alive. If I had to bet, I'd bet
on the delivery boy from the Chinese take-out. I order four nights out of seven.
Whenever he comes I make a big production of finding my wallet. He stands in
the doorway holding the greasy bag while I wonder if this is the night I'll finish
off my spring roll, climb into bed, and have a heart attack in my sleep.
The History of Love, Nicole Krauss

Notice how, in this brief passage, the loneliness and longing of the old
man are conveyed in the apparently mundane images of the Chinese takeout
delivery, as well as in the clipped, almost throw-away rhythm of his voice.
Traditionally, the characters in a play may be minimally described (Lisa,
in her teens, scruffy; Ludovico, blind, a former spy), for the very good reason
that the people in the audience will have the live actor in front of them to
offer a sense impression, heightened by costume, makeup, and lighting. B~t
playwrights can and often do vividly signal in their stage directions the physi~
cal attributes, gestures, and clothes of their characters, and actors can an, 5
often do gratefully make use of this information to explore the character
inner life.
Leaning on the solitary table, his head cupped in one hand as he pag~s
through one of his comic books, is Sam. A black man in his mid-forties.
He wears the white coat of a waiter.
Athol fugard
"Master Harold" ... and the Boys,
Or:
... Lou, the magician, enters. He is dressed in the traditional costume of
Mr. Interlocutor: tuxedo, bow tie, top hat festooned with all kinds of what-
nots that are obviously meant for good luck, he does a few catchy "soft shoe"
steps & begins singing a traditional version of a black play song.
spell #7, Ntozake Shange

TRY THIS 4.2 11' •. 'l'"'''H' "' ,., .... . '

' • ' ) ' -t, .:t
If people are characterize1d. by the objects they choose, o~, wear, and can,y ."
~th_them, ,~ .ey ar,e ~ls? rev~f led in ~hat, they throw away. qarbolosr is th~ 'j UJ
0
?f so~~ety_.or ,culW:e. by· examiry\~g., and analyzin~ its refu~e;"Write . ~j
study _ 0
character sketdi by de~cnbmg the contents of your character's waste basket. ' >
J• - ·, J · ..•\\ , .. t .1•, , • ( .tti t- -• ,,. ,.,.; r I
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Character as Voice <(
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As a writer you need to hear a character's voice in your head in order to bring ()
him or her to life successfully. This involves moving beyond inventing or
remembering the character to inhabiting his or her persona, a challenging
task if your character is significantly different from the person you are. As a
first step, it's always good practice to vyrite a monologue in you~ character's
voice. Thinking from the point of view of that character will help you find the
diction and the rhythm of his or her speech and thought. Keep going everi if
you feel you haven't "caught" the character, because sometimes the very fact
of continuing will allow you to slip or sidle into the voice you seek.

, 1 ' ' •: i l \''"'· -,« ,-,~-•

1

TRY THIS 4.3 . .

Write a quick ,sket~h of a character you have already worked with-no more
than two or three focused details. Then pick one of the trigger lines below
and write a monologue in that charac;ter' s voice. Keep going a little bit past
the place where you want to stop. ·

• After the movie, we ...

• I didn't really mean it, but . . .
• I thought I could smell .. .
• I know I really ought to .. .
• If there's anything I can't stand ...
• You call that music?
Now look over the monologue and highlight a few phrases that seem to you
to catch that character's voice. Pick one of these and use it to begin another
short monologue.
 One of the ways we understand people is by assessing, partly instinctively
and partly through experience, what they express voluntarily and involuntarily.
When someone chooses baggy jeans as opposed to slim-fits, or a shaved head,
a tuxedo, body piercing, a string of pearls-these are choices, largely conscious,
that signal I am a member of this group. Other "body language" will strike the
viewer as involuntary ( dishevelment, poor taste, blushing, slurring, staring,
sweating, clumsiness), and so as a betrayal of characteristics that have not
been chosen. In the same way speech may be consciously chosen both in its
style (the rapper's patter, the lawyer's convolutions) and content (she tells
him she's angry, but not that she's broke). On the whole, it is human nature
to give the involuntary more credibility than the chosen. We say that what
he said was very generous, but he kept checking to see how it was going over. His
glances belied his words. In this case, we say that the words represent the text,
and that what we read by other means is the subtext.
a: Speech belongs largely in the voluntary category, though like appearance it
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0 can (and does) betray us. Talking is an intentional attempt to express the inner
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a: as the outer. But when people talk in literature they convey much more than
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I the information in their dialogue. They are also working for the author-to
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reveal themselves, advance the plot, fill in the past, control the pace, establish
the tone, foreshadow the future, establish the mood. What busy talk!
NELL: So just fill me in a bit more could you about what you've been doing.
SHONA: What I've been doing. It's all down there.
NELL: The bare facts are down here but I've got to present you to an
employer.
SHONA: I'm twenty-nine years old.
NELL: So it says here.
SHONA: We look young. Youngness runs in our family.
NELL: So just describe your present job for me.
SHONA: My present job at present. I have a car. I have a Porsche. I go up
the Ml a lot. Bum up the Ml a lot. Straight up the Ml in the fast lane
to where the clients are, Staffordshire, Yorkshire, I do a lot in Yorkshire.
I'm selling electric things. Like dishwashers, washing machines, stainless
steel tubs are a feature and the reliability of the program ....
Top Girls, Caryl Churchill
Notice how the characters produce tension by contradicting each other
(Fill me in; it's all down there; but I've got to present you; I'm twenty-nine; so it
says). This is known as "no dialogue," in which characters are in many and
various ways saying "no" to each other. They may be angry or polite, disagree-
ing, contradicting, qualifying, or frankly quarreling. But whatever the tone,
they spark our interest because we want to find out what will happen in this
overt or implied conflict.
Notice also how Shona's description of her job reveals the subtext. She
falters between concrete imagery and flimsy generalization, contradicting in
generalization what she tries to prove by making up convincing details. She is

I d
spinning lies without sufficient information or imaginatio n, so 1't' s no great
surprise when Nell ends the exchange with, "Christ, what a was t e of ti me ...
Not a word of this is true, is it?"
Dramatic dialogue is always direct, as in this example, all the words
spoken. In fiction, nonfiction, or poems, direct dialogue of this sort is lively
and vivid, but sometimes the narrative needs to cover ground faster, and then
dialogue may be indirect or summarized. Summarized dialogue, efficient
but textureless, gives us a brief report:
Shona claimed she had sales experience, but Nell questioned both her age and
her expertise.
Indirect dialogue gives the flavor of the dialogue without quoting directly: w
()
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Nell wanted her to fill in the facts, so Shona repeated that she was twenty- >
nine, claimed that looking young ran in the family, and that she drove a (J)
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Porsche up to Staffordshire to sell dishwashers and washing machines. But a:

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she couldn't seem to come up with the word "appliances. 11
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There's a strong temptation to make dialogue eloquent (you are a writer, a:

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I
after all), and the result is usually that it becomes stilted. People are often not ()

eloquent precisely about what moves them most. Half the time we aren't re-
ally sure what we mean, and if we are, we don't want to say it, and if we do,
we can't find the words, and if we can, others aren't listening, and if they are,
they don't understand .... In fact, the various failures to communicate can
make the richest sort of dialogue, just as the most stunted language is some-
times the most revealing of character.
In this example from David Mitchell's Black Swan Green, thirteen-year-
old Jason Taylor comes home from school. Notice how in this short space
Mum's actions contradict her words, her "sarky" (sarcastic) tone conceals
her secret, and Jason's thoughts contradict his responses. Notice also that we
are never in doubt who's speaking, though there is only one "he said."
Mum was at the dining room table . .. Dad's fireproof document box was out
and open. Through the kitchen hatch I asked if she'd had a good day. "Not
a good day, exactly. Mum didn't take her eyes off her calculator. "But it's
11

certainly been a real revelation.

11

"That's good, I said, doubting it. I got a couple of Digestives and a glass
11

of Ribena. Julia's snaffled all the Jaffa Cakes 'cause she's at home all day
revising for her A levels. Greedy moo. "What're you doing?"
"Skateboarding."
I should've just gone upstairs. "What's for dinner?"
"Toad."
One unsarky answer to one simp • le ques ti on, that's all I,,wanted.
"Doesn't Dad usually do all the bank statements and stuff? .
"Yes. Mum finally looked at me. "Isn't your lucky old father m for a
II

pleasant surprise when he gets home • ••"

 t and argument can make interesting dialogue if the matter it
Deba e . .. d b d t self
. . . but in imaginative wntmg e ate an argumen are usual!
s interesting, . Ytoo
static
1 to be of interest, too simple and too. smgle. Eudora Welty explained in

I
an interview with the Paris Review, "Sometimes I needed to make a speech d
four or five things at once-reveal what the character said but also what h:
thought he said, what he hid, what others w: re g~m~ to thmk he meant, and
what they misunderstood- and so forth-all m this smgle speech .... I used t
. " 0
laugh out loud sometimes when I wrote it.
If a character expresses in dialogue what h e/ she means, that character
has done only one t hing, whereas as a writer you are constantly trying to
mean more than you say, to give several clues at once to the inner lives of
your characters. If Jeannine says:
I feel that civilization is encroaching on nature, and that the greed of the
developers will diminish the value of all our lives-
a: -she has expressed an opinion, but little of her inner life is revealed: her
w
f--
0 emotions, her history, her particularities. This is the dialogue equivalent of
<(
a: the vague category images described in Chapter 2. But if she says:
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I
0 They should lock up that builder. He's massacred the neighborhood. I remem-
ber how the lilac and wisteria used to bloom, and then the peonies and the
daffodils. What fragrance in this room! But now. Smell the stink of that site
next door. It just makes me sick.
-the same opinion is expressed, but her emotions-anger, nostalgia, and defeat-
also are vividly revealed, and through particular detail.

TRY THIS 4.4

Write a "dialogue" between two characters, only one of. whom can speak.
The other is physically, emotionally, or otherwise prevented from saying
what he/ she wants to say. Write only the words of the one, only the appear-
ance and actions of the other.

Character as Action
By our actions we discover what we really believe and, simultane-
ously, reveal ourselves to others. John Gardner
th
I have said that a character is first of all someone who wants. Whatever e
th
nature of that desire, it will lead the character toward action and erefore
toward potential change. The action may be as large as a military charge or as
th
small as removing a coffee cup, but it will sign al or symbolize for e reader
· ·t·icant change h as occurred . The characters who intereS t an d rnove
that a sigm
us are th0se who are capable of su ch change.
 Playwright Sam Smiley observes that "Any . 'fi .
• d' • .
change m con 1tions, relationships activity or II thsigm cant
,, discovery forces
'
quickest an d best way to know someone is to s a th ree. And ' he says ' "The
. . . ee , at person make a signifi-
cant dec1s1on .... At the mstant a character mak h .
. . .. • es a c 01ce, he changes from
one state to another; his s1gmficant relationship It . d '
. . s a .er, an usually he must
follow a new lme of actmn as a consequence."
If we grant that discovery and d~cision are the tw f h
. . o ~ ~ o ~m
change, characters will be m action when these 'bl A • • './
. . . are poss1 e.. ction as m
action-packed 1s a crude but effective way of getti·ng d·i· dd · ·
.
mto a work : scovery an ec1S1on
I .

Th:re'~ the bad guy! (discovery) Quick, I will load my revolver, hide behind z
0
this pillar, turn and shoot. ( decision), But ~ait! There's his accomplice on j::
0
the catwalk above me! (discovery) I will r~ll under this forklift to avoid his <(
bullet! ( decision) Cf)
<(
er:
The thriller, the cop show, the alien, and the spy are enormously w
l-
popular (and money-making) genres because they simplify and exagger- o
<(
er:
ate our experience of what action is. But of course most human discovery, <(
I
decision, and cha·nge take place in the realm of work, love, relationship, 0
and family, and it's important for t4e literary 'writer to recognize discovery
and decision in these areas, where they .are likely to be both complex and
difficult. '
One reason that debate and argument seem static is that characters hold-
ing forth With well thought-out positions seem unlikely to change, whereas
dialogue that represents potential change becomes itself dramatic action. In
dramatic dialogue, in ways large an,d small, characters are constantly making
discoveries and decisions: Look again at the previous exc:1J.ange between Nell
and Shona. What does Nell discover about Shona? What does Shona decide
to say to prove herself? Look at the exchange between Jason and his mum;
What does Jason want?· Discover? Decide? What discovery and decision of
Mum's can you infer from the subtext?
Change may seem most obvious in literature with a strong story line,
and of course discovery and decision will often involve a physical. action:
she opens the letter, he picks up the phone, she slams the door, he steps
on the gas. But change also, importantly, occurs in the mind. And even
in the gentlest piece of memoir or the slightest nature lyric the persona is
made aware of something that seems important, something that has not
before been present to the mind and now is, and so c~anges the enti~e
mental landscape. Frequently (by no means always; still, frequently) m
the tradition of memoir this mental change has to do with a new perspec-
tive on the complexity of life and human beings; frequently in lyric poetry
it has to do with the ephemeral quality of beauty, and therefore an aware-
ness of death.

L
r The change from alive to dead is a major one, .as is the change from in
danger to triumphant hero. But discovery and decision are no less present in

'
the subtle and profound exchanges of ordinary life.
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with snow along the bough
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Easter tide.
5 Now of my threescore years and ten
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
That only leaves me fifty more.
And since, to look at things in bloom,
10 Fifty years is little room,
a: About the woodland I will go
w To see the cherry hung with snow.
I-
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a: "II" from A Shropshire Lad, A E. Housman
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I
() In this very low-key poem (you can hear the stillness, the d.eliber~te

1-.m pace, in the rhythm), the poet makes two discov:eries and a decision. The first
,, I

discovery is of the snow on the trees; the second is of the brevity of life. The
'

decision is simply to walk in the woods, but in following this "new line of
action" he also "changes from one state to another," in that he acknowledges
his mortality.

. ,-:tc•·:,.;•·-•' ... ., • t

TRY'THIS 4.5 . •·• .· ,,:L:,.,i. 'i?,,'.'':;;,,

· Take a monologue you have.already :wtjtt:en al\ a /· <iti~11s'; in the 'forµi of ·
either narration or stage directions. Make thtiJiiol cd'ritradict di' qualify
, the speech. E.g.,. "I'm not worried ~b9ut )ii~i"~1:1:.f * e'~e t};#J gs a·o p't throw
1
me." (She twists her hands.) . and so :f~rth. , Renierft~er
;.t haf ,a. good way to
reveal characters' feelings is through their relatioulships
t ,. , /,J
Yf.,
to ·objects.
.;..<~- .
'

Character as Thought
Although discovery and decision necessarily imply thought, image, speech,
and action are all external manifestations-things that we could observe.
Imaginative writing has the power also to take us inside the minds of
th
characters to show us what they are thinking. Again, different degrees of e
revelation of thought are appropriate to different forms of literature:
th
• In a memoir or personal essay we count on the honest thoughts of e
author but can't credibly see into the minds of other characters. (Eve~
0
this quasi-rule is sometimes broken; Tom Wolfe, in his techniques_ d
" . into a kin
new Journalism," frequently turns what his interviewees say
 of mental patter or stream of consciousness, as if these quotations were
in fact their thoughts.)
• A character in a drama is necessarily speaking and therefore making
his/her thoughts external, but there are a number of theatrical tradi-
tions to let us know that we are overhearing thoughts-as in soliloquy,
aside, voice-over. Many characters in modem drama speak directly to the
audience, and usually do so with an assumed honesty apropos of what is
going on in their minds, whereas in dialogue with other characters they
may lie, conceal, stumble, or become confused.
• Fiction usually ( except in the case of the objective narrator) gives us the f-
thoughts of at least the central character. I
(9
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• A persona in poetry is usually sharing thoughts. Poetry also has the 0
same freedom as fiction, to be presented from the point of view of a I
f-
character-and this character may reveal what's on his or her mind. (/)
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a:
Aristotle suggested a useful way of looking at thought in relation to UJ
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desire. A persona or character begins with a certain desire, and therefore 0
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a certain specific goal in mind. Thought is the process by which she works a:
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backward to decide what to do in the immediate situation that presents itself. I
0
"Loveliest of Trees" is a condensed poetic demonstration of this process. My
apologies to Housman for this rude paraphrase-The chances are I will die at ·
about seventy. I'm twenty now. That means I have fifty years left. That's not
many years to look at these trees. I will look at them now. But it does show not
only Aristotle's understanding of the thought process, but also how crucial to
the beauty of the poem is Housman's diction.
Thought, like dialogue, is also action when it presents us with the process
of change. Since both discovery and decision take place in the mind, thought
is material to every character and is in fact the locus of action and the dwell-
ing place of desire. In the first lines of any poem, the first page of every story,
the curtain rise of every drama, you can find a human consciousness yearn-
ing for whatever might occur in the last line, on the last page, in the last
scene. The action proceeds because that consciousness makes a lightning-fast
leap backward to the present moment, to decide what action can be taken
now, at this moment, in this situation, to achieve that goal. At every new
discovery, the mind repeats the process, ever changing in the service of a fixed
desire.

TRY THIS 4.6

Pick a character. What is your character's deep desire? What is the situation
that the character is.· in how-where, doing what, in the company of whom?
Make a list, inventing as you go, of the character's thoug~t process, back-
ward from the ultimate desire to the specific action (or inaction) that would
lead eventually towa~d that desire. _,
 cter as Presented by the Author
Chara . d thought are the direct methods of
eech act10n, an • . Presenti
Appearance, sp . ' th d is authorial interpretation- "tellin ,, ng
The indirect me o . d h . g Usth
character. d otives values, virtues, an t e hke. The adv e
' backgroun ' m ' . l antag

I character s
. d· t metho are
of the m irec k
d pace· to now
time an s_
d enormous, for its use eaves you free to
anything you choose to know whether the h In
' . d godlike, to tell us what we are to feel. The inct· ·
rnove ·
c arac
es

knows 1t or not, an . . Irect

ter
method allows you o t convey a great deal of informat10n m a short tirne .
The port town of Veracruz is a little purgatory between land and sea fior th e
trave ler, but the People who live there are very fond of themselves and the
town they have helped to make . .. and they carry on their lives of alternate
violence and lethargy with a pleasurable contempt for outside opinion ....
Ship of Fools, Katherine Anne Porter
a:
w
l-
o The disadvantage of this indirect method is that it bars us readers from
<(
a: sharing the immediacy and vividness of detail and the pleasure of judging for
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I ourselves. In the summarized judgments of this passage, for example, we learn
0
more about the attitude of the narrator than about the town. Nevertheless,
the indirect method is very efficient when you want to cover the exposition
quickly, as A. S. Byatt does in this passage from "Crocodile Tears."
The Nimmos spent their Sundays in those art galleries that had the common
sense to open on that dead day.... They liked buying things, they liked simply
looking, they were happily married and harmonious in their stares, on the
whole. They engaged a patch of paint and abandoned it, usually simultane-
ously, they lingered in the same places, considering the same things. Some
they remembered, some they forgot, some they carried away.
Thus in a few sentences of the first paragraph, Byatt tells us everything we
need to know about the Nimmos' marriage-especially since Mr. Nimmo is going
to die on the next page, and the story will then concern itself with Mrs. Nimmo's
~ight from the scene. Notice that although this passage is full of analysis an_d
interpretation, we are given some images to look at: ".. '.harmonious in their
stares ... They engaged a patch of paint and abandoned it ... " In an instance such
as this, authorial interpretation functions for pace and structure. But it is not a
very useful mode to describe human change which involves action and therefore
calls for the · d. '
imme iacy of scene, and of the direct presentation of character.
TRY THIS 4.7
Write a paragr h 0 f h racter
through h a? no more than a hundred words presenting ac a ,
aut onal interp t t· h haracter 5
life, four qu 1. . re a IOn. Cover at least five years in t e c d rwo
h a 1ties he or h t an
abitual actions. s e possesses, three important even s,
Character as Conflict
· f of life must be conceived interms of t h e specific
The meaning .
meanmg o a personal life in a given situati on.
Victor Frankl

Rich characterization can be effectively (and quite consciously) achieved by

producing a conflict between methods of presentation. A character can be
directly revealed to us through image, voice, action, and thought. If you set
one of these methods at odds with the others, then dramatic tension will be
produced. Imagine, for example, a character who is impeccable and' expen- l-
sively dressed, who speaks eloquently, who acts decisively, and whose mind is o
:::i
revealed to us as full of order and determination. He is inevitably a flat char- LL.
z
0
acter. But suppose that he is impeccable, eloquent, and decisive, and that his 0
mind is a mess of wounds and panic. He is at once interesting. Cl)
<(

Here is the opening passage of Saul Bellow's Seize the Day, in which appear- a:
UJ
ance and action are blatantly at odds with.thought. Notice that it is the tension l-
o<(
between suppressed t~ought and what is e~ressed through appearance and a:
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action that produces the rich character conflict. · I
0
When it came to concealing his troubles, Tommy Wilhelm was not less
capable than the next fellow. So at least he thought, and there was a
certain amount of evidence to back him up. He had once been an actor-
no, not quite, an extra-and he knew what acting should be. Also, he was
smoking a cigar, and when a man is smoking a'cigar, wearing a hat, he·
has an advantage: it is harder to find out how he feels. He came from the
twenty-third floor down to the lobby on .the mezzanine to ·collect his mail
before breakfast, and he believed-he hoped-he looked passably well: doing
all right.
Thought is most frequently at odds with one or more of the other three
methods of direct presentation-reflecting the difficulty we have express-
ing ourselves openly or accurately-but this is by no means . alw~ys, the
case. The author may be directly telling us what to think and contradicting
herself by showing the character to be someone else entirely. A character
may be successfully, calmly, even eloquently, expressing fine opinions
while betraying himself by pulling at his ear, or herself by crushing her
skirt. Captain Queeg of Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny is a memo-
rable example of this, maniacally clicking the steel balls in his hand as he
defends his disciplinary code. Often we are not privy to the thought~ ~f a
character at all so that the conflicts must be expressed in a contrad1ct1on
between the ex~ernal methods of direct presentation, ap~e~ranc~, ~peech,
and action. Notice that the notion of "betraying onese~r is ~gam im~or-
tant here. We're more likely to believe the evidence unmtent1onally given
than deliberate expression.
r TRY THIS 4.8

I
Write a short character sketch (it may be from life) focusing on how Yo
character m akes a living. Put your charact_er 1_n . tion, and let
. a work'mg s1tua Ur

us know by a combination of direct an d indirect method~ what that Work

is; how well he/ she does it; what it looks, sounds, smells hke; and how the
character feels about it. Contrast the methods. ' '

TRY THIS 4 .9
Write a stage direction for two people that conveys the emotional r;lation-
ship between them. They may gesture, move, touch, and relate to objects or
elements of the place; but there is no dialogue. ··
..:

er:
w
1-
(_)
Stock and Flat Characters
<(
er: I h ave insisted on the creation of character through an understanding of
<(
I
(_)
desire and through many methods of presentation. But it would be impracti-
cal and u nnecessary to go through this process for every passerby on the fic-
tion al street, and boring to present such characters fully.
Flat characters are those defined by a single idea or quality. They may
exist on ly to fulfill a function, and we need know little about them. It's true
that they can be brought to brief life in an image-notice that the takeout
delivery boy in the passage from Nicole Krauss's History of Love, "stands in
the doorway holding the greasy bag" -but neither the author nor the reader
needs to stop to explore their psychology, or to give them the complexity that
would make them round.
Stock characters or caricatures are related to flat characters in that they
insistently present a single idea or quality. If you have aimed for a lifelike and
complex character, and someone says you've created a stock character, that's
not good. But some writers, especially in drama, effectively use stock charac-
ters as a way of satirizing human types. Eugene Ionesco takes the technique
to its extreme in The Bald Soprano:

MRS. SMITH: There, it's nine o'clock. We've drunk the soup, and eaten the
fish and chips, and the English salad. The children have drunk English
water. We've eaten well this evening. That's because we live in the sub-
urbs of London and because our name is Smith.

TRY T HIS 4 .10

5
Go back to something you have written and find a character who ~ppe:r t
only briefly or is named or referred to without appearing. Characterize t a
person with a single vivid image.