Getting a Character to Walk

I'm reading James Wood's wonderful book, How Fiction Works. In the section on Character, he talks about the idea of getting the characters "in" to the book, making them come alive for the reader. He talks about the fact that most of us, most of the time, lean into description as if we were describing a picture or an image in the mirror. It's frozen, just a lot of descriptors that Wood calls "static."

His point is that as hard as we try to tell the reader that the character looks this way or that, with this long list; it's no good. He gives this example of what doesn't work:

My mother is squinting in the fierce sunlight and holding, for some reason, a dead pheasant. She is dressed in old-fashioned lace-up boots, and white gloves. She looks absolutely miserable. My father, however, is in his element, irrepressible as ever, and has on his head that gray velvet trilby from Prague I remember so well from my childhood.

Here's an example of introducing the character through description that he likes:

He was a gentleman with red whiskers who always went first through a doorway.

Interesting, I think, and here's why: Wood talks about it in terms of "static" and "mobile." The first description is static. It's describing a picture, in this case, literally, but even if it weren't, it's just describing stationary elements—although I see emotion as well, and don't think of emotions as static. Nevertheless, I think what Wood is after, as I compare the two descriptions, is behavior that shows us something.

If I think about it, usually when I talk about someone, you know the "gossip" kind of talking, about a friend or stranger... I'm usually prompted by something they did that caught my attention, often with judgment attached. Right? I either like the way they act or I don't.

So, Wood is saying that to get a character established on the page, the author needs to pick up on something about the way they are that's telling, something about the way they generally behave, so the reader will get a feel for the character. Behavior, he's suggesting is more memorable than looks, especially the standard that we tend to fall back on, "limpid blue eyes," "ruggedly handsome" — that kind of thing. Actually, the example he likes combines a bit of telling physical description with a bit of behavior: red whiskers with always walking through the door first.

I've gotten good feedback about the way I brought one of my characters onto the page, and looking at it, I see that in a different way, I did something similar. It's in a conversation—what I'm referring to is the second line where Sophia describes the rider. The two speakers are outside above the street when they see him.

We had raised our third glass when a rider raced by at an awful clip.

“That’s Théodore Géricault.” Sophia always carried her mother-of-pearl opera glasses. “He rides like a man chasing death.”

Wood goes on to say that it doesn't take much to get a character "walking," just a few "brushstrokes." It makes me think that I'm often trying too hard, probably because I haven't found the strong detail that's telling. I also think it's important to keep the description unfolding for awhile, not to try to say it all at once. Again, that arises, I think, from insecurity, the nagging feeling that you haven't "said enough." The point Wood makes about the guy who "always goes though the door first," is that we surmise all sorts of things about him from that one bit of information.

He goes on to say that this capacity, to get the character walking right from the first is especially valuable with the bit players in your book. It makes sense, think about theater, if a walk-on or a one-line bit player comes on stage fully developed with attitude and behavior, we pay attention. We believe in the character.

For me, there's another whole piece to talk about here, because I think the same thing happens with the scene itself. Often writers create a static instead of a mobile scene. It's challenging to get the action moving, but the answer is similar: you have to get away from telling us how it "was" or how it "looked" and get in there with behavior—with what is actually happening. That's one of the reasons why dialogue can be powerful. It can drop us right into the action. I'll discuss this in greater detail in a future entry.