 Drama: December 10, 2014 Issue [#6690] |
  Drama
This week: Different Approaches to Characterization Edited by: Joy  
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“Clever's not enough to hold me - I want characters who are more than devices to be moved about for Effect.”
Laura Anne Gilman
“I am the man who comes and goes between the bar and the telephone booth. Or, rather:that man is called 'I' and you know nothing else about him, just as this station is called only 'station' and beyond it there exists nothing except the unanswered signal of a telephone ringing in a dark room of a distant city.”
Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
“The way she looks right now, you have to think about multiple car pile-ups. Imagine two bloodmobiles colliding head on. The way she looks, you'd have to think of mass graves to even log thirty seconds in the saddle.
Think of spoiled cat food and ulcerated cankers and expired donor organs.
That's how beautiful she looks.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
“Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we as readers have a strong subconscious wish to find them incredible.”
― C.S. Lewis, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. In this issue, we'll discuss a few different ways of showing a character's traits.
Thank you for reading our newsletters and for supplying the editors with feedback and encouragement.
Note: In the editorial, I refer to third person singular as he, to also mean the female gender, because I don't like to use they or he/she.
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
Surely, many of you must have filled out character charts for defining your fictional characters; I like to use them, too. This is a fine approach for us because we don’t want to give a blue-eyed, red-haired woman dark brown eyes and chestnut hair by the end of a novel, but a chart is for the writer’s referral only. Some novice writers just copy the chart into their stories in a paragraph or two, and voila’ the characterization is done, or so they think.
Clearly, smarter ways exist to show the assets and flaws of a character, and some of those have been used when people gathered around to listen to their elders’ tales, millenniums ago. For instance, one of the oldest storytelling strategies, like in Greek myths, is to define characters by a force of nature, emotion, or virtue and vice, such as Demeter losing her daughter to the underworld and grieving, thus turning the season to winter.
Ever since, characters have been important to stories. An interesting character is not the one who conforms and is stale. An interesting character is the one who sticks out in a believable way. So how can we describe such a character not through expositions but through smarter methods?
A few of the approaches to do this are:
 Through how the character arranges his surroundings or through showing where the character lives.
For example, to show the many-sidedness of his character Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has him live in an apartment packed with things like gold snuff cases, scrapbooks of newspaper clippings, an encyclopedia, a shoe filled with tobacco, Holmes's chemical apparatus, a sofa, a pipe-rack, etc.
On the other hand, in Jack London's Call of the Wild, the setting for Buck's adventures changes frequently, moving from a civilized environment to a wild and dangerous environment. These several changes in setting are crucial to Buck's development as a character.
Through parts of the body of a character:
Sometimes, a character’s head, belly, foot, hands or gestures can be a symbolic description of him.
In Mayor of Casterbridge, Hardy shows the character through his way of walking. “His measured, springless walk was the walk of the skilled countryman as distinct from the desultory shamble of the general labourer; while in the turn and plant of each foot there was, further, a dogged and cynical indifference personal to himself.”
Through habits and quirks:
This types of description signals how a character will behave in certain situations, especially if the habit or quirk is repetitious and has become an integral part of the character’s makeup.
“He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a verb in the past tense.”
James Joyce, Dubliners
 Through the eyes of another character or a photograph:
Another character’s assessment of a character can add to his description. It is a good idea to show the character from several other characters’ insights as any one character may be biased.
“Later, when she sees the photographs for the first time, she will be surprised at how calm her face looks - how steady her gaze, how erect her posture. In the picture her eyes will be slightly closed, and there will be a shadow on her neck. The shawl will be draped around her shoulders, and her hands will rest in her lap…”
Anita Shreve Fortune’s Rocks
Through a character’s work, his beliefs, his religion, his pastimes, hobbies, or passions.
What one does can usually define him. Showing a character as he engages in his work, pastime, or religious rituals may point to who he is, partly or as a whole.
“When your entire world is unraveling, you tend to crave order, and I found it in knitting. In fact, I’ve even read that knitting can lower stress more effectively than meditation.”
Debbie Macomber The Shop on Blossom Street
During the course of a long story or novel, authors offer characters to readers in choice pieces, which in essence imitates real life, since we don’t see all the aspects of a person right away when we meet him for the first time. Then when we observe him in action, or in the scenes of a story, we begin to learn about him; therefore, the longer and the more complicated a story is, the more the varied methods we can use.
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This Issue's Tip: In any scene, set the characters in motion, especially if they are speaking. Give them gestures and mimics, and have them play/work with inanimate objects, and have others move around them.
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Feedback for "Conspiracy Means High Drama"
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Quick-Quill 
I love conspiracies. I read your article with a bit of tongue in cheek. A conspiracy is a truth injected with farfetched ideas.
True. All lies and schemes need to have at least a modicum of truth to be believable. 
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BIG BAD WOLF Feeling Thankful 
Submitted item: "The Reptilian Chronicles"
Lots of things out there.
Yeah, we should be cautious. 
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SkyHawk - Into The Music 
Joy,
One thing to add to this -- your conspiracy plot line need not be the main plot line, either. Some conspiracies, such as two people plotting against a third for some reasons, can be a subplot in an overall story. Say, for example, a person is doing his job and doing it well -- well enough that the boss feels threatened, and the boss's lover, also an executive at the company, helps the boss try to make sure the good employee gets tripped up and even fired. The main story can be about the good employee, while a subplot (one he may not know about for a while) is the two boss's plotting his demise because they see him as a threat.
Conspiracy doesn't need to be the main plotline. It can be a subplot or even a scheme in the backstory, as long as it has an effect on the main story. Thanks for the input.
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