Stein on Writing Part 3

n.o.body believes for a second that Laverne weighed four thousand pounds. In speech we hear it said about an object that "it weighed a ton." We exaggerate constantly. It's a way of communicating quickly, and often effectively.

Comparison to a known quant.i.ty or quality is sometimes a useful form of exaggeration: Archie was Wilt Chamberlain tall.

Bruce wafted me around that dance floor. If I'd shut my eyes, he could have been Fred Astaire.

Exaggeration can be especially useful when dealing with children. Here's Nanci Kincaid again: The worst thing about George, though, worse than his nasty mouth, full of missing and broken teeth, worse than his fleas and sore spots, was the fact that he was missing one eyeball. He had an empty hole in his head. You could poke your finger in there and he wouldn't even twitch.

Reproving someone who is late, a layman might write, "I've been waiting a long time for you." That doesn't characterize either the speaker or the latecomer. "I've been waiting forever for you" is an exaggeration-and also a cliche. It doesn't characterize. Here's how an experienced writer, Rita Mae Brown, did it in her novel High Hearts: "Girl, my fingernails could grow an inch just waiting for you."

In The Best Revenge I needed to introduce a character who would prove to be influential, a tough lawyer named Bert Rivers, who is short and bald. If he was described as short and bald, that would be a movie-house ticket taker's description. Nick Manucci, in the company of his lawyer, Dino, sees his opponent's lawyer for the first time, and says: "This distributor has a lawyer so short you wouldn't be able to see him if he sat behind a desk. And he's Yul Brynner bald. But when he shakes your hand you know this dude could squeeze an apple into apple juice. Every time Dino opens his mouth, this lawyer p.i.s.ses into it."

That's not the author talking, it's a character talking, and therefore an acceptable exaggeration. It also characterizes the speaker.

Can you characterize more than one person at a time? Of course you can. You characterize the speaker as well as the person spoken about. A novice writing what first comes to mind might write, "My father is a pompous judge." That's telling the reader, not showing him. Here's the way it was done in the voice of a character named Jane Riller in The Best Revenge:.

My father is still living, but less and less. Judge James Charles Endicott Jackson, his "appellations" as he called his full name, that tall, lean, hollow-cheeked man who had made such a religion of the law, preached from the head of our dining-room table each evening of my young life.

A character would not likely say, "My mother always gave in to my father." That's telling the reader. Here's how Jane Riller says it: When they stood next to their car at the bus station, for a moment I thought my mother was going to leave the Judge's side long enough to come forward and say a few words more than good-bye. But it was only the wind ruffling her dress, not a movement of her body that I saw. I admired her as one would a pioneer farm woman, someone who had lived a life no longer possible. What great and unacknowledged actresses the women of my mother's background were; to avoid shattering the fragile innocence of their spouses, some of them simulated not only their o.r.g.a.s.ms but their entire lives.

Jane's snapshot of her mother also characterizes Jane. It shows what she, as a young woman, rebelled against. She wanted to go out into the world where you could experience everything. Note that the paragraph starts with a visual image-the parents standing next to their car at the bus station-and ends with the character's conclusion. Had the order been reversed, the effect would be lessened. Also note that Jane is characterizing not only her mother but a whole cla.s.s of people.

Can characterizing a whole cla.s.s of people be done by a beginning writer? Here's another example from Nanci Kincaid's first novel to demonstrate that it doesn't take decades of experience to use the techniques that writers have developed over centuries: Migrant kids know they are white trash, so they never speak a single word the whole two weeks they come to school. The rich kids will not sit by them at lunch. They invite each other to birthday parties held at the swimming pools in their backyards. The rich daddies usually go into politics. They slowly get bald and fat and buy up everything for miles around. When the legislature is in session Tallaha.s.see swarms with them. Mother says half of them have girlfriends put up at the Howard Johnson's.

Is it possible to characterize with a single word? In a work in progress, I wanted to reintroduce two characters who've been in several of my books, the lawyer George Thoma.s.sy, and Gunther Koch, a sixty-year-old Viennese psychiatrist. Dr. Koch is lecturing Thoma.s.sy, a successful trial lawyer, about how to detect jurors who might disadvantage Thoma.s.sy's case. The lawyer reacts to being lectured: Thoma.s.sy didn't take this kind of s.h.i.t from a judge, why the h.e.l.l should he take it from this accent.

The word "accent" characterizes not Koch but the speaker Thoma.s.sy. He deprecates Dr. Koch because he doesn't like being lectured. The trace of prejudice against foreigners is especially meaningful because Thoma.s.sy has tried hard to repress his own immigrant background.

If there is a common error among inexperienced writers, it's that they say too much, they try to characterize with an excess of detail instead of trying to find the word or phrase that characterizes best.

The words you select depend on the circ.u.mstances under which you introduce the character. For instance, when we first see a character at any distance, physical size makes an instant impression. If we are seeing a character at closer range, we often notice the eyes first. What inexperienced writers often do is give us the color or shape of eyes. That's not as effective as conveying how the character uses his eyes. If on meeting a person he averts his eyes, it usually connotes something negative. Good eye contact is usually perceived as positive. Unrelenting eye contact can be negative to a shy or withdrawn character: I couldn't make eye contact with her. She was looking for invisible spots on the wall.

She said, "I don't love you anymore," but her eyes belied her words.

She didn't answer me. She just continued to glare as if her eyes said it all.

Another error of inexperienced writers-or journalists in a hurry-is to confine characterization to the obvious physical attributes. For females, facial features, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, hips, b.u.t.tocks, legs. For males, broad shoulders, strong arms, chiseled features, and so on. That's top-of-the-head, thoughtless writing. Such cliches are common in speech. We expect better of our writers.

Instead of cliched attributes, consider using physical characteristics that relate to your story. For example, if you are writing a love story between a woman and a man, consider the belief of some psychologists that a woman's most prominent s.e.xual characteristic is her hair. (If that surprises you, imagine a woman you think attractive as bald. Would she still be s.e.xually appealing?) The same psychologists hold that the most important s.e.xual characteristic of a man is his voice (And if that surprises you, think of a man you believe to be attractive and imagine him with a squeaky, high-pitched voice. Would he still be s.e.xually appealing?) If you want to convey an antis.e.xual attribute to your reader, consider the characteristics of hair and voice in a negative way.

There are at least five different ways to characterize: 1. Through physical attributes.

2. With clothing or the manner of wearing clothing.

3. Through psychological attributes and mannerisms, 4. Through actions.

5. In dialogue.

You'll want to avoid generalizations or similes that have been overused, such as "She shuffled like a bag lady" or "She carried herself like a queen." One of my students described a character this way: "George was a big fellow." That pa.s.ses on information, but evokes nothing. The student was encouraged to think how he might revise his material to stir a feeling in the reader. This is what he did: When George came your way, you thought you were being run down by a truck.

We know immediately that George is a big fellow, but more important we feel his size as threatening. The writer has characterized by an action, which is far more effective than characterizing by description.

Characterization should be kept visual whenever possible: "He walked against an unseen wind" is visual. Opportunities are available in a character's gait, posture, demeanor, and other physical behavior. For instance, there are a lot of ways that a character can get across a room. Walking is the easy, lazy answer. The writer's aim should be to pick a way that both characterizes and helps the story.

Think of the many ways a character can walk. She can promenade, take a leisurely walk, stroll. She can amble, which means to move easily, to saunter. She can wander aimlessly.

You can pick up the pace, and have a character hasten, scurry, scoot, rush, dash, dart, bolt, spring, run, or race. Each of these words harbors a nuance that can help both to characterize and to convey a visual image. You can even use a metaphor effectively, as in "She flew to the store to get there before it closed."

A writer who always has his characters "walk" is missing opportunities. Variants on walking should be used with caution, however. Their overuse annoys readers. In considering the possible variations for walking, you have been doing what writers should do every day-reflect on the meanings of individual words.

It is also possible to characterize by going into great detail about how a particular character walks. Witness the following from a John Updike story: She didn't look around, not this queen, she just walked straight on slowly, on these long white primadonna legs. She came down a little hard on her heels, as if she didn't walk in bare feet that much, putting down her heels and then letting the weight move along her toes as if she was testing the floor with every step, putting a little deliberate extra action into it.

One author whose work I edited found a way to walk his character straight to bestsellerdom. The story hinged on the relationship of a husband to his wife and his mistress. The novel wasn't working because the husband and wife were characterized successfully, but the mistress seemed to be all s.e.x, a one-note characterization that failed to make her come alive. A triangle doesn't work unless all three partic.i.p.ants are characterized fully.

I asked the author to describe how the mistress would walk across the room. He said he saw her walking across the room like a young lion-a male simile that opened up a new way of characterizing the mistress. Male traits were then used to describe her elsewhere in the book. It made her come alive, which in turn made the relationship credible. The book went on to become the number-one bestseller for thirty-seven consecutive weeks. One can describe a way of moving that gives us a sense of personality: Henry moved through the crowd as if he were a basketball player determined to bounce his way to the basket.

The character needn't be in motion. Posture can provide personality: He had the bearing of a man who had been a soldier a long time ago.

Physical behavior can give the reader a sense of personality: tapping a finger, pointing with eyegla.s.ses, snickering, laughing, clapping hands wildly.

A broad range of psychological attributes is available to the writer. Let's look at one that can create a dramatic effect: He said nothing.

I demanded an answer and he just stood there. "Say something," I said. His silence was like a brick wall between us. "Come on! Speak!"

That's an example of someone who gets his way by refusing to do something. Psychological attributes can be much more direct: She bombarded them with questions nonstop as if their answers were irrelevant.

Calvin's glazed expression said, "I'm not paying attention. I'm listening to the music in my head."

She was only nine years old, but she could look directly into your soul as if in a previous life she had been a Grand Inquisitor and your lies were condemning you.

Characterizing through psychological attributes can be rewarding because they often connect to the story: He dealt with his friends as if they were employees. He talked and they listened.

If you got in a car with her you'd find that her sentences were at least ten miles long.

At a party he'd come on to a woman-any woman-as if she were the only woman in the room.

Physical and psychological attributes can also be combined for purposes of characterization: As he moved slowly across the room, age and arthritis made him seem brittle, but when he spoke- anywhere about anything-people stopped to listen as if Moses had come down with new commandments.

If you develop a characteristic that's especially pertinent to your character, or original, it's a good idea to use it on the character's first appearance, to "set" the character. For instance, if you now know that your character will first be seen walking, then gait is a characteristic that should appear right away. If the character is the kind who always interrupts other people in conversation, you might consider introducing that character as he or she interrupts. For instance: George and Mary were at the kitchen table, debating how to handle their misbehaving teenager when Alma walked in and said, "I don't know how you people can just sit there talking instead of getting off your b.u.t.ts and giving that child of yours a lesson with the back of your hand."

There are many ways in which characterization can go wrong in the hands of a less experienced writer, but two stand out because they are so common in rejected fiction. There is the protagonist with a weak will, and the villain who is merely badly behaved.

First, consider the "hero" who is not heroic, who lacks drive, a will to attain his objective. Let's face it, readers aren't interested in wimps. They are interested in a.s.sertive characters who want something, want it badly, and want it now.

Test yourself. Would you want to spend ten or twelve hours with a wimpish character who is weak and ineffectual? Don't ask the reader to. A wimp in life is a social bore. A wimp in fiction is an obstacle to reader enjoyment.

I have talked to writers whose problems with wimpish characters in their work had a direct link to their own lives. There are children who, damaged by authority, become fighters against authority. There are also people who, damaged by authority in childhood, become relatively pa.s.sive adults as a means of camouflaging their aggression and anger to save their hearts and lives. Camouflaged anger is useful in stories, but it is the final unleashing of the anger that attracts readers most.

In working with such writers, or with shy writers who produce shy heroes, I have found a way, once they understand the inhospitality of fiction to pa.s.sivity, to help them get rid of a wimpish protagonist who is de-energizing their fiction. I ask the writer to imagine that he is in his study with the door closed. A person outside wants to come in. The writer orders the intruder to stay out. I ask the writer to imagine a second person outside his door who says to the first, "Get out of my way," then comes into the writer's study without asking. The writer starts to object and this second intruder says, "You shut up and listen for a change!"

That second person is the writer's replacement for the wimp. That's his new protagonist. I urge the writer to listen to the character, rude as he is, and then compose a letter from that new non-wimp character to the writer that is a.s.sertive, candid, and at least a touch eccentric.

As to villains, bad behavior on its own is not as effective as mean spiritedness, deriving satisfaction and even pleasure from hurting the hero or preventing him from attaining his goal. (A section on characterizing villains begins on page 68.) In the course of developing a character, there are some questions I will ask myself. Does he behave differently toward strangers than he does to members of his family? Such a difference is revealing. Would my character behave differently when he met an old friend who is now famous than when he b.u.mped into another friend of the same vintage who is down on his luck and ashamed? I also ask myself if my character ever talks to people in a way they find offensive. Does he realize he is offending them? Does he try to apologize or change? Or doesn't he care? We know that people reveal themselves more when they raise their voices than when they speak normally. If my character had reason to shout, what would we hear? Or if my character is the kind of person who would never shout, what thought is he repressing? It adds to the drama to have contrast between what the character is doing and what he is saying to himself. As you can see, my questions provoke both good and bad characteristics and lead me into the character's relationships and into story scenes.

When I'm planning a character, I also try to listen to his or her dialogue as if the character were in the room with me. Do they use figures of speech and expressions that characterize strongly? I search for conscious and unconscious mannerisms of my character. As to a character's clothing, I try to focus on one item that will stand out in the reader's mind, for instance the fact that my character always wears a raincoat even when the sun is shining.

Eventually I have to ask myself about my character's att.i.tude toward himself. If he is sometimes self-deprecating, does he reveal it through some physical tic or in things he says when he first meets people? If he is arrogant, what does he do that will make the reader feel he is arrogant without his saying a word? An arrogant action, I find, works better than arrogant speech.

I have seen talented writers hurt their chances of publication because they persist in writing about "perfectly ordinary people." Of course there have been numerous successful novels in which the main characters were not extraordinary. What the writers mean by "perfectly ordinary people" are characters who are seemingly no different from the run of people we meet who do not seem in any way distinctive.

People who are exactly like other people probably don't exist. But people who seem like most other people litter our lives, and we don't usually seek their company because they are boring. Readers don't read novels in order to experience the boredom they often experience in life. They want to meet interesting people, extraordinary people, preferably people different from anyone they've met before in or out of fiction.

The experienced writer will give us characters-even in common walks of life-who seem extraordinary on first acquaintance. Are there exceptions? Of course.

In my novel The Resort, the leading characters are an "ordinary" middle-aged couple, Henry and Margaret Brown, who find themselves in horrific circ.u.mstances at the end of chapter one. If Henry and Margaret Brown were truly ordinary, they wouldn't have interested the reader. And so I had Margaret Brown become a physician at a time when few women were in medical school. I also made her outspoken, extraordinarily curious, and smart as h.e.l.l. And I had Henry, a businessman, spend his off hours in ways few businessmen do.

I made the Browns just different enough to interest the reader, but it was important that they not seem "special." Therefore, when calamity hits the Browns, readers from any walk of life can identify with their plight, which is critical for the story. Stephen King usually has quite ordinary-seeming characters get involved in extraordinary circ.u.mstances. In most instances, however, you'll want to make your characters as distinctive as possible rather than "ordinary."

The extraordinary quality of a character should usually be made evident almost immediately after he or she appears in the story, unless the thrust of a story is to have the gradual unveiling of a character's unusual habits or ambition.

Beware of characters who are so extreme as to seem like cartoon characters. Some characters in Charles d.i.c.kens's novels seem wildly exaggerated. Such characters are difficult to make credible to readers of mainstream fiction today.

Most authors seek high ground between the character who seems "perfectly ordinary"-and therefore uninteresting-and the wildly exaggerated cartoonlike character. Let's get a fix on the most fertile areas of characterization.

What makes a character extraordinary? Personality? Disposition? Temperament? Individuality? Eccentricity? How much overlap is there?

Let's explore each of those terms in as much depth as we can. My students find that their work in characterization improves markedly after they've considered the full span of meaning of those terms.

First, personality. We know that people at a party will cl.u.s.ter around people with personality. Personality refers to the distinctive traits of an individual, a set of behaviors, att.i.tudes, manners, and mannerisms that identify a person. Personality speaks of an individual's makeup, nature, and combined traits, his essence. It means the specialness of a person, which in some may involve likability, power, charm, magnetism, and charisma. The const.i.tuent parts of personality are disposition, temperament, individuality, and eccentricity.

I'm not pushing these definitions as definitive. I'm trying to suggest that exploring an important term in depth can produce a stimulating variety of definitions that are valuable tools for thinking about a character.

The disposition of a person is her att.i.tude toward the people and places of the world, her customary response, particularly her emotional response. Disposition can involve a person's qualities, outlook, mood, frame of mind, inclination, bent, bias, tendency, and direction, her proclivity, predilection, penchant, and propensity. Today, disposition is sometimes thought of as a predisposition, a mind-set. As you can now see, there are inspiring convolutions of meaning for these words that together define what a writer is trying to achieve in characterization.

Temperament is a person's manner of behaving, thinking, and particularly reacting to people and circ.u.mstances, his characteristic way of confronting a new day or a new development. Temperament can also be seen as a person's mettle, spirit, leaning, or inclination. Temperament often connotes a negative tendency toward anger or irritability, though the term "even temperament," of course, means the opposite.

Individuality is the aggregate of qualities that distinguish one individual from others. It connotes that person's distinctiveness, difference, and, most important, her originality and uniqueness. A writer describes a character's singularity with the particulars of concrete detail. These are the characteristics by which an individual is recognized by others. Her differentness is her ident.i.ty. It can be said that the individuality of a person marks her off, singles her out, sets her apart, and ultimately defines her.

I've left for last a definition that speaks most to the point of giving your characters special and unusual characteristics.

Eccentricity is an offbeat manner of behavior, dress, or speech that is peculiar to a person and greatly dissimilar to the same characteristics of most other people. We think of the eccentric person as odd, a card, perhaps somewhat kinky, a queer fish, a quirky individual different from the other people we know. When we speak of an eccentric person, don't we refer to him or her as a "character"?

The idiosyncrasies of a person are, of course, as seen by others rather than that person, who often believes his or her idiosyncrasies to be "perfectly normal."

Eccentricity is at the heart of strong characterization. The most effective characters have profound roots in human behavior. Their richest feelings may be similar to those held by many others. However, as characters their eccentricities dominate the reader's first vision of them.

If you were to examine the surviving novels of this century, you would find that a majority of the most memorable characters in fiction are to some degree eccentric. Eccentricity has frequently been at the heart of strong characterization for good reason. Ordinariness, as I've said, is what readers have enough of in life.

When a great number of young men take to wearing an earring, that is not eccentricity. When young women iron their hair as many did in the sixties, that is not eccentricity. They are conforming to a widespread group mode.

Eccentric behavior is sometimes said to be nutty behavior, implying strange behavior, which is perfectly suitable for fiction. But "nutty" can also mean crazy, which is not intended here for an important reason. There are two types seldom seen in fiction: people who are psychotic and habitual drunks. Readers find it difficult to identify with their behavior. There are exceptions, of course, as in horror stories. In Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k's Psycho, the leading character is crazy, though we don't know it for certain until quite near the end. Alcoholics sometimes play secondary roles in novels, and there have been several novels featuring alcoholic individuals or couples. But the most memorable alcoholic, who saw a giant rabbit called Harvey, involved a playful use of alcoholism that would probably not be attempted today with the recognition of the severity of the illness.

Dostoevsky's opening of Notes from Underground has a character explaining himself. He is so self-contradictory that when I read this opening aloud to students, they invariably laugh: I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. An unattractive man. I think that my liver hurts. But actually, I don't know a d.a.m.n thing about my illness. I am not even sure what it is that hurts. I am not in treatment and never have been, although I respect both medicine and doctors. Besides, I am superst.i.tious in the extreme; well, at least to the extent of respecting medicine. (I am sufficiently educated not to be superst.i.tious, but I am.) No, sir, I refuse to see a doctor simply out of spite. Now that is something that you probably will fail to understand.

Consider also Captain Ahab in Melville's Moby d.i.c.k, certainly an eccentric. In Mark Twain's celebrated novels, what captures our attention is not the ordinariness of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn but their eccentricity. Think of the twentieth-century novels of Hemingway, Faulkner, Graham Greene, Kafka, Garcia Marquez, Fitzgerald, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, J. D. Salinger. Or the short stories of John Cheever. Their most memorable work springs from eccentric characters.

Think of the most eccentric person you know. What makes him (or her) eccentric? What is the most eccentric thing they have ever done? What might they do that would seem even more eccentric? Then think of your character doing that very thing! Unlikely? Unreasonable? Surprising? All of the above? If such behavior would be out of character for your protagonist, then what variation of it would be in character?

If your character isn't capable of any important eccentricity, you may have picked a character who will not be greatly interesting to readers. People notice the eccentricity of others. They talk about it with their friends. It becomes the subject of gossip and rumination. When people do only what they are expected to do, they don't make us eager to spend a dozen hours in their company.

You may be wondering if I am suggesting too much complexity in characterization. I don't expect you to use it all, but your explorations will stimulate thoughts that add to the potential richness of the characterization. To the extent that the complexity reflects the intricacy of human nature, the characters will come alive to the reader and remain alive in the reader's memory.

One reason characters in transient fiction don't linger in the reader's memory is the shallowness of the characterization. If Ian Fleming's James Bond is remembered, it is as a kind of cartoon character. The reader doesn't concern himself whether James Bond lives or dies except when he is in the middle of reading a James Bond story, and even then he doesn't worry much because the cartoon character has to live another day-for another book!

Sherlock Holmes is a wonderful character. But we don't think about him as we would about a member of our family or a close friend, living or dead. We think of him as a character in a book or film. In the best of mainstream fiction, and in literary fiction, the most complex characters seem to graduate to a permanent place in our memory, as good friends do.

The same is true of villains. Professor Moriarty doesn't occupy our lives except when we are reading about him. But the reader carries the memory of Iago and Lady Macbeth for a lifetime.

Contrast is a useful technique for characterization. It sometimes has the extra virtue of surprise. I recall attending a convention once where I sat in back of a large room. Several rows ahead of me sat a woman dressed in an immaculately tailored gray suit, her hair kempt, her posture markedly straight, and she was picking her nose. What helped characterize her for me was the contrast between her appearance and her nose-picking.

Characterizing through unusual clothing or the manner of wearing clothing is another often neglected possibility. What it requires is to avoid the easy description that first comes to mind. "Jerry always wore his cap backwards" isn't writerly. It can be improved: His cap worn backwards was a message to the world: Jerry did things differently.

A layman might say, "Ellen looked terrific in her gown." That's top-of-the-head writing, which can be improved: In her gown, Ellen looked like the stamen of a flower made of silk.

The first description doesn't say anything particular about either Ellen or the gown. The second is visual and tells us how Ellen and the gown came across in a way that made them both look good.

One of my students took the easy way out in describing his character Martin. "Martin was an informal dresser who didn't like other men getting all dressed up." I persuaded him to rethink the sentence: Martin referred to men who wore shirts and ties all day not as people but as "suits."

An important technique that is used too seldom by novelists is to give a character life by introducing attributes that go against the character's dominant behavior in the scene to come. Early in The Best Revenge there is a scene in which the hero, the Broadway producer Ben Riller, whose current play is in severe financial difficulty, goes to see Aldo Manucci, the moneylender Ben's father used to go to many years earlier. In the scene, done from Ben's point of view, Ben is in the position of pleading for money, and Aldo presumably has the power to save him. Therefore, in characterizing Aldo on his first appearance, I gave him a variety of weaknesses: At last she wheeled him in, a shrunken human stuffed by a careless taxidermist. He was trying to hold his head up to see me, an eye clouded by cataract. He took an unblinking look, then let a rich smile lift the ends of his mouth as his voice, still ba.s.s though tremulous, said, "Ben-neh!" which made my name sound like the word "good" in Italian.

A common fault in fiction is the portrayal of characters as all good or all bad. Therefore, when introducing a character who will be in a position of power in a scene, suggest that character's vulnerability before the character exercises power. Conversely, when introducing a character who will be hurt emotionally or physically in the scene to come, show the character's strength at the outset.

In a short story there is usually time for only one event or episode. A character comes to life, the event takes place, the story's over. There is room for a change of att.i.tude toward something specific. Most often there isn't room in a short story for a character to experience enough to cause a profound change.

In a novel it is common and desirable for the princ.i.p.al character to change by the end of the book. If the protagonist is a risk taker, he may step into adulthood by learning that some kinds of risks are foolhardy. If the protagonist accepts certain conditions as a part of life, he may have learned that some of those conditions can change. And the protagonist who at the start is a pessimist about human nature may discover that a single human being can make a difference for a large number of fellow humans.

These are just a few examples of how a character might change in the course of a novel. The writer has to ask, is the change consistent with the character as portrayed? A change can be surprising, but it should not seem out of sync with what we know about the character.

Somerset Maugham said, "You can never know enough about your characters." When you have trouble improving a particular characterization, you need to know more. The remedy may lie in viewing your character from a different perspective.

Another way is to have your character complain bitterly about something. In life, complaining is more effective when it is done in a normal voice, the words speaking for themselves. However, bitter complaining connotes an emotional overload. At such times, your character is speaking, as it were, from the gut or the heart rather than the head. Listen to the character in that state. It will help you with the part of characterization that is normally hidden from public view. Imagine your adult character secretly dressed in children's clothes. Why is he doing that? What you want is not your answer, but the character's answer to that question. The child in an adult character may have a poignant memory of a lasting hurt. Or a marvelous secret to reveal.

Yet another way is to visualize your character as suddenly rather old. How would that change her appearance, dress, walk? Is there anything that you can incorporate in your characterization at your character's present age? Some people preserve characteristics of their childhood, others seem prematurely old in some way. So do some characters.

Imagine your character in an armchair talking to you. Ask your character questions that are provocative. Let your character challenge you. Disagree with your character. Let him win the argument.

Unfetter your imagination. Can you see your character flapping arms, trying to fly? Or trying to kiss everyone at a party? Or walking in the snow without shoes? Readers are interested in the out-of-the-ordinary. All these questions involve the character in action, the ideal way to characterize.

Last, imagine your character in the nude. This one almost always works if you portray your character in the nude honestly and in detail. People in the nude become especially vulnerable. This doesn't mean you should necessarily portray your character actually in the nude. Your character may not want to get undressed, or may want to dress quickly to cover up. Or your character can just be thinking in the bath or shower. An author of mine, Edwin Corley, had a remarkable success with a first novel called Siege, which started with a scene of a black general in his bathtub. Everything the general did later was more believable because a person seen realistically in the nude is immediately credible.