Dynamic Characters (8 page)

GETTING IT RIGHT

The easiest way to portray a job realistically is to give your character work you've done yourself. William Styron worked as a manuscript reader; so did his character Stingo in
Sophie's Choice.
P.D. James, mystery writer, was an administrator in the British justice system. John Steinbeck, like so many of his characters, had experience as a day laborer. Robin Cook, author of medical thrillers, is a doctor. Scott Turow, like Rusty in
Presumed Innocent
and Sandy in
The Burden of Proof,
is a lawyer. Employing your character where you yourself have worked means you know the territory. You can—and should—include details that deepen verisimilitude: the field's individual jargon, the duties, stress points, standard procedures, hazards, equipment, perks, career paths, pecking order, even insider jokes. In addition to deepening credibility, such details are often interesting to readers who have never worked in that job.

But your character
can
work in fields you have not. If you don't know what your protagonist's job feels like from the inside, find out. Talk to people in that line of work. Most people are flattered to be asked about their professions, and a good talker can tell you more personal details than any published source. Ask for the frustrations, glitches, problems.

For jobs that are at least partially on public display, observe carefully. How does the waitress address her boss? What tools does the locksmith use while changing your locks? What obstacles beset the taxi driver? How do the construction workers building the high-rise across from your office seem to structure their day?

Read trade periodicals, magazine interviews, memoirs. You can learn a lot from the more personal aspects of these sources. Study the ''Letters'' column. Read biographies for interesting views of jobs that celebrities held
before
they became famous. Playwright Moss Hart's autobiography
Act One,
for instance, contains unparalleled descriptions of the horrors and rewards and routines of being a summer-camp director.

This is your chance. If you always wanted to know what it would be like to be a costumer in a wax museum, sewing for effigies of Lizzie Borden and Lord Nelson and Elvis Presley, give that job to a character. Then you'll have a reason for researching costuming. How hard is it to dress wax? How authentic does the underwear have to be? Are the wax dummies anatomically correct? How do you dust a wax Count Dracula? The research books will even be tax deductible.

THE RIGHT JOB WILL SUGGEST MANY PLOT POSSIBILITIES

Once your character is gainfully employed, you have a strong tool for powering your plot in whatever direction you wish it to go.

How does this work? Suppose that the protagonist of your mystery novel is not a detective but a small-town vet. She visits a lot of farms, and a lot of smaller animals come to her clinic; she comes to know nearly everyone in town. She has scientific training. She gets called out on emergencies in the middle of the night. All these circumstances lend themselves to seeing things she shouldn't, to discovering facts that others want hidden, to making deductions from animal-related clues that others might miss. Look hard at the specifics of her job, and they will suggest all kinds of plot developments.

Or take another exotic example: that wax museum costumer (I'm fond of this job). What does a costumer do? Research into authentic period costumes, including acquiring actual old buttons, fabric, shawls, dresses. This could send her poking around attics, warehouses, estate sales. Perhaps she's a real wheeler-dealer who tries to always get there early to make a presale deal with whomever it takes to sell her those buttons once worn by Princess Charlotte, or that Revolutionary War uniform from somebody's great-great-great-great-great grandfather. But what else does she find while poking around? And who knows she's doing it?

Many interesting possibilities!

Even if your character works in a conventional office, his job can provide plot developments. Ted Kramer, for instance, the protagonist of Avery Corman's
Kramer Versus Kramer,
sells advertising space in magazines. The novel isn't about his job; it's about divorce and parenthood. Still, Corman makes good use of the volatility of advertising to add tension to Ted's situation. The sole support of his young son Billy, Ted loses his job during a company merger. He searches hard and finds another. During the custody hearing he's laid off a second time, greatly imperiling his case. Corman shows us Ted's heroic efforts to find another job within twenty-four hours.

In addition, how much Ted earns directly affects such plot incidents as hiring a housekeeper to take care of Billy, affording lawyers, even dating the second time around.

Do
your
character's job duties, industry conditions, work stresses or salary level suggest any incidents for your novel? If not, perhaps the character needs a career change.

SUMMARY: BE A FULL-SERVICE EMPLOYMENT AGENCY

• Find your character a job that characterizes his personality, class and talents.

• Further characterize him by his attitude toward his work.

• Choose jobs you know a lot about—or can learn about.

• Include enough realistic details about the job to make it seem as real as your protagonist does.

• Use the character's job to suggest plot complications and/or resolutions.

In Karen Joy Fowler's wonderful novel
Sarah Canary,
the protagonist never speaks. Not a word. Not for 290 pages. And Fowler succeeds in characterizing her anyway.

Most of us, fortunately, do not have to labor under such a burden. We have a powerful tool to let readers know who our characters are. We have dialogue. ''How forcible are right words!'' says Job (6:25), and so they are.

However, not all dialogue is created equal. Mediocre dialogue can do more harm than good: by boring your reader, by misleading him, by offending him or by convincing him that none of these characters has a single spark of genuine life. (If you write really terrible dialogue, he may think the same thing about the author.)

So how do you write good dialogue? And after you have, how do you give it to the reader: in large unbroken chunks, or intercut with descriptions of gestures, voices, surroundings? And what about dialect—does it help or hurt?

Dialogue is a complex subject. This isn't surprising when you consider how many areas of the human brain are activated by speech: frontal lobe, temporal parietal region, hippocampus, vagus nerve and, sometimes, the deep emotional centers in the limbic. Such complexity means that no rules will hold true 100 percent of the time. Still, guidelines exist. Good dialogue characterizes, sounds natural and flows well. Simple guidelines—until you start looking closely at each one.

MARK MY WORDS:

LETTING CHARACTERS REVEAL THEMSELVES

The basics first. Good dialogue is unsurpassed at telling us who your character is, both intellectually and emotionally. Which of the following excerpts give you a better picture of Thomas Wells?

Thomas Wells was a bitter man, an angry man, a bigot. He disliked anyone different from himself, and said so often. Nor did he care who heard him.

''Whole lot of 'em ought to be sent back where they come from,'' Wells said loudly in the Grain 'n Feed. ''Jews, Spics, niggers—just send 'em all back! Dirty bastards!'' Slowly, Saul Goldstein turned his head toward Wells.

The second version presents Wells more strongly, because it's more direct. Instead of the author labeling Wells a bigot, the character's words pin the label on himself.

Here is Muriel Spark's marvelous character, school teacher Jean Brodie
(The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie),
addressing her eleven-year-old pupils and revealing more about herself than she has any idea of:

''I have spent most of my holidays in Italy once more, and a week in London, and I have brought back a great many pictures which we can pin on the wall. Here is a Cimabue. Here is a larger formation of Mussolini's fascisti, it is a better view of them than last year's picture. They are doing splendid things as I shall tell you later. I went with my friends for an audience with the Pope. My friends kissed his ring but I thought it proper only to bend over it. I wore a long black gown with a lace mantilla and looked magnificent. In London my friends who are well-to-do—their small girl has two nurses, or nannies as they say in England— took me to visit A.A. Milne. In the hall was hung a reproduction of Boticelli's
Primavera,
which means the birth of Spring. I wore my silk dress with the large red poppies which is just right for my coloring. . . .''

Name-dropper, elitist, self-absorbed, more than a little silly . . . Jean Brodie's character is clearly revealed through her dialogue.

But, you may say, these two examples aren't typical. Thomas Wells and Jean Brodie are both extreme people, talking with unusual lack of inhibition.
My
characters are more ordinary, talking about more ordinary things. Can their dialogue still reveal individual personality?

Yes. It's true that in real life, much routine communication is generic: People in the same culture use essentially the same words to greet acquaintances, purchase a shirt, talk to their children (''What did you do in school today?'' ''Nothing.''). In fiction, however, even routine dialogue can be used to differentiate and individualize characters.

Here are three different characters offering food to guests:

''It's not
only
pot roast,'' Ezra said. . . . ''There's something more. I mean, pot roast is really not the right name, it's more like . . . what you long for when you're sad and everyone's been wearing you down. See, there's this cook, this real country cook, and pot roast is the least of what she does. There's also pan-fried potatoes, black-eyed peas, beaten biscuits genuinely beaten on a stump with the back of an ax—''

—Ezra Tull, in Anne Tyler's
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

''I've brought you something to eat,'' said a voice; ''oppen t'door!''

Complying eagerly, I beheld Hareton, laden with food enough to last me all day.

''Take it,'' he added, thrusting the tray into my hand.

''Stay one minute,'' I began.

''Nay,'' cried he, and retired, regardless of any prayers I could pour forth to detain him.

—Hareton Earnshaw, in Emily BrontE's
Wuthering Heights

Katie came in with the tray. ''This may not be as refined as you're used to,'' she apologized, ''but it's what we have in the house.''

—Katie Nolan, in Betty Smith's
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

There's little chance of confusing any of these speakers with the others. Ezra's nurturing, Hareton's uneducated hostility and Katie's painful awareness of her own poverty come through in even these snippets of routine social interaction.

You don't, of course, want to overdo this. Even the most dramatic and eccentric character occasionally just says, "What time is it?'' or ''Pass the salt.'' But, on the other hand, if whole sections of your protagonist's dialogue could be switched with whole sections of another main character's dialogue, you haven't done an effective job of using speech to individualize them. Go back and rewrite. Give each a diction, a rhythm, a slant on the world (the essence of characterization) of his or her own.

An aside here: Dialogue is the one place in fiction where cliches can work well. If your character's thoughts and ideas
are
hackneyed and undigested, cliched speech will convey that. In that sense, dialogue is a horse of a different color. If your character never has an original thought in her pretty head, let her spout cliches till hell freezes over. Just be aware that she may sound dumb as a fence post.

I DON'T LIKE YOUR TONE:

MAKING DIALOGUE CARRY EVEN MORE WEIGHT

By one expert estimate, 70 percent of communication is nonverbal. If Harry says to Sue, ''Can I see you tonight?'' almost three-quarters of his meaning will be conveyed by the tone of his voice, his inflections, his facial expression, his hand gestures, his body language, the degree of his attention.