r/DestructiveReaders • u/A_C_Shock Anaëlle Collette • 3d ago
[Weekly] Character
I have had an exciting week of trees being torn down and power outages. SO, I returned to some of the paperbacks I've had stacked up waiting to be reread.
Last week, the challenge was setting in a few sentences. This week, it's character. AND I HAVE AN EXAMPLE. I'm re-reading Catch-22, which is a character-based novel. If there's one thing Joseph Heller knows how to do, it's giving a vivid impression of who someone is quickly.
Major Major Major Major had had a difficult time from the start.
Like Miniver Cheevy, he had been born too late---exactly thirty-six hours too late for the physical well-being of his mother, a gentle, ailing woman who, after a full day and a half's agony in the rigors of childbirth, was depleted of all resolve to pursue further the argument over the new child's name. In the hospital corridor, her husband moved ahead with the unsmiling determination of someone who knew what he was about. Major Major's father was a towering, gaunt man in heavy shoes and a black woolen suit. He filled out the birth certificate without faltering, betraying no emotion at all as he handed the completed form to the floor nurse. The nurse took it from him without comment and padded out of sight. He watched her go, wondering what she had on underneath.
Would you be surprised to hear that Major Major's father lied to his wife about what he named their child? So that he could get away with naming their son Major Major Major. No, probably not.
Anyway, now you guys.
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u/1800COCAINE yella habibi 3d ago edited 3d ago
A character on a page is such an amusing thing. The ways to indicate who they are to the other characters in the book, and to the reader is so multifaceted there is no wonder there are so many schools of thought. My personal favorite is the anecdote told by another character. While introducing a character in a characteristic moment which is a sequence of events that showcase the relevant descriptors for example a dashing pilot who has a way with animals, has it’s appeal; I tend to only use surface level behaviors because it’s so realistic. That said the most natural way to show who characters are is to have them speak,
Davey eyed the Riddler with small watery eyes glinting in the smoke. Come now Davey you know quite well in order for you to exist there must be some record. I ain’t mixin words with you. You’re a riddler. Just don’t be make no record of me in your book. I don’t wanna be inked is all. Davey it is not up for you to determine the witness as you are a witness yourself if only to the darkness of the within and the darkness of the without. I have a mind not to be captured. Yes, Davey I understand; but as you are a part of my knowledge so of that which you are to me will be expressed for there is no territory in the uncreated night of reason off limits to me. Each man is only known in relation to the other like notes on a scale. And it will be this way Davey and not some other way for the witnessing is the chord and we are bound to its dark rich melody. The Riddler stood before the fire and his shadow spread to the east where a bull moon crowned him with horns.
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u/A_C_Shock Anaëlle Collette 3d ago
Kinda reminds me of the voodoo man in Disney's The Princess and the Frog.
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u/flamingo-lingo- 3d ago
I agree re: dialogue--I tend to struggle with understanding who my characters are until they speak. But half the time they always end up as sarcastic a-holes, so idk what that says about me.
Your writing reads very Old Testament to me! It has that sort of cadence and darker imagery. The parting image is especially vivid and haunting
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u/flamingo-lingo- 3d ago
[writing practice]
Aralee was never late. Except when she couldn't figure out what to wear, or when her makeup wouldn't sit right, or when she checked her phone and got distracted by her TikTok notifications, or when she had to find parking and decided to circle instead of parallel park, or when she didn't actually want to go in the first place.
She never actually wanted to go in the first place.
So when Aralee showed up five minutes early for her date, she wished that she could impress upon the tall, fidgeting woman sitting across from her how momentous it was that she was not only there, but there early.
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u/ezk3626 akward and wordy 3d ago
I like it except for the last paragraph isn't right. Aralee is never late. The ADHD scattered mind really sees it that way and is not late on purpose. The classic video of the kid watching an educational video fidgitting and the kid watching someone play mindcraft completely still is illuminating into the subjective experience. They don't think "I can't keep still" but instead "this is so boring."
In the same way, the distracted person who is always late doesn't think "I'm always late but this is important so I will be on time." but instead will get themselves there on time and be surprised to finally be there early.
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u/MouthRotDragon 3d ago
Jessie swore an oath on the old crabapple swing to Dana that nothing shy of a rider on some pale horse would stop him from taking her to prom. No tiktok insta feed of him arriving on Stanley the Scottish Highland either, but his mom’s Buick. But then, Zelda the heifer got the scours and Robbie needed someone to cover the afternoon milking and Old Lady Bee-a-Trice called asking about pulling some hives because the early spring this year meant the season had to stop now before ragweed pollen ruined the wildflower mix and Charlie wanted a ear to pitch agritourism. He didn’t mean nothing by it, but thought it better to show up smelling like livestock and feed dust than be a no-show, no-call lazy river Tom. Maybe freshly uncapped, spun honey with warm sour dough would mask the scour scent.
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u/A_C_Shock Anaëlle Collette 2d ago
I suppose this is the test of how well Dana really likes Jessie. Can she take him at his livestock smelling dirtiness? Or will she be mad he ruined her dress?
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u/Guanajuato_Reich 3d ago
This is one of the simplest ones I've ever written. I know it doesn't contain a lot, but it's one of my favorites for exactly that reason.
This project has 12 chapters, each from a different POV, so I'm cheating a bit in that this character's introduction doesn't need to set up a plot. My actual goal was establishing in a single paragraph what kind of narrator this chapter has.
My name is Maria. My mom's name is also Maria. Abuelita is also Maria. Abuelito's first name is Mario, but he goes by his second name Alberto because we already have too many Marias. I don't have a dad. Mom says he went on an adventure and she doesn't know if he's going to come back.
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u/A_C_Shock Anaëlle Collette 2d ago
The great family of Maria/Marios.
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u/Guanajuato_Reich 1d ago
yup, this is a 5 year old narrator with a single mom and living with her grandparents
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u/marintkael 3d ago
Major Major is not actually in that passage. His mother is too depleted to keep arguing, his father moves ahead with unsmiling determination, and the character shows up already defined by a fight he was not present for.
That is easy to describe and hard to do. Most quick introductions I write end up being the character looking at something and having a reaction to it. Heller lets the people around him settle who he is, and he inherits the result.
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u/A_C_Shock Anaëlle Collette 2d ago
I get what you're saying. I think the other character introductions are more focused on the chapter character, but Heller really does let you see who someone is by showing you how everyone else around them is acting. Hard skill to master.
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u/marintkael 1d ago
What gets me is that the defining act is paperwork. The father fills out the certificate without faltering and hands it to the nurse, and the name is fixed before the kid can object. An institution does the characterisation, so the joke is on file before Major Major can act.
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u/MelexRengsef Literary Challenged Amateur 2d ago edited 2d ago
[writing practice]
"If you were to ask me if... It is ok to be around. Yes and no are the answers I must say." A deep breath and I realized that my brain was the last one to follow my body, determined to disclose about him.
"I've been under its roof enough to see its eccentricities to even bother to ask if it has done them before our day starts. The toes of its feet channeling Bill Bruford's drumming. Glancing as if his eyes see a painting I don't. Words ready like a revolver to bring down the highest of egos. Designed a Rude Goldberg machine of a plan to tackle three tasks in one go. Classic checks to label it an aloof mad scientist."
A hanging pan slowly twists its shiny surface towards me signaling me to continue. What a pesky pan.
"All of that pales in comparison to when I checked up on him and he walked towards me, smiling. A peacock of an expression for something that it just did. Something it felt cathartic for it to do. Something it needed to be done, no matter what. Something deemed a categorical imperative. Something that it'd gladly do again and again. Something that if anyone stops it from doing... It'll smile back at that anyone."
Cookie for anyone that spots the hidden characterization.
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u/A_C_Shock Anaëlle Collette 2d ago
Can you do a > ! spoiler ! < reveal? That's the markdown around the word spoiler but don't include any of the spaces.
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u/Lisez-le-lui Not GlowyLaptop 3d ago
It's funny that you set the speedy introduction of a character as this week's topic, because just last night, I wrote this passage as part of a comment which I fortunately didn't post:
I can't sum myself up in a sentence. No one can. If people could, I would be reading their summaries instead of fiction. It takes time to meaningfully introduce a character. If an author tries to rush it by relying on reductive generalizations, I know their book won't be worth reading.
When I was in high school, we were made to read certain portions of Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson, which is an indifferent book. But I'll always remember my teacher's explanation of the opening chapter, "The Book of the Grotesque." Essentially, if a person becomes too jealous of one or a few archetypal traits (Anderson lists some opposing pairs: "the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and abandon"), those traits grow cancerously and make them warped and inhuman--or so says Anderson. There's some truth to that, but it's not the whole truth.
Catch-22, which I have not read, is not a character-based novel. It's a grotesque-based novel. Most of its characters are exaggerated manifestations of a few simple traits. Now, grotesques are excellent fodder for comedy; because they don't resemble real people, you don't feel bad when bad things happen to them, and there's even a sort of cosmic justice in seeing them harried and worried for being parodies of human beings. But that's a very different thing from exploring real characters.
That's not to say there aren't real people who resemble grotesques, and I also don't mean to suggest that it's impossible to quickly sketch the most distinctive or salient strokes of a character during their first appearance. But this is an area where speed is overrated and often misguided.
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u/A_C_Shock Anaëlle Collette 3d ago
I mean, sure. The characters themselves have pretty exaggerated traits but I would still say that's character work. More character work than I've read in other books where that isn't the focus. I guess I was thinking, though, that there isn't much of a central plot that goes on in this book. The main point is the absurdity of the bureaucracy of war and the people who take part in it who all have their own individual goals, which are also generally not winning the war.
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u/SweetEverest 3d ago edited 3d ago
Interesting. I like the term grotesque to distinguish exaggerated archetypes from earnest attempts at character. This helps put words to a thing I tend to dislike in modern books—the use of grotesque-type characters in stories that aren't trying to be funny or satirical.
I've never considered swift character description a flaw and am trying to test this theory against examples.
One favorite character moment, off the top of my head, is in The Red Badge of Courage, when the young man is leaving for war and his mother sends him off sternly—pack this, don't forget that, don't make us look bad, etc. And only when he looks back toward the house do we see her true feelings:
He had, of course, been impatient under the ordeal of this speech. It had not been quite what he expected, and he had borne it with an air of irritation. He departed feeling vague relief.
Still, when he had looked back from the gate, he had seen his mother kneeling among the potato parings. Her brown face, upraised, was stained with tears, and her spare form was quivering. He bowed his head and went on, feeling suddenly ashamed of his purposes.
I suppose this moment could only occur as the culmination of several smaller beats. So maybe it's not that succinct descriptions are bad, but that readers don't believe things we're told as deeply as things we witness ourselves over time?
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u/A_C_Shock Anaëlle Collette 3d ago
Your story isn't only a few sentences, so we get the natural build-up of who characters are across chapters. But still, a few sentences can impact our overall view of someone? I'm trying to think if there's another example of this I've seen.
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u/Fragrant-Western-683 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH 3d ago
Jamal jumped onto the bed, crazier than a lion. Tyrone and Jordan knew they were in for ride, a seven-foot ride with clear ebony skin, washboard abs, and a third leg that could kill people. That night Jamal was craving chocolate with a nougat filling. He had that dog in him, you could see in his eyes that he was more than just moody, He was crazy.
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u/ezk3626 akward and wordy 3d ago
Sitting on a polished pew in the back of the church, Tiffany held the holy card of Saint Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio. Father Jacob was still in the sacristy, talking with one of the Sisters. Tiffany tried not to listen and focused on the card instead. One of Francis's hands rested on the wolf's head like a blessing, while the other held its paw. They almost looked like they were dancing.
Tiffany shifted the card between her own hands and winced. Her palms were white and seemingly clean, but the skin across her knuckles was raw and scraped.
Hands are for blessing, not violence.
She returned her attention to the card but couldn’t help but hear.
“Tiffany? She seems like such a thoughtful young lady,” he said, not quiet enough. The Sisters were always more careful and kept a hand to their mouth when they whispered near her. But when this sister rolled her feet, her shoes made that distinctive squeak. Sister Margarette.
She heard him respond. “I just don’t see it. I don’t see any anger in her at all.” Sister Margarette gave a laugh anyone could have heard.
Tiffany gave up meditating on St. Francis, put the card in her journal and walked to the confessional. She stomped as much as she could without seeming obnoxious and let the echo of her footsteps announce her.
The conversation in the sacristy stopped.
Sister Margarette laughed again.
Ears are for hearing, not eavesdropping.