TECHNIQUE TUESDAY, #1: Character, Not Caricature
Tricks, templates, & tools
These should be fairly self-explanatory. They’re not formulas or, God knows, rules. They’re exercises to try, and ways of framing, and maybe challenges that will lead you to solutions to the individual problems your writing projects are already plotting to hurl at you. All of these are things I’ve developed (or borrowed and augmented) over the last quarter-century, and that at least some people have found useful.
Today’s episode: Creating Characters Who Aren’t Caricatures
If you’ve ever rolled up a character for an RPG, you’ll recognize the foundations for this technique. Except without the rolling (although, come to think of it, adding a random element would make for interesting variations).
I would try this using real-life models, at first. Ideally, practice on someone you spend a lot of time observing: a boss or teacher; a spouse or sibling or parent or kid; that woman with the antler pom-pom hat at the Farmer’s market who sells the good cheese. (Whether or not you choose to show your subject what you’ve done with them is entirely another question…)
Your challenge is as follows:
Using ONLY one article of clothing, one physical characteristic, one action or gesture, and one line of dialogue, give me a complete picture of a credible human being.
Here are some tips:
Don’t try this as a list; do it as a little mini-scene. Someone washing dishes, or stumbling into a room. But don’t cheat. If you’re using more than two sentences, you’re probably over-egging your character pudding. Just keep asking yourself, what is the thing this person does/wears/says that is the most identifiably this person?
Ready for the sneaky bit? The secret trick? One of the four things on your list should not fit. Meaning, should not be what I expect. Give me the blue-haired woman in curlers, fumbling with her knitting as she eases her popping knees down into her favorite chair, and you’ve got a caricature. Have her gaze kindly at the assembled around her and say, “Give me a beat,” and you’ve got a woman I want to know. Or “It’s too bad you felt you had to garrote him, dear,” and you’ve got Miss Marple, and a talisman for the ages.
Don’t think too much. We do this in our brains all the time, with every new person we meet, and with every figure who becomes a figure in our lives. Just keep focusing on the things that are most emblematic of the person you’re describing or imagining. Then give those to your readers so they can describe and imagine.
Have fun. Hope that helps. Let me know what you think, and what you come up with.