Revealing Your Character’s Character

In her book The Art of Characterization Fay Lamb proposes that writers “use the other elements of storytelling to cast your novel with unforgettable characters.” (page 5) She includes the following in her list of elements: deep point of view, actions, thoughts, experiences and dialogue.

How can I use these elements of storytelling to create complex characters as Lamb suggests?

I’ve been chewing on her suggestions and have customized them a bit for myself.

Lamb tells us to develop or reveal characters first of all by using what she calls Deep Point of View. I must admit I’m always intimidated by the many explanations of point of view. It’s like trying to remember the 50 states and their capital cities 50 years after high school!

Lamb says that Deep Point of View “immerses the reader into the head of the lead character through that character’s actions, reaction, thoughts, experiences and dialogue.” Okay.

Let’s take those elements one at a time.

I can reveal the body and mind, the heart and soul of a character through their ACTIONS. Makes sense. I must SHOW the reader what the character does, and how they do it sometimes, as a means of revealing a bit about that character with each scene.

This is especially true about their reactions, I think. How a character relates to other characters in the story can definitely reveal secrets or truths about them.

Revealing a character through THOUGHTS can be trickier. The most difficult thing for beginners is to resist the urge to have too much introspection or thought life. That slows the pace down and makes readers misinterpret that character’s psyche, I think. For the same reasons I also avoid characters talking aloud to themselves very much.

EXPERIENCES, on the other hand, are the stuff plots are made of. Action, reaction, escapades, accidents. The character going places, doing things, meeting people, learning, loving, hating, fearing and their reactions to these experiences show me bit-by-bit who my character really is, or who they are becoming.

Last on Lamb’s list is dialogue.

DIALOGUE is a fun puzzle to me as a writer. I’m still learning, but I love the game of creating realistic, effective dialogue. Accurate, effective dialogue reveals a character’s culture, era, education, place of origin or residence, profession, personality, age and more. Peppering dialogue with a few clues helps the reader figure out who this character is.

Lastly, in my opinion dialogue must always do double duty. It must move the plot along getting me from one scene to another, AND, it must reveal something about the people who are talking—something about them personally, or about their plans or problems or hopes.

Each conversation may show only tiny specks of these things, but, for me, if a piece of dialogue can’t do both of those things to some degree I eliminate that conversation from my manuscript.

I believe that character drives story. So, it’s only natural that I, as a writer, would follow Lamb’s method of using the elements of storytelling as a vehicle to parade my characters before the readers.

To me one of the clearest books about writing dialogue is Renni Browne’s and Dave King’s Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself into Print. They devote a chapter to writing convincing dialogue and another to writing natural beats. I’ve read the book three times and refer to it often.

“That book’ll help you, I bet,” I said.

“Think so?”

“Yep. Bet you this 1939 genuine copper penny it will!” I flipped it over in my palm to show off the shine.

“Thanks! I’ll just mosey on over to Amazon and order one of those books for myself.”

I gave you a thumbs-up.

And you were gone.

Jean Hall lives in Louisville, Kentucky. She is represented by Cyle Young of Hartline Literary. Her premier picture book series Four Seasons was recently signed by Little Lamb Books. Jean is a member of the SCBWI, Word Weavers International, and the Kentucky Christian Writers. Visit Jean at www.jeanmatthewhall.com, on Facebook at Jean Matthew Hall, and on Twitter as @Jean_Hall.