HALLIE EPHRON

Choosing Details to Reveal Character

HALLIE EPHRON writes suspense novels. Her latest is Come and Find Me from William Morrow. Her novel Never Tell a Lie was a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and was made into the movie AND BABY WILL FALL for Lifetime Movie Network. She is an award-winning crime fiction book reviewer for The Boston Globe. Her Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel: How to Knock ’Em Dead with Style was nominated for an Edgar Award.

 

 

Think about a character in your book. Conjure in your mind what she looks like—her physical stature, her complexion, her hair, her eyes, her clothing, jewelry, posture, scars, and so on. Now, mentally set her in motion. How does she stand, sit, walk, or run? How does she show that she’s anxious, upset, frustrated, elated, or surprised?

If you’d been taking notes, you could have generated a laundry list of details. Convey them all and you will overwhelm the reader. Instead, sift through the items on the list and pick the details that are the most potent at showing your character’s personality and suggesting her backstory. Include some at the outset and layer in more as your story moves forward.

Showing with a few telling physical details. Your character’s first appearance on the page is a critical moment that establishes that character in the reader’s mind. Your challenge is to find the details that will create a compelling presence, rather than a checklist of physical details that constructs a lifeless, paint-by-numbers replica of the character you envision.

Take this example from A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. Author Michael Dorris introduces the reader to Rayona’s mother, an American Indian woman, as she plays solitaire on her hospital bed:

With the back moved all the way up and a pillow wedged under her knees, everything Mom wants is within her reach. Her round face is screwed into a mask of concentration, like a stumped contestant on Jeopardy! with time running out, and her eyes see nothing but the numbers on the cards. She wears her favorite rings, a narrow abalone, an inlaid turquoise-and-jet roadrunner, and a sandcast silver turtle. Dwarfed among them, the thin gold of her wedding band cuts into her third finger. She’s on her throne, but her mind is with the game.

Notice that Dorris has given us no vital statistics like height, weight, eye color, or hairstyle. We have no idea what Mom is wearing or whether her fingernails are polished. But still, with only her intense concentration on the game, her posture in the bed, and the rings that overwhelm her wedding band, she feels alive and intensely present to us.

In a second example from later in the same scene, Rayona’s father appears in the doorway. Notice the details Dorris chooses to show the reader:

For a big man he’s quiet, and I’m always surprised when he appears. He’s tall and heavy, with skin a shade browner than mine. He has let his Afro grow out and there’s rainwater caught in his hair. His mailman uniform is damp too, the gray wool pants baggy around the knees. At his wrist, the bracelet of three metals, copper, iron, and brass, has a dull shine. I’ve never seen him without it. He looks uncomfortable and edgy in the brightly lit room and wets his lips.

Dorris uses quite a few physical details to establish the character’s presence—his physical stature (tall and heavy), complexion (browner than mine), a long-ish Afro, and bracelet. The damp uniform shows him to be a mail carrier who’s probably just come from work.

The contrast between Rayona’s father and mother are striking. Where her mother feels relaxed and in her own world, the father seems ill at ease as he wets his lips, and the reader feels a dynamic, possibly a danger, beginning to build.

Fill the fictional world your character inhabits with props. Use them to suggest your character’s backstory. Show, for example, that the sheets on just one side of her queen-size bed look as if they’ve been slept in, and you suggest a character who is recently separated from a lover. A funerary urn on the mantel suggests it’s a separation due to death. The greeting on her answering machine is a man’s voice—“Sorry we can’t take your call”—suggesting that she hasn’t begun to move on.

Which of these details would you show the reader first? If you carefully choreograph the details you choose to put on the page, you can reveal your character and her backstory in layers, deepening the reader’s understanding as your story moves forward.

EXERCISE

1. Rule a page into two columns. In the left column, put the name of one of your main characters and list key elements of that character’s personality and past. For example:

Jack Seever

a. Impatient and ruthless businessman

b. Trusts no one

c. Is nearly broke and desperate to keep it a secret

d. Still loves his high school sweetheart; they used to sing together in coffeehouses

e. Gave up his dream of being a musician in order to fulfill his father’s: making money

2. In the right column, make a list of every detail you know about that character—from physical attributes like eye color and height, to the settings that are his, like his office and home, to his personal possessions, like shoes and briefcase, home furnishings, and so on. Don’t self-censor. Try to get as many details down as you can so that this character, his possessions, and the settings that are uniquely his are etched in your mind.

3. Highlight in green any detail in the right column that reveals any of the key aspects of your character you listed on the left.

4. Highlight in red any detail in the right column that is nice for you, the writer, to know but not essential to convey to the reader.

5. As you write this character, use the green-highlighted details of person and place to reveal the character to the reader, building more details and depth of character as the novel progresses.