Here's the next blog post, this one thanks to client and friend Astrid Holm. I've been working with Astrid for many years. She originally found me when she was working on her MA in Creative Writing at Sussex University and she joined my monthly writing group. Astrid's writing has gone from the strength to strength. She was shortlisted for the Chicken House Prize, and is now represented by Ben Illis at A. M. Heath. She creates damn fine historical fiction (her first novel was described by Barry Cunningham as Chaucer meets Hollyoaks) and writes with vivid detail and characterisation. You can read more about her on her website and you can find her on Facebook. This is her summary of the intensive session on character.
'Making a Character Jump off the Page' with Julia Golding and Julia Bell
Julia Golding started us off by giving everyone a picture of a character. We were asked a series of questions about the picture.
- Who is he/she?
- What is the mood colour of the picture?
- What animal would they be?
- What music score would you associate with the picture?
- What does the character smell of?
- What did they last eat?
- What is the voice in their head saying as they look out of the picture?
Julia read out the answers to two contrasting characters. Then we swapped over what the characters smelt of.
Now, a nice little girl smelt of hair oil and dirty clothes and a rakish villain smelt of flowers and soap. Immediately this gave us new ways into thinking about the characters, it made them literally jump off the page. Why did she smell of hair oil? Had she stolen it, or been given it by her dad? Why did the villain smell of soap and flowers? Did he have an OCD handwashing problem or a darker secret?
Next we could choose to work with the same picture or shift to thinking about a character from our own work in progress.
Julia asked us to create a memory box for them.
What special items would the character have kept?
Julia asked us to describe the object in detail. She explained that it is through the details that authenticity lies. By triggering a memory of something similar in the reader, it authenticates the voice telling the story.
Many people found that one particular item in the imaginary treasure box had special resonance for them. I was drawn to describe a doll my character had loved during childhood and it really helped me clarify some points in her back story.
To make a character seem real Julia Bell highlighted four points.
Detail
Voice
Conflict
Surprise
She discussed how reading a book should be an experience for the reader; that they are in the moment at every point of the action. They are with the character as the action happens. As writers, to bring the story to life we should be in the moment too as we are writing. If we are bored writing it, it will be boring to read!
'It's a story not an essay' said Flannery O'Connor.
Voice is often very strong in the first person, very immediate. By using a first person narrative voice the writer can illustrate blind spots in the character by what they leave out, or don't understand. Secondly, this voice can show how the character justifies actions to him- or herself and, obliquely, to the reader. And thirdly, the reader can make their own interpretation of the character by the information, or lack of it, given by the narrator. An unreliable narrator creates an ironic gap where the reader becomes aware that they are not being told the truth.
When using third person narration it is also very important to get the sense of the character's voice. The tutors highlighted the author Henry James as a master at this technique. Using third person narration, the author can choose to use an omnipotent narrator that knows everything and tells the story from above, or a more subjective third person voice (also called limited third person), where the writer allows us into one or more of her characters thoughts.
Next Julia Bell gave us an exercise called 'My Neighbours Neighbour'.
We had five minutes to talk to the person next to us about an old neighbour (which could be an individual or a family), describing them physically and what they were like. We then swapped for five minutes.
Now we were challenged to write about our neighbours' neighbour, creating a character from a real person. It was fascinating how, by being given the bare bones of a character, that magic fairy dust of imagination was able to get to work. I found myself on a hot, dusty street in Boston, writing about a thirteen year old girl in rollerboots!
After lunch, Julia Golding led us through another exercise called 'Getting to Know You'. We all selected a postcard of a place that we thought our character might inhabit from a selection laid out on a table at the back of the room. When we returned to our desks, we were told to describe the place and put our character in the scene, for a paragraph or two.
Now we had to think of four escalating disasters, going from number one which would be a slight mishap to number four where the world is falling apart. My disasters for my historic heroine were:
1 Whilst in a crowd, an old man coughed over her and spat on her shoe.
2 She was pushed to the ground in a crush of people and broke her wrist as the crowd surged forward.
3 She was mugged and knifed outside the government building by thieves and had all her money robbed as she lay bleeding on the road.
4 The entire crowd was gathered up and arrested by fascist police and escorted into trucks to be taken to an ethnic cleansing camp.
Next we decided which disaster interested us the most and of course I chose number four!
Now Julia G gave us a timeframe for the disaster, (or as Julia B called it 'the Beaufort Scale' of disaster!) where we wrote about the event:
1 One second after the disaster.
2 Five minutes after the disaster. What are they thinking and feeling? If it is only a minor disaster, perhaps everything is all right again already.
3 One hour after the disaster, is it over yet?
4 Twelve hours since the disaster. Are there still impacts? For example in my disaster number one, she would probably have completely forgotten the spitting incident already, but number two with the broken wrist she would still be in pain, and number three she may well be dead. Number four, who knows?
5 One year after the disaster.
Both tutors discussed how choosing the correct timeframe for an event or disaster can have a big impact on the pacing of the book.
We also looked at how the character acted during the disaster. Did the character behave out of character? Or did the disaster make the character become more like themselves? I learned about my character doing this exercise, as I found out she was more humane and sympathetic during the crisis than I had thought she would be, being essentially a very selfish girl.
The tutors wanted us to consider why anyone would want to spend time with your character during a disaster.
Do we care about them surviving it?
Why are you sorry for them? Perhaps they are an orphan, isolated, vulnerable, suffering.
How will you make the reader 'root' for your character?
We also needed to work out if we were too interested in the big disaster, and had 'lost' the character within the plot. A good example of this is James Bond, where his character (although he doesn't start out with much of one anyway), is 'squeezed by the juggernaut of the plot'. If the voice of the character is lost beneath the weight of plot, the reader can lose interest.
We discussed how you need to choose your timeframe (as discussed above) to fit your story. The timings listed above are not a hard and fast rule; you can decide on when to revisit the impact of the disaster. This framing decision is very important, as for best dramatic effect you need to work out what timescale works for your character. You could slow a second down, stretch time, or start from a year later and reflect back on an event.
I'd like to Thank Julia Bell and Julia Golding for a really fantastic workshop and for giving me some tools I'll be using for a good long time to come.