She was dressed in rich materials—satins, and lace, and silks—all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered about. She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on—the other was on the table near her hand—her veil was but half arranged, her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay with those trinkets, and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some flowers, and a prayer-book, all confus- edly heaped about the looking-glass. It was not in the first few moments that I saw all these things, though I saw more of them in the first moments than might be supposed. But, I saw that every- thing within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork at the Fair, represent- ing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now, wax- work and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if I could. Some of the language may sound slightly dated to our ears, but the images Dickens created are still fresh. So is his later 62 Write! description of that terrible and memorable object, Miss Havisham’s wedding cake. It’s a great example of how a setting and the objects in it help to create a character and her place in her world. This is Pip’s description of his first visit to the room where Miss Havisham kept her cake: It was spacious, and I dare say had once been handsome, but every discernible thing in it was covered with dust and mould, and dropping to pieces. The most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all stopped together. An epergne or centrepiece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heav- ily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undis- tinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckled-legged spiders with blotchy bod- ies running home to it, and running out from it, as if some circumstances of the greatest public importance had just transpired in the spider community. I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same occurrence were important to their interests. But, the blackbeetles took no notice of the agitation, and groped about the hearth in a ponderous elderly way, as if they were short-sighted and hard of hearing, and not on terms with one another. These crawling things had fascinated my attention and I was watching them from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand upon my shoulder. In her other hand she had a crutch-headed stick on which she leaned, and she looked like the Witch of the place. “This,” said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, “is where I will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me here.” With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table then and there and die at once, the complete Creating Powerful People 63 realization of the ghastly waxwork at the Fair, I shrank under her touch. “What do you think that is?” she asked me, again pointing with her stick; “that, where those cobwebs are?” “I can’t guess what it is, ma’am.” “It’s a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!” These passages do something very important: They make us want to know more. We’re captivated by this grotesque character, and we want to know why she dresses this way, why she has a decaying wedding cake on the table even though horrible insects are running in and out of it. It’s the details that add up to a mem- orable character, almost like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Notice that Dickens allows us to start to get to know this character by using four elements: descriptions of the character, actions of the character, descriptions of the setting, and the reactions of another character. We’ll return to these a bit later so you can see how you can employ them in your own writing. Although quite a bit is revealed about Miss Havisham over the course of Great Expectations, I’d be willing to wager that Dic kens knew much more about her than he put in the book. The secret of making characters come alive for the reader or viewer is knowing them inside-out yourself. You’ll probably never use everything you know, but the more you know, the more you can select what to reveal. Getting to know a character The traditional advice to writers has been to write a biography of each of their major characters. In his book The Art of Dramatic Writing , Lajos Egri reduced this to a biographical questionnaire that you can answer for each main character. His book was first published in 1946 and its examples are mainly from classical drama, but it’s still available and well worth reading. Here is my own version of such a questionnaire, based on Egri’s approach. 64 Write! CHARACTER ANALYSIS 1 Name: 2 Gender: 3 Age: 4 Physical appearance: 5 How does the character feel about his or her appearance? 6 Describe the character’s childhood in terms of: a relationship to parents b relationship to siblings (if any) c relationship to other key people from his or her youth d lifestyle while growing up e education f childhood activities (hobbies, interests) g location(s) where he or she grew up. 7 Describe the character’s education during and after the teen years, as well as any military service. 8 Describe the character’s current relationships with: a parents b siblings c other key people from his or her youth. 9 Describe the character’s romantic life (Married? Involved?) and any relevant background (e.g., previous marriages, affairs). 10 Describe the character’s sex life and moral beliefs. 11 Does the character have children? If so, describe his or her relationship to them. If not, how does he or she feel about children? 12 What is the character’s religious background? Current beliefs? 13 What is the character’s occupation? 14 Describe the character’s relationship to his or her boss and co-workers. 15 How does the character feel about his or her job? 16 What are the character’s current hobbies or non-work activities? 17 Describe the character’s philosophy of life. 18 Describe the character’s political views. 19 Sum up the main aspects of the character’s personality. (Optimist or pessimist? Introvert or extrovert?) Creating Powerful People 65 By answering these questions, you will gain a deep knowledge of a character’s past and what he or she is like now. The next set of questions concerns the role your character plays in the story you are choosing to tell. Kno wing the answers to these five questions will help you struc- ture your story, and we’ll get more deeply into that in the next chapter. All the questions up to this point help you decide how the character acts. You also want to think about how the charac- ter sounds. For that, there are three more questions: This list can be useful for non-fiction writers as well. If you’re writing a biography, for example, if your book answered all of those questions about your subject in an entertaining way, you’d have a very solid piece of work. If you’re writing a feature story, 20 What is this character proud of? 21 What is this character ashamed of? 22 What is his or her state of health? 23 How intelligent is he or she? 24 Summarize the character’s relationship to the other major characters in your story. 25 What is the character’s goal in your story? 26 Why does he or she want to achieve this goal? 27 Who or what stands in the way of the character? Why? 28 What strengths or qualities will help this character achieve the goal? 29 What weaknesses will hinder this character from achieving the goal? 30 How articulate is the character? 31 Does the character have an accent or dialect? If so, describe it. 32 Does the character use slang or professional jargon? If so, describe it. 66 Write! you would get the answers to only a few. And if you were doing an in-depth interview, some of these questions would give you a good framework. Answering these questions is extremely useful, but it’s also time-consuming. I used this technique for a long time, and it may still be the best method for many writers, especially newer ones. However, in recent years I’ve developed another approach for fiction that I find more organic as well as quicker and easier. Using visualization to find your characters Using the biography/questionnaire method sometimes feels like you’re inventing the character. Visualization is more about dis- covering the character. The word “discovering” suggests that the character already exists, and I think in a way that’s true. Consider dreams. You don’t think ahead each night and decide who will be in your dreams, what their setting will be, and so forth. They just pop into your head, fully formed. I believe you can use much the same process for finding fictional characters, and my experience in tea ching this technique suggests that’s true. One exercise I use is the “hidden picture” technique. I get everybody in a group to decide on a character of theirs to focus on. Then I lead them through a relaxation exercise and ask them to close their eyes and imagine this character’s residence. I invite them to picture the front door, and reassure them that nobody is home and they have the character’s permission to enter. Then I have them go in and take a look around to see the surroundings. Is the place light or dark? Messy or neat? Modern or old- fashioned? Quiet or noisy? What’s the décor like? Then I tell them they are on a mission. Somewhere in this place there is a picture or photo that is very meaningful to the character. I don’t know where they will find it—maybe hung up on the wall for all to see, maybe in a photo album in a drawer, maybe hidden under the mattress, maybe someplace else. But they will be drawn to this picture and they will find it. I stay Creating Powerful People 67 silent for a moment to give them time to find the picture, then I guide them to looking at it closely. Is it in color or black-and- white? Is it old or new? If there are people in it, who are they and what are they doing? Is there anything written on the back? After a bit more time to examine the picture, I ask them to guess why it is so important to the character. Then I have them replace the picture exactly where it was and leave the residence as they found it. I bring them back gradually to full awareness and have them stretch. How many people do you think find a picture? Would it be 25 percent? Or 50 percent? Remember, this is not anything they have thought about before. In fact, about 90 percent find a pic- ture, and once in a while someone who didn’t find it during the workshop emails me later to say they dreamed about such a pic- ture or had it pop into their mind at a seemingly random time. To me, this is great proof that your subconscious mind is ready to give you what you ask for. By connecting the left brain, which deals with structure, analysis, and reasoning, with the right brain, which deals with images, feelings, sensations, and emotions, you can come up with characters and stories that are vivid and powerful. You can go through the same exercise that I do in the work- shop. Pick a time and place where you can relax, and just run through the steps I described. It may be useful to have a tape recorder handy and narrate what you see in your imagination as you work through the steps. Some people do find it too distract- ing to be talking while doing the exercise, but others find that if they don’t do this they forget some of the details. Experiment to see what works best for you. If you’d rather have me guide you through such an exercise, for a small fee you can download the “Hidden Picture” visualization MP3 file from my website (it’s on the “Visualizations” page at www.yourwritingcoach.com). 68 Write! The discovery-through-writing technique Some time ago I interviewed Academy Award-winning screenwriter Alvin Sargent (part of that interview appears at the end of this chapter). I noticed a big stack of script pages on his desk and asked him what they were. He said they were his next screenplay. I won- dered whether it was some kind of epic, since there obviously were a lot more than 120 pages there, the standard length for a screen- play. He explained that when he starts a new screenplay, first he puts his characters into a variety of situations that he writes as scenes. These may or may not actually appear in the story, they are more a device for him to get to know the characters and find his way in. If you want to try this approach, here are some situations you might write about, or just imagine: ✐ Your character is shopping and notices a teenager steal something. What does she do? Does she tell someone? Does she pretend she didn’t see it? Does she advise the youngster to put the item back? ✐ Your c haracter finds a purse or wallet that has a lot of money in it, but no identification. What does he do? ✐ Your character is diagnosed with a serious illness. Does she tell anybody about it? Who? Why? What else does she do? ✐ Your married character is very attracted to a new neighbor. What does he do? If he approaches her, how does he do it? You can come up with an endless variety of situations yourself and if you already know your story well, you can explore situa- tions that relate to it in some way, even if they’re not going to be in the story itself. For instance, if your character is a woman who is afraid of getting into a new relationship because the last one was such a disaster, you could write a scene about the day that relationship finally fell apart. Or if your character is a man plan- ning a huge heist, you could write a scene about the first thing he would do if he got the money. Creating Powerful People 69 To base or not to base, that is the question Some writers base their characters on people they know. The appeal, of course, is that you already have loads of information about these people. You know how they talk, what they look like, how they behave in a variety of circumstances. But there are also two dangers. One is that if your character is corrupt or amoral or disgusting, and you have based him or her so closely on the real per- son that readers can figure out who it is, you could be sued. The per- son doesn’t have to be famous, either: If they can prove that your portrayal was harmful to them or subjected them to humiliation, you’re in big trouble. This is also why it’s good to check the phone book and the internet to see whether there is anybody with your character’s name living in the city you use as your setting. If you have created a sadistic serial killer dentist named Dr. Frank Ashton who lives in Boston, and there really is a (probably quite nice) den- tist with that name living there, he’s not going to be happy. The other drawback to basing a character on someone you know is that y ou may find it difficult to give them qualities that they don’t have but that are required by the story. For instance, your lovely Aunt Agatha may look exactly the way you’d like your character Margaret Finster to look, but Auntie is a sweet and gen- erous type, while in your story Margaret is embezzling money from a fund for widows and orphans. Some writers find it hard to deal with those opposing images. Probably the best approach, and the one most used by fiction writers, is to create a composite. The character might be bald and portly like cousin Jack, a gambler like your old university room- mate, and clumsy with women like a man you used to work with. If you’re writing about characters whose world you don’t know, do research rather than just repeating the stereotypes that you see in the movies or in other books. In an interview with Marcel Berlins in The Times (London), top crime fiction writer George Pelecanos said: 70 Write! “The cliché is the cop who is obsessed with his cases, can’t have a normal family life, he’s divorced, turns to drink and so on. I worked with a lot of cops, the homicide police, before I did this book [The Night Gardener]. There are all sorts. There are some guys whose lives are falling apart. But there are others who do go home at night and do all these normal things and leave the work behind.” One strategy is to find out where the people in question go to drink. With many occupations, especially police officers, fire fight- ers, and people working in finance, there will be a local bar where they congregate. Go there, nurse your vodka and tonic or your Sprite, and eavesdrop like crazy. You’ll pick up a lot from what they talk about and how they talk about it. You might even meet some- one who will agree to be an informal source of information for you about the more specialized aspects of their occupation. Revealing character through description The most o bvious way to reveal characters is by describing what they look like: handsome or plain, wrinkled or smooth face, color of hair, height, slim or average or fat, what kind of clothing they wear, and so forth. Beginning writers overuse this tech- nique, and often blurt everything out the first time we meet the character: Leon was a short man with a perpetual frown on his face. He was given to wearing colorful shirts, often with a flo- ral pattern. His eyes were blue and beady… And so on, with nothing happening. It’s too much description, too soon. People writing in the first person have an even harder time. Typically they end up with something like this: Creating Powerful People 71 . “Visualizations” page at www.yourwritingcoach.com). 68 Write! The discovery-through -writing technique Some time ago I interviewed Academy Award-winning screenwriter Alvin Sargent (part of that interview. If you’re writing a biography, for example, if your book answered all of those questions about your subject in an entertaining way, you’d have a very solid piece of work. If you’re writing a. major characters in your story. 25 What is the character’s goal in your story? 26 Why does he or she want to achieve this goal? 27 Who or what stands in the way of the character? Why? 28 What strengths