Learning from Pratchett

Consider these sentences from Monstrous Regiment:

She’d never prayed since the day the bird burned, not even when her mother was dying. A god that burned painted birds would not save a mother. A god like that was not worth a prayer.

But Wazzer prayed for everyone. Wazzer prayed like a child, eyes screwed up and hands clenched until they were white. The reedy little voice trembled with such belief that Polly felt embarrassed, and then ashamed, and, finally, after the ringing “amen,” amazed that the world appeared no different than before. For a minute or two, it had
been a better place…

Polly’s complicated reaction to the way Wazzer prays characterizes her. It lets readers know why she reacts the way she does. Pratchett creates this contrast between the characters to reveal more about each of them, though because readers have access to Polly’s inner life they learn more about her. These seven sentences give two characters each a distinct way of looking at the world, a cosmology, and hint at the possibility that Polly might be changed by Wazzer’s, or that she is at least surprised by the power of it. The question of whether this contrast will lead to conflict or change is implied, and readers might read on wondering if this question will be answered. The different ways these characters look at the world is theological here but could be economic, sociological, etc.

Let one character observe another in a way that reveals contrasts between them and let that contrast imply big questions about their world and perhaps relationship.

See Charles Baxter’s “Counterpointed Characterization” in Burning Down the House for more about this technique.

Learning from Fowler

The first sentence of Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is “Those who know me now will be surprised to learn that I was a great talker as a child.”

If you’ve been reading my posts, you expect me to argue that there is an implied question in the sentence and that readers read beyond it hoping for an answer. You’re right. What’s changed for this character so that they no longer speak as much as they used to? Is this a good thing (“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt” –Abraham Lincoln) or bad (Silence = Death)?

The sentence also explicitly suggests a change in a character, and it characterizes because this is a character who thinks about their life, time, and others, or their audience. This first sentence, in some ways, begins to address the themes of the novel, which can be read as asking about sentience and what sentience in others (especially animals) ethically requires of humanity.

Finally, all of this reminds me of one of Donald Barthelme’s expectations of sentences, that they have a “metaphysical dimension.” Barthelme offers this definition: “By ‘metaphysical dimension’ I mean a quality that turns the mind toward original questions, first principles, the deepest sort of search for meaning.” Ethical questions, especially when they involve how we treat our neighbors, evoke first principles.

How do you know when a novel is finished?

. . . [O]nce I finish a draft, I reread the book. There I find things that are wrong or that don’t work. At that point I make the necessary changes through a new draft. I read the book again. More problems and another rewrite. This process might be repeated twenty times, more. Finally, I reread a batch of changes, see problems in the work, and yet realized that I have no answers. That is when the book is finished.

–Walter Mosley, Elements of Fiction

Learning from Munoz

“If she knew this woman better, if the woman knew her better, Delfina thought, she would tell her that this was only half true, that it was hard to make a go of it alone, but that it could be just as hard to live in a house without kindness.”

–from “Anyone Can Do It” by Manuel Munoz

Relationships are crucial to characterization, and hypothetical conditions shape the relationship described in this sentence. The terms of those conditions characterize: Delfina isn’t willing to share her past because she doesn’t know the woman she is interacting with well enough. If she knew her better, then she would reveal more about herself. The “then” is implied after the two “ifs” and before “she would.”

“If/then” constructions and hypothetical conditions could lead to lots of interesting characterization. Repeating a phrase emphasizes it, doubles down on it. Descriptions of a character’s interiority can add another layer. Also, secret-keeping by characters, what they decide not to reveal or when they do reveal information, can characterize.

Here are a few example drafts that apply some of what has been mentioned above.

  • If she had said, “Just to be clear, I want to reschedule, not cancel,” if he had asked, “Are you saying not Thursday or not at all?” June hissed at herself, then things could have worked out, or at least worked out differently. So, differently.
  • If he hadn’t wanted Benny’s approval, if Benny’s opinion had mattered less, Ray knew he would have told the truth earlier, before one disaster led to another and another after that.
  • If he wanted to destabilize the country, if he planned to make international treaties meaningless, then, spy or not, he helped our enemies.

Learning from Evanovich and Goldberg

Consider the first paragraph of The Heist by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg:

Kate O’Hara’s favorite outfit was her blue windbreaker with the letters FBI written in yellow on the back, worn over a basic black T-shirt and matching black Kevlar vest. The ensemble went well with everything, particularly when paired with jeans and accessorized with a Glock. Thirty-three-year-old Special Agent O’Hare didn’t like feeling exposed and unarmed, especially on the job. That all but ruled her out for undercover work. Fine by her. She preferred a hard-charging style of law enforcement, which was exactly what she was practicing on that 96 degree winter afternoon in Las Vegas when she marched into the St. Cosmas Medical Center in her favorite outfit with a dozen similarly dressed agents behind her.

First sentences and first paragraphs should hook readers, should give them reasons to be interested in continuing to read. This paragraph begins with the name of a character, and that character is interesting in part because the language of two distinct worlds is brought together in her: fashion and policing. Specifically, this character has a favorite outfit of police gear, an “ensemble . . . accessorized with a Glock.” The first two sentences use two characterization techniques, appearance and employment, presented using clear visual images. In the third sentence, a restated name and job title provide a transition from the previous sentence; readers are given the character’s age, and they are given access to the character’s inner life. We know already something this character does not like. The fourth and fifth sentences continue to allow access to the character’s feelings and vary sentence lengths. The change in sentence lengths provides emphasis, and the emphasis itself characterizes: “Fine by her.” Continuing attention to the character’s inner life, “she preferred,” provides a transition from the fifth sentence to the last sentence of the paragraph. That last sentence shows the character acting, another way to characterize, and acting in a specific setting. The character’s action suggests an ongoing process. If readers are hooked by nothing else, they read on to discover the results of the process. Characters and readers finish the paragraph with momentum. In other words, by the end of the first paragraph, readers know journalism’s “Five Ws”: “who” is doing “what” “where.” They can estimate “when.” To discover “why,” they read on. (The “Five Ws” have their roots in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.)  Finally, readers also know fairly specifically the genre they are reading.

Evanovich and Goldberg’s opening suggests several things we might try:

  • Using this paragraph and its sentences as a model, can you create expectations of a different genre?
  • How can your character bring together two disparate communities in a sentence or two?
  • What process begun by a main character in your first paragraph can create momentum deep into your narrative?

Similarly, Charlie Jane Anders wrote in Never Say You Can’t Survive, “I found that the more of a situation I could cram into those opening words, the greater the sense of momentum I could create, that could carry me through the rest of the story.” And also similarly, Elizabeth George in Write Away lists eight different hooks (page 70 in my edition) and many examples.

Learning from Miller

From The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller:

At the edge of the field, by the shadow-line of the hedge, a dog, or something like a dog, raised its head into the light, studied them a moment, the two women upright in the bareness of the field, then dropped out of sight again, soundlessly.

This sentence ends a chapter. The dog, or something like a dog, doesn’t reappear. It adds menace and tension to the novel, partly because of the situation (two pregnant women in a cold, snow-covered field), but also because of the word choices Miller has made: “Edge,” “shadow,” “into the light,” “studied,” “bareness,” “out of sight,” and “soundlessly,” for example. Most of all, the point of view allows readers to know something scary that the characters do not.

Two exercises, then. First, can we use the same words Miller does to create the opposite feeling for readers? We might allow ourselves to add words or see if we can change only their order. How are things different if the women watch the dog, for example? Second, how might we use the technique Miller uses? In other words, what can we let readers know that characters do not? How might this alarm readers, or how might it please them?