I recommend “My Jockey” by Lucia Berlin. One of the ways it is excellent is the several lessons about characterization it contains.
- Characters’ professions matter. In the case of this story, they make the story possible. A nurse and a jockey meet in an emergency room: ”I like working in emergency—you meet men there, anyway. Real men, heroes. Firemen and jockeys…. Jockeys have wonderful X-rays. They break bones all the time but just tape themselves up and ride the next race.” The characters’ professions make this meeting, where one is in an especially vulnerable position, believable. The nurse is already unique as well because they have, probably for most readers, a unique definition of heroes.
- What a character notices can characterize them: “His boots spelled of manure and sweat, but were as soft and dainty as Cinderella’s. He slept on, an enchanted Prince.” This pair of sentences juxtaposes and blurs boundaries. They reveal a character whose mind moves from boots to manure, sweat, Cinderella, and an enchanted Prince. What characters notice and the associations they form as a result help create them for readers.
- Reversals and transformations in how characters think about themselves, especially in relation to other characters, characterize: “Since he wouldn’t lie down on the gurney, I carried him down the corridor, like King Kong.” The nurse becomes a giant ape, and the patient becomes Ann Darrow.
- Punctuation and sentence length, especially in first-person stories, can characterize: “The first jockey I met was Munoz. God. I undress people all the time and it’s no big deal, it takes a few seconds, Munoz lay there, unconscious, a miniature Aztec god.” The sentence, “God,” suggests how the narrator feels about Munoz. It stands out for readers because of its contrast with the sentences around it. The fused sentence that follows combines undressing, vulnerability, and worship, a heady response in a few words that lets readers know how the narrator is feeling.
Consider surprising combinations of professions. What is the story of how two people with those professions meet? Or how might one character move from one profession to another?
